Anatole France

“ It would have been a joy to watch M. Anatole France pouring the clear elixir compounded of his Pyrrhonic philosophy, his Benedictine erudition, his gentle wit and most humane irony into such an unpromising and opaque vessel. He would have attempted it in a spirit of benevolence towards his fellow men and of compassion for that life of the earth which is but a vain and transitory illusion. M. Anatole France is a great magician, yet there seem to be tasks which he dare not face. ”

“ Still, and I repeat that I do not want to be ill-natured about it, in spite of that little failing, it must be owned that this little band of incarnations of Anatole France is very human; after all, Anatole France is probably human himself, so far as a man can be human when he is sane. ”

“ That philosophy, with which I deal further on, is enunciated in every volume by the nice old gentlemen who embody him, Bonnard, Bergeret and the others: irony54 and pity; despise man but love him, see his weakness and yet hope; he may not be immortal, yet he is eternal, indestructible as all matter; and though he be no more than a mite in cheese yet he is the expression of life, the soul of beauty, the one thing in the world which is holy. For Anatole France is sweet and pitiful. All through his work we feel that, and in none so much as in a little story, Crainquebille. ”

“ Those who have come under the spell of Anatole France and are conscious of his peculiar charm, know instinctively that, when his voice is hushed, such accents will never fall upon their ears again. There will doubtless be born other writers whose work will be no less illumined by grace and beauty, but it will be a different grace, a different beauty. ”

“ It is much more than that: it singularly reveals Anatole France himself, for here we have a man aged thirty-six writing as a kindly, rather cynical, faintly ironic old gentleman, fond of the classics and of humanity. Children make him sentimental ”

“ It is hard to realise that men follow shopgirls while empires fall, but it is most likely, and I suspect that Anatole France thinks it more important.
As it is the fate of Anatole France to be unpopular whatever he does, it is not surprising that The Gods are Athirst should have annoyed the advanced people as much as The Life of Joan of Arc did the reactionaries. That is because he loves truth and is one of the few people in the world who realise that truth is neither blue nor buff. ”

“ If Anatole France had been born in England and entered politics there, his influence would not have been large, because, in this country, what we like is a good, stodgy, immovable view; if at the age of twenty you believed in Mr Gladstone, at the age of sixty you have to believe in Mr Asquith, and there you are. ”

“ Of all the famous or popular men alive upon this planet Anatole France is to me the greatest. There is no writer to compare to him, and he has few peers amongst the greatest geniuses of past ages and all climes. ”

“ This does not mean that Anatole France is throwing over any ideas; he is merely being more or less influenced by one side of his own self. His love of humanity has always made it difficult for him to enjoy the fruit he raised to his mouth if it occurred to him just then that other mouths might go hungry. ”

“ The sensuality of Anatole France is like sap arising in the trees, like the moth circling about the candle; it is joyous, frank, unashamed; the world and all that is in it is its toy. In this country it has become disgusting to like good food; you must not even talk of food, it is not done (and the result is English food, the laughing-stock of the universe) . But listen to Anatole France on food in Histoire Comique:
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“The Castelnaudary stew contains the preserved thighs of geese, whitened beans, bacon and a little sausage. ”

“ Anatole France is acclaimed all over the world; everybody quotes him, and those12 who cannot quote him quote his name; he is above criticism. This would be very bad for him if he were not also above adulation. People dare not say the things which should be obvious: that he repeats himself; that he is sentimental; that his novels are, from the point of view of French technique, incoherent; that, as expressed by his characters, his conception of love is rather disgusting; in fact, they take all the humanity out of him by endowing him with all the graces ”

“ The true Anatole France which hides under the sentimental old gentlemen, so cynical and so human, born so cold and to-day so young, is the irreverent, jolly, blasphemous Frenchman of the Middle Ages. I have said this often and quoted much in support because I want to make the English understand what is so difficult for them to understand: the Gaul and his joviality.120 Still I cannot resist quoting a story from Penguin Island, which I am compelled to condense:
There was once a king and he had a beautiful queen. ”

