De la situation faite au parti intellectuel devant les accidents de la gloire temporelle
On the Situation Made for the Intellectual Party in the Modern World in the Face of the Accidents of Temporal Glory
Charles Péguy
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On the situation made for the intellectual party in the modern world in the face of the accidents of temporal glory.
When one has said what we have merely indicated, when one has said that the entry of a young man into the great modern intellectual party automatically confers upon him today all the powers of temporal domination, one has said nothing.
When one has said, when one has noted that the introduction, the initiation of a young man into the great modern intellectual party automatically opens to him all the powers of modern temporal domination — positions, riches, honors, vanities, sinecures, professorships, titles and decorations, secular prebends, civic pensions, promotions, governorships of state, parliamentary political dominations, the honor of saving — today — the Republic — and on top of it all what I see is most prized in the modern world — today by and among our young people: making a grand and brilliant marriage, half-rich or fully rich, with that very particular wealth of the great university men, in our aristocracies of republican defense, in our political inheritances, in our hereditary governments of the mind — when one has said all that, when one has enumerated all these grandeurs — all these sad miseries — one has still said nothing; one has said nothing that everyone today does not know, does not declare, confess, recognize, proclaim in some way, or has not, when one is clever, and everyone today is clever, discovered first.
One has said nothing either that is very interesting. For on these great villanies opinions are formed, on the great villanies of contemporary history, formed quickly and once for all, well formed, judgments are settled, resolutions taken, decisions made. On both sides. A young man who wishes to become a deputy, a minister, a son-in-law, a counselor of state, or even to obtain cheaply a chair in higher education, knows perfectly how to go about it. He knows what advances must be made, what pledges given, what promises made, what promises on the contrary to keep, what words to honor and what words to violate, what oaths to swear and what oaths to betray, what drafts to accept and sign and what drafts then to leave protested, when and how to swear and when and how to perjure oneself, what treasons to commit, and they know how one can even betray treasons themselves. A painter plays up the difficulty by putting whites on whites, blacks on blacks. Our young comrades play up their ease by putting treasons on treasons. Speaking with them in the so-called scientific language, we would say they produce treasons of treasons, treasons squared, treasons raised to powers one no longer knows how many. They are not merely adept at this. They are experts. They are artists. They know all this much better than we do. They have a competence in it that we shall never possess. We are a fool to concern ourselves with them, even to dare to speak of them. We are novices beside them. They know what they have to do, and what they do, and we shall never know. They need neither our information — they have more than we do, they have some that we do not have, that we shall never have — nor our aversions and discouragements. They despise us. They take us for fools. They are quite right.
On these great villanies, on the governmental turpitudes, on the political shames, on the tricks of parliamentary combinations, on the electoral frauds in political elections and literary elections, on the means of entering the College de France by the cellar door, on the art and the manner of defending the Third French Republic in Assyriology, on both sides positions are taken. Those who want to, want to; and those who do not want to, do not want to. Those who want to, want so much that you could not make them want more, or less. Even if you were good for something, which you are not. Those who do not want to, so much do not want that you could not make them not want more, or less, because you are good for nothing.
On all this, which is customary, which is habitual, all the habits and all the usages are taken.
On the public or secret turpitudes, on the baseness of temporal dominations, on both sides positions are taken. Quickly taken. Lives are run. He who wishes to arrive, arrives. If he does not arrive, it is because there are too many. It is not for lack of knowing. He knows his business. Let us not trouble ourselves with his business. From the third year of school, from the agregation, from the first perhaps, from the licence, from the entrance examination, from the khagne (or higher rhetoric), from the old provincial rhetoric classes, from the most innocent and young lower classes, from the youngest and freshest sixiemes, with the history of the ancient Egyptians and the cruel Assyrians, from the most ancient and youngest walks and the most violent games of tag under the heavy chestnut trees, from perhaps before, all that was decided. From the most ancient games of tag, and below, within, that game was decided.
On temporal careerisms, on both sides the die is cast. Sordid souls go to sordidness; servile souls go to servitude.
Fools go to honesty.
And what is most remarkable is that they have such a taste for it, the fools, for honesty, for old-fashioned probity, that they stay there.
It is sometimes difficult for the careerist to arrive, because there are too many. But nothing is as easy as not arriving, provided one puts a little of one’s own into it. Because there are not too many. There are thus in the world a certain number of young people, not very numerous — we know many of them at the cahiers, but it is assuredly in the personnel and clientele of the cahiers that one would find and know the most — clever fellows, then, particularly cunning lads, men who cannot be fooled, old foxes who have chosen the career of not succeeding, the procession of not arriving. They will enter the career when their elders are no longer in it. They will not need to wait that long. For their elders and they fit perfectly well in the same career. It is even said they are not too crowded in it, that they move about easily, simply, without hatreds and without much competition. For, at least according to the reports of travelers, it would be a career where one does not jostle.
These people too, these people on their side have no need of our considerations or our counsels. When a poor man has probity in his skin, he is lost. I mean lost for the grandeurs. Of all the defects that attack the very bones and marrows, this one is perhaps the most irremissible and the one that forgives the least. The man who does not arrive, who does not know how to go about it, who does not want to know, the type in our kind, the fool at last, the pure simpleton, nil admirari vere simplex, the good man knows very well, feels very well, since he came into the world, and even before, because his father and mother were honest people, that all his life he will be saddled with the dirty jobs. Or at least those admirable little trades, constrained and constraining, pious and modest, that the great of this world rate as dirty trades. He knows full well that all his life they will make him ruin his eyes correcting papers and compositions or copy and printer’s proofs.
In the obscure honors of some legion.
But he loves this, this man. He is so stupid that he does not even think of naming it probity, honesty, taste and passion for liberty. He execrates the very word purity. Because of all sepulchres, the whitened sepulchres are still those that seem to him most like cemeteries. It is we, the pedants, who amuse ourselves by giving all this the names of virtues. With our mania for making catalogues and indexes. He needs neither our classifications, nor our encouragements, nor our counsels. All he knows, this ignoramus, is that there are steps that the others take all the time and that he will never take, not even once, not even a single quarter of an hour. Because that quarter of an hour would remain on his stomach, would be impossible for him to digest.
All he also knows, all he finally knows, for he sees far, and far ahead, he sees to the end, is that his life will be thus, entirely, and that such will be his death, which is for him a sort of end of his life.
For this sort of people, little people, death is not, does not much appear to be the beginning of their eternity.
Infinitely more dangerous than the temptation of temporal government, because it no longer attacks merely the souls of servitude, infinitely more interesting because it attacks also the souls of command, and even some good minds, infinitely more formidable than the base temptation of temporal government is another temptation, a high temptation, a superior temptation, because the other is merely base and this one is superior: the temptation of glory, in all its forms, in all the forms of this veritable affliction.
Experience has unfortunately shown that the temptation of glory produces the forms of a veritable affliction, that there are men who would not betray their friends for the general government of Madagascar — and dependencies — and whose hearts falter and who would do one does not quite know what, and one asks oneself with anxiety, merely to be placed in a final chapter that the author would write of the history of Lanson.
It is fortunate for the solidity of the regime that men like Andler and Lanson are firm republicans. That they are its most solid supports and, so to speak, its walking sticks of old age. One does not know what young people, young authors would be capable of in order to enter glory — even considered as a purely spiritual power — namely to enter history — as one enters it today, that is to say to enter into the linear fabric, into the ribbon of literary evolution, into the scientific ribbon of a linear literary evolution — simply to enter a feuilleton in Le Temps; much more scientifically, to be placed in a new chapter of our master M. Lanson; much more scientifically still — for there are degrees in science and in the magistrature — to enter into the cosmos of the thought of our master M. Andler, even unexpressed, even unwritten, even unprinted, as a link in the chain, as a rung of the ladder, as an element — indispensable — an element of evolution being always necessary, indispensable, and inevitable — as an indispensable element in the linear history of the evolution of some literature, even of this execrable and contemptible and the last of all literatures, French literature.
