As to Madame Bergeret, she reproached herself sometimes for the birth of Putois; but, after all, she had done nothing worse than Shakespeare when he created Caliban. Nevertheless she turned quite pale one day when the maid came in and said that a man like a country labourer wished to speak to madame. “Did he give his name?” “Yes — Putois.” “What?” “Putois, madame. He is waiting in the kitchen.” “What does he want?” “He will tell no one but yourself, madame.” “Go and ask him again.” When the maid returned to the kitchen Putois was gone. But from that day Madame Bergeret herself began to have a kind of belief in his existence.
The story is both clever and of deep significance, it turns on the question of what an imaginary existence is. Putois’ generation is the generation of a myth, and he exerts the influence which mythical characters do. No one can deny the rule of mythical beings over the minds of men, their influence on human souls. Gods and goddesses, spirits and saints, have inspired enthusiasm and terror, have had their altars, have counselled crimes, have, originated customs and laws. Satyrs and Silenuses have occupied the human imagination, have set chisels and brushes to work century after century. The Devil has his history, extending back for thousands of years — has been terrible, witty, foolish, cruel; has demanded human sacrifices; and has not only been worshipped by magicians and witches, but has, up to our own days, had his priests. France, however, has not the Devil alone in his mind; his thoughts range higher.
And he not only throws light in a bantering way on the formation of a myth, but also, and still more vividly, upon human verdicts. When Madame Cornouiller suspects Madame Bergeret of wishing to keep the vagrant gardener for herself, of not allowing other people to have any share in Putois, the writer remarks, as it were with a smile, that many historical conclusions which are accepted by every one are as well founded as this conclusion of Madame Cornouillers. Here, as elsewhere, France asserts that it is foolish to believe in the just judgment of posterity.
He has always thought it strange that Madame Roland should have appealed to “impartial posterity,” without reflecting that if her contemporaries, who guillotined her, were cruel apes, there was every probability of their descendants being the same.
The world’s history is the world’s verdict, wrote Schiller. He is a naïve man who believes this. Posterity is just only to this extent, that the questions are of indifference to it; and as it is with the greatest difficulty that it can examine the dead, and as, moreover, it is itself not an impersonal thing, but an aggregate of more or less prejudiced human beings, the verdict takes shape accordingly. Historic justice is a Putois.
Fame is a Putois, an imaginary, impalpable being, that is pursued by thousands, and that melts into nothing just when it should display itself in full vigour — namely, after their death.
Everywhere we have imaginary, artificial existence, proclaimed to be real, and accepted as such. It is not at all necessary to confine ourselves to religion, where it is only too easy to discover Putois, whose huge shadow darkens theology in its entirety. Let us think of the illusions in politics, of the part played by titles in social life. Or let us remember the place occupied by imaginary existences in our own emotional life. Suppose that we could transfer to canvas the image of the beloved one which forms itself in the imagination of the lover at the moment when he sees all her supposed perfections, and afterwards place alongside of it the image of her which remains when love has evaporated and he has stripped her, one by one, of all the qualities which enchanted him — the description of the first picture would not seem less unreal than the description of Putois.
The reader who muses over the little story will feel how many ideas it sets in motion, and will, like the inhabitants of Saint-Omer, find traces of Putois everywhere.
The fault in most historical descriptions is that the pictures of the past are distorted in accordance with the significance which they have acquired for a later age. Gobineau makes Michael Angelo talk of Raphael as people did in the nineteenth century when they named them together. Wilde makes John the Baptist speak as he does in the Gospels, which were written, with an aim which led to distortion, long after his death. Wherever in modern poetry or art the figure of Jesus is treated, no matter in what spirit — let it be by Paul Heyse, by Sadakichi Hartmann the Japanese, or Edward Söderberg the Dane — He is the principal figure of His day, occupying the thoughts of all.
