Affaire Dreyfus. Cahiers de la Quinzaine

EIGHTEENTH CAHIER OF THE FOURTH SERIES

THE DREYFUS AFFAIR

Cahiers de la Quinzaine appearing twenty times per year Paris 8, rue de la Sorbonne, ground floor

This foreword to the previous cahier, seventeenth cahier of the fourth series, the complete stenographic record in extenso, from the Journal officiel, of the Jaures intervention in the Syveton invalidation, Chamber of Deputies, sessions of Monday 6 and Tuesday 7 April 1903. I had begun to write it at the same time as I was sending the copy of the cahier to the printers. But the industrial production of so large a cahier --- 268 pages --- the correction of proofs and the collation of texts prevented me from continuing my foreword. Besides, it is better that the commentary not appear at the same time and in the same place as the text; it is good that the text appear free of all commentary, that the text appear somewhere and that the commentary appear somewhere else afterward; our subscribers are free men, who know how to read a text, and form their own opinion freely, personally; we have always rigorously avoided, in these cahiers, what is commonly called pedagogy and which has truly become one of the most dangerous forms of universal demagoguery; to teach reading, such would be the sole and true end of a well-understood education; let the reader know how to read, and all is saved; nothing equals the pure reading of a text.

Eighteenth cahier of the fourth series

And also in these cahiers we carefully avoid contaminating the text with the commentary; and also in this new act of the Dreyfus Affair we have published the text in a large cahier and we publish today the foreword in an ordinary cahier. After all, is it not wise, and is it not customary, since politics has recovered from morality at least all the ground it had lost from it, that a foreword, as its name indicates, should arrive late? Is that not the sad and severe custom, the gray habit? Let us acknowledge the custom. Let us follow the new protocol. And are not all our forewords already belated forewords?

We published the stenographic record of the two sessions from the Journal officiel, issues of Tuesday the 7th and Wednesday the 8th of April; we took from this record the detail of the roll-call votes, which is of capital importance. We rigorously followed the Officiel; one could not dream of restoring, of reconstituting Jaures’s speech in its purity, that is to say of constituting a Jaures speech cleaned of interruptions, interventions, incidents, accidents, noise and votes. To begin by supposing that a parliamentary speech would not have been delivered in a parliamentary assembly is to begin by subjecting it to the most profound alteration it can receive. At this rate, one would then have had to remove from it also those parts that the author had deliberately put in to win over or to alienate this or that parliamentary party, this or that party man. After having freed the speech of its exterior parliamentarism, it was therefore necessary, by an operation much more profound and much more grave, to free it also of its interior parliamentarism. After having, by decanting the official text, established a first pure text, that of Jaures the deputy, it was therefore necessary, by decanting this first pure text, by a second purification much more profound and much more grave, to establish still, at the second degree, a second, a true pure text, that of a Jaures whom one supposed to be a non-deputy, generally non-parliamentary. --- Considering only quantity, one can affirm that a good third of the text furnished by the Journal officiel is of exterior parliamentarism; of what remains at least two-thirds are of interior parliamentarism. --- But the historian strictly forbids himself all these operations, these decantings and these purifications --- these so-called purifications, he would say --- because they are for him, above all, alterations. We do not know the interior thought of Jaures; we do not know what a non-deputy Jaures would be; we have no right to imagine a Jaures pure of all exterior parliamentarism; we have still less right to imagine what a Jaures would be pure of the contaminations much more profound and much more grave of an interior parliamentarism. We know only the exterior thought of Jaures, or, to speak exactly, the exterior political parliamentary manifestations of his thought; we know only a Jaures the deputy, a Jaures the parliamentarian, not only a Jaures become parliamentary through his entourage, through his comradeships, through his party relations, through his double electoral investiture, but, what is much more profound and much more grave, a Jaures become parliamentary in his gesture and in his speech, in his eloquence and in his intention, in his meaning and in his thought, in his ambition itself and in his hopes.

In particular we do not know the interior thought of Jaures in the Dreyfus Affair; more particularly we do not know the thought of Jaures in what he is indeed compelled to call the resumption of the Affair; we do not know the interior speech that he had prepared in his memory. We know still less the intimate speech that he had given himself before preparing his interior speech. We must scrupulously hold to the produced text that we have in the Journal officiel.