As virtue, crime has its degrees. One must congratulate oneself, for the solidity of our institutions, that a man like the honorable M. Gaston Deschamps, that men like our masters M. Andler and M. Lanson are such firm republicans. They themselves do not know, cannot suspect the full extent of their power. And even if they had knowledge of it, fortunately we have the certainty that they would not abuse it. One does not know what entirely disinterested young people would be capable of doing for them. One does not suspect, our masters themselves do not suspect what troops of enthusiastic dictatorship, infinitely more annoying than those they already have, which are already so insufferable, what praetorian guards, and more than devoted, attached, they could raise among so many young people whom one believes and who believe themselves to be of the purest republican defense.
They cannot know it. I do not speak here of that temporal power, I do not return here to that temporal power that we have spoken of and on which I do not think it opportune to return, for everyone knows it, which has come to our masters from the fact that they exercise not merely the functions but the magistracies and pursue or decree the functions of teaching in the state universities. Men who receive or do not receive, in France, candidates born French, for licences, for agregations, for the Ecole Normale, for scholarships, even for travel, men who have received license to make doctors and normaliens will always exercise in France an unlimited power. And there will be many who will be in their dependence. We leave for today this power, for today and perhaps for a long time, if not for always. What I say is that, among superior souls, among elevated souls, among the few Frenchmen who dare to confront this idea — not to pass an examination or a competition of state teaching — among these eminent and singularly rare souls there occurs a new ravage, for that very reason infinitely more dangerous, since it falls precisely, as if by chance, on the few who had escaped the first, the old common ravages.
There thus occurs a new, a last wastage, the worst of all.
A somewhat noble soul distrusts, instinctively and without anything needing to be said about it, everything that resembles temporal domination. A somewhat decent man has perhaps even more instinctive horror of exercising anything that resembles temporal intellectual domination than of submitting to it. There is therefore no need to insist on it. There is not even any need to speak of it. What must be said, what must be examined a little, is whether the temptation of glory, which reaches, which attacks precisely the elevated souls, otherwise unassailable, has not also become, in the modern world, a temptation of temporal domination, all the more pernicious for being more insidious, all the more formidable for being more insinuating, and for insinuating itself into more precious souls, having itself taken on the aspects almost of a virtue, almost of a duty, almost of a metaphysical and moral obligation.
Good minds easily perceive, by birth, by race, and without needing to be tugged by the sleeve, what a temporal domination is, in its crude, known, classified forms, what it weighs, what it is worth. Some good minds may not perceive that glory itself, that the old glory, which had indeed come into the world, the old world, rather as a spiritual power, that the glory of former times has become in the modern world, by an operation of the encrustation of the modern world, it too a temporal power, modern, like so many others there unfortunately are.
I say encrustation because I am not scientific. If I were a scholar I would say incrustation, it would make a biologico-sociological law, and everyone would respect me.
On the question of knowing to what degree glory itself, literary glory for example, has become in the modern world simply a form, and even a rather crude form, of temporal domination, I find myself compelled to appeal to myself, which is not proper, to my own testimony. But all our subscribers are perhaps not publishers. And some certainly are not journalists. One must have conducted for more than ten years, one must have had the charge and the responsibility of conducting for at least ten years the only enterprise which, without any capitalist resources, has ever been made to fight against the powers of money in the order of publishing, which alone has constantly and without any weakness refused to bend before the powers of money, in order to bring the testimony I bring here, in order to certify, to that degree of certainty, to what point of complete disintegration the ancient glory, which had come into the world and which had grown as child, adolescent and young woman as a power almost uniquely spiritual, has become, by an effect of modern capitalist incrustation, in its old days uniquely a temporal power, and the most degraded of temporal powers.
(I say: the only enterprise which, in the order of publishing; I do not say the only enterprise absolutely speaking. There are fortunately several of us. But the other enterprises are not properly of the order of publishing. I know as well as anyone, to take an example particularly dear to me, I know full well, since I am enrolled in it, how much that moral person which was called the Union for Moral Action, and which today is called the Union for Truth, has usefully resisted temporal powers in the order of opinion, of a certain opinion, namely the powers of money, the capitalist powers.) An order of opinion that was in its very program. (I hope that this praise I make of them, this testimony I render to their company will not compromise them too much, will not do them harm. I also hope, on the other hand, that it will not stun them too much, that so much praise will not seem to them absurd and immoderate. It is a company indeed that has a certain kind of innocence which has meant that it has shown, on several occasions to my knowledge, a great courage, mental, intellectual, civic, social — on several occasions interior to the company itself, which is the most difficult — of which it did not always appear to be aware.) They will therefore pardon me. Someone must speak sometimes. I am not a specialist, an entrepreneur of praise; I am embarrassed, awkward in praise; but this praise I make of them is justified beyond what one might believe, beyond even what they themselves perhaps believe. I mean notably and very precisely this: their company is poor: why conceal it? Given the political and social importance they could have, that it could have, that a very great number of its members already had individually, it would not have remained long or always poor if it had served someone’s interests. That is approximately the only law of sociology that has ever been verified. Someone’s interests or those of some who were outside, who might be outside, or, what is infinitely more serious, someone’s interests who might be inside. The interests of some political party, parliamentary (avowed) or parliamentary claiming to be anti-parliamentary, from outside, or, what is infinitely more serious, the new always parliamentary political party, a parliamentary political party that one is, that one becomes, that one makes oneself, that one introduces into the dust where there are already so many.
I bring my testimony. I bring it only for the record. I bring it without any illusion. For form’s sake, and for the discharge of my conscience. For the conduct of the argument. I bring it with the certainty that it will serve no purpose. It is only a testimony of experience and thus of competence. And nothing is as despised since the advent of modern intellectual methods, supposedly scientific, and their domination, as competence, which is not acquired in books (unless one sells them), and as this experience of which one boasts with untiring fatuity.
It is even extraordinary, when one thinks about it, and it is assuredly a note we shall encounter again, how this world, which always has this word experience on its lips, understood in the sense of scientific technique, in the sense of laboratory experience — performing an experiment, setting up an experiment, constructing an experiment, succeeding or not succeeding in an experiment, we know from experience (which must be pronounced seriously, severely, lowering the eyes and half-closing the mouth, pursing the lips a little) — is also the first, is also the only one to have so despised proper experience, experience properly speaking, that incalculable and constant increase which belongs to life itself, that perpetual entry of the total event into the event of one’s own life. We shall certainly return to this.
I bring my testimony therefore only to have a clear conscience, and because one must forget nothing. I have, thank God, not only a great number of comrades but on the contrary a certain number of friends who are university men. They are friends of the greatest solidity. When they come to see me, which always gives me great pleasure, during holidays, or those in Paris after class, between two classes, we sometimes talk. A sternly established and up-to-date statistic has made it possible to calculate that I never speak for fifteen minutes, and in thirteen-seventeenths of cases for thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds and one hundred and twenty-one two hundred and fifty-sevenths of a second, without bringing into my remarks a certain opposition that I have already introduced a certain number of times in writing in these very cahiers. I happen for example to oppose words like intellectual to industrial, scholastic to living, functionary to producer, functionary to citizen, functionary to taxpayer, particularly university man to publisher. This is well known, I shall not insist. What perhaps not everyone knows, because not everyone comes to see me, and he is quite right, is that I am a poor innocent, a poor man who does not have, like our great contemporary geniuses, infinite resources. Paris is full of people who always know how to write something new and say something different. Let us admire these Parisians. As for me, the inexhaustible fertility of a Leon Blum and of that inexhaustible number of our salon writers has always plunged me not so much into a dream as into a kind of stupor. I admire, and cannot imitate, to my great shame, I admire all these great men, our contemporaries at home, who have an indefinite number of writings and an equally indefinite number of different remarks. I have but one writing, as I have been told enough. And I also have but one subject. And what is most disagreeable is that the subject is altogether the same as the writing. I say what I write. I write what I say. I was therefore saying just now that when one of my several university friends is kind enough to come and see me, and we begin to talk, a number of minutes that I have already forgotten, but that is written down somewhere, does not pass without my rambling on and starting to trot out a certain opposition, which is beginning to be known, for example between university man and industrialist. In which I do nothing but follow one of the examples of our good master M. Sorel. Obtuse as I was when I came into the world, and as I have remained, I have not failed to notice how these conversations generally turn at that moment. It is to the point indeed that my university friends generally shake my hand with an affectionate, most affectionate, entirely affectionate commiseration that some barely disguise. One could even cite some instances — for if it is astonishing to what degree we are an object of friendships — and enmities — it is more astonishing still to what degree I am hardly an object of respect — one could even cite some instances of some having said to me, shaking my hand: Yes, old man — they say: old man — yes, old man, we know that one; or more colloquially, we’ve heard that one, and sometimes more briefly: yes, I know it; as one says irreverently of a song: don’t bother singing it to me. For they know I know only one song and that it is always the same.
