Romain Rolland Part 17

The war itself, however, was not to be the theme, for the free soul does not strive with the elements. The author's intention was to discuss the spiritual accompaniments of this war, for these to Rolland seemed as tragical as the destruction of millions of men. His concern was the destruction of the individual soul in the deluge produced by the overflowing of the ma.s.s soul. He wished to show how strenuous an effort must be made by any one who would escape from the tyranny of the herd instinct; to display the hateful enslavement of individuals by the revengeful, jealous, and authoritarian mentality of the crowd; to depict the terrific efforts which a man must make if he would avoid being sucked into the maelstrom of epidemic falsehood. He hoped to make it clear that what appears to be the simplest thing in the world is in reality the most difficult of tasks in these epochs of excessive solidarity, namely, for a man to remain what he really is, and not to become that which the levelling forces of the world, the fatherland, or some other artificial community, would fain make of him.

Romain Rolland deliberately refrained from casting his hero in a heroic mold, the treatment thus differing from what he had chosen in the case of Jean Christophe. Agenor Clerambault is an inconspicuous figure, a quiet fellow of little account, an author of no particular note, one of those persons whose literary work succeeds in pleasing a complaisant generation, though it has no significance for posterity. He has the nebulous idealism of mediocre minds; he hymns the praises of perpetual peace and international conciliation. His own tepid goodness makes him believe that nature is good, is man's wellwisher, desiring to lead mankind gently onward towards a more beautiful future. Life does not torment him with problems, and he therefore extols life amid the tranquil comforts of his bourgeois existence. Blessed with a kindly and somewhat simple-minded wife, and with two children, a son and a daughter, he may be considered a modern Theocritus wearing the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, singing the joyful present and the still more joyful future of our ancient cosmos.

The quiet suburban household is suddenly struck as by a thunderbolt with the news of the outbreak of war. Clerambault takes the train to Paris; and no sooner is he sprinkled with spray from the hot waves of enthusiasm, than all his ideals of international amity and perpetual peace vanish into thin air. He returns home a fanatic, oozing hate, and steaming with phrases. Under the influence of the tremendous storm he begins to sound his lyre: Theocritus has become Pindar, a war poet.

Rolland gives a marvelously vivid description of something every one of us has witnessed, showing how Clerambault, like all persons of average nature, really takes a delight in horrors, however unwilling he may be to admit it even to himself. He is rejuvenated, his life seems to move on wings; the enthusiasm of the ma.s.ses stirs the almost extinguished flame of enthusiasm in his own breast; he is fired by the national fire; he is physically and mentally refreshed by the new atmosphere. Like so many other mediocrities, he secures in these days his greatest literary triumph. His war songs, precisely because they give such vigorous expression to the sentiments of the man in the street, become a national property. Fame and public favor are showered upon him, so that (at this time when millions of his fellows are peris.h.i.+ng) he feels well, self-confident, alive as never before.

His pride is increased, his joy of life accentuated, when his son Maxime leaves for the front filled with martial ardor. His first thought, a few months later, when the young man comes home on leave, is that Maxime should retail to him all the ecstasies of war. Strangely enough, however, the young soldier, whose eyes still burn with the sights he has seen, is unresponsive. Not wis.h.i.+ng to mortify his father, he does not positively attempt to silence the latter's paeans, but for his part, he maintains silence. For days this muteness stands between them, and the father is unable to solve the riddle. He feels dumbly that his son is concealing something. But shame binds both their tongues. On the last day of the furlough, Maxime suddenly pulls himself together, and begins, "Father, are you quite sure ...?" But the question remains unfinished, utterance is choked. Still silent, the young man returns to the realities of war.

A few days later there is a fresh offensive. Maxime is reported missing.

