Paris and the Social Revolution Part 34

CHAPTER XVII

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN PROSE LITERATURE & THE DRAMA

"_I have intended to rehabilitate the pariah, whatever form it may take; whether it be a buffoon, like Triboulet, a courtesan, like Marion Delorme, a poisoner, like Lucrezia Borgia, the oppressed, like the people. Those who say that I have practised art for art's sake say a silly thing. No one, more than I, has practised art for society and humanity. I have always worked for this end, and have known what I wished to do_."-VICTOR HUGO.

"_We know what it cost the First Empire to have displeased Chateaubriand, what it cost Louis Philippe to have offended Lamartine, Napoleon III. to have vexed Victor Hugo_."-GASTON DESCHAMPS.

"_The apt.i.tude for commerce is an inferior apt.i.tude. There are mult.i.tudes of banks in which fortunes are perpetuated. Is there an unbroken line of Hugos, of Amperes, of Courbets, which progresses incessantly from father to son? Commerce is an absurd criterion of merit, base in itself and still more degrading when it is regulated by laws like ours._"

Helier, in ROSNY'S Le Bilateral.

"_This morning I received the visit of the police commissary, my neighbour, accompanied by four alcoholics. They turned everything topsy-turvy in my rooms, mixed up my correspondence, rumpled my collection of prints, and all to seize, at the end, a wood-cut of Maurin and the works of Tolstoy._"

Meyrargues, in VICTOR BARRUCAND'S Avec le Feu.

"_I believe it is impossible to-day for a great mind not to be somewhat anarchistic._"-AUGUSTIN FILON.

"_My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual outside of all rules and of all social necessities_."-EMILE ZOLA.

Whatever may be the verdict of posterity regarding the literary and philosophical activity of this restless, problematic period, the verdict of the contemporary world seems to be that Tolstoy, Ibsen, and Zola are the three biggest literary philosophers (or philosophical litterateurs) of their day and generation; and it is a noteworthy fact, to put it mildly, that the att.i.tude towards society of each one of these three intellectual giants is, more or less openly, revolutionary. All three may be claimed by the parties of revolt without any considerable forcing of the note.

Tolstoy, by reason of his adoration of Jesus, his insistence on a literal interpretation of Jesus' teachings, his advocacy of non-resistance as the most effective form of resistance, and his attempts to incorporate liberty in education and, by education, in life, seems to fall naturally enough into the category of the "Christian anarchist." But, whether Tolstoy be a "Christian anarchist" or a "Christian socialist," as certain Christian socialists rather presumptuously claim, is immaterial. He is opposed to the established order, and belongs indisputably with the revolutionists.

Ibsen is a fearless, implacable, self-confessed destroyer of dogma and tradition, whom the anarchists may claim without doing violence either to themselves or to him.

The att.i.tude of Zola towards society and the social problem is not so easy to define.

Zola exposed with a frankness bordering on brutality the rottenness of the wealthy and privileged cla.s.ses, the oppressions and cruelty of capital, the selfishness and hypocrisy of ministers, magistrates, army officers, and priests; pictured with a friendliness bordering on advocacy the sufferings and struggles of the labourers, and stated with perfect fairness the most revolutionary ideas and ideals. That he had in him little enough of the stuff of which real martyrs are made-in spite of his const.i.tutional inability to "shut himself up in his works, and act only through them," as he a hundred times announced his intention of doing-was shown clearly enough by his ignominious flight when things turned against him in the Dreyfus affair. Nevertheless, no novelist of his time-at least none in France-has portrayed so masterfully, so sympathetically, one might almost say so devoutly, the character of the extreme, the martyr type of anarchist, the _propagandiste par le fait_.

Zola is said to have boasted of the progress anarchistic violence made after he "launched his Souvarine into the world." The charge is probably a libel; but from this cold, calculating, consecrated Souvarine of _Germinal_ to the generous, sentimental Salvat of Paris the sincere _propagandiste par le fait_ was explained, excused, admired, extolled by him.