Such are our discourses. And thus they end. But how can men propose to have two worlds, one for writing, one (other) for speaking (and conversing), one of writing, one of table talk, when it is already so difficult to have one little piece of one.
I bring this testimony therefore only for the record; by it and through it the reader’s face will brighten, as I know from experience that my friends’ faces brighten at this point; I say it again: a man who has not worked as a common-law producer, as a salaried worker or salaried employer in a private industrial enterprise, a man who is not in some capacity in some private commercial enterprise — and one clearly understands what I mean by a commercial enterprise — a man whose very life does not depend on it, a man in short, to use the word, who has not had to pay drafts on the fifteenth and at the end of the month — and where to find the money for these drafts? — a man who has not had to establish a budget and who does not incessantly have to start over, a man who does not entirely have a common-law budget, a private budget, a particular budget, entirely fed by private, commercial revenues, themselves of common law, if not entirely spent in private expenditures — one must have been squeezed at the larynx and have had colic in the belly from that atrocious anxiety of due dates, one must have been rolled and devoured in those whirlwinds of war that roll everywhere outside the wickets of the state, in those whirlwinds of economic war and universal competition, much more real, being much more general, than what Herve solemnly and pretentiously calls the Social War, to know I do not say what it is to be poor — there are many poor functionaries — but what it is to be wretched, on the one hand, and on the other what it is to be honest. Because the others do not know what temptation is.
In this sense, we have said it, we shall return to it, it must be said, and I am sure that Berth and M. Sorel will understand me well, there is a deep kinship between the employer and the worker. The relations of fact, the relations of reality between workers and employers, or, if one wishes to speak a somewhat conceptual language, between the worker and the employer, are much more mixed, intermingled, complicated, implicated than political parties generally make them, all equally parliamentary (and at least as much those who call themselves and perhaps believe themselves anti-parliamentary, who boast of being anti-parliamentary), than the antagonistic political parties themselves make them. There is between the worker and the employer, between workers and employers, a solidarity — one should perhaps say a synagonism — or to speak perhaps a little more exactly, particular solidarities, particular synagonisms, incontestable, undeniable. There are between employers and workers, between the employing class and the proletariat (should one say the operariat?), an antinomy, an antagonism, particular antagonisms, incontestable, undeniable. All this is much less simple in the arrangement of reality, I mean of actual reality, the only reality we know, than in the programs of parties, than in newspaper articles, which are scarcely anymore today than pieces of party programs, than in review articles, even large ones, and not merely weeklies but monthlies, many of which are unfortunately scarcely anymore today than newspaper articles, than in books, alas, of which, apart from three or four, it is better not to speak. But beyond both, beyond this antagonism and solidarity, there is a certain deep kinship, there is between the worker and the employer a certain deep kinship, a certain deep consonance, which I would call industrial, in the sense we have attributed to this word, a certain deep industrial kinship, a certain deep industrial consonance, which is a feeling, a situation, a phenomenon of capital importance, of which we have I believe said a few words in a preceding cahier, on which we shall certainly return, a kinship, a feeling, a consonance, a situation, a phenomenon limited to them, which extends to all of them, which extends to no others, which extends to all employers and workers, which extends to none of those who are neither employers nor workers.
This wretchedness prevails only outside the wickets of the state. A man who has not passed through that does not know, cannot say he knows what it is to be wretched, and what it is to be tempted.
A man fairly well known as a journalist and who has remained a journalist in positions where one generally remains one a bit less, a man who has that journalist’s gift of giving a certain fortune to certain words, good or bad, apt or improper, which he invents or borrows, a man who notably gave a certain fortune to the word bloc, M. Georges Clemenceau, also gave a certain fortune to the word barricade, a new fortune, by speaking of those who are on one and the other side, who are not on the same side of the barricade. This was unfortunately only a journalist’s quip. And perhaps a romantic’s reminiscence. The barricade is no longer today the great social and political instrument, the great apparatus of government or revolution, the great apparatus of discernment. It is no longer the barricade today that discerns, that separates the good people of France in two, the populations of the kingdom. It is a much smaller apparatus, but infinitely more widespread, especially today, called the wicket. A few wooden frames, more or less mobile, a metal grating, more or less fixed, account for the entire cost of a wicket. Yet it is with that, with this little, that France is governed very well. Standard ordinary format. Whereas it took barrels, and even casks, and if I remember rightly omnibuses, almost entire buildings, to make a barricade. It is no doubt even for this reason that finally, it is at least one of the reasons for which in all likelihood many more wickets have come into the world than barricades ever sprouted. It was perhaps easier to make. One need only have gone oneself to buy stamps or pay one’s taxes, which we call contributions, and to understand a little, to know a little how to read what one does, to have oneself discovered this elementary truth of fact. We no longer have today the discriminating barricade. We have the discriminating wicket. There is the one who is behind the wicket, and the one who is before. The one who sits behind, and those who stand before, those who file past, before, as in a parade, in some grotesque parade of freely consented servitude. There is the great, the true separation of the people of France. And that is why the great political debates of these last years and of this present one do not manage to excite me. O subtle but declamatory Gonzalve la Flize. Whom I have learned not to confuse with the first Gonzalve, with the other, the false one, with the old one, the one from Cordoba who was a good soldier, although there is in your style, which I had not the honor of knowing until this year, a certain military tone, a certain air, one could be mistaken, an air of fanfare and triumph, with trumpets, that is quite agreeable. As much as they excite the French people. All these men, all these parties who fight or who pretend to fight, I easily recognize them for what they are, I have known them for a long time as one great, one immense, one single party. They all belong to the same great and unique party, which is the party of those who are on the other side of the wicket, the good side, according to them. They all belong to the same great and sole party of bureaucracy. Those who are there hold on to it. Those who are no longer there ask only one thing, which is to return. Those who are not yet there ask only one thing, which is to come. Bureaucrats all, and having of the world and of life, notably of political and social life, a bureaucrat’s representation. Bureaucrats all, even and especially the one who is an orator, even and also the one who is a journalist. Bureaucrat Jaures, bureaucrat Clemenceau — that is why their oratorical duels are purely fictitious — and do not manage to move me and it is barely if I follow them: I sense too much the ballyhoo, the secret understanding, that they are (both) the same men at bottom, that they are companions and accomplices, men of the same world, of the same system, which is the bureaucratic system; no less bureaucratic, and perhaps more, the anti-ministers — the ministers — of the General Confederation of Labor. Bureaucrats over and against whoever is of the common populace: voters, or simply registered, in the political order, and, in the economic order, taxed, called taxpayers. Workers in revolt or workers resigned, seed of voters, seed of strikers, and always seed of the sacrificed.
They fight among themselves, but they fight only behind the wicket. No one will ever fight through the wicket, because then it would be serious.
