The Embrace of Unreason

by Frederick Brown

  “educate,” “illustrate”: article on Barrès in A. K. Thorlby, ed., The Penguin Companion to European Literature (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 84.

  “At this moment”: Maurice Barrès, Mes Cahiers: 1896–1923, ed. Guy Dupré (Paris: Plon, 1994), p. 6.

  “Le juif errant/La corde aux dents”: François Broche, Vie de Maurice Barrès (Paris: Jean-Claude Lattès, 1987), p. 27.

  “Rambunctious kids”: ibid., p. 36.

  “Was I to become”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, pp. 10–11.

  “Those who did not begin”: Henri Brémond, introduction to Vingt-cinq Années de Vie Littéraire, by Maurice Barrès (Paris: Bloud, 1908), p. xvi.

  “Well, if not superior”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 1025.

  “You were born with a caul”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 76.

  “When one wants to arrive”: ibid., p. 77.

  “brain cells”: ibid., p. 83.

  “The important thing”: ibid., p. 85.

  “The young king”: Maurice Barrès, Les Déracinés (Paris: Plon, 1924), vol. 1, p. 71.

  “very much the prince”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 98.

  “Who are you”: ibid., p. 97.

  “Why did I want”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 12.

  “I have concluded”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 122.

  “Raising funds”: ibid., p. 111.

  “You wouldn’t believe”: ibid., p. 104.

  “I see how it was Wagner”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 701.

  “fortified, transformed”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 139.

  “the artistic glories of the public place”: ibid., p. 141.

  “His was a virgin”: Maurice Barrès, Sous l’Oeil des Barbares (Paris: Plon, 1921), p. 235.

  “This night celebrates”: ibid.

  “[It’s not that we’re heroic]”: The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats (New York: MacMillan, 1953), pp. 36–37.

  “The borders of our minds”: J. W. Burrow, The Crisis of Reason: European Thought, 1848–1914 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 231.

  “a new religion”: The Autobiography of William Butler Yeats, p. 71.

  “It is said of the man of genius”: ibid., p. 40.

  “We have intellectual fathers”: Zeev Sternhell, Maurice Barrès et le Nationalisme Français (Paris: Fayard, 2000), p. 64.

  “There’s something about you”: Jean Garrigues, Le Général Boulanger (Paris: Perrin, 1999), p. 46.

  “We have to fear”: ibid., 81.

  “Throughout the whole”: James Harding, The Astonishing Adventure of General Boulanger (New York: Scribner’s, 1971), p. 7.

  “The renown he craves”: Jules-Michel Gaillard, Jules Ferry (Paris: Fayard, 1989), pp. 623–24.

  “For some time”: ibid., p. 628.

  “If I knew something useful”: Joseph Dedieu, Montesquieu: L’Homme et l’Oeuvre (Paris: Boivin, 1943), p. 22.

  “You are called upon”: Adrien Dansette, Le Boulangisme (Paris: Fayard, 1946), p. 132.

  “Today, most great soul-conquerors”: Gustave Le Bon, La Psychologie des Foules (Paris: Alcan, 1895), p. 63.

  “[Boulanger’s] program”: quoted by Michel Winock in Nationalisme, Antisémitisme et Fascisme en France (Paris: Le Seuil, 1994), p. 45.

  “inexplicable vertigo”: Charles de Freycinet, Souvenirs: 1878–1893 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1973), p. 400.

  “thousands of young people”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 150.

  “For any man of action”: ibid., p. 165.

  “The violence of approbation”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 19.

  “My temperament”: ibid., p. 183.

  “General Boulanger didn’t deceive us”: Arthur Meyer, Ce Que Mes Yeux Ont Vu (Paris: Plon, 1912), p. 97.

  “You are isolated”: ibid., p. 192.

  CHAPTER 3 The Nightingale of the Carnage

  “There I am in a temple”: Maurice Barrès, Les Voyages de Lorraine et d’Artois (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1916), pp. 407–8.

  “Madame Barrès really doesn’t exist”: Broche, Maurice Barrès, p. 203.

  “The pilgrimage to Bayreuth”: Max Nordau, Degeneration (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 213.

  “I’ve never witnessed”: Jean Bouvier, Les Deux Scandales de Panama (Paris: Julliard, 1964), pp. 106–7.

  “The principal participants”: Maurice Barrès, Leurs Figures (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1917), p. 58.

  “Baron Jacques de Reinach”: ibid., p. 123.

  “It seems that all”: La Libre Parole, November 26, 1892.

  “They continue to impose”: Sternhell, Maurice Barrès, p. 213.

  “The paper’s tendencies”: Études Maurrassiennes (Aix-en-Provence: Institut d’Études Politiques, 1972), vol. 1, p. 146.