We rigorously followed the Officiel. We know that the stenographic record does not punctually render the debates. But at this rate nothing renders these debates, nothing renders any debates, and, universally, nothing renders anything, nothing scientific renders anything real, no sign ever renders all the signified, no symbol renders exactly all the symbolized as it was, no image renders all the corresponding reality. The stenographic record called official is still the best truly scientific, historical, formal image that we have of these parliamentary debates. It is for us to know that every image is necessarily the result of a reduction; it is for us, when we have in hand the result of this reduction, to perform as much as we can the inverse operation, the restoration of reality. It is for us, when we have the stenographic record, to represent to ourselves as much as we can, all the better that we ourselves shall have attended some sessions, all the better still, at the second degree, that we shall have read the records of the very sessions where we shall have attended, all the better that we shall have, so to speak, performed the collation --- it is for us, when we have in hand the official stenographic record, to represent to ourselves as much as we can, prudently, the parliamentary debates themselves. This representation is imperfect, necessarily, like all representations of the same order. But not everyone can attend parliamentary debates. Not everyone can attend everything. First if everyone wanted to attend everything, by definition nothing would ever get done. Our subscribers know that the official stenographic records are particularly dry, particularly restricted, particularly reduced for tumultuous sessions. The profession of stenographer is a terrible profession, in an assembly so numerous. How can one practice it with assurance in an assembly so foreign to all organization of labor? It is unfortunately true that in a session of the Chamber, the tellers, the bureau, the stenographers are the only ones of whom one can say with full assurance that they are working. But in a workshop where no one knows how to work, it is difficult for a few to work. Our subscribers must therefore expect that in a tumultuous session the stenographers could only record a particularly reduced text. We must only warn them that, by the testimony of experienced or competent persons, the reduction of the two sessions whose record we published, especially the second, were particularly impoverished. The tumult was, at several points, literally indescribable. All the more was it unrecordable. Jaures, Charles Guieysse told me --- he had attended the session, and had received from Jaures the best impression --- Jaures, who recovered, he told me, his old form, and who provided a truly considerable physical parliamentary effort, Jaures remained several times for ten minutes before being able to get a word in --- the next word; for it is notable that he delivered a continuous speech, chopped but continuous, welded back to every interruption, taken up again at every interception, continued, a deliberate, willed, settled speech, it seems, down to the slightest detail, down to the last expression, down to the word, down to the gesture. This is the strongest impression that Jaures gave in this double combat to all who heard him: that he brought from elsewhere, from within himself, a perfectly concerted, willed, settled speech, of fixed structure, of assured memory, of monumental value, that he resolutely delivered this speech at the tribune, and that the origin and the solidity of the speech were exterior, extrinsic, anterior to the debate raised. Jaures spoke not as an orator who makes a speech, not as a parliamentarian who makes his speech, but as an orator who brings a speech, a finished speech, a hewn block, an indivisible act. I do not wish to know, today at least, whether he always works thus. It is said that he never approaches the tribune to deliver a great speech or to make some declaration without having settled within himself down to the last detail his text and his action. Such is not the question of art and oratorical method that I wish to note today. We shall treat some day, if we have the time and the means, of eloquence, of public eloquence, of political eloquence, of popular eloquence, of the new eloquence of meetings, of parliamentary eloquence; speaking of Jaures we shall treat of eloquence, and, as much as we can, of his eloquence. Today, and provisionally, what I wish to note is that, considering only this speech delivered in two particularly hard sessions, this manifest speech, this speech-act, it --- this speech --- presented itself to attentive listeners as a finished act, prepared, ready, brought, where the session effects were for the most part anticipated, where the incidents were calculated, where even the accidents entered without disjoining it. This impression only grows sharper upon reading the stenography. Our subscribers have seen that the text published in the Journal officiel had a quite apparent structure beneath the superficial undergrowth, a quite clear structure beneath the inevitable fatigues. This is to say that if we had permitted ourselves the operation of discernment and analysis that we have justly forbidden ourselves in general, this operation of analysis and discernment was particularly easy in the speech we published. We continue to forbid it to ourselves provisionally, because it would be long, because it can be put off to later, and, as manager, because it is not the historian’s business. But each person can do it on his own account, personally and under his personal responsibility. Nothing would be so easy, working, as author, on the text published in the Journal officiel, as to separate in it the superimposed strata, the political and parliamentary layers. It is quite evident, upon reading the text, that this surface covers sediments, and that these terrains of sedimentation, these alluvions cover rock.