When we say to our friends on the other side of the lycee door that one must have suffered in the street and been tossed about in the distress of the street to know what it is to be wretched and what it is to be honest, because inside the establishment one has practically never been tempted, they believe us, naturally, because they have friendship for us, very willingly they do us the friendship of believing it, or much more exactly and simply of believing us, or rather they believe they believe it, but they only know it. A philosopher on his deathbed said recently to the most faithful of his disciples, who collected this remark for us; having reached an advanced age, a few moments before the moment of his death this philosopher was saying, more or less: I know I am going to die, but I do not believe it. He meant no doubt by these words, insofar as one can explain, by analysis, words so profound and so just, he meant no doubt by these words that he knew, foresaw, foreknew his approaching death with a full intellectual, historical and scientific knowledge, implying an indisputable, inevitable historical and scientific certainty, but that he did not foreknow, did not have a presentiment of his own approaching death with an interior organic knowledge. One knows one’s death, one does not believe it, or one does not believe in it. It is, I think, one of the most profound things ever uttered since there has been death.
And there has been death for a long time. It is a word so profound, reaching so profoundly to the most profound and most essential sentimental sources, that it applies not only to death, that it is not true only of death, but that it is true of everything that is of the same degree of profundity as death, of the same order of magnitude as life and death; it is not true only of probity, which is a virtue of race, of which the dishonest cannot even have any organic idea; it is true above all of wretchedness, which is so profoundly akin to death, being, as I believe I indicated in a very old cahier of Jean Coste, very exactly what that very rare formula from the Greek Antigone says: a living death.
He who has not been tempted, in wretchedness, does not know what wretchedness and temptation are, and consequently he does not know what probity is, what it is to be honest. Or to speak entirely exactly and confine ourselves in all rigor to the saying we have reported, he may know it, but he only knows it: he does not believe it and does not believe in it.
I shall not linger to return to what I said about wretchedness in a very old cahier. I shall linger even less to treat of probity, even to speak of it. Virtues and vices have no need of us to continue, to run their courses. What I wished only to note today, and that is why I appealed to my own testimony, to my own experience, for lack of any other, is that there are three degrees in the temptation of power.
The first degree is the temptation of temporal power. It is a degree of so base a temptation that we shall not need to concern ourselves with it here. For and against this first temptation positions are taken, and well taken. He who succumbs to so crude, so vile, so basely and crudely vile a temptation was someone who wanted to succumb. We have nothing to say to him. He is marked. He is not admissible.
We can concern ourselves here only with what takes place after admissibility, with what lies between admissibility and admission; we work, we can work only the oral. We must limit ourselves and we have reserved the summits (we have often said, the limit cases). He who succumbs to the temptation of temporal power, who even undergoes it in some way, who even thinks of it, is not even admissible. He is refused at the outset. He who succumbs to the temptation of what is socially temporal in intellectual powers, who even undergoes it in some way, who even thinks of it, is likewise not even admissible. He too is refused at the outset. He who succumbs to the temptation of glory, who even undergoes it in some way, who even thinks of it — he would certainly be admissible. But he is unfortunately refused, he fails the oral, he is unfortunately not on the final list.
Such are approximately the relations, the superpositions and imbrications of these three degrees.
A second degree is the intermediate and transitional temptation, composite, mixed from both elements, the temptation of what is socially temporal in intellectual powers: professorships, examinations, competitions, positions and decorations. And money and consideration therein. This temptation is even cruder, viler and baser than the first. He who lingers over this temptation is even more judged than the other, than the first. Even less admissible. We shall not linger over it therefore.
There is indeed in this case, in this second case, a kind of contamination, a sort of intoxication, particularly and very particularly disagreeable. We regard, we consider with an entirely different eye the pure and simple careerist, the clean careerist, the one we have called the careerist of the first degree, the temporal man, the temporal careerist in short who has only (socially) temporal ambitions, properly, purely and simply, and the other careerist, the second, the one of this second degree, the temporally intellectual man, the socially temporally intellectual careerist in short, the one who covets what is socially temporal in intellectual powers. We would almost have sympathy for the first, in comparison with the second. We prefer, we almost like the first, compared with the second. We much prefer to deal with the first. We infinitely prefer the one who does his trade, or who appears to do his trade, the careerist who exercises (temporal) ambition as a recognized profession. We loathe the other. In the past we regard, we consider with an entirely different eye the temporal ambitions of barons, for example, than those of bishops (unless these bishops were, as was so frequent, purely and simply barons); the temporal ambitions of laymen quite otherwise than those of clerks; of men of arms than of priests. We accept readily enough, and naturally, that captains, barons, men of war, all laymen should wish to have, that all temporal men should covet temporal things, castles and temporal lands, powers, arms, temporal titles. They were for us, so to speak, doing their trade. Whereas on the contrary we always have a feeling of a particular kind of prevarication, a sort of simony, a very clear feeling, when spiritual men, officially non-temporal, coveted temporal things. We suffer for them. We regard them only with a painful eye. That spiritual men, that officially non-temporal men should covet (worldly) temporal goods — this is what at bottom we do not accept, what we cannot digest. Which gives us an after-feeling, an aftertaste, an afterthought of simony, of some simony. This afterthought, this after-feeling, this aftertaste is so deep, this after-memory is so profound that it has survived even the establishment of the modern world, where so many memories, more or less organic, have perished, that it has remained in the very depths even in this modern world where so many traces have not survived, have been abolished. Even today, performing a sort of transposition, a particular filiation, and regarding almost in spite of ourselves the intellectuals as sorts of (unworthy) successors of the spiritual, we are not disturbed when the careerists who are, so to speak, qualified, when an avowed careerist, when professional careerists, that is to say, exactly and in final definition, when a temporal man with temporal ambition, when a minister, when a deputy, when a politician, when a parliamentarian, when a professional in short, when a journalist covets, pursues a temporal increase, a charge, a greatness, a temporal bigness, even when he wants to have, acquire, take temporal money, when he wants in short to give himself volume and mass and above all temporal weight. We consent to it, as to their trade. We even believe we cut a good figure, show good character in authorizing them to do so. In ourselves and for our personal satisfaction. For socially they do not ask our authorization. They do not need it. They do perfectly well without it. They even appear to us to be automatically authorized. We do not suffer from it. Neither for them nor for us. Whereas we are truly disturbed (though one is beginning to get us used to it), when on the contrary it is an intellectual, and even generally when it is a non-temporal man, when it is a professor, when it is a magistrate (though these, truly, have accustomed us to it more than others), even when it is a (military) officer, although everything possible is being done to accustom us to it today.
That is where the danger lies, the insupportable tyranny; that is where the danger lies, the unendurable audacity of tyranny; the threat no one will tolerate; it is there, it is then that this kind of contamination occurs, this sort of intoxication, this simony of sorts of which we spoke at the very beginning of this brief interruption. Because there, because then we are not forewarned, because one does not mistrust, because here we would be disarmed. Because they are political, parliamentary, politicians, even policemen, generally temporal where one absolutely must not be all that. They create heterogeneity, confuse the orders, put together two orders that must never be put together. It smells of mixture, of bottle, and nothing is as insupportable as a pharmaceutical tyranny of the grocer. These men who confuse all too much the ministry of Public Instruction with the ministry of the Interior and the Sorbonne with the Prefecture of Police.
The third degree of temptation, particularly dangerous, is the degree of the temptation of glory. Particularly harmful, particularly formidable because it attacks noble, unguarded souls.
A capital revolution was accomplished, in the social history of the arts and letters, with the advent of the modern era. One too often forgets that the modern world, under another aspect, is the bourgeois world, the capitalist world. It is even an amusing spectacle to see how our anti-Christian socialists, particularly anti-Catholic, heedless of the contradiction, praise the same world under the name of modern and condemn it, the very same, under the name of bourgeois and capitalist. Such a contradiction, more or less conscious or unconscious, would cause a scandal if one were at a point of caring about one more or one fewer contradiction in this parliamentary political world. And one more or fewer scandals. One too often forgets also that the advent of the modern world was, under another aspect, the advent of the same parliamentary political economic bourgeois and capitalist world. It is therefore not surprising that by an effect of modern capitalist incrustation glory itself has finally become a temporal power.
