Nationalism and the French novel, 1870–1914

H,rrory Pnnted

of European Ideor, in Great Bntain

Vol

16, No. 4-6.

NATIONALISM

pp. 967-973,

1993

0191-6599/93$6.00+0.,X, Cc 1993 Pergamon Press Ltd

AND THE FRENCH NOVEL, 1870-1914 ELFRIEDA DUBOIS *

My life’s dream was to work for the intellectual, moral and political alliance of Germany and France, an alliance which would include England. My fantasy has been destroyed for ever.. . A greater, liberal Germany, founded in full friendship with France, would play a major part in Europe and would, together with France and England, create an invincible trinity.

Thus wrote Renan in September 1870.’ The ‘terrible year’, 1870/71, as Victor Hugo called it, brought the shock of France’s defeat by the ‘barbaric’ Prussians together with the loss of the Rhineland provinces and the collapse of the Second Empire. Prior to these events there was in France a general humanitarianism with a romantic flavour and a belief in continuing progress, inherited from the Enlightenment. One admired German sciences and philosophy, Wissenschaft; some scholars corresponded across the frontiers, such as Renan, with David Strauss and Mommsen.2 France was quite unprepared for war with Prussia and Napoleon III seemed unconcerned while urgent telegrams reached him on his cruise along the Norwegian coast, in the company of Renan. The words nationalisme and patriotisme came to France from England, in the course of the eighteenth century, and came into their own in the French Revolution.3 Patriotism, as held by the Jacobins, means merely love of one’s country, whereas nationalism implies an antagonistic attitude to another country. Chauvinisme, an exaggerated and belligerent nationalism, derives from Nicolas Chauvin, who upheld his patriotic attachment to Napoleon after 1815. The enormous military and political upheaval found its literary expression. One of the first literary reactions to the defeat is contained in Alphonse Daudet’s Contes du Lundi (1872). The poignant story, La derni&re classe, relates the experience of an Alsatian schoolboy whose French teacher, after forty years of service, holds his last class, writing on the board ‘Vive la France’. He is to be replaced by a German teacher; through the educational system the population was to be ‘germanised’. The French did likewise after 1919 through their educational system at all levels. During the siege of Paris, a carpenter, (Le Prussien de B&sake) found a small house he owned on the outskirts, emptied of its furniture, but discovered the culprit ‘ca sentait le Prussien’. In his deepseated hatred of the Prussian Belisaire kills him and throws the body into the Seine. La mort de Chauvin recalls the naive patriot in face of the disastrous reality. He is killed by mistake as the Versailles army reaches Paris, victim of the civil war: ‘C’ttait le dernier Francais’.4

*43 Beauchamp

Place, Oxford

OX4 3NE, U.K. 967

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Another novel, evoking the fate of conquered Alsace, is the work of two novelists, Erckmann and Chatrian, Le Brigardier Frkdhic ( 1874).5 Employed in the Forestry administration, the brigadier wished to marry his daughter to a young colleague who would take his place and allow him to retire. The war brought this dream to an end. The fiance is called up, the girl accidentally wounded, she subsequently dies. Like all civil servants in Alsace the brigadier had to choose between the (hateful) allegiance to the Kaiser, accompanied by an increase in salary, or a return to France in some minor post on a mere pittance. The brigadier, a patriot, chooses France. A collection of short stories, under the title of Les SoirPes de Mkdan appeared in 1880, intended as a literary manifesto of the school of naturalism.6 As such it had a controversial reception. The theme of the stories was to give a true meaning of patriotism and national rivalry. Zola maintained that the defeat of 1870/71 was due to the superior scientific spirit developed in German countries. By applying a scientific spirit in France the two provinces will be regained, a somewhat esoteric argument. In the stories rhetorical patriotism, extreme chauvinism, the myth of war heroism are debunked and shorn of their false mystique. Huysmans’s Sac au dos (first published in 1877 in a slightly different form) is largely autobiographical. Called up in his early twenties, as a student, he could only ascribe the war to the inapt policy of Napoleon III. He was drafted to Chalons and fell ill almost immediately through drinking icy cold water. He then experienced the summary treatment of ill equipped hospitals and brutality of the staff until he was released through the intervention of a well placed friend and returned to Paris. In the mean time the Republic had been declared, the war continued and the Prussians occupied the capital. There is no war heroism, but a cynical attitude to the sordid life of the soldiers.’ Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de Suifhas also some personal experience as its origin. The inhabitants of Rouen are trying to escape towards the coast (Maupassant had managed to escape from his defeated battalion). They are held up by a crudely cynical Prussian officer (with his inapt accent in French) who wants to force a young woman (nicknamed Boule de Suif who is a prostitute) to sleep with him. She refuses on patriotic grounds, but is blackmailed into consenting by her ‘bourgeois’ fellow travellers who also show their meanness against the girl’s generous sharing of her provisions. Whereas the party indulges in hypocritical singing of the Marseillaise, the girl is broken hearted. Maupassant shows the morally destructive force of war, but also true patriotic pride in a social outcast. Zola’s own story combines a romantic love tale, set in a mill in Lorraine, at the point when Prussian troops are advancing. The proud old mill owner, Merlier, has consented to the engagement of his daughter Francoise to a young Belgian, Dominique, who has come to live in the neighbourhood. Dominique joins in the defense of the mill and is threatened with execution since he does not belong to the French army. On his flight he kills a Prussian soldier. Merlier’s life is now in danger and Francoise is offered the choice between the execution of her father or her fiance. In the end Dominique is shot for refusing to betray a road through the woods, just as the French soldiers arrive. The mill is burnt down and old Merlier

