Tài liệu Clerambault The Story Of An Independent Spirit During The War doc

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As became a good idealist, Clerambault rarely looked where he was going, but that did not prevent him from
meddling in politics in a fumbling sort of way, as was the mania of men of letters in his day. He had his word
to say, right or wrong, and was often entreated to speak by journalists in need of copy, and fell into their trap,
taking himself seriously in his innocent way. On the whole he was a fair poet and a good man, intelligent, if
rather a greenhorn, pure of heart and weak in character, sensitive to praise and blame, and to all the
suggestions round him. He was incapable of a mean sentiment of envy or hatred, and unable also to attribute
such thoughts to others. Amid the complexity of human feelings, he remained blind towards evil and an
advocate of the good. This type of writer is born to please the public, for he does not see faults in men, and
enhances their small merits, so that even those who see through him are grateful. If we cannot amount to
much, a good appearance is a consolation, and we love to be reflected in eyes which lend beauty to our
mediocrity.
This widespread sympathy, which delighted Clerambault, was not less sweet to the three who surrounded him
at this moment. They were as proud of him as if they had made him, for what one admires does seem in a
sense one's own creation, and when in addition one is of the same blood, a part of the object of our
admiration, it is hard to tell if we spring from him, or he from us.
Agénor Clerambault's wife and his two children gazed at their great man with the tender satisfied expression
of ownership; and he, tall and high-shouldered, towered over them with his glowing words and enjoyed it all;
he knew very well that we really belong to the things that we fancy are our possessions.
Clerambault had just finished with a Schilleresque vision of the fraternal joys promised in the future. Maxime,
carried away by his enthusiasm in spite of his sense of humour, had given the orator a round of applause all by
himself. Pauline noisily asked if Agénor had not heated himself in speaking, and amid the excitement Rosine
silently pressed her lips to her father's hand.
The servant brought in the mail and the evening papers, but no one was in a hurry to read them. The news of
the day seemed behind the times compared with the dazzling future. Maxime however took up the popular
middle-class sheet, and threw his eye over the columns. He started at the latest items and exclaimed; "Hullo!
War is declared." No one listened to him: Clerambault was dreaming over the last vibrations of his verses;
Rosine lost in a calm ecstasy; the mother alone, who could not fix her mind on anything, buzzing about like a
fly, chanced to catch the last word, "Maxime, how can you be so silly?" she cried, but Maxime protested,
showing his paper with the declaration of war between Austria and Servia.
"War with whom?" "With Servia?" "Is that all?" said the good woman, as if it were a question of something
in the moon.
Maxime however persisted, doctus cum libro, arguing that from one thing to another, this shock no matter
how distant, might bring about a general explosion; but Clerambault, who was beginning to come out of his
pleasant trance, smiled calmly, and said that nothing would happen.
"It is only a bluff," he declared, "like so many we have had for the last thirty years; we get them regularly
every spring and summer; just bullying and sabre-rattling." People did not believe in war, no one wanted it;
war had been proved to be impossible, it was a bugbear that must be got out of the heads of free democracies
and he enlarged on this theme. The night was calm and sweet; all around familiar sounds and sights; the
chirp of crickets in the fields, a glow-worm shining in the grass, delicious perfume of honey-suckle. Far
away the noise of a distant train; the little fountain tinkled, and in the moonless sky revolved the luminous
track of the light on the Eiffel Tower.
The two women went into the house, and Maxime, tired of sitting down, ran about the garden with his little
dog, while through the open windows floated out an air of Schumann's, which Rosine, full of timid emotion,
was playing on the piano. Clerambault left alone, threw himself back in his wicker chair, glad to be a man, to
Clerambault 5
be alive, breathing in the balm of this summer night with a thankful heart.
Six days later Clerambault had spent the afternoon in the woods, and like the monk in the legend, lying
under an oak tree, drinking in the song of a lark, a hundred years might have gone by him like a day. He could
not tear himself away till night-fall. Maxime met him in the vestibule; he came forward smiling but rather
pale, and said: "Well, Papa, we are in for it this time!" and he told him the news. The Russian mobilisation,
the state of war in Germany; Clerambault stared at him unable to comprehend, his thoughts were so far
removed from these dark follies. He tried to dispute the facts, but the news was explicit, and so they went to
the table, where Clerambault could eat but little.
He sought for reasons why these two crimes should lead to nothing. Common-sense, public opinion, the
prudence of governments, the repeated assurances of the socialists, Jaurès' firm stand; Maxime let him talk,
he was thinking of other things, like his dog with his ears pricked up for the sounds of the night Such a
pure lovely night! Those who recall the last evenings of July, 1914, and the even more beautiful evening of
the first day of August, must keep in their minds the wonderful splendour of Nature, as with a smile of pity
she stretched out her arms to the degraded, self-devouring human race.