  “useful variations”: Sternhell, Maurice Barrès, p. 289.

  “How is this conscious self”: ibid.

  “eternal war”: Sternhell, ibid., p. 288.

  “He preached the truth”: Barrès, Les Déracinés, vol. 1, p. 16.

  “The sands gave way”: Maurice Barrès, Scènes et Doctrines du Nationalisme (Paris: Félix Juven, 1902), p. 17.

  “Jews,” he wrote: ibid., p. 63.

  “[Dreyfus] walked”: ibid., pp. 134–35.

  “Dreyfusism was reinvigorated”: Alain Pagès, Émile Zola: Un Intellectuel dans l’Affaire Dreyfus (Paris: Librairie Séguier, 1991), p. 108.

  “aristocrats of thought”: Barrès, Scènes et Doctrines, pp. 45–46.

  “(B.) is at once”: ibid., p. 57.

  “Let us rejoice”: ibid., pp. 208–9.

  “The laws of our mind”: La Grande Pitié des Églises de France in L’Oeuvre de Maurice Barrès (Paris: Le Club de l’Honnête Homme, 1966), vol. 3, pp. 12ff.

  “While the Germans deify”: Maurice Barrès, Chronique de la Grande Guerre (Paris: Plon, 1968), p. 180.

  “At six in the morning”: John Keegan, The First World War (New York: Knopf, 1999), p. 72.

  “radiantly happy”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 752.

  “I am reproached”: ibid., p. 769.

  “These soldiers coming and going”: ibid., p. 758.

  “a new being—the combat unit”: ibid., p. 759.

  “One could spend hours”: Barrès, Les Voyages, p. 407.

  “Only by understanding”: Eksteins, Rites of Spring, p. 307.

  “National Socialism is, in its truest meaning”: ibid., p. 309.

  “with colors unfurled”: Keegan, First World War, p. 202.

  “It is preposterous to talk about reason”: Eksteins, Rites of Spring, p. 183.

  “Le Crapouillot, the only trench paper”: Hugh Cecil and Peter Liddle, eds., Facing Armageddon (London: Leo Cooper, 1996), p. 224.

  “The maneuvers of German agents”: Barrès, Chronique, p. 421.

  “It isn’t because”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 773.

  “a beautiful marriage”: Barrès, Chronique, p. 601.

  “The holy familiarity”: ibid., p. 617.

  “Joan of Arc … obeyed”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, p. 830.

  “intelligence is a very small”: Barrès, Les Déracinés, vol. 2, p. 72.

  “I don’t long”: Barrès, Mes Cahiers, pp. 23–24

  CHAPTER 4 The Battle for Joan

  “This living enigma”: Égide Jeanné, L’Image de la Pucelle d’Orléans dans la Littérature Historique Française Depuis Voltaire (Paris: J. Vrin, 1934), p. 64.

  “Christian sanctity”: Jean Cluzel, “Wallon, Jeanne d’Arc et la République” (Session in homage to Henri-Alexandre Wallon, Institut de France, October 11, 2004).

  “Everyone had something to say”: Archives de la Préfecture de Police, Ba460.

  “This prohibition will enter”: L’Univers, May 30, 1878.

  “Better late than never”: La Lanterne, May 29, 1878.

  “believers and free-thinkers alike”: Rosemonde Sanson, “La Fête de Jeanne d’Arc en 1894”: Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, June–September 1973, p. 447.

 
; “Like her, let us say”: ibid., p. 448.

  “She was the dawn”: ibid., pp. 448–49.

  “May you disappear forever”: La Croix, May 10 and 16, 1894. Sermons of Canon Brettes at the Sacré-Coeur in Paris.

  “tenebrous enemies”: Sanson, “La Fête”: pp. 454–55.

  “How twisted”: “Mythes de Jeanne d’Arc”: Wikipédia.

  “[He] replied”: Montreal Gazette, December 2, 1904.

  “I pledge myself,” “Camelots du Roi”: Wikipédia.

  “You know my ideas”: Michel Winock, “Jeanne d’Arc”: in Les Lieux de Mémoire, vol. 3, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1984), p. 713.

  “To Joan of Arc”: New York Times, May 12, 1907.

  “Long live Christ”: New York Times, December 14, 1908.

  “Yesterday we seemed capable”: Maurice Barrès, Autour de Jeanne d’Arc (Paris: Champion, 1916), pp. 45–46.

  “At the feet of”: Le Temps, May 17, 1915.

  “Once again Joan is winning”: Barrès, Autour de Jeanne d’Arc, pp. 77–86.

  “Alas, how many Frenchmen”: Le Petit Parisien, May 9, 1921.