France, in his story, Judæas Procurator, has, in an extremely clever manner, indicated the place occupied by Jesus in the consciousness of a contemporary Roman. To any one who can read, the fact that the life and death of Jesus interested only a little band of humble people in Jerusalem, is sufficiently established by the circumstance that Josephus, who knows everything that happens in the Palestine of his day, does not so much as name Him. The man who argues that such an event as the Crucifixion must have made some impression forgets what a common and unheeded incident a crucifixion was in troublous times. During the Jewish war of the year 70, in the course of which 13.000 Jews were killed at Skythopolis, 50.000 in Alexandria, 40,000 at Jotapata — 1,100,000 in all — Titus crucified on an average 500 Jews every day. When, impelled by hunger, they crept under the walls of Jerusalem, they were captured, tortured, and crucified. At last there was no more wood for crosses left in Palestine.
As his principal character, France has taken the Titus Ælius Lamia to whom the seventeenth ode of Horace’s Third Book is addressed — a gay young Roman who, according to France, is banished by Tiberius for a flagrant love-affair with a consuls wife, goes to Palestine, and meets with a friendly reception in the house of Pontius Pilate. Forty years pass; Ælius Lamia has long been back in Italy; he is at Baiæ, taking the baths, and is sitting one day by a path upon a height reading Lucretius, when, in the occupant of a litter borne past by slaves, it seems to him that he recognises his old host, Pilate.
And it really is Pilate, who has come, accompanied by his eldest daughter, now a widow, to take the baths. They talk of old days — of all the trouble Pontius had with those wretched Jews, who refused to do homage to the image of the Emperor on the banners, and allowed themselves to be flogged to death rather than worship it. They continually came to him, too, demanding a sentence of death on some unfortunate creature whose crime he was unable to discover, and who appeared to him to be as mad as his accusers. Lamia declares that Pontius lacked appreciation of the Jews’ good qualities, but confesses that his own predilection was in favour of the Jewesses. He recalls an evening on which he saw one of them dancing with uplifted arms to the clang of cymbals, on a ragged carpet in a miserably lighted, wretched drinking-booth. The dance was barbaric, the voice hoarse, but in the motion of the limbs there was sorcery, and the eyes were Cleopatra’s. She had heavy red hair, this girl, whose charms enticed the young Roman to follow her everywhere. “But she ran away from me,” he continued, when the young lay preacher and miracle-worker came from Galilee to Jerusalem. She became inseparable from him, and joined the little band of men and women who were always with him. “You remember him, of course?” “No,” replies Pilate. “His name was Jesus, I think; he was from Nazareth” “I do not remember him,” reaffirms Pilate. “You were obliged to have him crucified.” “Jesus—” mutters Pilate, “from Nazareth — I have no recollection of it.”
Here we have a characteristic example of Frances manner of producing his effects, and of his art in its profound truth.
So far is he from seeing Pilate’s connection with Jesus in the light of later times that he represents him as completely forgetting the whole occurrence, which was an everyday one to him — whilst Lamia only remembers it because of Magdalene.
France has drawn Magdalene again in the tale of Læta Acilia, one of those composing the volume entitled Balthasar. Here he represents her as driven from Judæa, and arriving by ship at Marseilles, where she tries to convert her protectress, a Roman knight’s wife. The Roman lady desires a child. Magdalene promises to pray for her. The next time she comes to the house Læta Ac
ilia is pregnant. And now Magdalene tells her that she herself was a sinner when she first beheld the fairest of men, the Son of Man; that He drove seven devils out of her; and that she fell on her knees before Him in the house of one Simon and poured precious ointment from an alabaster box over His sacred feet. She repeats the words which the gentle Rabbi uttered in her defence when His disciples, with coarse taunts, would have driven her away. Since then she has lived in the shadow of the Master as in a new Paradise. And to her it was that He appeared first after His resurrection.
It seems to the Roman lady that Magdalene is endeavouring to impart to her a distaste for the pleasures of her placid life. Until now she has had no idea of there being any other happiness in the world except that which she knows.