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killed by a stray bullet. It was the day planned for the wedding of the young couple. Zola wanted to show a senseless war which destroys personal happiness, but he also clings to the same view of Prussian brutality set against French patriotism (L’A ttaque au moulin). But Zola’s main contribution to the literature around the events of 1870, in fact a key text, is La D.kbricZe( 1892).8 In the long novel various strands, political and patriotic, moralistic and didactic, are linked. Republican in outlook, Zola disliked the Second Empire with its concomitant moral degradation of the country, the immediate reason for the defeat. Patriotic, but opposed to war, he made a minute, sometimes overwritten, study of the movement of one division (106e). They took part in the battle of Sedan, in late August and early September, suffering from hunger and exhaustion, and without effective direction from their leaders. The Prussians are described in their cynical brutality which arouses nationalist hatred in the defeated French. The French felt the defeat all the more when they remembered the spectacular victories under Napoleon Bonaparte. Two soldiers are in the centre of the novel, Maurice, an intellectual, uncertain of himself, and dependent on Jean, a farmer, a man of the people, with good sense. We follow the soldiers in their dangerous and exhausting struggle until the surrender of Metz, general Bazaine’s ill advised move, when the whole army and their equipment fall into enemy hands. The Empire has fallen and Paris is besieged and capitulates at the point of starvation. Maurice had joined the garde nationale, on the side of the Commune, and Jean sides with the army gathered in Versailles. He accidentally wounds his friend who succumbs inspite of careful nursing. Built into the stark picture of the all destructive war is a personal tragedy of unfulfilled human relationships. The concluding remark is: ‘toute une France a refaire’.9 The novel is virtually the end of the ‘roman-fleuve’, Les RougonMacquart, the story of a Second-Empire family. A year later, in 1893, Leon Bloy-he had joined the army in 1871-(whereas Zola had no war experience) brought out a collection of short stories under the title Sueur de Sang. Profoundly patriotic and attached to Napoleon III, Bloy sees Catholic France, symbolically identical with the kingdom of God, set against Protestant Prussia. In L’Obstacle Bloy describes, much in the same vein as Zola, the disorderly retreat of the famished and abandoned soldiers after the defeat at Le Mans, early in January 1871. One ofthe cruellest and most sordid stories is the deathbed confession of an old French woman who had murdered the young son of a Prussian officer and then served him in various dishes of excellent French ‘cuisine’. She has thus taken revenge for the loss of her husband and sons in the war. The officer, so we are told, was found dead the same evening. Bloy has obviously overstepped anything which could ever have been written to urge la revanche. He expounds a similarly savage act of revenge in Un Ppouvantable huissier, when a Frenchman whose house had been pillaged by the enemy army, shuts the next group of soldiers in his house and burns them alive. The French themselves are not always seen in a favourable light. In La Courdumiraclemean French peasants callously leave their own soldiers without food or shelter. They later help the Prussians in the hope of getting better treatment for themselves.‘O In two volumes of war memoirs’* Paul Deroultde recounts his experiences of a patriotic and enthusiastic young officer in the France-Prussian war to his