“ Doubtless this daily observation of the current trend gave birth to a new man, for now Anatole France is no longer the satirical and lightly ironical dilettante making excursions into the field of speculation, but a robust devotee of the rights of the people. ”

“ How is such a man brought into existence? His father was a book-seller, and so he breathed culture in his childhood; he read everything from every part of the world, especially things written by men long since dead; things full of that beauty mingled with sadness which is one of the gifts of time. Anatole France learned to be at home in strange cultures, and at the same time he studied the masters of his own country, whose specialties are precision and lucidity and charm of phrase. ”

“ I do not apologise for the egotism which9 is already invading this monograph, and I suppose I shall remain egotistic as I go on. For the works of Anatole France are too bulky, too many to be appraised one by one; they raise so many issues that a fat quarto volume would hardly suffice to analyse all, and it would be rather dull. Believing that criticism is “the adventures of the soul among masterpieces,” I am much more inclined to give the adventures of my intellect (claiming no soul) among the works of Anatole France. ”

“ I submit that any man of24 high intellectual development tends to hold two views upon one topic. One view is that of his instinct, the other is that of his reason. In the case of Anatole France the instinct is always hedonistic; he is a pagan; he loves Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, and even the Catholic Church, for their beauty; he is fond of all the good things of the world, beautiful women, flowers, sweetmeats ”

“ He is too great to be merely clever, too wise to be dogmatic. He is indulgent to all men, save the fanatics. Fanatics he detests, because they are the sworn enemies of Beauty, and in his eyes the only unpardonable sins are the sins against Beauty.
Anatole France sees life steadily, and sees it whole. With the insight of genius he can enter into the state of mind and speak with the tongue appropriate to all his characters, from the highest to the lowest—scholar, politician, priest, soldier, voluptuary, wanton, all the motley dramatis personæ that move across the stage of life. ”

“ I come neither to bury11 Anatole France nor to praise him; there is in one-man criticism a danger that it should be too favourable, for the critic tends to choose as a subject an author whom he whole-heartedly worships. Now I do not worship Anatole France; I have had to read every one of his works over again in the last few weeks, and if there is anything calculated to make one hate a writer for evermore it is to read all his works one after the other. People are afraid to criticise Anatole France adversely ”

“ Anatole France is not exactly a literary man. He is not a literary man in the sense of Flaubert or Turgenev, for he is not content with being the god in the machine, he is always allowing you to see him guiding it; indeed in most of his work he is the god in the car. That is probably why Anatole France has never adopted classical form. He appreciates it, and in the many critical articles he has written he has praised just those people whose form was perfect ... but it is the sick man, not the robust man admires health. ”

“ What we arrive at once more in Anatole France is that humorous drawing back from the world, back into some high pitched observation-tower of the mind, from the philosophic seclusion of which the world scene can be easily imagined as different from what it is. Nothing is more salutary in the midst of the mad confusion of the world than these retirements. ”

“ In ‘Lys Rouge’, his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in ‘Opinions de M. l’Abbe Jerome Coignard’ he has given us the most radical breviary of scepticism that has appeared since Montaigne. ‘Le Livre de mon Ami’ is mostly autobiographical; ‘Clio’ (1900) contains historical sketches.
To represent Anatole France as one of the undying names in literature would hardly be extravagant. Not that I would endow Ariel with the stature and sinews of a Titan; this were to miss his distinctive qualities: delicacy, elegance, charm. ”

“ I detest the word “spirituality,” and I hardly know what I miss in this French view of love that Anatole France holds, but I miss it. This view is not exactly: “One woman is as good as another,” but it certainly is: “One woman is as good as another if she is good-looking.” It is all flesh, and116 æsthetics, which do redeem the flesh, do not redeem it fully. The French heroine, beloved of Anatole France’s heroes, is merely Galatea animate; she is just the beautiful woman descended from her pedestal at the call of her chosen lover. ”