It was nearly ten o'clock when Clerambault ceased to talk, for no one had answered him. They sat then in
silence with heavy hearts, listlessly occupied or seeming to be, the women with their work, Clerambault with
his eyes, but not his mind, on a book. Maxime went out on the porch and smoked, leaning on the railing and
looking down on the sleeping garden and the fairy-like play of the light and shadows on the path.
The telephone bell made them start. Someone was calling Clerambault, who went slowly to answer,
half-asleep and absent so that at first he did not understand; "Hullo! is that you, old man?" as he recognised
the voice of a brother-author in Paris, telephoning him from a newspaper office. Still he could not seem to
understand; "I don't hear, Jaurès? What about Jaurès? Oh, my God!" Maxime full of a secret apprehension
had listened from a distance; he ran and caught the receiver from his father's hand, as Clerambault let it drop
with a despairing gesture. "Hullo, Hullo! What do you say? Jaurès assassinated! " As exclamations of pain
and anger crossed each other on the wire, Maxime made out the details, which he repeated to his family in a
trembling voice. Rosine had led Clerambault back to the table, where he sat down completely crushed. Like
the classic Fate, the shadow of a terrible misfortune settled over the house. It was not only the loss of his
friend that chilled his heart, the kind gay face, the cordial hand, the voice which drove away the clouds, but
the loss of the last hope of the threatened people. With a touching, child-like confidence he felt Jaurès to be
the only man who could avert the gathering storm, and he fallen, like Atlas, the sky would crumble.
Maxime rushed off to the station to get the news in Paris, promising to come back later in the evening, but
Clerambault stayed in the isolated house, from which in the distance could be seen the far-off
phosphorescence of the city. He had not stirred from the seat where he had fallen stupified. This time he could
no longer doubt, the catastrophe was coming, was upon them already. Madame Clerambault begged him to go
to bed, but he would not listen to her. His thought was in ruins; he could distinguish nothing steady or
constant, could not see any order, or follow an idea, for the walls of his inward dwelling had fallen in, and
through the dust which rose, it was impossible to see what remained intact. He feared there was nothing left
but a mass of suffering, at which he looked with dull eyes, unconscious of his falling tears. Maxime did not
come home, carried away by the excitement at Paris.
Madame Clerambault had gone to bed, but about one o'clock she came and persuaded him to come up to their
room, where he lay down; but when Pauline had fallen asleep anxiety made her sleepy he got up and went
into the next room. He groaned, unable to breathe; his pain was so close and oppressive, that he had no room
to draw his breath. With the prophetic hyper-sensitiveness of the artist, who often lives in tomorrow with
more intensity than in the present moment, his agonised eyes and heart foresaw all that was to be. This
inevitable war between the greatest nations of the world, seemed to him the failure of civilisation, the ruin of
the most sacred hopes for human brotherhood. He was filled with horror at the vision of a maddened
Clerambault 6
humanity, sacrificing its most precious treasures, strength, and genius, its highest virtues, to the bestial idol of
war. It was to him a moral agony, a heart-rending communion with these unhappy millions. To what end?
And of what use had been all the efforts of the ages? His heart seemed gripped by the void; he felt he could no
longer live if his faith in the reason of men and their mutual love was destroyed, if he was forced to
acknowledge that the Credo of his life and art rested on a mistake, that a dark pessimism was the answer to the
riddle of the world.
He turned his eyes away in terror, he was afraid to look it in the face, this monster who was there, whose hot
breath he felt upon him. Clerambault implored, he did not know who or what that this might not be, that it
might not be. Anything rather than this should be true! But the devouring fact stood just behind the opening
door Through the whole night he strove to close that door
At last towards morning, an animal instinct began to wake, coming from he did not know where, which turned
his despair towards the secret need of finding a definite and concrete cause, to fasten the blame on a man, or a
group of men, and angrily hold them responsible for the misery of the world. It was as yet but a brief
apparition, the first faint sign of a strange obscure, imperious soul, ready to break forth, the soul of the
multitude It began to take shape when Maxime came home, for after the night in the streets of Paris, he
fairly sweated with it; his very clothes, the hairs of his head, were impregnated. Worn out, excited, he could
not sit down; his only thought was to go back again. The decree of mobilisation was to come out that day, war
was certain, it was necessary, beneficial; some things must be put an end to, the future of humanity was at
stake, the freedom of the world was threatened. "They" had counted on Jaurès' murder to sow dissension and
raise riots in the country they meant to attack, but the entire nation had risen to rally round its leaders, the
sublime days of the great Revolution were re-born Clerambault did not discuss these statements, he merely
asked: "Do you think so? Are you quite sure?" It was a sort of hidden appeal. He wanted Maxime to state, to
redouble his assertions. The news Maxime had brought added to the chaos, raised it to a climax, but at the
same time it began to direct the distracted forces of his mind towards a fixed point, as the first bark of the
shepherd's dog drives the sheep together.