This is not saying that Zola was consciously (or unconsciously) an advocate of the _propagande par le fait_. He extended an equal cordiality to all the reformers and innovators who are groping towards a new and better world. The evils of contemporary society are so gigantic, in his view, and the necessity for a change of some sort so imperative, that he could understand and condone any and every honest protest, no matter how imprudent and no matter how fruitless.

Besides, Zola was more of an observer than a philosopher, and more of a poet than either. His later works, and _Germinal_ at least among his earlier ones, are primarily prose epics. He loved the dynamiter for his epic value as Milton loved his magnificent Satan, and may have had no more intention of holding him up to men as an exemplar than Milton had of inst.i.tuting devil-wors.h.i.+p.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Emile Zola]

It is not normal for the poet to have a coherent system, and it is extremely doubtful if Zola had one. Still, the poet must have, like other mortals, his personal point of view; and Zola's personal point of view (which is not for a moment to be confounded with his point of view as a poet) seems to have been that of the scientists of his novels,-anarchistic as to end, but evolutionary as to means: the att.i.tude of Guillaume Froment in _Paris_, who saw in "unities creating worlds, atoms producing life by attraction, by free and ardent love, the only scientific theory of society," and who "dreamed of the emanc.i.p.ated individual evolving, expanding without any restraint whatsoever, for his own good and for the good of all." The att.i.tude of Bertheroy (_Paris_), "who worked, in the seclusion of his laboratory, for the ruin of the present superannuated and abominable regime, with its G.o.d, its dogmas, its laws, but who desired also repose, too disdainful of useless acts to join in the tumults of the street, preferring to live tranquil, rich, recompensed, in peace with the government (whatever it might be), all in foreseeing and preparing the formidable issue of to-morrow,"-the Bertheroy who says: "I have only contempt for the vain agitations of politics, revolutionary or conservative. Does not science suffice? Of what use is it to wish to hurry things when a single step of science does more to advance humanity towards the city of justice and truth than a hundred years of politics and social revolt? Science alone is revolutionary: it alone can make not only truth, but justice prevail, if justice is ever possible here below. Of a certainty, it alone brushes away dogmas, expels the G.o.ds, creates light and happiness. It is I, member of the Inst.i.tute, rich and decorated, who am the only revolutionist." The att.i.tude of Jordan (_Travail_), "a completely emanc.i.p.ated spirit, a tranquil and terrible evolutionist, sure that his labour will ravage and renew the world.... According to Jordan, it is science solely that leads humanity to truth, to justice, to final happiness, to the perfect city of the future towards which the peoples are so slowly and painfully advancing."

All things considered, it would not be unfair, perhaps, to address to Zola himself the words which he made this Jordan speak to the reforming hero of _Travail_, Luc Froment: "Only, my n.o.ble friend, you are nothing more nor less than an anarchist, complete evolutionist as you believe yourself; and you have every reason to say that, while it is with the formula of Fourier that we must begin, it is by _l'homme libre dans la commune libre_ that we must end." And, if Zola had been thus addressed, it is not unlikely that he would have replied laughingly, as he made his Luc reply, "At any rate, let's begin; and we shall see in due time whither logic leads us."

There is no doubt possible regarding Zola's belief in a good time coming. His later books were fairly saturated with a sublime faith almost childlike. There is also no doubt that he believed that science consecrated to the service of humanity is quite capable of regenerating the world, as he indicated by the communistic experiment of Luc in _Travail_. But whether he believed that science _will_ be consecrated to the service of humanity or whether he was presenting a method which might be employed, and which he simply hoped, almost against hope, would be so employed, is not so clear. Thus, in the last chapter of _Travail_, after giving a beautiful picture of the superb results of the peaceable revolution accomplished through the altruistic initiative of Luc in the commune of Beauclair, he added a sort of apocalyptic vision of the happenings in the princ.i.p.al divisions of the big world outside, in which the same superb results have been secured by violence,-by a b.l.o.o.d.y, socialistic _coup d'etat_, by the multiplication of anarchistic bombs, by a universal war,-quite as if he would say to the cla.s.ses in power: "I have shown you how society may be renewed. I have shown you the way of your salvation, the only way. If you would but walk in this way, you might save yourselves and the world with you. But you will not. You are too stupid, too selfish, too obstinate, too corrupt. You will not. I have known you only too long, and I know you will not. Well, then, so much the worse for you! Expropriation, ma.s.sacre, annihilation, await you!"

