that this certainty is my great comfort in this hour. I know that my
mother has gained that freedom of soul which allows contemplation of the
universal scheme of things. I know from my own experience how
intermittent is this wisdom, but even to taste of it is already to
possess God. It is the security I derive from knowledge of your soul and
your love, that enables me to think of the future in whatever form it
may come.
_December 9._
DEAR MOTHER,--P---- L----, in his charming letter, tells me he would
willingly exchange his philosophers for a gun. He is quite wrong. For
one thing, Spinoza is a most valuable aid in the trenches; and then it
is those who are still in a position to profit by culture and progress
who must now carry on French thought. They have an overwhelmingly
difficult task, calling for far more initiative than ours. We are free
of all burden. I think our existence is like that of the early monks:
hard, regular discipline and freedom from all external obligations.
_December 10_
(a marvellous morning).
Our third day in billets brings us the sweetness of friendly weather.
The inveterate deluge of our time in the first line relents a little,
and the sun shows itself timidly.
Our situation, which has been pleasant enough during the last two
months, may now be expected entirely to change.
The impregnability of the positions threatens to make the war
interminable; one of the two adversaries must use his offensive to
unlock the situation and precipitate events. I think the high command
faces this probability--and I hardly dare tell you that I cannot regret
anything that increases the danger.
Our life, of which a third part is flatly bourgeois and the two other
parts present just about the same dangers as, say, chemical works do,
will end by deadening all sensibility. It is true we shall be grieved to
leave what we are used to, but perhaps we were getting too accustomed to
a state of well-being which could not last.
My own circumstances are perhaps going to change. I shall probably lose
my course, being mentioned for promotion to the rank of corporal, which
means being constantly in the trenches and various duties in the first
line. I hope God will continue to bless me.
. . . I feel that we have nothing to ask. If there should be in us
something eternal which we must still manifest on earth, we may be sure
that God will let us do it.
_December_ 10 (2nd letter).
Happily you and I live in a domain where everything unites us without
our having to write our thoughts. . . .
The weather is overcast again and promises us a wet time in the first
and second lines.
The day declines, and a great melancholy falls too upon everything. This
is the hour of sadness for those who are far away, for all the soldiers
whose hearts are with their homes, and who see night closing down upon
the earth.
I come to you, and immediately my heart grows warm. I can feel your
attentive tenderness, and the wisdom which inspires your courage.
Sometimes I am afraid of always saying the same thing, but how can I
find new words for my poor love, tossed always through the same
vicissitudes? Now that we are going to set out, perhaps we shall have to
leave behind many cherished keepsakes, but the soul should not be
strongly tied to fetiches. We are fond of clinging to many things, but
love can do without them.
_December 12, 10 o'clock_ (card).
A soft day under the rain. All goes well in our melancholy woods. In
various parts of the neighbourhood there has been a terrible cannonade.
Received your letters of the 4th and 6th. They brought me happiness:
they are the true joy of life. I am glad you visited C----. I hope to
write to you at greater length. It is not that I have less leisure than
usual, but I am going through a time when I am less sensible to the
beauty of things. I long for true wisdom. . . .
_December 12, 7 o'clock._
To-day, in spite of the changing beauty of sun and rain, I did not feel
alive to Nature. Yet never was there such grace and goodness in the
skies.
The landscape, with the little bridge and the man on horseback of which
I have told you, softened under the splendour of the clouds. But I had
lapsed from my former sense of the benediction of God, when suddenly
the beauty, all the beauty, of a certain tree spoke to my inmost heart.
It told me of fairness that never fails; of the greenness of ivy and the
redness of autumn, the rigidity of winter in the branches;--and then I
understood that an instant of such contemplation is the whole of life,
the very reward of existence, beside which all human expectation is
nothing but a bad dream.
_Sunday, December 13._
. . . After a refreshing night I walked to-day in these woods where for
three months the dead have strewn the ground. To-day the vanishing
autumn displayed its richness, and the same beauty of mossy trunks spoke
to me, as it did yesterday, of eternal joy.
I am sure it needs an enormous effort to feel all this, but it must be
felt if we are to understand how little the general harmony is disturbed
by that which intolerably assails our emotions.
We must feel that all human uprooting is only a little thing, and what
is truly ourselves is the life of the soul.
_December 14_ (splendid weather,
with all the calm returned).
