Paris and the Social Revolution Part 38

M. Brieux is not easy to locate doctrinally or otherwise. He is not an "_auteur gai_," far from it, and is not, in the strict sense of the term, perhaps, a revolutionist. But his mania for the correction of abuses has surely beguiled him more than once into an att.i.tude towards society that is, to all intents and purposes, revolutionary.

The rugged, poetic, weird, and philosophical Francois de Curel is as difficult to locate doctrinally as M. Brieux. There are times when he seems to be as irreverent a nihilist as M. France, M. Donnay, or M.

Richepin, and times when he seems to be as reverently ecclesiastical and reactionary as M. Paul Bourget or M. le Comte de Mun. All his plays-_Les Fossiles_, in which he pictures the pathetic impotence of the exhausted n.o.bility; _La Nouvelle Idole_, in which he alternately exalts and belittles science; _La Fille Sauvage_, in which he studies the demoralising effect of civilisation upon the mind of the savage; and _Le Repas du Lion_, in which he confronts orthodox economy with the socialist's dream-admit of different and absolutely contradictory interpretations.

But _Le Repas du Lion_ is claimed, with at least a show of reason, by the socialists, because of its denouement. One of its wealthy characters elucidates the conflict between labour and capital by means of a parable, "The Lion and the Jackal." The lion hunts for himself. The jackal, too feeble to hunt for himself, follows the lion. The lion gorges himself with his prey. The jackal eats what the lion leaves. If there were no lion to hunt for him, the jackal would starve. Ergo, the lion is the benefactor of the jackal.

A labourer objects: "In that case, Monsieur, there is a lion; and we are the jackals. Since you choose to have the business settled between wild beasts, we will follow you on to your own ground. When the jackals find that the remnants left by the lion do not garnish their paunches sufficiently, they get together in great numbers, surprise the king, and devour him alive."

The labourer's objection is given force by the shooting of the capitalist of the piece. "The reply of the jackal to the lion," comments one of the minor characters.

Jean Jullien considers himself, if rumour speaks true, in no sense a revolutionist. All the same, his robust drama _La Poigne_, which depicts vividly the moral ravages wrought by authority in and about a humanitarian soul, was received enthusiastically by both the socialistic and the anarchistic press. "Socialists will take notice," remarked a socialist organ, "that it behooves them to lavish their money and their bravos on this attempt at '_L'Art Social_.'" And the theatrical critic of _Le Libertaire_ said: "The piece of Jean Jullien pleased us by its frankness and its human interest. Rarely has an author so stirred our minds and hearts. It is only just to say that the personages exemplify the sentiments and the ideas which are familiar to the anarchists, and that we find in _La Poigne_ an echo of our pa.s.sions."

The same author's _L'Ecoliere_, which denounces the hypocrisy of petty provincial functionaries and narrates the conflict of a high-minded, warm-hearted woman with the bourgeois system of morals, was accorded a similar welcome in similar quarters. So also was his _Oasis_, which preaches that Humanity should create for itself, remote from "egoisms, prejudices, mutually hostile religions, and the disgraceful tumults of injustice and war, the basis of peace, of a.s.sociation, and of love."

As a _feministe_ who flouts and defies the marriage code, Paul Hervieu lays himself liable to be cla.s.sed as a revolutionist, at least a partial revolutionist, however little such a cla.s.sification may please him.

Whatever else they are, _La Loi de l'Homme_, _L'Armature_, _Les Tenailles_, _Les Paroles Restent_, _L'Enigme_, and _Le Dedale_ are works of revolt. The first-named, _La Loi de l'Homme_, evoked the following sweeping but not unsympathetic judgment from the critic Emile de St.

Auban, who, lawyer as well as critic, should know whereof he speaks: "The contemporary theatre occupies itself a great deal with the laws.

The code appears often on the boards, and the dramatist-jurists abrogate it in prose or in verse. But never was this abrogation so pa.s.sionate, so brusque, never was it so radical, so total, as in _La Loi de l'Homme_. I will add so concise, since three very short acts, two of which make one, suffice to erase not a text, but _the_ text, not _a_ law, but _the_ law, and with the law the cortege of egoisms and hypocrisies which have given it birth, and have a.s.sured it its full expansion and the calm and sure perpetration of its outrages; to erase, I say, an entire jurisprudence, written or traditional, promulgated against the weak for the strong."