If you ask intellectual Frenchmen, without distinction of social position or political faith, who is the foremost living French man of letters, five out of six will answer, without an instant's hesitation, Anatole France. Less pictorial, less colossal, and less epic than Zola, but more penetrating and more profound; aesthetic and erudite (in the good old-fas.h.i.+oned sense of the latter word), subtile, suave, and refined; abundantly endowed with the humour and the wit in which Zola was deficient; as impeccable in point of language and style as Zola was careless, as measured as Zola was violent, as gentle as Zola was brutal, as finished as Zola was crude; as perfect an embodiment of the Greek spirit as Zola, if he had only had a keener sense of the grotesque, would have been of the Gothic,-Anatole France is none the less a redoubtable iconoclast,-the most redoubtable iconoclast of his generation, perhaps. A playful pessimist, a piquant anarchist, a mischievous nihilist, if you will, but a pessimist, an anarchist, a nihilist, for all that. "Prejudices," he says, "are unmade and remade without ceasing: they have the eternal mobility of the clouds. It is in their nature to be august before appearing to be odious; and the men are rare who have not the superst.i.tion of their time, and who look straight in the eye what the crowd does not dare to look at." M. France is one of these rare men. He combines the amiable doubt of Montaigne with the mocking irreverence of Voltaire and the subversive grace of Renan. "The end which M. France seems to pursue persistently," says one of his literary brethren, "is the demolition of the social edifice by the force of a logic tinctured with irony, without anger, and without phrases. By as much as Zola, Tailhade, and Mirbeau are ardent and pa.s.sionate when they attack society, by so much is M. France calm and feline; but he is not, on that account, the less to be feared."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANATOLE FRANCE]

As the most eminent living representative of the best cla.s.sic traditions of French prose, M. France is the idol of the lettered youth of France. From admiration of form to acceptance of the substance underlying the form is but a step. His ideas insinuate themselves consequently into the very penetralia of culture,-that exquisite culture which brooks the presence of nothing common or unclean,-and they act as a disintegrating force in circles where downright revolutionary propaganda cannot enter.

In his writings, Anatole France is the precise intellectual counterpart-at every point but that of Catholicism, and even here his pa.s.sion for Augustine, Chrysostom, and the other Church Fathers deters him from displaying an uncomely asperity-of his own adorable creation, l'Abbe Coignard,[105] the "delicious Catholic _revolte_, who juggles with principles and human inst.i.tutions as if they were a Merry Andrew's painted spheres; the railing anarchist who lashes with jests and whose only bombs are _bons mots_." And the best characterisation it is possible to give of M. France, the genial iconoclast, is to repeat certain of his observations on the character of his Abbe and certain of the sayings he puts into his Abbe's mouth,-which I accordingly do in the following detached paragraphs, making no pretence of preserving in the translation the peculiar savour and charm of the original:-

OF THE CHARACTER OF JERoME COIGNARD.

"His free intelligence trampled under foot vulgar beliefs and never accepted without examination the common opinion, except in what had to do with the Catholic faith in which he was immovable.

"The sagest of moralists, a sort of marvellous blend of Epicurus and Saint Francis of a.s.sisi.... He preserved, in his boldest explorations, the att.i.tude of a peaceful promenader.... It is certain that the world, to his eyes, resembled less the deserts of the Thebade than the gardens of Epicurus. He sauntered therein with the audacious ingenuousness which is the essential trait of his character and the elemental principle of his teaching."