Under the old regimes, glory was an almost uniquely spiritual power. Under the old regimes, enough powers counterbalanced the powers of money — powers of force, other powers of force or powers of mind — so that through all these powers, and through their very combats and debates, and especially here, glory could remain an almost uniquely spiritual power. By a singular combination, by a singular play of events, at the advent of the modern era a great quantity of powers of force, most of them indeed, fell, but far from their fall having served in any way the powers of mind, by giving them the open field, on the contrary the suppression of the other powers of force has profited hardly anyone but that power of force which is money. It has hardly served but to clear the ground for the profit of the powers of money. The counterweights of force, of other forces, being suppressed, nothing has gone to the mind, which supposedly was waiting, to the powers of mind, for which the revolution of the modern world was supposedly being made. Contrary to what one might have hoped, when one was poorly informed, contrary to what the demolishers of the old world or most of these demolishers and the promoters and introducers of the modern world perhaps indeed hoped, everything has gone to the sole powers of force that had remained, to the powers of money.
In the old worlds, under the old regimes, other powers of force counterbalanced both that power of force which is money and the powers of mind. And there were enough, because the world was rich in powers. Powers of arms and above all powers of race; power of the fist, power of the gauntlet, power of the dagger, power of tradition, itself half-intellectual or spiritual, power of so many rhythms that beat so many hearts, powers of so many lives that beat their measure, powers of so many bodies that were not enslaved, powers of hierarchy, themselves half-intellectual or half-spiritual, powers of the city, powers of the commune, civic powers, powers of community, half-temporal and half of the mind, nautical power (Athens) or power of chivalry, and above all powers of race, then the strongest of all, and the most beautiful, truly dynastic powers, dynasties of kings, dynasties of the great, dynasties of beggars, all equally dynastic, everyone then was a dynast — an infinity of fine and strong powers of force, at the limit all temporal and thence indefinitely degraded into powers that became in an infinity of gradations spiritualized, an infinity of powers of force or of half-force at once struggled or made pacts and fought among themselves, and thus doubly counterbalanced, and at once sometimes struggled against the powers of mind, or made pacts and married more or less with them.
There resulted in the old worlds and under the old regimes a sort of unstable equilibrium that was perpetually to be reestablished, renewed, reinvented, remade, but which in fact was reestablished, renewed almost always, which almost always managed to reinvent itself. It remade itself. And even humanities managed several times to achieve very durable equilibria, truly stable equilibria — the more or less unilinear equilibrium of ancient Egypt, the passionate equilibria of the people of Israel, the equilibria of the Hellenic cities, the equilibrium of the Roman peace — where however the powers of money made a first attempt at their domination, and which will remain the most disgusting of ancient equilibria, because it is the one most resembling our modern equilibrium of death, to the point of being like an attempt, a temptation, an essay, a first model, an image of prefiguration — the equilibrium of life of Christendom, the equilibrium of the feudal world, the equilibrium of the royal world, the equilibrium of the old kingdom of France. Through all of these together the equilibrium finally of ancient France. And these equilibria themselves were what we have said, answered to the general conditions we have stated. That is to say that enough powers of force and of mind were combined and counterbalanced in them so that the powers of mind were not infallibly subjected in them, which for them is as much as to say dead, so that each power of mind in particular was in the end or became free and surviving. As much as it wished. That is to say as much as it had in itself of force, and thus of reason for being and of justification.
When the intellectual party, rather recently agglomerated in this modern world, wishes to defend the fat prebend of money that this modern world has become for it, it generally uses an astute stratagem that creates a curious displacement of responsibilities. It pretends to be unaware that humanity has been going on for quite some time, and knows, wishes to know, pretends to know, in order to oppose it to the modern world, only a certain old regime. Such is the philosophy of history of these conglomerates. Dreading for their modern world, not without some appearance of reason, the judgment of some honest man, if a single one had survived, or of some intelligent man, if a single one by chance had survived the assassinations of the old slaughters, this agglomerated conglomerate, or this conglomerated agglomerate, imagined inventing a certain old regime that would be perfectly comfortable for it. We know how it proceeded. A certain old regime had to be made, which naturally would not be the real one — that was the first condition — an inoffensive old regime, I mean for the modern era by comparison, an old regime without harmfulness. We know well enough how the party proceeded. Taine was there, ready for a single stroke. To constitute this not-quite-innocent old regime which, by way of comparison, would do no damage to the splendor of the modern world and regime, one knew well enough how to proceed. One had only to feign, it sufficed to feign a certain little old regime of convention. A little wretch of a little old regime, nasty, and all ready to be convinced and beaten, moreover perfectly false, by stringing end to end a few more or less fabricated anecdotes borrowed from the reign of Louis XV, a few rumors borrowed from the reign of Louis XVI; and so that it could not be said that one had not gone far enough back, far enough to the sources, a few bits of gossip descended from the reign of Louis XIV. Perhaps even the regime of Louis XI was put under contribution. But I do not know why, one was careful as of fire not to put under contribution the regime and reign of Louis IX (yet there was only a tiny little graphic transposition to make, the I to change its place, to put before the X instead of after) — Joinville, Guillaume de Nangis, and the confessor of Queen Marguerite. For one had to go, decidedly, and not stop before the origins.
When one had finished explaining to the little boys what was in Taine’s Old Regime (two volumes) one was careful not to explain to them what was in Taine’s Revolution (six volumes), Taine Anarchy (two volumes), Taine Jacobin Conquest (two volumes), Taine Revolutionary Government (two volumes), and above all what was in what Taine so justly, so properly called THE MODERN REGIME, Taine Modern Regime, three volumes. Modern regime. One must indeed say so: modern regime; and the whole modern world. And not (merely) France, nor contemporary. And modern regime is the true title of the whole, not of a part only.
The modern world debases. It debases the city; it debases man. It debases love; it debases woman. It debases race; it debases the child. It debases the nation; it debases the family. It even debases — always our limits — it has managed to debase what is perhaps the most difficult thing in the world to debase, because it is something that has in itself, as in its very texture, a particular kind of dignity, a singular incapacity to be debased: it debases death. A few days after the funeral of Berthelot I met, at the exit of the Gare de Sceaux, one of our most devoted collaborators, one of those worthy heirs of those great families and great names — the Berthelots, the Halevys — of several of those great republican or liberal families that were and have remained interrelated and as it were woven together like the great and together the lofty dynasties of science and letters and of the modern world. After a few half-sad remarks which, on his part, were meant to be optimistic, as always: “Look,” he said to me suddenly, “I thought of you the other day.” (It was one of those sudden recalls of memory, unforeseen by the subject himself, and yet so deep, deep against the subject himself, that create a sort of upwelling, a backflow, a point of origin and of contrariety, a spring in the water, an angular source point, like a wave of backflow, which are, which create a counter-wave in the almost linear declivity, in the downstream descent of the subject and of memory.) “I thought of you the other day.” “You are very kind.” “Yes, I thought of you; you know, I went to Berthelot’s funeral. I was inside. You were not inside, you. Your reactionary soul would have rejoiced to see what they made of Berthelot’s funeral.”
He was smiling sadly, and his lips showed a certain deliberately optimistic bitterness. He had emphasized with a three-quarters sad smile of understanding this word reactionary, and had underlined it with a glance, because he understood as well and even better than you, dear readers and subscribers, what he meant there by this word reactionary. And this word rejoice, said by him, had a particularly severe meaning.
The details followed, lamentable. No, indeed, I did not know what they had made of Berthelot’s funeral. A few indications were enough, a few indications followed, pitiful, odious for anyone who understood, and which the spectator was ashamed to report, which the interlocutor was ashamed to say. A few details escaped, followed, an unavowable procession of ragamuffins, lugubrious, but not in the sense in which the word lugubrious contains the word mourning — or if one wishes it was a mourning of grotesque contrast infinitely more atrocious than a true and simple mourning — a few details said with regret, odious for anyone who has some sense of one of the oldest sentiments that humanity has known, of one of the most precious too, of a sentiment that all humanities somewhat worthy of that name, of man, have known, esteemed at its value, piously fostered; of one of the dearest old sentiments that sometimes come to sit on the warmed threshold; for anyone who has kept some sense of the very old and very venerable respect.