To the category of partial, unwilling, or unwitting revolutionists to which Jullien, Brieux, Hervieu, and De Curel belong may be a.s.signed also Jules Case in _La Va.s.sale_, Gaston Devore in _La Conscience d'un Enfant_, Georges Ancey in _Ces Messieurs_ and _La Dupe_, Emile Fabre in _L'Argent_, _Le Bien d'Autrui_, _La Vie Publique_, and _Comme Ils sont Tous_, Rostand in _La Samaritaine_, Abel Hermant in _Le Faubourg_, _La Carriere_, and _La Meute_, Albert Guinon in _Decadence_,[123] Alexandre Bisson in _Le Bon Juge_, Emile Bourgeois in _Mariage d'Argent_, and Bruyerre in _En Paix_. Indeed, it is even permitted to query whether the reputed reactionaries, Jules Lemaitre and Henri Lavedan, are not really (at least so far as certain of their pieces are concerned) in the same boat.

Revolutionary and semi-revolutionary plays were for a considerable period well-nigh a monopoly of the _Theatre Libre_, where unconditional literary form and unconventional acting were the handmaids of unconventional ideas. Latterly they have invaded every legitimate stage of Paris, not excepting the august and supposedly inhospitable _Comedie Francaise_; and they may be said to be the specialty of four houses: the _Theatre Antoine_ (founded by Antoine after he abandoned the _Theatre Libre_); the _Grand Guignol_, the nearest existing counterpart to the _Theatre Libre_; and the _Gymnase_ and the _Renaissance_, which are now copying the general policy of the _Antoine_. Maurice Maeterlinck and his company have latterly made their headquarters in Paris. Maeterlinck's _Monna Vanna_ was applauded by the revolutionary organs.

The various free stages, or _theatres a cote_, which give private performances at irregular intervals, also reserve a modic.u.m of s.p.a.ce in their repertoires for pieces of social revolt.

The _revues_ of the variety theatres and concert halls, in which the events of the year are criticised and caricatured with a freedom that often calls down the wrath of the censors.h.i.+p, particularly at Montmartre, are also far from a negligible influence in the direction of revolution.

In 1883 the socialist Clovis Hugues wrote, in an introduction to a volume by the refractory Leon Cladel: "The petrification of the republic in the bourgeois spirit does not prevent literature from being socialistic. It is unconsciously so, perhaps; but it is so. And this is the essential thing for the future.... Open a romance, no matter what one, attend a theatrical representation, no matter what one, and, so that you have the slightest apt.i.tude for combining details, for surprising the idea in the fact, for following a philosophical train through an intrigue, you will be amazed at the quant.i.ty of socialism which emerges from this romance and that play.

Has the author felt himself responsible towards the Revolution in writing his work? Not the least in the world. He has yielded to the mighty pressure of events, he has submitted to the historic fatalities of his time, the permanent influence of humanity in travail.... What signifies this transformation?

It signifies that the philosophies soak down into literature; it signifies that the hour is at hand, since the idea incarnates itself involuntarily in the form; it signifies that the fourth estate is mounting, that justice is near."

A round decade later (1894) A. Hamon, a friend of anarchy, wrote:-

"Read in the sheets which are the most hostile to the anarchists-such as the _Figaro_, the _Journal_, the _Gil Blas_, the _Echo de Paris_-the short stories, sketches, and chroniques of the Mirbeaus, the Bauers, the Descaves, the Paul Adams, the Bernard Lazares, the Ajalberts, the Severines, etc., and you will perceive that anarchist tendencies throng them. Follow the '_jeunes revues_,' and you will observe that there is not, to speak in the large, a piece of verse, a story, a study of any sort whatsoever, which does not tend towards the destruction of what the anarchists qualify as social prejudice,-_la patrie_, authority, family, religion, courts of law, militarism, etc.

"All the thinking men of this epoch,-savants, litterateurs, artists, etc.,-one may almost say all, so rare are those who imprison themselves in the '_tour d'ivoire_' or who profess doctrines commendatory of the existing order,-all the relatively young men, I mean, who have attained their majority since 1870, have _libertaire_ inclinations. The result is a fervent propaganda under the most varied forms and in the most dissimilar _milieux_."

Still later (1899) a declared opponent of anarchism, M. Fierens-Gevaert, wrote in his admirable social study, _La Tristesse Contemporaine_: "There are, to begin with, the militant anarchists,-a handful of wretched starvelings and lunatics, whose doctrine consists solely in listening to the instincts of the brute within them. There are, next, the unwitting or dilettante anarchists. These latter are legion. They are to be found in the highest grades of society. They even compose the intellectual _elite_ of their time. Every philosopher, novelist, poet, dramatist, and artist is to-day a latent anarchist; and very often he boasts of it."