  “By bending to the natural order”: Charles Maurras, Oeuvres Capitales (Paris: Flammarion, 1954), vol. 2, pp. 299–315.

  CHAPTER 5 Royalism’s Deaf Troubadour

  “L’Action Française has acquired”: Maurice Barrès and Charles Maurras, La République ou le Roi: Correspondance Inédite, 1888–1923, ed. Guy Dupré (Paris: Plon, 1976), p. 585.

  “Civilization is an effort”: quoted by Raymond Aron in Chroniques de Guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), p. 438.

  “[This worldview] oriented itself”: Winock, Nationalisme, p. 164.

  “a deaf man”: Gide, Journal, p. 753.

  “The most cherished voices”: Stéphane Giocanti, Maurras: Le Chaos et l’Ordre (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), p. 136.

  “What evil demon”: Charles Maurras, Sans la Muraille des Cyprès (Paris: J. Gibert, 1941), pp. 18–19.

  “The heavens themselves”: Troilus and Cressida, I.iii.

  “In spite of weaknesses”: Yves Chiron, La Vie de Maurras (Paris: Perrin, 1991), p. 61.

  “You must perceive Jesus Christ”: ibid., p. 62.

  “At the time”: ibid., p. 78.

  “I must admit”: Barrès and Maurras, La République ou le Roi, p. 18.

  “Passion, willfulness”: ibid., p. 47 (January 23, 1891).

  “In Drumont’s work”: ibid., p. 32.

  “You persist in confusing”: ibid. p. 79 (June 9, 1894).

  “the scourge of nations”: Giocanti, Maurras, p. 161.

  “There was no one to say”: ibid., p. 162.

  “Every sacred drop”: La Gazette de France, September 6, 1898.

  “nations have a general”: from Joseph de Maistre, “Des Souveraintés Particulières et des Nations”: in Oeuvres Complètes (Lyon: Vitte, 1884), vol. 1, p. 325; quoted in Alain Finkielkraut, The Defeat of the Mind (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 16.

  “All of us agree”: Maurice Barrès, Scènes et Doctrines, p. 118.

  “M. de Bismarck undoubtedly”: Maurras, Oeuvres Capitales, vol. 2, p. 387.

  “French unity, which”: ibid., p. 398.

  “exclusive nationalism” and its “deep-rooted hostility”: Chiron, Vie de Maurras, pp. 218–19.

  “Our institute”: ibid., p. 220.

  “The lugubrious”: L’Action Française, July 21, 1913.

  “I don’t hesitate”: ibid., August 2, 1913.

  “General Pau’s speech”: ibid., August 1, 1913.

  “So I have brought down”: in Eugen Weber, L’Action Française: Royalism and Reaction in Twentieth-Century France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962), p. 90.

  “Fortunate are those whose hearts”: L’Action Française, August 1, 1914.

  CHAPTER 6 Spy Mania and Postwar Revenge

  “The truth is”: Laurent Dornel, La France Hostile: Socio-histoire de la Xénophobie (1870–1914) (Paris: Hachette, 2004), p. 301.

  “Mystifications, forgeries”: L’Action Française, January 9, 1913.

  “Had he not, by his own admission”: L’Action Française, April 24, 1917.

  “After one year of bloodshed”: Nicolas Faucier, Pacifisme et Antimilitarisme dans l’Entre-deux-Guerres, 1919–1939 (Paris: Spartacus, 1983), p. 35.

  “He supported the nationalist thesis”: Le Figaro, July 23, 1917.

  “M. Malvy is a traitor”: Weber, L’Action Française, p. 105.

  “In this overexcited hall”: ibid., p. 106.

  “One can criticize, detest”: Le Temps, February 25, 1921.

  “Judging others by themselves”: Leopold Schwarzschild, World in Trance (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943), p. 140.

  “We will know in a few hours”: L’Action Française, December 27, 1922.

  “The German rebirth”: Ian Kershaw, Hitler (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), vol. 1, p. 192.

  “I consider that he bore”: Le Figaro, January 23, 1923.

  “A German Bullet”: L’Action Française, January 23, 1923.

  “Germany, the Soviet Union”: ibid.

  “In the street, in the dock”: L’Action Française, January 29, 1923.

  “While revolutionaries”: L’Action Française, December 25, 1923.

  PART TWO

  “News of the Armistice”: Adam Frantz, Sentinelles Prenez Garde à Vous (Paris: Legrand Amédée, 1931), pp. 183–88.

  “We did not cheer”: Richard van Emden, The Soldier’s War (London: Bloomsbury, 2009), p. 365.

  “To think that I shall not have to”: ibid., p. 367.

  “We have lived”: ibid., p. 364.