But as manager, as historian, as editor, that was not our concern. We had to hold to the text published in the Journal officiel.

When we study The Decline of Parliamentarism in France, we shall study in particular the workings of parliamentary assemblies, the sessions of the Chamber, the analytical and stenographic recording of these debates, the fidelity of this recording. What we shall say then will bear upon all our parliamentary records, upon our preceding records, upon all the records published in the Journal officiel.

We rigorously followed the Officiel. But one must understand clearly that it does not present merely an effect of reduction, of impoverishment. Moreover, this reduction is not constant; this impoverishment is not constant; so that the inverse operation is not guaranteed; the restoration is always very precarious. Indeed, beyond the fact that the stenographers can seize and record only an image of the debates, beyond the fact that they can seize and record only a poor and, so to speak, linear image of tumultuous and numerous debates of characters --- for we hear, so to speak, only one character at a time; and there is never but one character at a time who speaks in a stenography taken and written, where the lines follow one another, and on the contrary in reality there can be all the characters, the entire assembly at once speaking; and even when there are numerous murmurs, collective or not, the stenography can only give them this literary and linear form: Exclamations, noise, protests at the center, on the right, on the left, on the far left, a form that makes the center, the left, the far left, the right --- it has been a long time since there has been a far right --- a somewhat fictitious collective character, unique, one, linear --- beyond this, the stenographers can seize and record only a textual image in a debate where everything counts: the accent, the tone, the gesture, the force of the voice, the timbre, and not only what is heard, but the features, but the gaze, but the height, but the carriage of the head, and the shoulders, and the entire body, and the coat, and the tie. A textual image is not a total image. A textual image is only a linear textual image of what is heard. It renders neither all that is heard, nor what is not heard, nor what accompanies what is heard, nor what is seen, nor what is done, nor what one senses, nor what is felt, nor what is divined.

This is why we must show ourselves extremely prudent when, starting from an image, from a text, we try to represent to ourselves a historical reality. Those who have never done history, the politicians and certain sociologists, make, from texts and monuments to reality, an immediate transfer, an instantaneous passage, imprudent, presumptuous; they claim to operate on texts, and that their operations should be directly valid for the reality of events and men. The true historian is prudent, wise, modest; seeking reality itself, he knows all its depth, all its richness, all its variety, its complexity, its abundance, its difficulty, its fecundity; he knows above all this capital character, that reality does not begin again, that the event of reality does not become twice, that consequently it does not occur a first time under its form of reality itself and subsequent times under forms of images that would succeed one another; but he knows that reality comes only once, the time it comes, that the reality of history is the material for no exact recommencements, for no true recommencements, no more for recommencements of images than for recommencements of second or third realities, of secondary, subsequent realities; the true historian knows that the political and sociological systems, alleged to be historical, are made for the convenience, for the laziness of politicians and sociologists, for the convenience of propaganda or of teaching --- that teaching of which unfortunately one almost always makes a second propaganda --- he knows that these fruitful but infertile systems are not made for work and are not made for the manifestation of truth; the true historian knows that images are only images, that records are only images, and that thus we can handle them, elaborate them only with the most extreme reserve, with a total prudence, with an exact modesty.

As proof, the great differences that we have been able to note between the impressions received from the session itself by those, on the one hand, who had attended the session and by those, on the other hand, who knew only the stenographic record published in the Journal officiel. Thus the speech of Jaures appeared much stronger, much more solid, more constant, better constructed, better, to those who had heard it than to those who had only read it; it appeared to the former more conformable to the old form of the great orator; Jaures, they said, found himself again; it was indeed the same Jaures that we had known; --- it was because, having in reality, as spectators, as listeners, participated in the parliamentary session, they had themselves, like the orator, like the deputies, undergone without knowing it the parliamentary effect of a great parliamentary speech; it was someone very difficult, ordinarily, who told me that this great speech of Jaures continued the series of his old great speeches: it is far from making, in the stenography, the same impression; to hold to this character, it appears to me today, in the stenography, much more artificial, much more theatrical than the old great speeches.

