To this end it is essential that the people should no longer be a chance audience, transiently patronized by friendly managers and actors. The popular performances of the great theaters, such as have been customary in Paris since the issue of Napoleon's decree on the subject, do not suffice. Valueless also, in Rolland's view, are the attempts made from time to time by the Comédie Française to present to the workers the plays of such court poets as Corneille and Racine. The people do not want caviare, but wholesome fare. For the nourishment of their indestructible idealism they need an art of their own, a theater of their own, and, above all, works adapted to their sensibilities and to their intellectual tastes. When they come to the theater, they must not be made to feel that they are tolerated guests in a world of unfamiliar ideas. In the art that is presented to them they must be able to recognize the mainspring of their own energies.
More appropriate, in Rolland's opinion, are the attempts which have been made by isolated individuals like Maurice Pottecher in Bussang (Vosges) to provide a "théâtre du peuple," presenting to restricted audiences pieces easily understood. But such endeavors touch small circles only. The chasm in the gigantic metropolis between the stage and the real population remains unbridged. With the best will in the world, the twenty or thirty special representations are witnessed by no more than an infinitesimal proportion of the population. They do not signify a spiritual union, or promote a new moral impetus. Dramatic art has no permanent influence on the masses; and the masses, in their turn, have no influence on dramatic art. Though, in another literary sphere, Zola, Charles Louis Philippe, and Maupassant, began long ago to draw fertile inspiration from proletarian idealism, the drama has remained sterile and antipopular.
The people, therefore, must have its own theater. When this has been achieved, what shall we offer to the popular audiences? Rolland makes a brief survey of world literature. The result is appalling. What can the workers care for the classical pieces of the French drama? Corneille and Racine, with their decorous emotion, are alien to him; the subtleties of Molière are barely comprehensible. The tragedies of classical antiquity, the writings of the Greek dramatists, would bore the workers; Hugo's romanticism would repel, despite the author's healthy instinct for reality. Shakespeare, the universally human, is more akin to the folk-mind, but his plays must be adapted to fit them for popular presentation, and thereby they are falsified. Schiller, with Die Räuber and Wilhelm Tell, might be expected to arouse enthusiasm; but Schiller, like Kleist with Der Prinz von Homburg, is, for nationalist reasons, somewhat uncongenial to the Parisians. Tolstoi's The Dominion of Darkness and Hauptmann's Die Weber would be comprehensible enough, but their matter would prove somewhat depressing. While well calculated to stir the consciences of the guilty, among the people they would arouse feelings of despair rather than of hope. Anzengruber, a genuine folk-poet, is too distinctively Viennese in his topics. Wagner, whose Die Meistersinger Rolland regards as the climax of universally comprehensible and elevating art, cannot be presented without the aid of music.
However far he looks back into the past, Rolland can find no answer to his question. But he is not easily discouraged. To him disappointment is but a spur to fresh effort. If there are as yet no plays for the people's theater, it is the sacred duty of the new generation to provide what is lacking. The manifesto ends with a jubilant appeal: "Tout est à dire! Tout est à faire! A l'oeuvre!" In the beginning was the deed.
CHAPTER X
THE PROGRAM
WHAT kind of plays do the people want? It wants "good" plays, in the sense in which the word "good" is used by Tolstoi when he speaks of "good books." It wants plays which are easy to understand without being commonplace; those which stimulate faith without leading the spirit astray; those which appeal, not to sensuality, not to the love of sight-seeing, but to the powerful idealistic instincts of the masses. These plays must not treat of minor conflicts; but, in the spirit of the antique tragedies, they must display man in the struggle with elemental forces, man as subject to heroic destiny. "Let us away with complicated psychologies, with subtle innuendoes, with obscure symbolisms, with the art of drawing-rooms and alcoves." Art for the people must be monumental. Though the people desires truth, it must not be delivered over to naturalism, for art which makes the masses aware of their own misery will never kindle the sacred flame of enthusiasm, but only the insensate passion of anger. If, next day, the workers are to resume their daily tasks with a heightened and more cheerful confidence, they need a tonic. Thus the evening must have been a source of energy, but must at the same time have sharpened the intelligence. Undoubtedly the drama should display the people to the people, not however in the proletarian dullness of narrow dwellings, but on the pinnacles of the past. Rolland therefore opines, following to a large extent in Schiller's footsteps, that the people's theater must be historical in scope. The populace must not merely make its own acquaintance on the stage, but must be brought to admire its own past. Here we see the motif to which Rolland continually returns, the need for arousing a passionate aspiration towards greatness. In its suffering, the people must learn to regain delight in its own self.
With marvelous vividness does the imaginative historian display the epic significance of history. The forces of the past are sacred by reason of the spiritual energy which is part of every great movement. Reasoning persons can hardly fail to be revolted when they observe the unwarranted amount of space allotted to anecdotes, accessories, the trifles of history, at the expense of its living soul. The power of the past must be awakened; the will to action must be steeled. Those who live to-day must learn greatness from their fathers and forefathers. "History can teach people to get outside themselves, to read in the souls of others. We discern ourselves in the past, in a mingling of like characters and differing lineaments, with errors and vices which we can avoid. But precisely because history depicts the mutable, does it give us a better knowledge of the unchanging."
What, he goes on to ask, have French dramatists hitherto brought the people out of the past? The burlesque figure of Cyrano; the gracefully sentimental personality of the duke of Reichstadt; the artificial conception of Madame Sans-Gène! "Tout est à faire! Tout est à dire!" The land of dramatic art still lies fallow. "For France, national epopee is quite a new thing. Our playwrights have neglected the drama of the French people, although that people has been perhaps, since the days of Rome, the most heroic in the world. Europe's heart was beating in the kings, the thinkers, the revolutionists of France. And great as this nation has been in all domains of the spirit, its greatness has been shown above all in the field of action. Herein lay its most sublime creation; here was its poem, its drama, its epos. France did what others dreamed of doing. France wrote no Iliads, but lived a dozen. The heroes of France wrought more splendidly than the poets. No Shakespeare sang their deeds; but Danton on the scaffold was the spirit of Shakespeare personified. The life of France has touched the loftiest summits of joy; it has plumbed the deepest abysses of sorrow. It has been a wonderful 'comédie humaine,' a series of dramas; each of its epochs a new poem." This past must be recalled to life; French historical drama must restore it to the French people. "The spirit which soars above the centuries, will thus soar for centuries to come. If we would engender strong souls, we must nourish them with the energies of the world." Rolland now expands the French ode into a European ode. "The world must be our theme, for a nation is too small." One hundred and twenty years earlier, Schiller had said: "I write as a citizen of the world. Early did I exchange my fatherland for mankind." Rolland is fired by Goethe's words: "National literature now means very little; the epoch of world literature is at hand." He utters the following appeal: "Let us make Goethe's prophesy a living reality! It is our task to teach the French to look upon their national history as a wellspring of popular art; but on no account should we exclude the sagas of other nations. Though it is doubtless our first duty to make the most of the treasures we have ourselves inherited, we must none the less find room on our stage for the great deeds of all races. Just as Anacharsis Cloots and Thomas Paine were chosen members of the Convention; just as Schiller, Klopstock, Washington, Priestley, Bentham, Pestalozzi, and Kosciuszko, are the heroes of our world; so should we inaugurate in Paris the epopee of the European people!"
Thus did Rolland's manifesto, passing far beyond the limits of the stage, become at its close his first appeal to Europe. Uttered by a solitary voice, it remained for the time unheeded and void of effect. Nevertheless the confession of faith had been spoken; it was indestructible; it could never pass away. Jean Christophe had proclaimed his message to the world.