Our collaborator had received, being of the family, an admission card. The ceremony, inside the Pantheon, that is to say the most official ceremony, the most sumptuously and splendidly official and governmental, this secular ceremony intended, simmered as an apotheosis of the modern world, imagined as a personal apotheosis, fabricated as an apotheosis of the modern world in the person and on the body of one of its most eminent representatives — in that entire apotheotic ceremony there was not a gesture that was not an offense to the respectable respect. People were standing, sitting. Leaning, tense. They were not lying down. They had their hats on their heads. Except, however, those who were too hot in the hair. They talked, shouted, laughed, called out to one another, stamped their feet, could not hear one another. They had put there, I think, the music of the Republican Guard, as at the new feast of Joan of Arc. And when the honorable M. Fallieres came into view and was ready to enter, one of the ushers, shouting to the bandmaster in the general tumult, in the tumultuous hubbub of the women of republican defense, in the nonsense that rang, in the drivel that drooled, in this hubbub of a public square transported inside a temple, in these gossips, in these murmurs, in these vanities, in these fatuities, in these unhealthy curiosities, an ill-bred usher, an usher without bearing, an usher without style shouting through all that to the bandmaster: “Come on! Hop! Over there! The music. Here’s the president. Your Marseillaise. You lot.”
Ushers of the Republic, apparitors of these new funeral pomps, will you make us miss the less crude sacristans?
That is what I was told they had made of Berthelot’s funeral. That is what I was told from several quarters they had done inside. I was told it: I was not there. There was no system of return tickets, and I am not a great enough lord in the Republic to have had tickets.
One will not accuse the modern world and crowd of respecting respect; it is a weakness unknown to them. You will tell me that perhaps they listened to the music. I know that music takes more and more space. Not only in official ceremonies, but in the very fabric of modern life. It would remain only to determine how much sincerity there is in this sudden love of music, and how much on the contrary is snobbery. Or, as one said when one spoke French, infatuation. I would merely like to observe that in this new use made of music for official ceremonies, governmental funerals, there is an abuse that comes from a particular insincerity, from a more or less conscious, more or less voluntary misunderstanding. That there is a duplicity, the exploitation of a double meaning. For this very good music that they have played for us at funeral ceremonies by very good musicians, either it is bad, and then it is properly modern, and even contemporary. Or else it is good, and it is always religious music, in the most strictly exact sense of that word. And indeed it is good, for this sort of ceremony, only in that sense, for that cause and on that condition, that it is exactly religious music. Music of genius created and brought into the world by a certain number of very good Christians whose successive names Rolland would tell you as many as you wish.
There is a real abuse here, perfectly characterized, a real duplicity, in short everything that our master M. Maurice Bouchor, when he was drunk — drunk with music, certainly, it is the only intoxication anyone has ever known him to have — ingenuously called a corruption of a minor. One takes a truly, properly religious music, namely Christian, made by very Christians, and one transports it just like that, in military wagons — shall I say one transports it to a disused Pantheon? — not to be an ornament there, more or less superfluous, added on, more or less supplementary, but, everyone feels it clearly, to make of it the very heart and substance of the ceremony. To be all that counts in the ceremony.
And after (or before), the next day (or the day before), one meets people who say to you: I went (or I shall go) to such and such a funeral (or such and such a wedding); they played (or they will play) very fine music there. I do not know how it comes about, perhaps I do not have a sufficiently modern soul, but I am shocked by such remarks. It seems to me that formerly a wedding, a funeral, had value in themselves and by themselves. That they had a meaning. That they were not merely a pretext. An afternoon tea.
And it is not because I am not a musician that I am offended. On the contrary. If I were a musician I would be offended in addition and on the contrary on behalf of the music.
If one wished to put the modern world on trial — and there are days, truly, when one would almost be tempted to — it would be easy to show that the modern world always behaves this way. And it is thus that it sometimes succeeds in masking its poverty, in coagulating a crust of more honest poverty, a superficial crust of propriety or apparent richness or dignity over the hollow of its irremediable emptiness. He who wished to put the modern world on trial, and who could not resist the temptation, would first have to pierce, denounce all this universal parasitism of the modern world living uniquely, living only from the inheritances of all those ancient worlds which it at the same time spends all its time calling stupid worlds, damned-fool worlds, and the most imbecile of worlds.
It is fortunate for the modern world, which moreover uses it very liberally, with an unaffected ease, it is fortunate for it, and for us who watch it use it, that other worlds its fathers came into the world before it, and that these damned-fool worlds that moreover did not exist, do not exist and have never existed, which will never exist — that at least one is sure of, since it is past — made and left it Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, made it the admirable Invalides and the Arc de Triomphe, made it, good God, that very Pantheon, and that monument unique in the world: Paris.
The very perfect, very horizontal and very vertical, very perfectly, very Roman and very other; very imperial and very classical Arc de Triomphe.
Very imposing, very majestic, but with an assurance without pride, so perfectly assured. Of a greatness such, of a greatness where pride would be foolish. Very military and very imperial, very Roman vault too; and yet so familiar, so passing, that you see people, behind the posts and chains, people who dare to pass underneath. To cross the square.
And then there is, on your side, on your right, this Marseillaise of Rude, this Marseillaise of stone, which officially is a Song of Departure, or a Departure of the Volunteers, or a Song of the Departure of the Volunteers.
That they should have made it Paris, monument of monuments, capital monument of so many elementary monuments, city-monument, capital-monument, this people of houses, streets and monuments, this people of gables and roofs, which still are not all modern, and thus are not all ugly, the city of three hills, equidistant, equilateral, equitable, and of this circle of hills, of this amphitheater, more or less exterior today, circumferential, which will all be gradually consumed and thus become interior, wisely, sagely, intelligently spaced, discreetly, elegantly arranged, sown, this network of streets and ways, of veins and arteries, this central aorta, the Seine, lightly, slowly, attentively arched, not curved but arched (the crosier), this people also of a people, people of houses of a people of men, this people also of peoples, people of houses of so many peoples of men, this people finally of memory, this people of memories, this people of remembrances, where all the universality of the horizontal cross-section of the present time is infinitely multiplied by all the universality of the vertical sounding, of the vertical deepening, by all the universality of the vertical cross-section and of the elevation, of the vertical thread, by all the universality of the vertical past, vertically the richest, of an infinite vertical past for each point of this infinite horizontal universe of the present time, the city where not a paving stone that does not ring a memory of the past, that does not call, that does not evoke, that does not ring the memory of the remembrance of the past, where the very mud of the gutter is a mud of history, where there is not a paving stone that does not ring under the heel the resonance, the evocation, the reverberation of an infinite past, city where the least wooden paving block covers, stops, corks like a stopper the vertical line mounting and rising perpetually to the light of day, living, invincibly, rebellious to dying, and to disappearing, and to being effaced, under feet, always reappearing, like the bloodstain (and it is often a bloodstain) of the memory of a past event that has always been capital in the history of the world — temporal capital of the world, intellectual capital, alas (must one say alas?), and spiritual capital, still, always, still a spiritual capital; the city that has suffered most for the temporal salvation of humanity, the city in the world that has worked most at salvation, for the temporal salvation of the world, the city also, the city still, the city always, the city that has suffered most, that has worked most, that has most prayed for a salvation that infinitely surpasses temporal salvation; this first city of the world; capital of the kingdom; unique city of the world; the most intellectual, alas, for the intellectuals; and on the contrary the most voluptuous for the voluptuous, the most carnal for the carnal; and also for the mystics the most mystical; at this very moment, in this present time, in the misfortunes and miseries of this time, the one that still, the one that always, still the one that suffers, that works, that prays most and best for this salvation that infinitely surpasses the temporal salvation of humanity; the most temporal city for time and for the temporal, at the same time, together the most eternal for the eternal and for eternity; unique city of the world; modern city, ancient city; the first of the modern cities of the world, as modern, the first of the ancient cities of the world, as ancient; after Jerusalem and Rome; and yet there is in Lutetia, and even in Paris itself, something of antiquity, some antiquity that goes back as far as anyone, an antiquity than which one sees none, one sees none that is more authentic, more ancient, more antique.