Clerambault had but one wish left, to rejoin the flock, rub himself against the human animals, his brothers,
feel with them, act with them Though exhausted by sleeplessness, he started, in spite of his wife, to take the
train for Paris with Maxime. They had to wait a long time at the station, and also in the train, for the tracks
were blocked, and the cars crowded; but in the common agitation Clerambault found calm. He questioned and
listened, everybody fraternised, and not being sure yet what they thought, everyone felt that they thought
alike. The same questions, the same trials menaced them, but each man was no longer alone to stand or fall,
and the warmth of this contact was reassuring. Class distinctions were gone; no more workmen or gentlemen,
no one looked at your clothes or your hands; they only looked at your eyes where they saw the same flame of
life, wavering before the same impending death. All these people were so visibly strangers to the causes of the
fatality, of this catastrophe, that their innocence led them like children to look elsewhere for the guilty. It
comforted and quieted their conscience. Clerambault breathed more easily when he got to Paris. A stoical and
virile melancholy had succeeded to the agony of the night. He was however only at the first stage.
The order for general mobilisation had just been affixed to the doors of the Mairies. People read and re-read
them in silence, then went away without a word. After the anxious waiting of the preceding days, with crowds
around the newspaper booths, people sitting on the sidewalk, watching for the news, and when the paper was
issued gathering in groups to read it, this was certainty. It was also a relief. An obscure danger, that one feels
approaching without knowing when or from where, makes you feverish, but when it is there you can take
breath, look it in the face, and roll up your sleeves. There had been some hours of deep thought while Paris
made ready and doubled up her fists. Then that which swelled in all hearts spread itself abroad, the houses
were emptied and there rolled through the streets a human flood of which every drop sought to melt into
another.
Clerambault 7
Clerambault fell into the midst and was swallowed up. All at once. He had scarcely left the station, or set his
foot on the pavement. Nothing happened; there were no words or gestures, but the serene exaltation of the
flood flowed into him. The people were as yet pure from violence; they knew and believed themselves
innocent, and in these first hours when the war was virgin, millions of hearts burned with a solemn and sacred
enthusiasm. Into this proud, calm intoxication there entered a feeling of the injustice done to them, a
legitimate pride in their strength, in the sacrifices that they were ready to make, and pity for others, now parts
of themselves, their brothers, their children, their loved ones. All were flesh of their flesh, closely drawn
together in a superhuman embrace, conscious of the gigantic body formed by their union, and of the
apparition above their heads of the phantom which incarnated this union, the Country. Half-beast, half-god,
like the Egyptian Sphinx, or the Assyrian Bull; but then men saw only the shining eyes, the feet were hid. She
was the divine monster in whom each of the living found himself multiplied, the devouring Immortality where
those about to die wished to believe they would find life, super-life, crowned with glory. Her invisible
presence flowed through the air like wine; each man brought something to the vintage, his basket, his bunch
of grapes; his ideas, passions, devotions, interests. There was many a nasty worm among the grapes, much
filth under the trampling feet, but the wine was of rubies and set the heart aflame; Clerambault gulped it
down greedily.
Nevertheless he was not entirely metamorphosed, for his soul was not altered, it was only forgotten; as soon
as he was alone he could hear it moaning, and for this reason he avoided solitude. He persisted in not
returning to St. Prix, where the family usually stayed in summer, and reinstalled himself in his apartment at
Paris, on the fifth floor in the Rue d'Assas. He would not wait a week, or go back to help in the moving. He
craved the friendly warmth that rose up from Paris, and poured in at his windows; any excuse was enough to
plunge into it, to go down into the streets, join the groups, follow the processions, buy all the
newspapers, which he despised as a rule. He would come back more and more demoralised, anaesthetised as
to what passed within him, the habit of his conscience broken, a stranger in his house, in himself; and that is
why he felt more at home out of doors than in.
Madame Clerambault came back to Paris with her daughter, and the first evening after their arrival
Clerambault carried Rosine off to the Boulevards. The solemn fervour of the first days had passed. War had
begun, and truth was imprisoned. The press, the arch-liar, poured into the open mouth of the world the
poisonous liquor of its stories of victories without retribution; Paris was decked as for a holiday; the houses
streamed with the tricolour from top to bottom, and in the poorer quarters each garret window had its little
penny flag, like a flower in the hair.