Soon his father learns that he is dead. Now Clerambault gropes for the meaning of those last words behind the silence, and is tormented by the thought of what was left unspoken. He locks himself into his room, and for the first time he is alone with his conscience. He begins to question himself in search of the truth, and throughout the long night he communes with his soul as he traverses the road to Damascus. Piece by piece he tears away the wrapping of lies with which he has enveloped himself, until he stands naked before his own criticism. Prejudices have eaten deep into his skin, so that the blood flows as he plucks them from him. They must all be surrendered; the prejudice of the fatherland, the prejudice of the herd, must go; in the end he recognizes that one thing only is true, one thing only sacred, life. A fever of enquiry consumes him; the old Adam perishes in the flame; when the day dawns he is a new man.

He knows the truth now, and wishes to strengthen his own faith. He goes to some of his fellows and talks to them. Most of them do not understand him. Others refuse to understand him. Some, however, among whom Perrotin the academician is notable, are yet more alarming. They know the truth.

To their penetrating vision the nature of the popular idols has long been plain. But they are cautious folk. They compress their lips and smile at one another like the augurs of ancient Rome. Like Buddha, they take refuge in Nirvana, looking down calmly upon the madness of the world, tranquilly seated upon their pedestals of stone. Clerambault calls to mind that other Indian saint, who took a solemn vow that he would not withdraw from the world until he had delivered mankind from suffering. The truth still glows too fiercely within him; he feels as if it would stifle him as it strives to gush forth in volcanic eruption.

Once again he plunges into the solitude of a wakeful night. Men's words have sounded empty. He listens to his conscience, and it speaks with the voice of his son. Truth knocks at the door of his soul, and he opens to truth. In this lonely night Clerambault begins to speak to his fellows; no longer to individuals, but to all mankind. For the first time the man of letters becomes aware of the poet's true mission, his responsibility for all persons and for everything. He knows that he is beginning a new war, he who alone must wage war for all. But the consciousness of truth is with him, his heroism has begun.

"Forgive us, ye Dead," the dialogue of the country with its children, is published. At first no one heeds the pamphlet. But after a time it arouses public animosity. A storm of indignation bursts upon Clerambault, threatening to lay his life in ruins. Friends forsake him.

Envy, which had long been crouching for a spring, now sends whole regiments to the attack. Ambitious colleagues seize the opportunity of proclaiming their patriotism in contrast with his deplorable sentiments.

Worst of all for Clerambault in that his innocent wife and daughter have to suffer on his account. They do not upbraid him, but he feels as if he had aimed a shaft against them. He who has. .h.i.therto sunned himself in the warmth of family life and has enjoyed the comforts of modest fame, is now absolutely alone.

Nevertheless he continues on his course, although these stations of the cross become harder and harder. Rolland shows how Clerambault finds new friends, only to discover that they too fail to understand him. How his words are mutilated, his ideas misapplied. How he is overwhelmed to learn that his fellows, those whom he wishes to help, have no desire for truth, but are nourished by falsehood; that they are continually in search, not of freedom, but of some new form of slavery. (In these wonderful pa.s.sages the reader is again and again reminded of Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor.) He perseveres in his pilgrimage even when he has lost faith in his power to help his fellow men, for this is no longer his goal. He pa.s.ses men by, marching onward towards the unseen, towards truth; his love for truth exposing him ever more pitilessly to the hatred of men. By degrees he becomes entangled in a net of calumnies; his troubles develop into a "Clerambault affair"; at length a prosecution is initiated. The state has recognized its enemy in the free man. But while the case is still in progress, the "defeatist"

meets his fate from the pistol bullet of a fanatic. Clerambault's end recalls the opening of the world catastrophe with the a.s.sa.s.sination of Jaures.