Capital of luxury. Capital of prayer. Capital of faith. Capital of charity. Capital of everything.
Capital also of (temporal) glory. But what is glory, after all that.
Capital of luxury (they say). Capital of vice (they claim). Capital of virtue. Capital, apparently capital of sin. City of so many grandeurs, of every grandeur. City of so many baseness, of every wretchedness. City of every charity, in every sense of this word, excellently, eminently, infinitely in that technical sense that infinitely surpasses the others. City of pride and humility, of modesty always. Capital of thought. Capital of the production and consumption of thought.
City of the world where temporal careerists arrive most, the fastest, the most infallibly, the most automatically. And all the temporal snobs. City also that most infallibly, most acceleratedly uses up the temporal careerists, and almost automatically, and almost immediately breaks their backs, so that one speaks of them no more.
City from which radiates, alas, the most intelligence in the world. Lighthouse and City of Light as say firstly the imbeciles, secondly the official ceremonies, thirdly the romantics, fourthly Hugo all by himself. Brain where the most thought is elaborated. Heart from which rises, through all that mist you see from Montmartre, in that fog, in all that sea mist, in that industrial mist, coal dust, wooden paving dust, stone paving dust, residue dust, filth of every kind, dust of vapor, steam, and today vapors of gasoline and petroleum and so many heavy oils, vapors also of so many unhealthy breaths, heart from which rises, through all that temporal mist, the most specifically, the most technically true prayer.
Not only Paris, but around Paris itself, the surroundings — that they should have made it Versailles and even Saint-Germain.
I would give Versailles, Paris and Saint-Denis.
They were given to it, Versailles, and Paris, and Saint-Denis; many others were given to it; that they should have made and given it the towers of Notre-Dame, and the steeple of my country; that they should have made and given it Versailles, and Fontainebleau, and even Rambouillet, residences, or as they say, royal residences; that they should have made and given it the steeple of my country, that is to say, for I know it, the steeple of my country; that they should have made and given it so many admirable French cathedrals, the two formidable jambs, the two enormous legs, so normal, so square, so powerful, so classical, the two thrusts, the two ascents, the two ascensions, the two trunks, the two vegetable stems of the two towers of Notre-Dame, the gallery of kings, the gallery of voids, or gallery of angels, the nave of Amiens, the spire of Chartres — but why single out, why dismember — that they should have made and given it so many admirable French cathedrals entire, Notre-Dame entire, Amiens entire, Chartres entire, all the others entire, and how many; so many admirable, so many infinite exterior forests, so many admirable, so many infinite interior vessels; so many simple admirable parish churches, so many admirable castles of the French Renaissance and other times, so many admirable villages and towns, so many of those admirable little French towns, and big market-towns, unique monuments, my dear Porche, an infinity of unique monuments of the life of former times, fresh as stone, burning as the sun, faithful as the tomb, silent as an eternity, where one knows what a summer and a winter are, a spring and an autumn, where one has not lost the memory of the four seasons, where one also knows what day and night are, market-towns and cities of churches and town halls.
Perfect profile of the French village.
That they should have made and kept for it, to give it, all these admirable and perfect undulations of the Ile de France, the very perfect Soissonnais; not only so many high and deep forests; but the country of admirable lines, where ponds and marshes know how to be more perfectly beautiful than lakes, the country of perfect planes, of perfect curves and undulations, of almost perfectly flat lines, of admirable descents, of descents almost without climbs, of descents that are descensions, of lines of repose and action, of lines of beauty, of perfectly noble lines, the country of Racine and La Fontaine.
That of all this they should have made and kept to commit to it this monument unique in the world: France.
That they should have made and kept for it this immense Beauce, vast as the sea, immense and infinite as the sea, sad as much and as deep as the sea; this ocean of wheat; not one of those perfect undulations of before and after, but a picture of an entirely different order, of an infinitely graver order; or rather a country that surpasses all art, all interpretation, all drawing; but a perfect plateau, without a snag, without an amusement, without a single picturesque, without a frivolity, without a fault, without a vanity; the only horizon where the sun reigns and does not amuse itself with nonsense for painters.
Perfectly classical country, perfectly upright, where there is not a single effect.
Not a hollow where an effect might nest, might hide.
Plain, ocean, plateau, universe of temporal wheat; plateau flat as the hand, you say; without a retreat, without a recess, without a discretion: always the same peasant cunning — plateau where you could hide, Halevy, twenty divisions; there, before you; as in the hollow of the hand. One must have done grand maneuvers in Beauce. 1900. A few folds, undulations that are nothing. No, they are nothing in the immensity of this universe of the horizontal, a nothing, innocent undulations — where you could hide the Grand Army.
Plain, ocean of wheat, living wheat, moving waves, moving vegetable waves, infinite undulations; ploughable sea and no longer as for the ancient Greeks, unploughable and rebellious to the plough; but equally invincible, and equally inexhaustible; essential earth of the south, king of summers; inexhaustible undulations of the ears; ocean of green, ocean of yellow and of blond and of gold; slow and sure rustlings, indefinitely reborn rustlings, and softly murmuring, shimmering and living rustlings of the inexhaustible cereal waves; then perfect alignments of the fine haystacks; of the great and perfectly beautiful golden stacks; stacks, houses of wheat, entirely made of wheat, granaries without roofs, granaries without walls, roofs and walls of straw and wheat protecting, defending straw and wheat: sheaves, ears, straw, wheat, protecting, defending, better than that constituting, building themselves; immense buildings of grain, perfect houses of wheat, quite full, quite plump, without obesity however, quite prosperous; and that sacramental form, old as the world, one of the oldest of forms, self-indicated, inevitable and all the more beautiful, all the more perfect, being more perfectly suited, the old ogive, with perfect curves on all sides, with the perfect curved terminal angle, gentle and slow termination and ogival point; innocent curves and forms, you say; innocent, apparently; cunning in reality, cunning and very skillful, with a patient and invincible peasant skill, invincibly cunning against the oblique rain and the demolishing wind.
Buildings of wheat, insubmersible in earthly storms, which standing against the wind, against the broad autumn winds, against the hard winter winds, against the soft west winds, against the dry east winds, against snow, against hail, against the interminable rains, against those inexhaustible rains of autumn and mild winters, against those eternities of rains that are figurations of eternities, where all the air rains, where the wind rains, where the sky rains and penetrates your soul, standing against the four cardinal points, and even, they too, against all the collateral points you wish, in all weathers without budging, sail indifferently against all weathers, great cargo vessels that make and hold your head against all earthly storms, vessels that navigate always, and always close-hauled, fat-bellied vessels, full-bellied, not obese, vessels with nautical curves, designed to cut the waves of wind, the waves of rain, the waves of misfortune.
Not only the army of the Moselle in clogs; but the army of the Moselle barefoot; let us not pity them; let us rather envy them. One is very well marching in clogs, and even barefoot, when one is they. Sadness and fear were unknown to them. They would no doubt have scaled the clouds… But I cannot recite to you the whole of that Passive Obedience.
They were happy. It is we who make them unhappy, who pity them. Fools that we are. It is we. Or rather, among us, it is the pale historian, the intellectual historian, the cerebral historicus who artificially makes them unhappy. Ask the great fellows, the real historians, Michelet, Hugo, those who saw them, really saw them, if they were unhappy.
They were happy, the fellows. They were doing something. And they knew very well that they were doing something. Let us envy them. Hugo: these superb barefooted ones; it is literally true that one saw them march upon the dazzled world. Their clogs, their bare feet obtained from this world a reverberation that has been given to no man since. Their bare feet obtained from the instrument of this world a resonance, from the roads of this world a resonance, a reverberation that no one has drawn from it since.