I do not wish today to anticipate the history that we are preparing of the decomposition of Dreyfusism in France; we are editing this session, and we are not breaking it apart. I wish today to insist only on the prudence of interpretation; and I shall bring, to teach the prudence of interpretation, that is to say already of reconstitution, only two examples, which hold together, which make a double example. It is the example of the incident raised at approximately two-thirds of the first session between M. Henri Brisson and M. Godefroy Cavaignac.

A Dreyfusard who had attended the session, not one of those good-headed Dreyfusards whom a general staff of self-proclaimed Dreyfusard leaders makes believe a little confusedly whatever one wishes, but a free Dreyfusard, an autonomous Dreyfusard, a Dreyfusard, in short, told me: I assure you that the intervention of M. Brisson appeared to me spontaneous, sincere, natural. --- On the contrary and without any exception all those I saw who had only had knowledge of the stenographic text published in the Journal officiel --- whether they were Parisians who had stayed in Paris during the Easter holidays, or provincials passing through Paris --- everyone burst out laughing in my face when I seriously asked whether they believed that the Brisson interception had been improvised, had come out by itself, unexpectedly, at that moment. It was because the Dreyfusard, who was in no way a parliamentarian, being a true Dreyfusard, had nevertheless during the session, as spectator, been part of the parliamentary assembly; he had undergone the parliamentary impression, felt the parliamentary emotion; and everyone knows that parliamentary emotion is of a rather crude order; he said: When Brisson, at that moment, rose to interrupt Jaures and to raise the Cavaignac incident, I had the impression that his intervention was in no way concerted, that it was literally an interruption. --- The others replied: We have read the text. You will never make us believe that before mounting the tribune Jaures did not know that at that moment of his speech the honorable M. Brisson would intervene to bring his testimony. Note, they continued, that this testimony, as such, was perfectly legitimate, and that the production of this testimony could be opportune; what we only regret is that this intervention, no doubt opportune and which one had the right to concert, was given the form of a simulated improvisation. --- I assure you, the Dreyfusard said again, I assure you that the tone of M. Brisson appeared to me profoundly sincere; his emotion appeared to me genuine; one must not hold it against him; he speaks thus; let us not forget that he is an old Romantic; he weeps easily; with abundance; he extends his arms; his voice whimpers; he makes the sign of the cross; he makes prosopopoeias; that is what is his nature, or what has become his nature; that is what makes his sincerity; he is made thus; such is his second, other and only nature; on the contrary it would be if he were not Romantic, if he did not lament, if he did not splutter, if he did not whimper, that I would begin to doubt him; as long as he is Romantic, I believe he is sincere. --- Thus spoke this former Dreyfusard, a young man. I added the personal testimony that I had received from Anatole France, of whom I had asked, the following Thursday morning, his personal impression of the session. France had told us: I saw Brisson in the corridors; skeptics can suppose that he is preparing his gesture, his action in session; but in the corridors he need not feign; I saw him in the corridors; forgetting, as is natural, as is human, the terrible blows he had struck in order to remember only those that had been struck against him, he was weeping for real and raising his arms to heaven and saying, sobbing: To see myself treated thus, I, an old Republican.

So many testimonies, so many attestations, so many shared emotions, so many communicated impressions did not satisfy the others. --- Never, said these readers, never will you make us believe that in a speech as well prepared as that of Jaures evidently was, in an action as prepared, everything was not prepared, not only the text and the gesture, the oratorical action, but, as much as one could, the expected reception, not only the interior texture, but the exterior texture, the substructure, the subsidiary interventions, the expected subsidies. And above all, they said, we have read the text. You will never make us believe that a man of our modern civilizations, a man of our time, a Frenchman, a deputy, a Parisian --- today representative of the department of the Bouches-du-Rhone --- a former minister and President of the Council, not one of those backward men, debris of ancient superstitions, survivals of old religious beliefs, not a man of the past, but a man of the day after tomorrow, Republican, Radical, Radical-Socialist, if one may speak thus, Freemason, Masonic, Masonizing and dignitary, high dignitary of Masonry, if one is permitted to know, freethinker, civil, civic, secular, statist, parliamentary and aged in parliamentary assemblies --- never will you make us believe that such a man, at our age, a man of our age, when he passes through a cemetery, the Montmartre cemetery, a real cemetery, and when he sees a real statue, in real bronze --- truly never will you make us believe that this man wonders in earnest whether the real bronze is going to come alive, whether a bronze arm is going to wave in the air a bronze pen and a bronze palm, or a sword. There have been civilizations that believed that bronze could come alive under the blow of anger and under the breath of indignation; civilizations of savages, but civilizations also that were far superior to the culture, so to speak, of an average Radical deputy. There have been very advanced civilizations, artistic, philosophical, quite perfect, quite harmonious, that believed that statues came alive. Those ages were perhaps no less habitable than those that the honorable M. Brisson wishes to make for us. But since the death of mythologies, since the only images that ever lived were broken, since the iconoclasts, after the death of myths, after the death of gods, after the triumph of so much Christian idolatry over pagan idolatry, after the eviction, after the begun overthrow of that Christian idolatry, today positivists, in this sense, even when we try to go beyond the positivists, literally we do not believe that bronze statues are going to come alive. Someone who believed it would be immediately arrested by the cemetery keeper. If M. Brisson believes that a bronze statue is going to start writing with a pen holder to annoy M. Cavaignac, M. Brisson is among us a dangerous madman. If M. Brisson does not believe it, let us be wary of the cunning, and of figurative language. It is extremely dangerous to say what one does not believe.

