NICE,
February 6, 1898.
... You write that you are annoyed with Zola, and here everyone has a
feeling as though a new, better Zola had arisen. In his trial he has been
cleansed as though in turpentine from grease-spots, and now shines before
the French in his true brilliance. There is a purity and moral elevation
that was not suspected in him. You should follow the whole scandal from the
very beginning. The degradation of Dreyfus, whether it was just or not,
made on all (you were of the number I remember) a painful and depressing
impression. It was noticed that at the time of the sentence Dreyfus behaved
like a decent well-disciplined officer, while those present at the
sentence, the journalists for instance, shouted at him, “Hold your tongue,
Judas,”--that is, behaved badly and indecently. Everyone came back from the
sentence dissatisfied and with a troubled conscience. Dreyfus’ counsel
Demange, an honest man, who even during the preliminary stages of the trial
felt that something shifty was being done behind the scenes, was
particularly dissatisfied--and then the experts who, to convince themselves
that they had not made a mistake, kept talking of nothing but Dreyfus, of
his being guilty, and kept wandering all over Paris! ...
Of the experts one turned out to be mad, the author of a monstrously absurd
project; two were eccentric creatures.
People could not help talking of the Intelligence Department at the War
Office, that military consistory which is employed in hunting for spies and
reading other people’s letters; it began to be said that the head of that
Department, Sandhen, was suffering from progressive paralysis; Paty de Clam
has shown himself to be something after the style of Tausch of Berlin;
Picquart suddenly took his departure mysteriously, causing a lot of talk.
All at once a series of gross judicial blunders came to light. By degrees
people became convinced that Dreyfus had been condemned on the strength of
a secret document, which had been shown neither to the accused man nor his
defending counsel, and decent law-abiding people saw in this a fundamental
breach of justice. If the latter were the work not simply of Wilhelm, but
of the centre of the solar system, it ought to have been shown to Demange.
All sorts of guesses were made as to the contents of this letter, the most
impossible stories circulated. Dreyfus was an officer, the military were
suspect; Dreyfus was a Jew, the Jews were suspect. People began talking
about militarism, about the Jews. Such utterly disreputable people as
Drumont held up their heads; little by little they stirred up a regular
pother on a substratum of anti-semitism, on a substratum that smelt of the
shambles. When something is wrong with us we look for the causes outside
ourselves, and readily find them. “It’s the Frenchman’s nastiness, it’s the
Jews’, it’s Wilhelm’s.” Capital, brimstone, the freemasons, the Syndicate,
the Jesuits--they are all bogeys, but how they relieve our uneasiness! They
are of course a bad sign. Since the French have begun talking about the
Jews, about the Syndicate, it shows they are feeling uncomfortable, that
there is a worm gnawing at them, that they feel the need of these bogeys to
soothe their over-excited conscience.
Then this Esterhazy, a duellist, in the style of Turgenev’s duellists, an
insolent ruffian, who had long been an object of suspicion, and was not
respected by his comrades; the striking resemblance of his handwriting with
that of the _bordereau,_ the Uhlan’s letters, his threats which for some
reason he does not carry out; finally the judgment, utterly mysterious,
strangely deciding that the _bordereau_ was written in Esterhazy’s
handwriting but not by his hand! ... And the gas has been continually
accumulating, there has come to be a feeling of acute tension, of
overwhelming oppression. The fighting in the court was a purely nervous
manifestation, simply the hysterical result of that tension, and Zola’s
letter and his trial are a manifestation of the same kind. What would you
have? The best people, always in advance of the nation, were bound to be
the first to raise an agitation--and so it has been. The first to speak was
Scherer-Kestner, of whom Frenchmen who know him intimately (according to
Kovalevsky) say that he is a “sword-blade,” so spotless and without blemish
is he. The second is Zola, and now he is being tried.
Yes, Zola is not Voltaire, and we are none of us Voltaires, but there are
in life conjunctions of circumstances when the reproach that we are not
Voltaires is least of all appropriate. Think of Korolenko, who defended the
Multanovsky natives and saved them from penal servitude. Dr. Haas is not a
Voltaire either, and yet his wonderful life has been well spent up to the
end.
I am well acquainted with the case from the stenographers’ report, which
is utterly different from what is in the newspapers, and I have a clear
view of Zola. The chief point is that he is sincere--that is, he bases
his judgments simply on what he sees, and not on phantoms like the
others. And sincere people can be mistaken, no doubt of it, but such
mistakes do less harm than calculated insincerity, prejudgments, or
political considerations. Let Dreyfus be guilty, and Zola is still
right, since it is the duty of writers not to accuse, not to prosecute,
but to champion even the guilty once they have been condemned and are
enduring punishment. I shall be told: “What of the political position?
The interests of the State?” But great writers and artists ought to take
part in politics only so far as they have to protect themselves from
politics. There are plenty of accusers, prosecutors, and gendarmes
without them, and in any case, the role of Paul suits them better than
that of Saul. Whatever the verdict may be, Zola will anyway experience a
vivid delight after the trial, his old age will be a fine old age, and
he will die with a conscience at peace, or at any rate greatly solaced.
The French are very sick. They clutch at every word of comfort and at
every genuine reproach coming to them from outside. That is why
Bernstein’s letter and our Zakrevsky’s article (which was read here in
the Novosti) have had such a great success here, and why they are so
disgusted by abuse of Zola, such as the gutter press, which they
despise, flings at him every day. However neurotic Zola may be, still he
stands before the court of French common sense, and the French love him
for it and are proud of him, even though they do applaud the Generals
who, in the simplicity of their hearts, scare them first with the honour
of the army, then with war....