“ There, perhaps, you have an eternal symbol of the difference between the Englishman, who takes his irreligion as seriously as his religion, and the Frenchman, who takes his irreligion as smilingly as his apéritif.
It is just because he sums up the end of the nineteenth century so well that Anatole France is already in some quarters a declining fashion. He is the victim of a reaction against his century, not of a reaction against his style. He is the last of the true mockers: the twentieth century demands that even its mockers shall be partisans of the coming race. ”

“ A philosophy which consists of having none, a religion which insists on the unsatisfactoriness of all belief—these are destructive and bewildering forms of reasoning; but Anatole France combined these traits with qualities and achievements which amply balanced their influence. [Pg 102] What we should have liked Mr. May to do, a thing which we are still waiting for a biographer to do, is to have summed up, after consideration, the contradictions, the theories, the principles and the talent of Anatole France, from which we might obtain clear, critical, impartial, sober judgment of the writer. ”

“ Anatole France belongs to the class of poets known as "Les Parnassiens." Yet a book like 'Les Noces Corinthiennes' ought to be classified among a group of earlier lyrics, inasmuch as it shows to a large degree the influence of Andre Chenier and Alfred de Vigny. France was, and is, also a diligent contributor to many journals and reviews, among others, 'Le Globe, Les Debats, Le Journal Officiel, L'Echo de Paris, La Revue de Famille, and Le Temps'. On the last mentioned journal he succeeded Jules Claretie. ”

“ People like Captain Victor, Tudesco, bombastic, ebullient, Falstaffian people, move in our midst. Their creator is always poking fun at them; persistently he erects Aunt Sallies and then throws bouquets at them. He teases them because he loves them. It should be observed, however, and I do not want to be ill-natured about it, that Anatole France never pokes fun at the characters that embody his own personality.104 Bergeret, the other nice old gentlemen, Vence, Dechartre, are never absurd; they are amiable, scholarly, tender, generous, and have a strong sense of humour. ”

“ We are closer to some others, to people such as Mr Thomas Hardy, even though he stopped in full flight and gathered himself together only to produce the Dynasts in a medium which is not quite the one he was born to. We are fairly close, too, to Mr Anatole France, to his gaiety, his malignancy, his penetration without excessive pity. Mr Anatole France is one of the great doubtfuls of our period, like the Kaiser and Mr Roosevelt. ”

“ Whether or not one agrees with his propagandum, one cannot ignore its significance.
Anatole France has attained distinction in several literary forms. His early poems are not of sufficient merit to make him famous, but they [Pg 135] consist of a piquant combination—humor, history, and philosophy. His critical introductions to delightful editions of famous books are charmingly done and sufficiently discriminating. His tractates on questions of the times are earnest, direct, and vigorous. But it is to his novels and stories that we must look to find his most characteristic writings. ”

“ There is not one of his novels properly holds together. I mean that there is not one that develops harmoniously the story of certain human beings in a given atmosphere. At times, for instance in the four volumes of101 Contemporary History, you have the sense of developing lives, and then Anatole France puts on somebody else’s coat, like Maître Jacques, transforms himself from coachman into cook, calls himself Bergeret or Bonnard, or, more audaciously, takes on the shape of Vence, the genial worldling, or of Dechartre, the passionate sculptor, and talks. ”

“ France was in a ferment; a terrible revolution broke out. The ephemeral leaders of the disordered State carried on a Reign of Terror amidst unheard-of perils. They were, for the most part, less pitiless and less cruel than the princes and judges instituted by Iahveh in the kingdoms of the earth; nevertheless, they appeared more ferocious, because they gave judgment in the name of Humanity. Unhappily they were easily moved to pity and of great sensibility. Now men of sensibility are irritable and subject to fits of fury. ”