Religious conversion and its psychology have furnished the world's
library with many volumes. Perfectly understood in the ages of
faith, the subject is for modern thinkers susceptible of realistic
explanation. Only we pave the way now by a psychological course instead
of the ancient doctrine of Grace Abounding. Nor do we confound the
irresistible desire of certain temperaments to spill their innermost
thoughts, with what is called conversion. There was Rousseau, who
confessed things that the world would be better without having heard.
He was not converted. Tolstoy, believing that primitive Christianity
is almost lost to his fellow beings, preaches what he thinks is the
real faith. Yet he was converted. He had been, he said, a terrible
transgressor. The grace of God gave sight to his sin-saturated
eyeballs. Is there the slightest analogy between his case and that
of Cardinal Newman? John Henry Newman had led a spotless life before
he left the Anglican fold. Nevertheless he was a convert. And Saint
Augustine, the pattern of all self-confessors, the classic case, may
be compared to John Bunyan or to Saint Paul! Professor William James,
who with his admirable impartiality has scrutinized the psychological
topsy-turvy we name conversion, has not missed the commonplace fact
that every man as to details varies, but at base the psychical
machinery is controlled by the same motor impulses. _A chacun son
infini._
Some natures reveal a mania for confession. Dostoïevsky's men and
women continually tell what they have thought, what crimes they have
committed. It was an epileptic obsession with this unhappy Russian
writer. Paul Verlaine sang blithely of his ghastly life, and Baudelaire
did not spare himself. So it would seem that the inability of certain
natures to keep their most precious secrets is also the keynote of
religious confessions. But let us not muddle this with the sincerity
or insincerity of the change. Leslie Stephen has said that it did not
matter much whether Pascal was sincere, and instanced the Pascal wager
(_le pari de Pascal_) as evidence of the great thinker's casuistry. It
is better to believe and be on the safe side than be damned if you do
not believe; for if there is no hereafter your believing that there is
will not matter one way or the other. This is the substance of Pascal's
wager, and it must be admitted that the ardent upholder of Jansenism
and the opponent of the Jesuits proved himself an excellent pupil of
the latter when he framed his famous proposition.
Among the converts who have become almost notorious in France during
the last two decades are Ferdinand Brunetière, François Coppée, Paul
Verlaine, and Joris-Karl Huysmans. But it must not be forgotten that
if the quartette trod the Road to Damascus they were all returning to
their early City of Faith. They had been baptized Roman Catholics. All
four had strayed. And widely different reasons brought them back to
their mother Church. We need not dwell now on the case of Villiers de
l'Isle Adam, as his was a death-bed repentance; nor with Paul Bourget,
a Catholic born and on the side of his faith since the publication of
Cosmopolis. As for Maurice Barrès, he may be a Mohammedan for all we
care. He will always stand, spiritually, on his head.
The stir in literary and religious circles over Huysmans's trilogy,
En Route, La Cathédrale, and L'Oblat, must have influenced the
succeeding generation of French writers. Of a sudden sad young rakes
who spouted verse in the æsthetic taverns of the Left Bank fell to
writing religious verse. Mary Queen of Heaven became their shibboleth.
They invented new sins so that they might repent in a novel fashion.
They lacked the delicious lyric gift of Verlaine and the tremendous
enfolding moral earnestness of Huysmans to make themselves believed.
One, however, has emerged from the rest, and his book, Du Diable à
Dieu (From the Devil to God), has crossed the twenty-five thousand
mark; perhaps it is further by this time. The author is an authentic
poet, Adolphe Retté. For his confessions the lately deceased François
Coppée wrote a dignified and sympathetic preface. Retté's place in
contemporary poetry is high. Since Verlaine we hardly dare to think
of another poet of such charm, verve, originality. An anarchist with
Sebastien Faure and Jean Grave, a Socialist of all brands, a lighted
lyric torch among the insurrectionists, a symbolist, a writer of "free
verse" (which is hedged in by more rules, though unformulated and
unwritten, than the stiffest academic production of Boileau), Adolphe
Retté led the life of an individualist poet; precisely the sort of
life at which pulpit-pounders could point and cry: "There, there is
your æsthetic poet, your man of feeling, of finer feelings than his
neighbours! Behold to what base uses he has put this gift! See him
wallowing with the swine!" And, practically, these words Retté has
employed in speaking of himself. He insulted religion in the boulevard
journals; he hailed with joy the separation of Church and State. He
wrote not too decent novels, though his verse is feathered with the
purest pinions. He treated his wife badly, neglecting her for the
inevitable Other Woman. (What a banal example this is, after all.) He
once, so he tells us to his horror, maltreated the poor woman because
of her piety. Typical, you will say. Then why confess it in several
hundred pages of rhythmic prose, why rehearse for gaping, indifferent
Paris the threadbare, sordid tale? Paris, too, so cynical on the
subject of conversions, and also very suspicious of such a spiritual
_bouleversement_ as Retté's! "No, it won't do, Huysmans is to blame,"
exclaimed many.