No man, no isolated man, no great man has since drawn from it a reverberation of such resonance. And still less any men in troops.
Paris, city of revolt. City of submission. City of so many servitudes. City of liberty. Liberty, on this fine day. Of so many platitudes. Of such fieriness.
Parisians from the heart of Paris, and from the Paris of those days, from the heart of the old suburbs, from the Faubourg Marceau, the Faubourg Antoine, and among them, intermingled with them, and all around them, little French peasants, peasant lads, peasants of plains and undulations, peasants of woods and hills, marauding lads, peasant lads, bird-nesting lads, peasants of the Ile de France, peasants of the Beauce, peasants of the Loire valley; and also, some of them, mountain peasants, or at least peasants of the slopes; shepherds, cowherds, pastors, peasant workers — they set off to empty quite other nests; having barely glimpsed, or not at all, that great Paris, the Paris of those days — all together they went with their light feet, with their bare feet, they went to sow their Paris, their France, the Paris of that day, the France of that day, on all the roads of the world.
They were happy. It is we, the pedants, who make them unhappy, in our books, in our history textbooks.
O soldiers of the Year Two! O wars! O epics! That, my friend, is an epic. It is always an operation of joy. It consists in marching on a road (in fighting), and in the noise of the steps one has taken on that road being unable ever to be effaced from the memory of peoples.
Companions of the tour of Europe. On condition that Europe be the world. Which it was moreover in those days. Almost. We go on the roads; and instantly the traces of our steps are effaced as soon as we have passed; other innumerable steps efface them, as temporary, as precarious as ours, as ephemeral, as temporary, as precarious as we, the innumerable steps of innumerable men as small, as wretched, as insignificant, as transitory as we. They went on the roads; they went, they marched yet as we do: neither will the sun ever reduce to dust, nor water ever turn to mud, nor any cartwheel ever efface the trace of their step.
What is most remarkable, these fellows, is that they knew it very well. They had forgotten to be stupid. It is the property, it is one of the properties of temporal eternity that he who obtains it can so to speak, I do not say always, but in certain cases, under certain forms, can so to speak touch it instantaneously, that temporal eternity can be touched instantaneously. Having obtained temporal eternity, they knew perfectly well that they had just obtained it, that it was a done deal, for this temporal eternity. Which they generally did not fail to take for an eternal eternity.
Naturally.
Let us above all not whine for them. They did not whine, the good marchers. They did not whine, they, about themselves. Let us not whine for them, about them. That would be the worst way to recall ourselves to their good memory. Let us love the heroes as they loved themselves. Let us love, let us recall, let us recall to the world the heroes, let us celebrate the heroes as they loved themselves, as they recalled themselves to themselves. Their temporal glory was essentially glorious. It was made essentially of glory and joy, even of gaiety. At least let us unworthy ones, we little people, not do them the insult of unmarking them, of unmaking them, of denaturing them. Let us not disfigure them. Let us not make them unrecognizable.
I have just uttered, I have just said, let slip a very great word, a word that frightens me. A word I do not like, because I find it is much abused. A word I mistrust. And those who use it. A word that is always used today. Precisely since things have declined. It is always that way. A word that must on the contrary be used very rarely. Today more rarely than ever. It seems to me that I spoke of heroes. I had begun by saying, I think, that they were, that they were epic. I meant naturally by that, very properly, very technically, that they were making epic. That is moreover how we must understand that Hugo already understood it:
They, in the rapture of their epic struggles.
Thus when it escaped us to say that they were heroes, I meant naturally by that, very properly, very technically, that they were doing heroism. That is moreover also how we must understand that Hugo immediately understood it:
Drunk, they savored all the heroic sounds.
Now heroism is essentially a virtue, a state; the heroic action is essentially an operation of health, of good humor, of joy, even of gaiety, almost of jest, an action, an operation of ease, of largesse, of facility, of comfort, of fecundity; of good going; of mastery and self-possession; of habit almost, so to speak, and of usage, of good usage. Of interior fecundity; of force as of a fine and strong spring of force drawn from the blood of one’s race and from one’s own blood, an overflow of sap and blood. Without any stiffening, without any stiffness. Without toiling. Without sweating.
Above all without complaining. Without moaning and without whining. The temporal hero plays his time. He has no reason, no desire, no idea, no image even of whining and does not whine. He does not whine because in the mode he has no feeling, no suspicion of paining of any sort. He does not whine because in the event he has no feeling, no suspicion of caring about the event, the outcome, the result, the success, to the point of whining and complaining about another event. A poor player who wants to win. A poor temporal player. What these great players need is to play. It is first, it is solely to play.
The game alone is essential to these great players. The game alone interests them. They infinitely prefer to play without winning than they would like to win without playing.
(If such is the hero, if such a life of heroism, what will it be when we speak of the saint and a life of holiness. As the temporal hero draws from the force of his race an inexhaustible force of joy, so, in another order, in an infinitely superior order, the saint, the true saint draws from the operation of grace, from the force of the operation of grace, an inexhaustible force of joy. There are no more grumbling saints than there are grumbling heroes. The mode, the tone is identically the same. Each in his order, naturally. Unlike the end, which in these two orders, in the temporal order and in the eternal order, in the one and in the other, in the one in opposition, in contrariety to the other, is, becomes diametrically opposed, diametrically contrary. For the temporal hero plays to play, to be, to be a (temporal) hero, not to win. He infinitely prefers to play without winning than to win without playing. He likes playing without winning. He would not like to win without playing. A saint on the contrary who would amuse himself by playing (his salvation), who would like to play (it), who would not aim solely, in this order, at winning (heaven), would perpetually commit, and so to speak to the maximum, to infinity, to the limit, to the eternal, that of all sins which is rated the driest, pride, and no doubt, along with it, a certain number of others. Which would be the most rigorously contradictory in the very terms.
Since it would be making of the very principle of his holiness a principle of sin itself, of a perpetual sin and so to speak itself eternal.
Thus appears suddenly, thus is born under the pen, at the moment it least expected it, thus is revealed, thus bursts, thus breaks unexpectedly, thus springs under the pen at the moment one least expected it, thus naturally escapes at the very moment one least expected it, one of those fundamental oppositions, one of those invincible contrarieties, one of those distances, one of those disparities, one of those discords, muffled, suddenly bursting, one of those differences, one of those distances, one of those inequalities that mark with an indelible mark, one of those irreducible oppositions, one of those infinite contrarieties that betray, that represent, that manifest, ineluctably that reveal this gap, this irreducibility, this distance, this absolute irreducibility, this opposition, this contrariety, this incompetence and this absolute, infinite, itself eternal incompatibility between the eternal and the temporal. He who is of time, the hero who is of time infinitely loves to play (his time); he infinitely prefers to play without winning than to win without playing; he infinitely loves to play, even without winning; he would not like to win without playing. He who is of eternity, the saint who is of eternity, one cannot even conceive how he would like to play his eternity.
Thus it is the very mechanism of the relation of end to means and of means to end that is counter-indicated, counter-launched, counter-thrown in the two cases; contrary in the one to the other; the steam has been reversed; which, according to Immanuel, is the most important thing in an economy.
The most important, according to Immanuel, in a pragmatic economy, in an economy of conduct and action.
A saint does not play at all, cannot play at all, can have no idea or representation of any kind or even imagination of playing.
One does not see, one cannot conceive how he would play, how he would like to play.
Opposition, total contrariety, irreducible, infinite, absolute, itself eternal, all the more capital, all the more significant in that the mode, we have said it, and more than ever it must be repeated, having noted this essential contrariety, all the more significant in that the mode is identically the same; on the contrary. So that at the very moment that the temporal makes for the eternal a diametrical contrariety in the object, in the mechanism of the relation of end to means and of means to end, at the same time, simultaneously, it does not cease to make for it, on the contrary it continues, if need be it would begin to make for it a parallel.
CHARLES PEGUY