We are still here in the region of the first line, but in a place where
we can lift our heads and behold the charm of my Meusian hills, clearing
in the delicate weather.
Above the village and the orchards I see the lines of birches and firs.
Some have their skeletons coloured with a diaphanous violet marked with
white. Others build up the horizon with stronger lines.
I have been strengthened by the splendid lesson given me by a beautiful
tree during a march. Ah, dear mother, we may all disappear and Nature
will remain, and the gift I had from her of a moment of herself is
enough to justify a whole existence. That tree was like a soldier.
You would not believe how much harm has been done to the forests about
here: it is not so much the machine-guns as the frightful amount of
cutting necessary for making our shelters and for our fuel. Ah well, in
the midst of this devastation something told me that there will always
be beauty, in man and in tree.
For man also gives this lesson, though in him it is less easily
distinguished: it is a fine thing to see the splendid vitality of all
this youth, whose force no harvest can diminish.
_December 15, morning._
I have had your dear letter of the 9th, in which you speak of our home.
It makes me happy to feel how fine and strong is the force of life which
soon adjusts itself to each separation and uprooting. It makes me happy,
too, to think that my letters find an echo in your heart. Sometimes I
was afraid of boring you, because though our life is so fine in many
ways, it is certainly very primitive, and there are not many salient
things to relate.
If only I could follow my calling of painter I could have recourse to
these wonderful visions that lie before me, and I could find vent for
all the pent-up artist's emotion that is within me. As it is, in trying
to speak of the sky, the tree, the hill, or the horizon, I cannot use
words as subtle as they, and the infinite variety of these things can
only be named in the same general terms, which I am afraid of constantly
repeating. . . .
_December 15._
One must adapt oneself to this special kind of life, which is indigent
as far as intellectual activity goes, but marvellously rich in emotion.
I suppose that in troubled times for many centuries there have been men
who, weary of luxury, have sought in the peace of the cloister the
contemplation of eternal things; contemplation threatened by the crowd,
but a refuge even so. And so I think our life is like that of the monks
of old, who were military too, and more apt at fighting than I could
ever be. Among them, those who willed could know the joy which I now
find.
To-day I have a touching letter from Madame M----, whose spirit I love
and admire.
Changeable but very beautiful weather.
It is impossible to say more than we have already said about the
attitude we must adopt in regard to events. The important thing is to
put this attitude in practice. It is not easy, as I have learnt in these
last days, though no new difficulty had arisen to impede my path towards
wisdom.
. . . Tormenting anxiety can sometimes be mistaken for an alert
conscience.
_December 16._
Yesterday in our shelter I got out your little album--very much damaged,
alas--and I tried to copy some of the lines of the landscape. I was
stopped by the cold, and I was returning dissatisfied when I suddenly
had the idea of making one of my friends sit for me. How can I tell you
what a joy it was to get a good result! I believe that my little pencil
proved entirely successful. The sketch has been sent away in a letter to
some friend of his. It was such a true joy to me to feel I had not lost
my faculty.
_December 17_ (in a new billet).
. . . Last night we left behind all that was familiar when we came out of
the first-line trenches after three days of perfect peace there. We were
told off to the billet which we occupied on October 6th and 7th. One
can feel in the air the wind of change. I don't know what may come, but
the serenity of the weather to-day seems an augury of happiness.
These have been days of marvellous scenes, which I can appreciate better
now than during those few days of discouragement, which came because I
allowed myself to reckon things according to our miserable human
standards.
I write to you by a window from which I watch the sunset. You see that
goodness is everywhere for us.
_3 o'clock._
. . . I take up this letter once more in the twilight of an exceptional
winter: the day fades away as calmly as it came. I am watching the women
washing clothes under the lines of trees on the river bank; there is
peace everywhere--I think even in our hearts. Night falls. . . .
_December 19_ (in a billet).
A sweet day, ending here round the table. Quiet, drawing, music. I can
think with calm of the length of the days to come when I realise how
swift have been these days that are past. Half the month is gone, and
Christmas comes in the midst of war. The only thing for me is to adapt
myself entirely to these conditions of existence, and, owing to my union
with you, to gain a degree of acceptance which is of an order higher
than human courage.
_December 21, morning._
MY VERY DEAR MOTHER,--I have told you freely in my letters of my
happiness; but the rock ahead of happiness is that poor humanity is in
perpetual fear of losing it. In spite of all experience, we do not
realise that in the eternal scheme of things a new happiness always
grows at the side of an old one.