“I have no desire to know your God. You have loved him too supremely. To please him one is to fall at his feet with unloosened hair! That is no posture for the wife of a Roman knight. Go, Jewess! Your God can never be mine. I have not lived the life of a sinner, and I have not been possessed with seven devils. I have not wandered in ways of error; I am a woman deserving of respect. Go!”
What attracts France in these characters is the contrast between the emotional life of the two women, between the religiously erotic rapture of the Asiatic and the tradition-sanctioned conjugal love of the Roman matron.
It is always as the creative writer that he touches history.
Among the many things in which France does not believe is history as a science. History, he says, is a representation of the events of the past. But what is an event? A remarkable fact. Who decides whether a fact is remarkable or not? The historian decides it, arbitrarily, according to his taste. A fact is, moreover, an exceedingly composite thing. Does the historian represent it in all its compositeness? That would be impossible. Hence he gives us it cropped and pruned. And yet again, the historic fact is the final consequence of unhistoric or unknown facts. How can the historian demonstrate their concatenation?
This line of argument appeals so forcibly to France that he sets it forth no fewer than three times — in the preface to La Vie Littéraire, in Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard, and in Le Jardin d’Épicure. As the creative writer he chills the ardour of the investigator by his scepticism. It is, he says, impossible to know the past; no one is able to read everything that would require to be read. Twice he relates the same fable in illustration of his argument:
When young Prince Zemire succeeded his father on the throne of Persia, he summoned a convocation of all the learned men of his kingdom, and addressed them thus:
“My revered teacher has impressed upon me that kings would be less liable to error if they were acquainted with the history of the past. Write me a history of the world, and make certain that it is complete.”
After the lapse of twenty years the learned men reappeared before the king, followed by a caravan composed of twelve camels, each bearing 500 volumes.
The secretary of the society made a short speech and presented the 6000 volumes.
The king, whose time was fully occupied with the affairs of the State, expressed his gratitude for the trouble taken, but added: “I am now middle-aged, and even if I live to be old I shall not have time to read such a long history. Abridge it!” After labouring twenty years longer the learned men returned, followed by three camels bearing 1500 volumes, and said: “Here is our new work; we believe that nothing essential is omitted.”
“That may be; but I am an old man now. Abridge still further, and with all possible speed!”
After the lapse of only ten years they reappeared, followed by a young elephant, bearing only 500 volumes. “This time we have been exceedingly brief.”
“Not yet sufficiently so,” replied the king. “My life is almost over. Abridge again!”
Five years passed, and the secretary returned alone, walking with crutches, and leading a small ass, whose load was one large book.
“Hurry!” called an officer. “The king is at the point of death.”
“I die,” said the king, “without knowing the history of mankind.”
“Not so, sire,” answered the aged man of learning; “I can compress it for you into three words: They were born, suffered, and died.”
We see how it is that France, in spite of his great gifts as an investigator, has not become a historian, but a novelist and story-writer.
He is not, however, so pessimistic as we might conclude from the closing words of his fable. The human beings whom he describes have pleasures as well as pains, and he invariably advocates pleasure as superior to every kind of abnegation of nature, and combats the theory that there is good in suffering.
But this scepticism with regard to history is typical of his sceptical spirit generally.
The danger of extreme intellectual refinement is that it disposes to doubt. The interest in humanity of the man who sees the many-sidedness of everything is apt to be swallowed up in contempt for humanity. And once this has happened he is quite likely, from sheer pessimistic reasonableness, to become the supporter of high-handed tyranny.
France has run this danger. Ten years ago it seemed as if the course of his development were quite as likely to lead him, practically, to reaction as to Radicalism.
When Abel Herman’s book, Le Cavalier Miserey, a military novel of some ability which criticised the army, was forbidden to soldiers, France wrote: “I know only a few lines of the famous order of the day published by the colonel of the Twelfth Regiment of Chasseurs at Rouen. They are as follows: ‘Every copy of Le Cavalier Miserey which is confiscated shall be burned on the dunghill, and every soldier in whose possession a copy is found shall be punished with imprisonment.’ It is not a particularly elegant sentence, and yet I would rather have written it than the four hundred pages of the novel.”
