ANATOLE FRANCE'S VALEDICTORY

PEDRO H E N R I Q U E Z U R E N A

"AHE mature artist whose gradual development has been governed by Goethe's law of " self-culture" knows when it is that the work of his life has achieved its completion. Wagner's Parsifal, Tolstoy's Resurrection, Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken, are lofty twilit summits: the artist has left behind him the whirlwinds of passion, and now lays aside, like Prospero, the symbols of his power and his fame, to enter into the realm of silence. The great master of irony and sagesse has attained the spiritual regions where life, over which thought has been incessantly vigilant, becomes clear and pure, defining its moral perspectives, like a valley left behind, hid by the mists of the morning, whose rich landscape is beheld, in the peaceful evening, from the heights. More than this: he has already, during his life, met with the reaction that follows all renown. Looked upon as an exception, an exception among the Academicians, an exception among the realists, an exception among all the writers of yesterday, and as such accepted and revered by generations younger than his own, Anatole France had seemed to possess the secret of perpetual literary youth. But it was merely an illusion. Youth is implacable. Youth demands renewal, and accepts no compromise. Every generation brings a new interpretation of life, a new sense of art, and the men of yesterday rarely know how to enter into the spirit of the new times. The reaction was slow in coming, but it came at last. Anatole France could not be the idol of 1914. French hterature of to-daya passionate, sincere, ideahstic literature, equally eager for subtle ideas and for direct emotions is the outcome of artistic tendencies radically different from those of the 'eighties. It is even more: it is the outcome of artistic impulses that seem to run counter to those which have been traditionally held as typically French. For this is an idealistic literature in the philosophical sense of the term; not merely in the sense of a more or less religious spirituahsm (which, of
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course, is not lacking either) nor in the sense of a more or less vague and sapless " unrealism." A literature in which every subject seeks its own adequate form, instead of lazily casting itself into one of the accepted models: the paragraph a la Bossuet; the heroic couplets of seventeenth century tragedy; the "incisive" Voltairean prose; the tirade of Hugo; the descriptions of the realists. Anatole France symbolizessymbolizes supremelymany tendencies opposed to the new ideals. If such tendencies are typically French, as is commonly supposed, then those who see in him a thorough representative of his people are not wrong. H e is not, by temperament, an ideologist; much less a metaphysician. H e knows all the philosophies, but has a passion for none. Compare him with Camille Mauclair, and you will find, by contrast, the revelation of the deep and restless metaphysical temperament in the literature of to-day. Philosophically, then, a sceptic, but an " active " sceptic (even in criticism) ; a master of all the resources of sagesse that scepticism often brings,he has lived in danger of that essential mediocrity which so often lies at the root in the French writer, under his technical perfections: that mediocrity born of the absence of the ideal meaning, of the transcendental conception of life, without which the Homeric poems and the Attic tragedies, the work of Dante and of Shakespeare, would be nothing more than brilliant pageants and hollow magnificences. Sceptical, Ironical, sage; French, In short; even gaulois, since he has known how to give sensuality Its role In life (at least in French life) and even strong words their place In books,Anatole France appeared to assume an attitude quite unlike that of modern French youth, opening to the splendors of the universe the large Impressionable eyes of Romaln RoUand's Jean-Chrlstophe. But Irony may be a form of philosophical thought. And the irony running through Anatole France's work, as a constantly growing current, towards which all the intellectual forces converge, becomes at last a philosophy of human history. Thus his work acquires its original and higher unity, Its characteristic savor,which, thoroughly French as it Is, yet sometimes reminds

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us of English literature, as is the case also with Balzac, or even with Flaubert. Besides, in his way, Anatole France is an idealist. I mean, he has an ideal. An ideal, not philosophical, but social,- therefore,. French; but an ideal, at any rate. H e has bravely fought for the people, especially for the spiritual freedom of his people. It has not been all bays and roses in his public life: fanatic populaces have thrown stones at him. And his faith in the moral and intellectual redemption of men, crowning his ironical philosophy of history, is the ideal motif that gives his work a higher meaning. A melancholy veil of darkness has just fallen over this philosophy,so ironical, yet so generous in its desire for human welfare. The Revolt of the Angels, Anatole France's last novel, is, seen in the light of recent events, somewhat in the manner of a valedictory. It seems as if the author, now so oppressed, would not return to his literary tasks, even after the crisis aiBIcting his country may have passed. The prospect of an unavoidable, destructive and useless war; the certainty that the efforts of spiritual liberation would be suspended; the sadness of seeing a whole life's work in danger of becoming fruitless, even if not from external conflicts, from the pettinesses of internal politics: these are the closing notes of the book. And, as if giving up all public endeavor; as If a bitter scepticism had replaced the old ironical but active faith; as if, his belief in mankind being dead, he were secluding himself within a sad individualism, Anatole France seals the revolted archangel's vision with the renunciation of all conquest of power. " Let us not conquer Heaven: let It suffice us to be capable of conquering It. War breeds war; victory breeds defeat. . . . We have destroyed laldabaoth, our tyrant, if we have destroyed in ourselves ignorance and fear. . . . Victory is spirit. It is in ourselves, and only in ourselves, that we must attack and destroy laldabaoth."

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A TENT

SONG

W I T T E R BYNNER

"^ILL we watch the last low star, Let us love and let us take Of each other all we are.

On some morning with that star One of us shall lie awake, Lonely for the other's sake.

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