On the corner of the Faubourg Montmartre they met a strange procession. At the head marched a tall old man
carrying a flag. He walked with long strides, free and supple as if he were going to leap or dance, and the
skirts of his overcoat flapped in the wind. Behind came an indistinct, compact, howling mass, gentle and
simple, arm in arm, a child carried on a shoulder, a girl's red mop of hair between a chauffeur's cap and the
helmet of a soldier. Chests out, chins raised, mouths open like black holes, shouting the Marseillaise. To right
and left of the ranks, a double line of jail-bird faces, along the curbstone, ready to insult any absent-minded
passer-by who failed to salute the colours. Rosine was startled to see her father fall into step at the end of the
line, bare-headed, singing and talking aloud. He drew his daughter along by the arm, without noticing the
nervous fingers that tried to hold him back.
When they came in Clerambault was still talkative and excited. He kept on for hours, while the two women
listened to him patiently. Madame Clerambault heard little as usual, and played chorus. Rosine did not say a
word, but she stealthily threw a glance at her father, and her look was like freezing water.
Clerambault was exciting himself; he was not yet at the bottom, but he was conscientiously trying to reach it.
Nevertheless there remained to him enough lucidity to alarm him at his own progress. An artist yields more
through his sensibility to waves of emotion which reach him from without, but to resist them he has also
weapons which others have not. For the least reflective, he who abandons himself to his lyrical impulses, has
Clerambault 8
in some degree the faculty of introspection which it rests with him to utilise. If he does not do this, he lacks
good-will more than power; he is afraid to look too clearly at himself for fear of seeing an unflattering picture.
Those however who, like Clerambault, have the virtue of sincerity without psychological gifts, are sufficiently
well-equipped to exercise some control over their excitability.
One day as he was walking alone, he saw a crowd on the other side of the street, he crossed over calmly and
found himself on the opposite sidewalk in the midst of a confused agitation circling about an invisible point.
With some difficulty he worked his way forward, and scarcely was he within this human mill-wheel, than he
felt himself a part of the rim, his brain seemed turning round. At the centre of the wheel he saw a struggling
man, and even before he grasped the reason for the popular fury, he felt that he shared it. He did not know if a
spy was in question, or if it was some imprudent speaker who had braved the passions of the mob, but as cries
rose around him, he realised that he, yes he, Clerambault, had shrieked out: "Kill him."
A movement of the crowd threw him out from the sidewalk, a carriage separated him from it, and when the
way was clear the mob surged on after its prey. Clerambault followed it with his eyes; the sound of his own
voice was still in his ears, he did not feel proud of himself
From that day on he went out less; he distrusted himself, but he continued to stimulate his intoxication at
home, where he felt himself safe, little knowing the virulence of the plague. The infection came in through the
cracks of the doors, at the windows, on the printed page, in every contact. The most sensitive breathe it in on
first entering the city, before they have seen or read anything; with others a passing touch is enough, the
disease will develop afterwards alone. Clerambault, withdrawn from the crowd, had caught the contagion
from it, and the evil announced itself by the usual premonitory symptoms. This affectionate tender-hearted
man hated, loved to hate. His intelligence, which had always been thoroughly straightforward, tried now to
trick itself secretly, to justify its instincts of hatred by inverted reasoning. He learned to be passionately unjust
and false, for he wanted to persuade himself that he could accept the fact of war, and participate in it, without
renouncing his pacifism of yesterday, his humanitarianism of the day before, and his constant optimism. It
was not plain sailing, but there is nothing that the brain cannot attain to. When its master thinks it absolutely
necessary to get rid for a time of principles which are in his way, it finds in these same principles the
exception which violates them while confirming the rule. Clerambault began to construct a thesis, an
ideal absurd enough in which these contradictions could be reconciled: War against War, War for Peace, for
eternal Peace.
The enthusiasm of his son was a great help to him. Maxime had enlisted. His generation was carried away on
a wave of heroic joy; they had waited so long they had not dared to expect an opportunity for action and
sacrifice.
Older men who had never tried to understand them, stood amazed; they remembered their own commonplace,
bungling youth, full of petty egotisms, small ambitions, and mean pleasures. As they could not recognise
themselves in their children they attributed to the war this flowering of virtues which had been growing up for
twenty years around their indifference and which the war was about to reap. Even near a father as
large-minded as Clerambault, Maxime was blighted. Clerambault was interested in spreading his own
overflowing diffuse nature, too much so to see clearly and aid those whom he loved: he brought to them the
warm shadow of his thought, but he stood between them and the sun.