Never has the tragedy of conscience been more simply and more poignantly depicted than in this account of the martyrdom of an average man. Rolland's ripe spiritual powers, his magical faculty for combining mastery with the human touch, are here at their highest. Never was his outlook over the world so extensive, never was the view so serene, as from this last summit. And yet, though we are thus led upwards to the consideration of the ultimate problems of the spirit, we start from the plain of everyday life. It is the soul of a commonplace man, the soul it might seem of a weakling, which moves through this long pa.s.sion. Herein lies the marvel of the moral solace which the book conveys. Rolland was the first to recognize the defect of his previous writings, considered as means of helping the average man. In the heroic biographies, heroism is displayed only by those in whom the heroic soul is inborn, only by those whose flight is winged with genius. In _Jean Christophe_, the moral victory is a triumph of native energy. But in _Clerambault_ we are shown that even the weakling, even the mediocre man, every one of us, can be stronger than the whole world if he have but the will. It is open to every man to be true, open to every man to win spiritual freedom, if he be at one with his conscience, and if he regard this fellows.h.i.+p with his conscience as of greater value than fellows.h.i.+p with men and with the age. For each man there is always time, for each man there is always opportunity, to become master of realities. Aert, the first of Rolland's heroes to show himself greater than fate, speaks for us all when he says: "It is never too late to be free!"

CHAPTER XXI

THE LAST APPEAL

For five years Romain Rolland was at war with the madness of the times.

At length the fiery chains were loosened from the racked body of Europe.

The war was over, the armistice had been signed. Men were no longer murdering one another; but their evil pa.s.sions, their hate, continued.

Romain Rolland's prophetic insight celebrated a mournful triumph. His distrust of victory, his reiterated warnings that conquerors are merciless, were more than justified by the revengeful reality. "Victory in arms is disastrous to the ideal of an unselfish humanity. Men find it extraordinarily difficult to remain gentle in the hour of triumph."

These forecasts were terribly fulfilled. Forgotten were all the fine words anent the victory of freedom and right. The Versailles conference devoted itself to the installation of a new regime of force and to the humiliation of a defeated enemy. What the idealism of simpletons had expected to be the end of all wars, proved, as the true idealists who look beyond men towards ideas had foreseen, the seed of fresh hatred and renewed acts of violence.

Once again, at the eleventh hour, Rolland raised his voice in an address to the man whom sanguine persons then regarded as the last representative of idealism, as the advocate of perfect justice. Woodrow Wilson, when he landed in Europe, was received by the exultant cries of millions. But the historian is aware "that universal history is but a succession of proofs that the conqueror invariably grows arrogant and thus plants the seed of new wars." Rolland felt that there was never greater need for a policy that should be moral, not militarist, that should be constructive, not destructive. The citizen of the world, the man who had endeavored to free the war from the stigma of hate, now tried to perform the same service on behalf of the peace. The European addressed the American in moving terms: "You alone, Monsieur le President, among all those whose dread duty it now is to guide the policy of the nations, you alone enjoy world-wide moral authority. You inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of these pa.s.sionate hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help them to clasp one another.... Should this mediator fail to appear, the human ma.s.ses, disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth into excesses. The common people will welter in b.l.o.o.d.y chaos, while the parties of traditional order will fly to b.l.o.o.d.y reaction.... Heir of George Was.h.i.+ngton and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of a party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives of the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The world hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations and of cla.s.ses. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail you by the name of Reconciler!"

The prophet's voice was drowned by the clamors for revenge. Bismarckism triumphed. Literally fulfilled was the prophecy that the peace would be as inhuman as the war had been. Humanity could find no abiding place among men. When the regeneration of Europe might have been begun, the sinister spirit of conquest continued to prevail. "There are no victors, but only vanquished."

CHAPTER XXII

DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND

Despite all disillusionments, Romain Rolland, the indomitable, continued his addresses to the ultimate court of appeal, to the spirit of fellows.h.i.+p. On the day when peace was signed, June 26, 1919, he published in "_L'Humanite_" a manifesto composed by himself and subscribed by sympathizers of all nationalities. In a world falling to ruin, it was to be the cornerstone of the invisible temple, the refuge of the disillusioned. With masterly touch Rolland sums up the past, and displays it as a warning to the future. He issues a clarion call.

"Brain workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for five years by the armies, the censors.h.i.+p, and the mutual hatred of the warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being reopened, we issue to you a call to reconst.i.tute our brotherly union, and to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly built than that which previously existed.

"The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their science, their art, their reason, at the service of the governments. We do not wish to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches. We know the weakness of the individual mind and the elemental strength of great collective currents. The latter, in a moment, swept the former away, for nothing had been prepared to help in the work of resistance. Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us for the future!

