V.G. Belinsky, Karl Marx and W.M. Thackeray on Eugène Sue's "Les Mystères de Paris"

The confrontation and comparison of the literary judgments of two or more contemporary critics on a single literary work is not a method frequently used in literary history, for its scope is necessarily narrow and the results it provides are more often insignificant details than important discoveries. It would be a pity, however, to refuse this method in such a case, when the compared critics are unmistakably great personalities and when the confrontation promises to throw light upon their critical principles from an unusual angle. Such a rare opportunity offers itself in the case of three great representatives of the European culture and thought of the last century, the founder of Marxism, Karl Marx, the Russian revolutionary democratic critic, V. G. Belinsky and the great English critical realist, W. M . Thackeray, who all almost at the same time reviewed or analysed the same novel, namely Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris. In comparing the evaluations of Marx and Belinsky we are not opening up new ground, as this has already formed the subject of Soviet studies; Thackeray's opinions however have never been analysed in this connection. There is no doubt that the comparison would bring more fruitful results, if the literary work in question were an outstanding work of art or at least reached an average literary standard. But even if the low artistic level of Sue's novel detracts somewhat from the value of our research, the greatness of his critics guarantees at least interesting results.