These young people sought employment for their strength which really embarrassed them, but they did not
find it in the ideals of the noblest among their elders; the humanitarianism of a Clerambault was too vague, it
contented itself with pleasant hopes, without risk or vigour, which the quietude of a generation grown old in
the talkative peace of Parliaments and Academies, alone could have permitted. Except as an oratorical
exercise it had never tried to foresee the perils of the future, still less had it thought to determine its attitude in
the day when the danger should be near. It had not the strength to make a choice between widely differing
courses of action. One might be a patriot as well as an internationalist or build in imagination peace palaces or
Clerambault 9
super-dreadnoughts, for one longed to know, to embrace, and to love everything. This languid Whitmanism
might have its aesthetic value, but its practical incoherence offered no guide to young people when they found
themselves at the parting of the ways. They pawed the ground trembling with impatience at all this uncertainty
and the uselessness of their time as it went by.
They welcomed the war, for it put an end to all this indecision, it chose for them, and they made haste to
follow it. "We go to our death, so be it; but to go is life." The battalions went off singing, thrilling with
impatience, dahlias in their hats, the muskets adorned with flowers. Discharged soldiers re-enlisted; boys put
their names down, their mothers urging them to it; you would have thought they were setting out for the
Olympian games.
It was the same with the young men on the other side of the Rhine, and there as here, they were escorted by
their gods: Country, Justice, Right, Liberty, Progress of the World, Eden-like dreams of re-born humanity, a
whole phantasmagoria of mystic ideas in which young men shrouded their passions. None doubted that his
cause was the right one, they left discussion to others, themselves the living proof, for he who gives his life
needs no further argument.
The older men however who stayed behind, had not their reasons for ceasing to reason. Their brains were
given to them to be used, not for truth, but for victory. Since in the wars of today, in which entire peoples are
engulfed, thoughts as well as guns are enrolled. They slay the soul, they reach beyond the seas, and destroy
after centuries have passed. Thought is the heavy artillery which works from a distance. Naturally
Clerambault aimed his pieces, also the question for him was no longer to see clearly, largely, to take in the
horizon, but to sight the enemy, it gave him the illusion that he was helping his son.
With an unconscious and feverish bad faith kept up by his affection, he sought in everything that he saw,
heard, or read, for arguments to prop up his will to believe in the holiness of the cause, for everything which
went to prove that the enemy alone had wanted war, was the sole enemy of peace, and that to make war on the
enemy was really to wish for peace.
There was proof enough and to spare; there always is; all that is needed is to know when to open and shut
your eyes But nevertheless Clerambault was not entirely satisfied. These half-truths, or truths with false tails
to them, produced a secret uneasiness in the conscience of this honest man, showing itself in a passionate
irritation against the enemy, which grew more and more. On the same lines like two buckets in a well, one
going up as the other goes down his patriotic enthusiasm grew and drowned the last torments of his mind in a
salutary intoxication.
From now on he was on the watch for the smallest newspaper items in support of his theory; and though he
knew what to think of the veracity of these sheets, he did not doubt them for an instant when their assertions
fed his eager restless passion. Where the enemy was concerned he adopted the principle, that the worst is sure
to be true and he was almost grateful to Germany when, by acts of cruelty and repeated violations of justice,
she furnished him the solid confirmation of the sentence which, for greater security, he had pronounced in
advance.
Germany gave him full measure. Never did a country at war seem more anxious to raise the universal
conscience against her. This apoplectic nation bursting with strength, threw itself upon its adversary in a
delirium of pride, anger and fear. The human beast let loose, traced a ring of systematic horror around him
from the first. All his instinctive and acquired brutalities were cleverly excited by those who held him in leash,
by his official chiefs, his great General Staff, his enrolled professors, his army chaplains. War has always
been, will forever remain, a crime; but Germany organised it as she did everything. She made a code for
murder and conflagration, and over it all she poured the boiling oil of an enraged mysticism, made up of
Bismarck, of Nietzsche, and of the Bible. In order to crush the world and regenerate it, the Super-Man and
Christ were mobilised. The regeneration began in Belgium a thousand years from now men will tell of it. The
Clerambault 10
affrighted world looked on at the infernal spectacle of the ancient civilisation of Europe, more than two
thousand years old, crumbling under the savage expert blows of the great nation which formed its advance
guard. Germany, rich in intelligence, in science and in power, in a fortnight of war became docile and
degraded; but what the organisers of this Germanic frenzy failed to foresee was that, like army cholera, it
would spread to the other camp, and once installed in the hostile countries it could not be dislodged until it
had infected the whole of Europe, and rendered it uninhabitable for centuries. In all the madness of this
atrocious war, in all its violence, Germany set the example. Her big body, better fed, more fleshly than others,
offered a greater target to the attacks of the epidemic. It was terrible; but by the time the evil began to abate
with her, it had penetrated elsewhere and under the form of a slow tenacious disease it ate to the very bone. To
the insanities of German thinkers, speakers in Paris and everywhere were not slow to respond with their
extravagances; they were like the heroes in Homer; but if they did not fight, they screamed all the louder.