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imprisonment in Breslau from which he managed to escape. He became a fierce nationalist, with a hatred for Bismarck’s brutality, and resentment of Bazaine’s cowardly capitulation. A champion of the revanche, and in his chauvinistic exhibitionism, he joined the Ligue des patriotes in 1882, an anti-Republican group. In support of his militarism he composed some mediocre verse, Chansons du soldat (1909) which enjoyed an undeserved temporary success. He was one of the fiercest spokesmen of military nationalism. Later novels tend to look at life in the separated provinces of Alsace and Lorraine under German rule. RenC Bazin’s Les OberZP( 1901)i2 sets his story in ‘germanised’ Alsace with divisions among and within families. Joseph OberlC has accepted German rule, and his children educated in Germany, and has prospered in his business. His son, Jean, after having completed his studies in Germany, decides to remain in his native Alsace and work in the firm. His sister, Lucienne, is engaged to a German officer, von Farnow; but their mother and uncle Ulrich share a deep-seated attachment to the former Alsace. Quite different is the Bastian family, fiercely patriotic and anti-German, Jean is in love with their daugher Odile, their sympathies are with the French tradition. Jean rejects insistant German patriotism on various occasions, including at an official dinner party. His projected marriage to Odette is made impossible by his sister’s marriage to a German officer, unacceptable in the Bastian family. He presents himself as a volontaire at the regiment in Strasbourg, for one day only, and from there escapes to France. Farnow breaks his engagement to Lucienne and denounces Jean to the military authorities. Jean will be unable to return to his native Alsace. With the sentimental story running through the novel, Bazin depicts nationalism on both sides, upholding the French patriotism of the Alsatians, but castigating the Germans for so triumphantly insisting on their victory. For Bazin the question of Alsace-Lorraine is not an internal French problem, but concerns Europe; in fact it did so over two World Wars. Maurice Barres’s novel, Colette Baudoche (1908)” achieved something similar for Lorraine. In an even more blatantly sentimental tale, he presents the fidelity to France of old Mme Baudoche and her grand-daughter against the conceited nationalism of the young German teacher, Asimus, Monsieur le docteur (Herr Doktor), as he insists on being called. He has come to Lorraine to practise French and Colette manages to interest him in French culture and shows him to appreciate it. Bazin introduces all the stereotype features of the German, seen through French eyes, his pedantry in behaviour and speech, his clumsiness, down to his taste for charcuterie (‘Wurst’) and with it all his conceit. Colette having succeeded in ‘converting’ Asimus to French views and an understanding of French culture, feels that she cannot accept to marry a German, her patriotism is stronger than her feelings for him. Barr-es saw nationalism not exclusively directed at an external enemy (Germany), but also, within the country, the ‘foreign’ Jew. So he joined antisemitic manifestations which owed much to E. Drumont’s La Francejuive (1886). As a defender of the army he upheld, wrongly, as it turns out, the condemnation of Dreyfus.14 In fact the Dreyfus affair15 split the country and has left a certain trail behind it. Zola, P&guy and Jaures stood by Colonel Dreyfus, falsely accused of spying for

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the Germans, for which he was condemned and deported. In fact it was an antisemitic move (his family came from Alsace and had chosen French nationality after 1871). P&guy defended Dreyfus in a number of his Cahiers,16 demanding justice. Zola wrote an open letter, Saccuse, to the then French President, pointing to a miscarriage ofjustice. ” As a socialist and pacifist Jean Jaurbs stood by Dreyfus and would have liked to solve the affair by political means. The Catholic press, La Croix, and a large part of the clergy, were anti-dreyfusardsand clearly antisemitic. They were also conservative and anti-republican.‘* The nationalist, violently anti-foreign, cause had a lifelong supporter in Charles Maurras.” He was a royalist (although that cause became increasingly elusive), antisemitic to the point of never accepting the rehabilitation of Dreyfus and remaining an anti-dreyfusard in the face of all evidence. He objected to any foreigner settling in France who was not of ‘Latin’ origin. In 1899 he founded a bimonthly paper the Action francaise, which became a daily in 1908, it had a considerable, but pernicious, influence. In fact the Action franqaise was condemned by Pius XI in 1926. It was later lifted by Pius XII when it no longer had any significance, but as a journalist Maurras had proved influential. As against the deep-felt hatred of anything German, so wide spread in France in the years after 1870/7 1, there is another voice, one of reconciliation. Romain Rolland, historian and musicologist, represents a European spirit, steeped as he was in its literature and with a deep love of music he saw as a unifying link. He was a pacifist and supported the innocence of Dreyfus alongside PCguy. The Cahiers de la Quinzaine published his ‘roman-fleuve’ Jean-Christophe (1904-l 2) and it also came out in book form. Partly based on his own experiences, Rolland follows Jean-Christophe Krafft, the central character, a young German, through his adolescent years with its concomitant difficulties, to his later years of success as a composer. He discovers France, lives in Paris and comes up against the seedy and vulgar side, but also the subtle and creative spirit of the French intellectual in the person of his friend Olivier. Rolland wanted to create a bridge between people of good will who are to be found in every nation. The novel earned him the Nobel Prize (1916) and he gave the money to the Red Cross. During the First World War Rolland lived in Switzerland and repeatedly stated that he did not consider the Germans as enemies, since he felt as much a ‘son of Beethoven, Leibnitz and Goethe’ as the Germans themselves.21 As we look back, with hindsight, on the period of intensive nationalism in France, and we must not forget that it was matched on the other side of the Rhine, we may think, and rightly so, that there has been a considerable change with regard to the two countries. France and Germany were reconciled through two statesmen, de Gaulle and Adenauer, between 1958 and 1962. And we are witnessing a newly reunited Germany (not without some misgivings voiced here and there). What strikes one looking at the literary expression of nationalism over the period, is the common hatred, on the right as on the left, founded on the same ready-made features of the ‘Prussian’ (with other Germans thrown in for good measure), and, indirectly, the view of the ‘degenerate’ French from the other side. As we approach European unification, on a political and economic level, there is little said about our cultural, let alone spiritual, heritage, we may feel that we have come a long way. But nationalism, of a fierce and aggressive