Just how far this surprising situation is an heirloom of the four revolutions which France traversed during the last century, and just how far it is traceable to forces which have entered from without,-to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, Darwin and Spencer, Leopardi and the pleiades of Russian and Scandinavian innovators,-it is not necessary to determine. The really significant thing is that the intellectual and social conditions which have produced Anatole France, Descaves, and Mirbeau in France have likewise produced Bjornson, Brandes, and Strindberg in Scandinavia, Maxim Gorky in Russia, Hermann Heijermanns in the Netherlands, Gerhardt Hauptmann in Germany, Camille Lemonnier in Belgium, Gabriel d'Annunzio in Italy, and Jose Echegaray in the Biscayan Peninsula; and it is only by keeping well in mind the intensity and the scope of this world-movement of revolt that the dynamic value of French revolt can be properly estimated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LA COMeDIE FRANcAISE]

CHAPTER XVIII

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN POETRY, MUSIC AND ART

"_The maker of poems settles justice, reality, immortality, His insight and power encircle things of the human race, He is the glory and extract thus far of things and of the human race._"

WALT WHITMAN.

"_Venez a moi, claquepatins, Loqueteux, joueurs de musettes, Clampins, loupeurs, voyous, catins, Et marmousets et marmousettes, Tas de traine-cul-les housettes, Race d'independants fougueux!

Je suis du pays dont vous etes: Le poete est le Roi des Gueux._

"_Vous que la bise des matins, Que la pluie aux apres sagettes, Que les gendarmes, les matins, Les coups, les fievres, les disettes, Prennent toujours pour amusettes, Vous dont l'habit mince et fougueux Parait fait de vieilles gazettes, Le poete est le Roi des Gueux._"

JEAN RICHEPIN.

"_Je voudrais dire a mes amis, Sculpteurs d'ideal et de rimes, Que s'enfermer n'est plus permis, Lorsqu'au dehors grondent les crimes.

Chantons la justice et l'amour!

Le peuple va nous faire escorte.

Poete, descends de la tour!

Et puis ferme ta porte._"

MAURICE BOUKAY.

"_Persons of anarchistic mentality are signalised by their love of the new in art and in science, by their feverish search after new forms._"-A. HAMON.

"_So it is you who are the poet. Well, as for me, I do not like poets nor_ intellectuels. _I do not like them because they are all more or less anarchists, and because the anarchists blow up the bourgeois. I am neither a poet nor an_ intellectuel, _and I am proud of it._"

Monsieur Dupont, in La Pet.i.te Boheme of ARMAND CHARPENTIER.

Zola, being asked to define an anarchist, said, "_Un anarchiste, c'est un poete._" Conversely, the poet is more or less of an anarchist. Job and Isaiah are currently quoted by the _libertaires_ in support of their position. aeschylus, in his immortal "_Prometheus_," Euripides in his "_Bacchantes_," Schiller, Sh.e.l.ley, Swinburne, Robert Burns, and Walt Whitman, in portions of their works, all promulgated good, sound anarchist doctrine. As to the poets who, without being specifically anarchistic, are revolutionists of one sort or another, their name is legion. A bulky volume would scarcely suffice to name them.

In France, especially, revolutionary singers have never been lacking.

"_Console-toi, gibet, tu sauveras la France!_" cried Andre Chenier, greatest of the galaxy of poets who ill.u.s.trated the Revolution.

Beranger, before he was dazzled by the _epopee_ of Napoleon, had his moments of revolt. The two Augustes of the Restoration, Barbier and Barthelemy, the first in his _Iambes_ and the second in his _Nemesis_, glorified insurrection.

Hegesippe Moreau, who died in the _Hospice de la Charite_ at twenty-eight, just as his _Myosotis_ was winning him recognition, heaped terrible imprecations upon the heads of the rich and powerful, and played a valiant part in the outbreak of 1830,

"_Non comme l'orateur du banquet populaire Dont la flamme du punch attise la colere: Comme un bouffon dans ses parades, non!

Mais les pieds dans le sang, en face du canon._"

"_Pour que son vers clement pardonne an genre humain, Que faut-il au poete? Un baiser et du pain_,"

sang Moreau in his beautiful "_Elegie a la Voulzie_," which is recited in revolutionary meetings more often than any other poem. "He was hungry," remarks Sainte-Beuve, apropos of Moreau's vindictiveness, "and he composed, in his hunger, songs that betrayed by their fierceness and bitterness the want within."

Moreau defends the excesses of the mobs of the Revolution:-

"_Oubliez-vous Que leur ame de feu purifiait leurs uvres?

Oui, d'un pied gigantesque ecrasant les couleuvres Par le fer et la flamme ils voulaient aplanir Une route aux francais vers un bel avenir.