Yet this conversion--literally one, for he was educated in a Protestant
college--is sincere. He means every word he says; and if he is
copiously rhetorical, set it all down to the literary temperament. He
wrote not only with the approval of his spiritual counsellor, but also
for the same reason as Saint Augustine or Bunyan. Newman's confession
was an Apologia, an answer to Kingsley's challenge. With Huysmans, he
is such a consummate artist that we could imagine him plotting ahead
his cycle of novels (if novels they are); from Là-Bas to Lourdes the
spiritual modulation is harmonious. Now, M. Retté (he was born in 1863
in Paris of an Ardennaise family), while he has sung in his melodious
voice many alluring songs, while he has shown the impressions wrought
upon his spirit by Walt Whitman and Richard Wagner, there is little
in the rich extravagance of his love for nature or the occasional
Vergilian silver calm of his verse--he can sound more than one chord
on his poetic keyboard--to prepare us for the great plunge into the
healing waters of faith. A pagan nature shows in his early work, apart
from the hatred and contempt he later displayed toward religion. How
did it all come about? He has related it in this book, and we are free
to confess that, though we must not challenge the author's sincerity,
his manner is far from reassuring. He is of the brood of Baudelaire.
Huysmans frankly gave up the riddle in his own case. Atavism may have
had its way; he had relatives who were in convents; a pessimism that
drove him from the world also contributed its share in the change.
Personally Huysmans prefers to set it down to the mercy and grace of
God--which is the simplest definition after all. When we are through
with these self-accusing men; when professional psychology is tired of
inventing new terminologies, then let us do as did Huysmans--go back to
the profoundest of all the psychologists, the pioneers of the moderns,
Saint Theresa--what actual, virile magnificence is in her Castle of
the Soul--Saint John of the Cross, and Ruysbroeck. They are mystics
possessing a fierce faith; and without faith a mystic is like a moon
without the sun. Adolphe Retté knows the great Spanish mystics and
quotes them almost as liberally as Huysmans. But with a difference. He
has read Huysmans too closely; books breed books, ideas and moods beget
moods and ideas. We are quite safe in saying that if En Route had not
been written, Retté's Du Diable à Dieu could not have appeared in its
present shape. The similarity is both external and internal. John of
the Cross had his Night Obscure, so has M. Retté; Huysmans, however,
showed him the way. Retté holds an obstinate dialogue with the Devil
(who is a capitalized creature). Consult the wonderful fifth chapter
in En Route. Naturally there must be a certain resemblance in these
spiritual adventures when the Evil One captures the outposts of the
soul and makes sudden savage dashes into its depths. Retté's style is
not in the least like Huysmans's. It is more fluent, swifter, and more
staccato. You skim his pages; in Huysmans you recognise the distilled
remorse; you move as in a penitential procession, the rhythms grave,
the eyes dazzled by the vision divine, the voice lowly chanting. Not so
Retté, who glibly discourses on sacred territory, who is terribly at
ease in Zion.
Almost gayly he recounts his misdeeds. He pelts his former associates
with hard names. He pities Anatole France for his socialistic
affinities. All that formerly attracted him is anathema. Even the
mysterious lady with the dark eyes is castigated. She is not a
truth-teller. She does not now understand the protean soul of her poet.
_Retro me Sathanas!_ It is very exhilarating. The Gallic soul in its
most resilient humour is on view. See it rebound! Watch it ascend on
high, buoyed by delicious phrases, asking sweet pardon; then it falls
to earth abusing its satanic adversary with sinister energy. At times
we overhear the honeyed accents, the silky tones of Renan. It is he,
not Retté, who exclaims: _Mais quelles douces larmes!_ Ah! Renan--also
a cork soul! The Imitation is much dwelt upon--the influence of
Huysmans has been incalculable in this. And we forgive M. Retté his
theatricalism for the lovely French paraphrase he has made of Salve
Regina. But on the whole we prefer En Route. The starting-point of
Retté's change was reading some verse in the Purgatory of the Divine
Comedy. A literary conversion? Possibly, yet none the less complete.
All roads lead to Rome, and the Road to Damascus may be achieved from
many devious side paths. But in writing with such engaging frankness
the memoirs of his soul we wish that Retté had more carefully followed
the closing sentence of his brilliant little book: _Non nobis, Domine,
non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam!_
V