"First of all, let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers, artists, have added an incalculable quant.i.ty of envenomed hate to the plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of Europe. In the a.r.s.enal of their knowledge, their memory, their imagination, they have sought reasons for hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scientific, logical, and poetical. They have labored to destroy mutual understanding and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled, debased, degraded, Thought, of which they were the representatives. They have made it an instrument of the pa.s.sions; and (unwittingly, perchance) they have made it a tool of the selfish interests of a political or social clique, of a state, a country, or a cla.s.s. Now, when, from the fierce conflict in which the nations have been at grips, the victors and the vanquished emerge equally stricken, impoverished, and at the bottom of their hearts (though they will not admit it) utterly ashamed of their access of mania--now, Thought, which has been entangled in their struggles, emerges, like them, fallen from her high estate.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Original ma.n.u.script of _The Declaration of the Independence of the Mind_]

"Arise! Let us free the mind from these compromises, from these unworthy alliances, from these veiled slaveries! Mind is no one's servitor. It is we who are the servitors of mind. We have no other master. We exist to bear its light, to defend its light, to rally round it all the strayed sheep of mankind. Our role, our duty, is to be a center of stability, to point out the pole star, amid the whirlwind of pa.s.sions in the night.

Among these pa.s.sions of pride and mutual destruction, we make no choice; we reject them all. Truth only do we honor; truth that is free, frontierless, limitless; truth that knows naught of the prejudices of race or caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For humanity we work; but for humanity as a whole. We know nothing of peoples. We know the People, unique and universal; the People which suffers, which struggles, which falls and rises to its feet once more, and which continues to advance along the rough road drenched with its sweat and its blood; the People, all men, all alike our brothers. In order that they may, like ourselves, realize this brotherhood, we raise above their blind struggles the Ark of the Covenant--Mind, which is free, one and manifold, eternal."

Many hundreds of persons have signed this manifesto, for leading spirits in every land accept the message and make it their own. The invisible republic of the spirit, the universal fatherland, has been established among the races and among the nations. Its frontiers are open to all who wish to dwell therein; its only law is that of brotherhood; its only enemies are hatred and arrogance between nations. Whoever makes his home within this invisible realm becomes a citizen of the world. He is the heir, not of one people but of all peoples. Henceforward he is an indweller in all tongues and in all countries, in the universal past and the universal future.

CHAPTER XXIII

ENVOY

Strange has been the rhythm of this man's life, surging again and again in pa.s.sionate waves against the time, sinking once more into the abyss of disappointment, but never failing to rise on the crest of faith renewed. Once again we see Romain Rolland as prototype of those who are magnificent in defeat. Not one of his ideals, not one of his wishes, not one of his dreams, has been realized. Might has triumphed over right, force over spirit, men over humanity.

Yet never has his struggle been grander, and never has his existence been more indispensable, than during recent years; for it is his apostolate alone which has saved the gospel of crucified Europe; and furthermore he has rescued for us another faith, that of the imaginative writer as the spiritual leader, the moral spokesman of his own nation and of all nations. This man of letters has preserved us from what would have been an imperishable shame, had there been no one in our days to testify against the lunacy of murder and hatred. To him we owe it that even during the fiercest storm in history the sacred fire of brotherhood was never extinguished. The world of the spirit has no concern with the deceptive force of numbers. In that realm, one individual can outweigh a mult.i.tude. For an idea never glows so brightly as in the mind of the solitary thinker; and in the darkest hour we were able to draw consolation from the signal example of this poet. One great man who remains human can for ever and for all men rescue our faith in humanity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

WORKS BY ROMAIN ROLLAND

I

CRITICAL STUDIES

Les origines du theatre lyrique moderne. (Histoire de l'opera en Europe avant Lully et Scarlatti.) Fontemoing, Paris, 1895.

Cur ars picturae apud Italos XVI saeculi deciderit Fontemoing, Paris, 1895.