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Dubois

kind, is still with us in every part of the world. Much of nationalism, of ethnic identity, has often more to do with prejudices, sentiments and dreams than a realistic and historical assessment. Human relationships, on a personal basis, are far from easy, perhaps, on a national basis, they require an even greater effort not to become inhuman. Elfrieda

Dubois

Oxford

NOTES 1. Revue des Deux Mondes (15 September 1870) J’avais fait le rCve de ma vie de travailler a l’alliance intellectuelle, morale et politique de 1’Allemagne et de la France, alliance entrainant celle de 1’Angleterre. Ma chimere est d&trite a jamais.. . Une grande Allemagne lib&ale, form&e en pleine amitie avec la France, devenait une piece capitale en Europe et creait, avec la France et l’Angleterre, une invincible trinite. 2. G. Weill, ‘Europe de XIXe sickle et I’idPe de nationalite (Paris, 1938); H. Psichari, Renan et la guerre de 70 (Paris, 1947); R. Remand, La Droite en France (Paris, 1964). 3. F. Brunot, Histoire de la language francaise, Vol. 9, p. 639 sqq; F. Mackenzie, Les Relations de I’dngleterre et de IaFrance dapres le vocabulaire, 2 vols, (Paris, 1939). 4. Alphonse Daudet (1840-97), successful novelist who evoked his native Provence in his writings. 5. With the subtitle Histoire dun Francais chasseparles Allemands, five editions between 1879-86, 1915, 1936. 6. Modern edition, 1981 with a critical introduction by C. Becker. 7. Lettre a la jeunesse in Le Voltaire (May, 1879). 8. H. Guillemin, Cette curieuse guerre de 1870 (Paris, 1956); Special number of L’Esprit CrCateur, IV, 2 (1966); Les Cahiers naturalistes, 54 (1980). 9. Heinrich Mann, Macht und Mensch (1915), writing on La Debacle, understands Zola’s nationalism and explains that war was needed on both sides for political reasons. Bismarck wanted to unite Germany and Napoleon needed a boost for his crumbling regime. The former was successful, the latter was not. 10. Leon Bloy (1846-1917), author of critical, historical and religious writings as well as novelist, expressing extreme views and a deep faith. 11. 1870 Feuilles de route (Des Bois de Verrieres a la Forteresse de Breslau); 70/71 Nouvelles Feuilles de route (de la Forteresse de Breslau aux All&es de Tourny) (Paris, 1907). 12. On the genesis of Les Oberle’ Bazin wrote in Le Temps (17 November 1905): Comme tout Francais ne avant la guerre, j’ai toujours eu au caxr I’amour et le regret de cette Alsace que je ne connaisais pas. A force d’entendre exalter la fidtlitir alsacienne, je me suis demand& si un pareil hommage rendu au genie de n’ttait pas une legende glorieuse . mais fausse ou exagtrte. J’ai la France.. 1’Alsace du nord au sud, vivant chez les voulu savoir . . . J’ai parcouru Alsaciens. J’y suis retourni deux fois . . . J.S. Wood, Un Aspect du mouvement traditionaliste et social darts la Iitte’rature francaise contemporaine: Rene Bazin, sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris 1932). A. Cherel, En relisant apres la guerre Bazin, Bourget, Barr&s (1925). 13. Belongs to the group of novels Les Bastions de I’Est; M. Davanture, ‘Barr&s et la guerre de 1870’ in Les Ecrivainsfrancais devant Iaguerre de 1870et devant la Commune (Paris, 1972), pp. 79-91.

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and the French Novel

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14. Z. Sternhell, Le Nationalisme de Maurice Barr& (Paris, 1972); J. Madaule, Le Nationalisme de Maurice Barres (Marseille, 1943). 15. G. Leroy, ed. Les Ecrivains et Z’Affaire Dreyfus (Colloque, Orltans 1981, PUF, 1983). 16. ‘Notre Patrie’ Cahiers de la Quinzaine, 7e sCrie. 17. J’accuse, Le Figaro (20 November 1897). 18. M. Larkin, Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair (London, 1974). 19. J. McCearney, Maurras et son temps (Paris, 1977). 20. Romain Rollandpar lui-mCme, ed. J.-B. Barr&e (Paris, 1955); D. Bresky, Cathedral or Symphony, Essays on Jean-Christophe (European Papers, 1973). 21. Au-dessus de la m&We(19 October, 1914).