It was a crime in those days to utter a word against the army. Those who know what France has written about it since, know what a change has taken place in his views.
When the crisis came, it showed that in this man dwelt not merely, as in certain others, intellect and ability, but a determined will, and that in his inmost soul he was not such a doubter but that he had preserved one belief and one enthusiasm — belief in the justification of the great spiritual revolt of the eighteenth century, and enthusiasm for it.
As author he owns two main elements of effectiveness. The first is the ingenuousness which prevents his characters ever being — what Voltaire’s often are — marionettes; they move freely on their own legs, and lead a life independent of their author and undisturbed by him. Their naïveté makes them natural.
The second element is art. France has what he himself calls the French writer’s three great qualities — in the first place, lucidity; in the second, lucidity; in the third and last, lucidity. But this is only one fundamental quality of his art. He has proved himself possessed of moderation and tact, in which for him, as the true Frenchman (and to use his own words), “all art consists.” His detestation of Zola as a novelist was due to that Italian’s utter lack of moderation as an artist. He himself as narrator is always subdued.
He lacks passion, and he is never wanton; his eroticism is only Epicureanism. There is sensuality in his writing, and there is intellectuality — a good deal of the former, an overpowering amount of the latter.
He is, taken all in all, more the artistic and philosophic than the creative author. Delacroix has said that art is exaggeration in the right place. France’s exaggeration lies in the wealth of ideas with which he endows his characters, a wealth which the books can hardly contain (vide Thaïs and Balthasar), and for which place must be made in whole additional volumes, such as Les Opinions de M. Jérôme Coignard, Le Jardin d’Épicure, and a part of Pierre Nozière. He has more ideas than feelings. He has ideas upon every subject, criticises everything — not only human prejudices and institutions, but nature herself.
He reproaches her, for instance, with giving us youth so early, and letting us live the rest of our life without it; it ought to come
last, as the crown of life, like the butterfly stage, which in insects comes after the larva and cocoon stage, and ought, as the last, highest phase of development, to be directly followed by death.
France’s own highest stage of development has come last. For in his latest phase, as combatant, he is far from having lost any of his satirical power, or of the artistic superiority which it confers. Never has his irony been so effective as in his most distinctly polemical work, L’Anneau d’Améthyste, where the most immoral actions, one breach of the Seventh Commandment after the other, become links in the cleverly woven chain of intrigues which, aiming at gratifying an ambitious young parvenu baron’s desire to become member of an ultra-Conservative aristocrat’s hunt, result in procuring the episcopal ring for a crafty, submissive priest. This priest has cringed to every one, and by his humility has prevailed on men and women to act. Hardly is he appointed before he reveals himself as the most warlike son of the Church, the irreconcilable enemy of the State.
As an artist, France, even when he is most combative, is Olympian and passionless.
That he is not lacking in passion, behind his art and apart from it, was revealed on the day when the serene sceptic suddenly faced round and as polemist adopted a party, as popular orator proclaimed himself a radical Socialist.
He was no born orator; according to French custom, he read his speeches. But his greatness as a writer stood him in good stead. He generally began by riveting the attention of the crowd by something graphic and tangible — perhaps some old fairy-tale. One day he told the story of the wonderful wrestler who could transform himself into a fire-breathing dragon, and when the dragon was overcome, into an inoffensive duck. “I could not help thinking of this wrestler the other day,” he said, “when I read the programme which the Nationalists have affixed to the walls. We have seen them on our streets and boulevards ejecting fire from their eyes, their mouths, and their nostrils. Like the most frightful dragons, they flapped their wings and showed their terror-inspiring claws. They were, nevertheless, overcome; and now they have come to life again, to make a fresh trial of strength, with smooth feathers, with an appearance of belonging to our household, with a domestic animal’s mild voice. What a remarkable transformation!”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 484