--- Even through a figure of Romantic rhetoric?

--- Especially through a figure of Romantic rhetoric.

--- Even to deputies?

--- Even to deputies. One must not hold the national representation in such contempt.

Listen to the phrase, these provincial readers repeated, listen to the phrase that we learned by heart on the train:

“For many long days, alas! I pass at the Montmartre cemetery before his statue and I sadly salute that bronze. Well! I wonder at this hour when the revelation you have just heard resounds at this tribune, whether that bronze is not going to rise and, holding between its clenched fingers the pen and the sword that Rude had placed there as though to express that this paladin of the Republic gave to his cause both his soul and his life; I wonder whether he is not going to rise before you and cry out to you: ‘You are no longer in the Republic; you are no longer of our lineage!’” (Vigorous applause on the left and on the far left. --- Noise on various benches at the center and on the right)

--- Come now, these naive provincials continued, what is a man who sadly salutes a bronze? Where has that been seen? Where is that seen in our day? What are the clenched fingers of a bronze? Imagine a cemetery, your cemetery, the one you have the right to, the cemetery of Orleans or Beaugency, and ask the concierge, the gravedigger, the gardener whether a bronze statue is going to rise, clench its fingers, and cry out. What would happen to you if you held such remarks to the modest functionary?

Thus spoke these provincials, because they were stubborn.

The true historians, those who have done history or tried to do it, not those who have made speeches about history on prize-giving days, are unanimous in taking texts, testimonies, documents, monuments only for what they are --- texts, testimonies, documents, monuments --- they are unanimous in attributing to them only a textual, testimonial, documentary, monumental value; they never handle them as reality itself.

Thus, and much more so, in the Cavaignac altercation, born of the Brisson intervention, which was like the continuation of that first intervention, the impression received by those, on the one hand, who had attended the session differed from the impression received by those, on the other hand, who held to textual knowledge. For all those who had attended the session, there was only one impression, one opinion, one judgment: Cavaignac had been crushed, Cavaignac had been executed, it was the crushing of Cavaignac, it was the execution of Cavaignac, there would be no more talk of him, it was the definitive execution, nothing remained of him; denounced by his former president of the council, convicted of all his crimes, disowned by all his former friends, poorly supported by the new ones, bending under the anger and the vengeful jeers of the left, abandoned by the center, supported only by the nationalists, foreign to the right, it was total, irremissible execution.

On the contrary, those who had received only textual knowledge of the altercation had the impression that M. Cavaignac had come out of it victorious. I speak here only of the altercation itself, of its form, and I leave for today the debate that was its matter. The moist phrases of M. Brisson do not render well in stenography. The dry and hard phrases of M. Cavaignac had kept all their hardness.

“I have three things to reply to M. Henri Brisson… (Interruptions)

“He did not fear to say that on the question of the Henry forgery my conviction was formed on 14 August. That is not true.

“My conviction was formed on the Henry forgery only on the day when, after having voluntarily departed from regular procedures, I had the man who had committed this act brought before me, and when, by the force of my resolution and my will, I obtained from him a confession that no one other than I would have wrested from him.”