They insulted not only the adversary, they insulted his father, his grandfather, and his entire race; better still
they denied his past. The tiniest academician worked furiously to diminish the glory of the great men asleep in
the peace of the grave.
Clerambault listened and listened, absorbed, though he was one of the few French poets who before the war
had European relations and whose work would have been appreciated in Germany. He spoke no foreign
language, it is true; petted old child of France that he was, who would not take the trouble to visit other
people, sure that they would come to him. But at least he welcomed them kindly, his mind was free from
national prejudices, and the intuitions of his heart made up for his lack of instruction and caused him to pour
out without stint his admiration for foreign genius. But now that he had been warned to distrust everything, by
the constant: "Keep still, take care," and knew that Kant led straight to Krupp, he dared admire nothing
without official sanction. The sympathetic modesty that caused him in times of peace to accept with the
respect due to words of Holy Writ the publications of learned and distinguished men, now in the war took on
the proportions of a fabulous credulity. He swallowed without a gulp the strange discoveries made at this time
by the intellectuals of his country, treading under foot the art, the intelligence, the science of the enemy
throughout the centuries; an effort frantically disingenuous, which denied all genius to our adversary, and
either found in its highest claims to glory the mark of its present infamy or rejected its achievements
altogether and bestowed them on another race.
Clerambault was overwhelmed, beside himself, but (though he did not admit it), in his heart he was glad.
Seeking for someone to share in his excitement and keep it up by fresh arguments, he went to his friend
Perrotin.
Hippolyte Perrotin was of one of those types, formerly the pride of the higher instruction in France but seldom
met with in these days a great humanist. Led by a wide and sagacious curiosity, he walked calmly through
the garden of the centuries, botanising as he went. The spectacle of the present was the object least worthy of
his attention, but he was too keen an observer to miss any of it, and knew how to draw it gently back into
scale to fit into the whole picture. Events which others regarded as most important were not so in his eyes, and
political agitations appeared to him like bugs on a rose-bush which he would carefully study with its parasites.
This was to him a constant source of delight. He had the finest appreciation of shades of literary beauty, and
his learning rather increased than impaired the faculty, giving to his thought an infinite range of
highly-flavoured experiences to taste and compare. He belonged to the great French tradition of learned men,
master writers from Buffon to Renan and Gaston Pâris. Member of the Academy and of several Classes, his
extended knowledge gave him a superiority, not only of pure and classic taste, but of a liberal modern spirit,
over his colleagues, genuine men of letters. He did not think himself exempt from study, as most of them did,
as soon as they had passed the threshold of the sacred Cupola; old profesor as he was, he still went to school.
When Clerambault was still unknown to the rest of the Immortals, except to one or two brother poets who
mentioned him as little as possible with a disdainful smile, Perrotin had already discovered and placed him in
his collection, struck by certain pictures, an original phraseology, the mechanism of his imagination, primitive
yet complicated by simplicity. All this attracted him, and then the man interested him too. He sent a short
Clerambault 11
complimentary note to Clerambault who came to thank him, overflowing with gratitude, and ties of friendship
were formed between the two men. They had few points of resemblance; Clerambault had lyrical gifts and
ordinary intelligence dominated by his feelings, and Perrotin was gifted with a most lucid mind, never
hampered by flights of the imagination. What they had in common were dignity of life, intellectual probity,
and a disinterested love of art and learning, for its own sake, and not for success. None the less as may be
seen, this had not prevented Perrotin from getting on in the world; honours and places had sought him, not he
them; but he did not reject them; he neglected nothing.
Clerambault found him busy unwinding the wrappings with which the readers of centuries had covered over
the original thought of a Chinese philosopher. At this game which was habitual with him, he came naturally to
the discovery of the contrary of what appeared at first to be the meaning; passing from hand to hand the idol
had become black.
Perrotin received Clerambault in this vein, polite, but a trifle absent-minded. Even when he listened to society
gossip he was inwardly critical, tickling his sense of humour at its expense.
Clerambault spread his new acquisitions before him, starting from the recognised unworthiness of the
enemy-nation as from a certain, well-known fact; the whole question being to decide if one should see in this
the irremediable decadence of a great people, or the proof, pure and simple, of a barbarism which had always
existed, but hidden from sight. Clerambault inclined to the latter explanation, and full of his recent
information he held Luther, Kant and Wagner responsible for the violation of Belgian neutrality, and the
crimes of the German army. He, however, to use a colloquial expression, had never been to see for himself,
being neither musician, theologian, or metaphysician. He trusted to the word of Academicians, and only made
exceptions in favour of Beethoven, who was Flemish, and Goethe, citizen of a free city and almost a
Strassburger, which is half French, or French and a half. He paused for approbation.
He was surprised not to find in Perrotin an ardour corresponding to his own. His friend smiled, listened,
contemplated Clerambault with an attentive and benevolent curiosity. He did not say no, but he did not say
yes, either, and to some assertions he made prudent reservations. When Clerambault, much moved, quoted
statements signed by two or three of Perrotin's illustrious colleagues, the latter made a slight gesture as much
as to say: "Ah, you don't say so!"
Clerambault grew hotter and hotter, and Perrotin then changed his attitude, showing a keen interest in the
judicious remarks of his good friend, nodding his head at every word, answering direct questions by vague
phrases, assenting amiably as one does to someone whom one cannot contradict.
Clerambault went away out of countenance and discontented, but a few days later he was reassured as to his
friend, when he read Perrotin's name on a violent protestation of the Academies against the barbarians. He
wrote to congratulate him, and Perrotin thanked him in a few prudent and sibylline words:
"DEAR SIR," he affected in writing the studied, ceremonious formulas of _Monsieur de Port-Royal_ "I am
ready to obey any suggestions of my country, for me they are commands. My conscience is at her service,
according to the duty of every good citizen."
One of the most curious effects of the war on the mind, was that it aroused new affinities between individuals.
People who up to this time had not a thought in common discovered all at once that they thought alike; and
this resemblance drew them together. It was what people called "the Sacred Union." Men of all parties and
temperaments, the choleric, the phlegmatic, monarchists, anarchists, clericals, Calvinists, suddenly forgot their
everyday selves, their passions, their fads and their antipathies, shed their skins. And there before you were
now creatures, grouped in an unforeseen manner, like metal filings round an invisible magnet. All the old
categories had momentarily disappeared, and no one was astonished to find himself closer to the stranger of
yesterday than to a friend of many years' standing. It seemed as if, underground, souls met by secret roots that
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stretched through the night of instinct, that unknown region, where observation rarely ventures. For our
psychology stops at that part of self which emerges from the soil, noting minutely individual differences, but
forgetting that this is only the top of the plant, that nine-tenths are buried, the feet held by those of other
plants. This profound, or lower, region of the soul is ordinarily below the threshold of consciousness, the mind
feels nothing of it; but the war, by waking up this underground life, revealed moral relationships which no one
had suspected. A sudden intimacy showed itself between Clerambault and a brother of his wife whom he had
looked upon until now, and with good reason, as the type of a perfect Philistine.
Leo Camus was not quite fifty years old. He was tall, thin, and stooped a little; his skin was grey, his beard
black, not much hair on his head, you could see the bald spots under his hat behind, little wrinkles
everywhere, cutting into each other, crossing, like a badly-made net; add to this a frowning, sulky expression,
and a perpetual cold in the head. For thirty years he had been employed by the State, and his life had passed in
the shadow of a court-yard at the Department. In the course of years he had changed rooms, but not shadows;
he was promoted, but always in the court-yard, never would he leave it in this life. He was now
Under-Secretary, which enabled him to throw a shadow in his turn. The public and he had few points of
contact, and he only communicated with the outside world across a rampart of pasteboard boxes and piles of
documents. He was an old bachelor without friends, and he held the misanthropical opinion that disinterested
friendship did not exist upon earth. He felt no affection except for his sister's family, and the only way that he
showed that was by finding fault with everything that they did. He was one of those people whose uneasy
solicitude causes them to blame those they love when they are ill, and obstinately prove to them that they
suffer by their own fault.
At the Clerambaults no one minded him very much. Madame Clerambault was so easy-going that she rather
liked being pushed about in this way, and as for the children, they knew that these scoldings were sweetened
by little presents; so they pocketed the presents and let the rest go by.
The conduct of Leo Camus towards his brother-in-law had varied with time. When his sister had married
Clerambault, Camus had not hesitated to find fault with the match; an unknown poet did not seem to him
"serious" enough. Poetry unknown poetry is a pretext for not working; when one is "known," of course that
is quite another thing; Camus held Hugo in high esteem, and could even recite verses from the "Châtiments,"
or from Auguste Barbier. They were "known," you see, and that made all the difference Just at this time
Clerambault himself became "known," Camus read about him one day in his favourite paper, and after that he
consented to read Clerambault's poems. He did not understand them, but he bore them no ill will on that
account. He liked to call himself old-fashioned, it made him feel superior, and there are many in the world like
him, who pride themselves on their lack of comprehension. For we must all plume ourselves as we can; some
of us on what we have, others on what we have not.
Camus was willing to admit that Clerambault could write. He knew something of the art himself, and his
respect for his brother-in-law increased in proportion to the "puffs" he read in the papers, and he liked to chat
with him. He had always appreciated his affectionate kind-heartedness, though he never said so, and what
pleased also in this great poet, for great he was now, was his manifest incapacity, and practical ignorance of
business matters; on this ground Camus was his superior, and did not hesitate to show it. Clerambault had a
simple-hearted confidence in his fellow-man, and nothing could have been better suited to Camus' aggressive
pessimism, which it kept in working order. The greater part of his visits was spent in reducing Clerambault's
illusions to fragments, but they had as many lives as a cat, and every time he came it had to be done over
again. This irritated Camus, but secretly pleased him for he needed a pretext constantly renewed to think the
world bad, and men a set of imbeciles. Above all he had no mercy on politicians; this Government employee
hated Governments, though he would have been puzzled to say what he would put in their places. The only
form of politics that he understood was opposition. He suffered from a spoiled life and thwarted nature. He
was a peasant's son and born to raise grapes, or else to exercise his authoritative instincts over the field
labourers, like a watch-dog. Unfortunately, diseases of the vines interfered and also the pride of a quill-driver;
the family moved to town, and now he would have felt it a derogation to return to his real nature, which was
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too much atrophied, even if he had wished it. Not having found his true place in society, he blamed the social
order, serving it, as do millions of functionaries, like a bad servant, an underhand enemy.
A mind of this sort, peevish, bitter, misanthropical, it seems would have been driven crazy by the war, but on
the contrary it served to tranquilise it. When the herd draws itself together in arms against the stranger it is a
fall for those rare free spirits who love the whole world, but it raises the many who weakly vegetate in
anarchistic egotism, and lifts them to that higher stage of organised selfishness. Camus woke up all at once,
with the feeling that for the first time he was not alone in the world.
Patriotism is perhaps the only instinct under present conditions which escapes the withering touch of
every-day life. All other instincts and natural aspirations, the legitimate need to love and act in social life, are
stifled, mutilated and forced to pass under the yoke of denial and compromise. When a man reaches middle
life and turns to look back, he sees these desires marked with his failures and his cowardice; the taste is bitter
on his tongue, he is ashamed of them and of himself. Patriotism alone has remained outside, unemployed but
not tarnished, and when it re-awakes it is inviolate. The soul embraces and lavishes on it the ardour of all the
ambitions, the loves, and the longings, that life has disappointed. A half century of suppressed fire bursts
forth, millions of little cages in the social prison open their doors. At last! Long enchained instincts stretch
their stiffened limbs, cry out and leap into the open air, as of right right, do I say? it is now their duty to press
forward all together like a falling mass. The isolated snow-flakes turned avalanche.
Camus was carried away, the little bureaucrat found himself part of it all and without fury or futile violence he
felt only a calm strength. All was "well" with him, well in mind, well in body. He had no more insomnia, and
for the first time in years his stomach gave him no trouble because he had forgotten all about it. He even got
through the winter without taking cold something that had never been heard of before. He ceased to find fault
with everything and everybody, he no longer railed at all that was done or undone, for now he was filled with
a sacred pity for the entire social body that body, now his, but stronger, better, and more beautiful. He felt a
fraternal bond with all those who formed part of it by their close union, like a swarm of bees hanging from a
branch, and envied the younger men who went to defend it. When Maxime gaily prepared to go, his uncle
gazed at him tenderly, and when the train left carrying away the young men, he turned and threw his arms
round Clerambault, then shook hands with unknown parents who had come to see their sons off, with tears of
emotion and joy in his eyes. In that moment Camus was ready to give up everything he possessed. It was his
honey-moon with Life this solitary starved soul saw her as she passed and seized her in his arms Yes, Life
passes, the euphoria of a Camus cannot last forever, but he who has known it lives only in the memory of it,
and in the hope that it may return. War brought this gift, therefore Peace is an enemy, and enemies are all
those who desire it.
Clerambault and Camus exchanged ideas, and to such an extent that finally Clerambault could not tell which
were his own, and as he lost footing he felt more strongly the need to act; for action was a kind of justification
to himself Whom did he wish to justify? Alas, it was Camus! In spite of his habitual ardour and convictions
he was a mere echo and of what unhappy voices.
He began to write Hymns to Battle. There was great competition in this line among poets who did not fight
themselves. But there was little danger that their productions would clog men's memories in future ages, for
nothing in their previous career had prepared these unfortunates for such a task. In vain they raised their
voices and exhausted all the resources of French rhetoric, the "poilus" only shrugged their shoulders.
However people in the rear liked them much better than the stories written in the dark and covered with mud,
that came out of the trenches. The visions of a Barbusse had not yet dawned to show the truth to these
talkative shadows. There was no difficulty for Clerambault, he shone in these eloquent contests. For he had
the fatal gift of verbal and rhythmical facility which separates poets from reality, wrapping them as if in a
spider's web. In times of peace this harmless web hung on the bushes, the wind blowing through it, and the
good-natured Arachne caught nothing but light in her meshes. Nowadays, however, the poets cultivated their
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