  “As night came”: Thomas Gowenlock, Soldiers of Darkness (Garden City: Doubleday, 1937), p. 206.

  “Such courage and nerve”: van Emden, Soldier’s War, p. 370.

  “I cannot say how far I walked”: “ ‘Stand to’ on Givenchy Road” from FirstWorld War.com. This passage is also excerpted from Everyman at War, edited by C. B. Purdom (London: Dent, 1930).

  “I would like to send you home”: Gustav Regler, The Owl of Minerva (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1959), p. 56.

  “We seemed, as we moved up the road”: van Emden, Soldier’s War, p. 129.

  “Your letter finds me”: Jacques Vaché, Lettres de Guerre (Paris: Au Sans Pareil, 1919), p. 24.

  CHAPTER 7 Scars of the Trenches

  “the dictation of thought”: André Breton, Manifestes du Surréalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1963), p. 37.

  “War is my homeland”: Dominique Desanti, Drieu La Rochelle (Paris: Flammarion, 1978), p. 111.

  “endangering the safety”: Marguerite Bonnet, ed., L’Affaire Barrès (Paris: José Corti, 1987), p. 24.

  “It wouldn’t be worth a trial”: ibid., pp. 64–65.

  “To be sure”: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Journal: 1939–1945 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992), p. 76.

  “To think that this was an infantry officer”: ibid., p. 76.

  “Giraudoux regards the events”: ibid., p. 77.

  “The father was a peasant”: Régine Pernoud, Histoire de la Bourgeoisie en France (Paris: Seuil, 1962), vol. 2, p. 482.

  “She counted on me”: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, L’État Civil (Paris: Gallimard, 1977), p. 57.

  “How often I sobbed”: ibid., p. 44.

  “During recess”: ibid., p. 94.

  “My mother had bought me”: ibid., p. 96.

  “There were two good students”: ibid., p. 110.

  “There, something gripped me”: ibid., p. 173.

  “I revealed with brutal candor”: Pierre Andreu and Frédéric Grover, Drieu La Rochelle (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1979), p. 74.

  “I have known two or three”: ibid, p. 97.

  “Only leaders count”: ibid., p. 102.

  “No more family”: ibid., p. 109.

  “Et nous saurons”: ibid., p. 123.

  “Violent death”: Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Correspondance avec André et Colette Jéramec, (Paris: Gallimard, 19
93), p. 200.

  “Now, God be thanked”: ibid., p. 444.

  “Don’t go crazy”: ibid., p. 175.

  “What is that, next to our affection”: ibid., p. 342.

  “I am appalled”: Andreu and Grover, Drieu La Rochelle, p. 134.

  “We are drawn to ageless”: Gérard Durozoi, Histoire du Mouvement Surréaliste (Paris: Hazan, 1997), p. 9.

  “In old shop signs”: Arthur Rimbaud, “L’Alchimie du verbe”: in Une Saison en Enfer (Paris: Éditions Garnier, 1962), p. 228.

  “An entire generation’s idea”: Louis Aragon, Projet d’Histoire Littéraire Contemporaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), p. 7.

  “Dada means nothing”: “Manifeste Dada,” Dada 3, Zurich, December 1918.

  “I tell you”: ibid.

  “Every time a demonstration”: Durozoi, Histoire du Mouvement Surréaliste, p. 39.

  CHAPTER 8 The Rapture of the Deep

  “psychic automatism”: Breton, Manifestes du Surréalisme, p. 37.

  “man was given language”: ibid., p. 46.

  “the mediocrity of our world”: André Breton, Point du Jour, in Oeuvres Complètes, (Paris: NRF, 1992), vol. 2, p. 276.

  “This hubbub of cars and lorries”: Francis Ponge, “Les Écuries d’Augias,” in Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), pp. 191–92.

  “shed its verbal aspect”: Louis Aragon, Une Vague de Rêves (Paris: Seghers, 2006), p. 17.

  “It does not have many friends”: Francis Ponge, “Les Colimaçons,” in Le Parti Pris des Choses in Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 1, p. 26.

  “The plastic instinct”: André Breton, Le Surréalisme et la Peinture (Paris: Gallimard, 1979).

  “We know the yearning”: André Malraux, Les Voix du Silence (Paris: NRF, 1951), p. 628.

  “Everything leads one to believe”: Breton, Manifestes du Surréalisme, pp. 66–67.

  “Above all there is that joy”: Louis Aragon, Anicet (Paris: NRF, 1921), p. 187.

  “the great writer par excellence”: Le Figaro, October 19, 1924.

  “Anatole France hasn’t died”: Maurice Nadeau, Histoire du Surréalisme (Paris: Seuil, 1945), p. 95.

  “You and I, sir”: Andreu and Grover, Drieu La Rochelle, p. 174.