"Never did spirit show itself at once so daring and so pacific, nor temper its disdain with more sweetness.... He despised men with tenderness. He endeavoured to teach them that, since they have nothing anywhere near great in themselves except their capacity for suffering, they can cultivate nothing useful or beautiful but compa.s.sion."

"It was his benevolence which impelled him to humiliate his fellows in their sentiments, their knowledge, their philosophy, and their inst.i.tutions. He had to show them that their imbecile natures have neither imagined nor constructed anything worth being attacked or defended very energetically, and that, if they knew the fragile crudity of their greatest works, such as laws and empires, they would fight over them only in play, for the sheer fun of the thing, like the children who build castles of sand on the rim of the sea."

"The majesty of the laws did not impose on his clairvoyant soul; and he deplored the fact that the unfortunate are burdened with so many obligations of which, for the most part, it is impossible to discover the origin or the sense."

"What he had the least of was the sense of veneration. Nature had refused it him, and he did nothing to acquire it. He would have feared, in exalting some, to debase others; and his universal charity embraced equally the humble and the proud."

SOME OF JERoME COIGNARD'S SAYINGS.

_Of Society and Governments_:

"After the destruction of all the false principles, society will subsist, because it is founded upon necessity, the laws of which, older than Saturn, will rule when Prometheus shall have dethroned Jupiter."

"I conclude that all the laws with which a minister swells his portfolio are vain doc.u.ments that can neither make us live nor prevent us from living."

"It is well-nigh a matter of indifference whether we are governed in one fas.h.i.+on or another, and ministers are imposing only by reason of their clothes and their carriages."

"These a.s.semblies [parliaments] will be founded upon the confused mediocrity of the mult.i.tude of which they will be the issue. They will revolve obscure and multiple thoughts. They will impose on the heads of the government the task of executing vague wishes, of which they will not have full consciousness themselves; and the ministers, less fortunate than the dipus of the fable, will be devoured, one after the other, by the hundred-headed Sphinx, for not having guessed the riddle of which the Sphinx herself did not know the answer. Their greatest hards.h.i.+p will be to resign themselves to impotence, to words instead of action. They will become rhetoricians, and very bad rhetoricians, since the talent which carried with it ever so little clarity would ruin them.

They will be obliged to speak without saying anything, and the least stupid among them will be condemned to deceive more than the others. In this way the most intelligent will become the most contemptible. And, if there shall be some capable of arranging treaties, regulating finance, and supervising affairs, their ability will profit them nothing; for time will be lacking, and time is the stuff of great enterprises."

_Of the Army_:

"I have observed that the trade the most natural to man is that of soldiering; it is the one towards which he is the most easily borne by his instincts and by his tastes, which are not all good. And apart from certain rare exceptions, of which I am one, man may be defined as an animal with a musket. Give him a handsome uniform and the hope of going to fight, he will be content.... The military condition has this also in keeping with human nature, that one is never forced to think therein; and it is clear that we were not made to think."

"Thought is a disease peculiar to certain individuals, and could not be propagated without bringing about promptly the end of the species. Soldiers live in bands, and man is a sociable animal. They wear costumes of blue and white, blue and red, gray and blue, ribbons, plumes, and c.o.c.kades; and these give them the same prestige with women that the c.o.c.k has with the hen. They go forth marauding and to war; and man is naturally thieving, libidinous, destructive, and sensible to glory."

"It is astounding, Tournebroche, my son, that war and the chase, the mere thought of which ought to overwhelm us with shame and remorse in recalling to us the miserable necessities of our nature and our inveterate wickedness, should, on the contrary, serve as matter for the pride of men; that Christians should continue to honour the trade of butcher and headsman when it is hereditary in the family; and that, in a word, among civilised peoples the ill.u.s.triousness of the citizens is measured by the quant.i.ty of murder and carnage they carry, so to speak, in their veins."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Pair of Army Officers]

_Of the Academy_: