Clerambault: The Story of an Independent Spirit During the War

by Romain Rolland

All peoples cannot walk abreast on the same road; they are always passing each other, and being outstripped in their turn. What does it matter, since we are all in the same column? We should get rid of our silly self-conceit. The pole of the world's energy is constantly changing, often in the same country. In France it has passed from Roman Provence to the Loire of the Valois; now it is at Paris, but it will not stay there always. The entire creation swings in alternate rhythm from germinating spring to dying autumn. Commercial methods are not immutable, any more than the treasures beneath the earth are inexhaustible. A people spends itself for centuries, without counting the cost; its very greatness will lead to its decline. It is only by renouncing the purity of its blood and mixing with other nations that it can subsist. Our old men today are sending the young ones to death; it does not make them younger, and they are killing the future.

Instead of raging against the laws of life, a wholesome people will try to understand them and see its real progress, not in a stupid obstinacy which refuses to grow old, but in a constant effort to advance with the age, changing and becoming greater. To each epoch its own task. It is merely sloth and weakness if we cling all our lives to the same one. Learn to change, for in that is life. The factory of humanity has work for all of us. Labour for all, peoples of the world, each man taking pride in the work of all the rest, for the travail, the genius of the whole earth is ours also!

These articles appeared here and there, whenever possible, in some little sheet of advanced literary and anarchistic views, in which violent attacks on persons took the place of a reasoned-out campaign against the order of things. They were nearly illegible, defaced as they were by the censor. Besides, when an article was reprinted in another paper, he would let pass with a capricious forgetfulness what he had cut out the day before, and cut what he had passed then. It took close study to make out the sense of the article after this treatment, but the remarkable thing was that the adversaries of Clerambault, not his friends, went to this trouble. Ordinarily, at Paris, these squalls do not last long. The most vindictive enemies, trained to wars of the pen, know that silence is a sharper weapon than insult, and get more out of their animosity by keeping it quiet; but in the hysterical crisis in which Europe was struggling, there was no guide, even for hatred. Clerambault was continually being recalled to the public mind by the violent attacks of Bertin, though he never failed to conclude each one in which he had discharged his venom, with a disdainful: "He is not worth speaking of."

Bertin was only too familiar with the weaknesses, defects of mind, and small absurdities of his former friend; he could not resist the temptation to touch them with a sure hand, and Clerambault, stung and not wise enough to hide it, let himself be drawn into the fight, retaliated, and proved that he too could draw blood from the other. Thus a fierce enmity arose between the two.

The result might have been foreseen. Up to this time Clerambault had been inoffensive, confining himself on the whole to moral dissertations. His polemic did not step outside the circle of ideas. It might as well have been applied to Germany, England, or ancient Rome, as to the France of today. To tell the truth, like nine-tenths of his class and profession, he was ignorant of the political facts about which he declaimed, so that his trumpetings could hardly disturb the leaders of the day. In the midst of the tumult of the press, the noisy passage of arms between Clerambault and Bertin had two consequences; in the first place it forced Clerambault to play with more care, and choose a less slippery ground than logomachy, and on the other it brought him in contact with men better informed as to the facts who furnished him with the necessary information. A short time before there had been formed in France a little society, semi-clandestine, for independent study and free criticism on the war, and the causes that had led up to it. The Government, always vigilant and ready to crush any attempt at freedom of thought, nevertheless did not consider this society dangerous. Its members were prudent and calm, men of letters before all, who avoided notoriety, and contented themselves with private discussion; it was thought better policy to keep them under observation, and between four walls.

These calculations proved to be wrong, for truth modestly and laboriously discovered, though known only to five or six, cannot be uprooted; it will spring from the earth with irresistible force. Clerambault now learned for the first time of the existence of these passionate seekers after truth, who recalled the times of the Dreyfus case. In the general oppression, their apostolate behind closed doors took on the appearance of a little early-Christian group in the catacombs. Thanks to them, he discovered the falsehoods as well as the injustices of the "Great War." He had had a faint suspicion of them, but he had not dreamed how far the history that touches us most closely had been falsified, and the knowledge revolted him. Even in his most critical moments, his simplicity would never have imagined the deceptive foundations on which reposes a Crusade for the Right, and as he was not a man to keep his discovery to himself, he proclaimed it loudly, first in articles which were forbidden by the censor, and then in the shape of sarcastic apologues, or little symbolic tales, touched with irony. The Voltairian apologues slipped through sometimes, owing to the inattention of the censor, and in this way Clerambault was marked out to the authorities as a very dangerous man.

Those who thought they knew him best were surprised. His adversaries had called him sentimental, and assuredly so he was, but he was aware of it, and because he was French he could laugh at it, and at himself. It is all very well for sentimental Germans to have a thick-headed belief in themselves; deep down in an eloquent and sensitive creature like Clerambault, the vision of the Gaul—always alert in his thick woods—observes, lets nothing escape, and is ready for a laugh at everything. The surprising thing is that this under-spirit will emerge when you least expect it, during the darkest trials and in the most pressing danger. The universal sense of humour came as a tonic to Clerambault, and his character, scarcely freed from the conventions in which it had been bound, took on suddenly a vital complexity. Good, tender, combative, irritable, always in extremes—he knew it, and that made him worse—tearful, sarcastic, sceptical, yet believing, he was surprised when he saw himself in the mirror of his writings. All his vitality, hitherto prudently shut into his bourgeois life, now burst forth, developed by moral solitude and the hygiene of action.

Clerambault saw that he had not known himself; he was, as it were, new-born, since that night of anguish. He learned to taste a joy of which he had never before had an idea—the giddy joy of the free lance in a fight; all his senses strung like a bow, glad in a perfect well-being.

This improved state, however, brought no advantage to Clerambault's family; his wife's share of the struggle was only the unpleasantness, a general animosity that finally made itself felt even among the small tradespeople of the neighbourhood. Rosine drooped; her secret heart-ache wore upon her all the more because of her silence; but if she said nothing her mother complained enough for two. She made no distinction between the fools who affronted her and the imprudent Clerambault who caused all the trouble; so that at every meal there were awkward remarks meant to induce him to keep still. All this was of no use, reproaches whether spoken or silent, passed over his head; he was sorry, of course, but he had thrown himself into the thick of the fight, and with a somewhat childish egotism he thrust aside anything that interfered with this new interest.

Circumstances, however, came to Madame Clerambault's assistance; an old relation who had brought her up died, leaving her little property in Berry to the Clerambaults. The mourning was a good excuse for quitting Paris, which had now become detestable, and for tearing the poet from his dangerous surroundings. There was also the question of money and of Rosine, who would be better for change of air. Clerambault gave in, and they all three went to take possession of their small inheritance, and remained in Berry during the rest of the summer and autumn. It was in the country, a respectable old house just outside a village. From the agitation of Paris Clerambault passed at once to a stagnant calm, and in the long silent days all that broke the monotony was a cock crowing in a farm-yard or a cow lowing in the meadow. Clerambault was too much wrought up to adapt himself to the slow and placid rhythm of nature; formerly he had adored it and was in harmony with the country people from whom his family had come. Now, however, the peasants with whom he tried to talk seemed to him creatures from another planet. Certainly, they were not infected by the virus of war; they showed no emotion, and no hatred for the enemy; but then they had no animosity either against war, which they accepted as a fact. Certain keen, good-natured observations showed that they were not taken in as to the merits of the case, but since the war was there they made the most they could out of it. They might lose their sons, but they did not mean to lose money; not that they were heartless, grief had marked them deeply, though they spoke little of it; but after all, men pass away,—the land is always there. They at least had not, like the bourgeois in cities, sent their children to death through national fanaticism. Only they knew how to get something in exchange for what they gave; and it is probable that their sons would have thought this perfectly natural. Because you have lost someone you love, must you lose your head too? Our peasants did not lose theirs; it is said that in the country districts of France more than a million new proprietors have been made by the war.