For myself, I have not to look for a new one. I have only to try to
reconcile two wisdoms. One, which is human, prompts me to cultivate my
happiness, but the other teaches me that human happiness is a most
perishable flower.
We may say: Let us make use of the joys chosen by an upright conscience;
but let us never forget how swiftly these pass.
Yes, the Holy Scriptures contain the finest and most poetical
philosophy. I think they owe it to their affiliation to the oldest
philosophies. There are many disputable things in Edouard Schuré, but
what remains is the divination which made him climb through all doctrine
to the infinitely distant Source of human wisdom.
Do you know that those touching traditions of the Good Shepherd and the
Divine Mother, so happily employed in our Christian religions, are the
creations of the oldest symbolism? The Greeks derived them from their
own spiritual ancestors; with them the good shepherd was called Hermes,
the god of the migration of souls. In the same way, the type of our
Madonna is the great Demeter, the mother who bears an infant in her
arms.
One feels that all religions, as they succeeded each other, transmitted
the same body of symbols, renewed each time by humanity's
perpetually-young spirit of poetry.
_December 23_ (in the dark).
I had begun this letter yesterday, when I was forced to leave off. It
was then splendid weather, which has lasted fairly well. But we are now
back again in our first lines. This time we are occupying the village
itself, our pretty Corot village of two months ago. But our outpost is
situated in a house where we are obliged to show no sign of life, so as
to conceal our presence from the enemy. And so here we are at nine
o'clock in the morning, in a darkness that would make it seem to be late
on Christmas eve.
Your dear letter lately received has given me great joy. It is true that
Grace and Inspiration are two names for the same thing.
If you are going to see the pictures of the great poet Gustave Moreau,
you will see a panel called _La vie de l'humanité_ (I believe). It
consists of nine sections in three divisions, called _l'Age d'or, l'Age
d'argent, l'Age de fer_. Above is a pediment from which Christ presides
over this human panorama. But this is where this great genius has the
same intuition as you had: each of the three parts bears the name of a
hero--Adam, Orpheus, and Cain, and each one represents three periods.
Now, the periods of the golden age are called Ecstasy, Prayer, and
Sleep, while the periods of the silver age are called Inspiration, Song,
and Tears.
Ecstasy is the same as Grace, because the picture shows Adam and Eve in
the purity of their souls, in a scene of flowers, and in the enjoyment
of divine contemplation. The harmony of Nature itself urges them on in
their impulse towards God.
In the silver age, Inspiration is still Grace, but just beginning to be
complicated by human artifice. The poet Orpheus perpetually contemplates
God, but the Muse is always at his elbow, the symbol of human art is
already born; and that great human manifestation of God, Song, brings
with it grief and tears.
Following out the cycle and coming to human evil, Gustave Moreau shows
the iron age--Cain condemned to labour and sorrow.
This work shows that the divine moment may be seized, but is fugitive
and can never remain with man. It explains our failures. People say that
the picture is too literary, but it touches the heart of those who wish
to break through the ice with which all human expression is chilled.
Undoubtedly Rembrandt was the Poet of genius _par excellence_, at the
same time as he was pure Painter. But let us grant that ours is a less
rich time, our temperaments less universal; and let us recognise the
beauty of Gustave Moreau's poem, of which, in two words, you expressed
the spirit.
YOUR SON.
_December 24, morning._
Our first day in the outpost passed away in the calm of a country
awaiting snow. It came in the night.
In the back gardens, which lie in sight of the Germans, I went out to
see it, where it emphasised and ennobled the least of things. Then I
came back to my candle, and I write on a table where my neighbour is
grating chocolate. So that is war.
Military life has some amusing surprises. We had to come to the first
line before two non-commissioned officers found a bath and could bathe
themselves. As for me, I have made myself a water-jug out of a part of a
75.
. . . I will not speak of patience, since a reserve of mere patience may
be useless preparation for the unknown quantity. But I must say that the
time goes extremely quickly.
We spend child-like days; indeed we are children in regard to these
events, and the benefit of this war will have been to restore youth to
the hearts of those who return.
Dear mother, our village has just had a visit from two shells. Will they
be followed by others? May God help us! The other day they sent us a
hundred and fifteen, to wound one man in the wrist!
A house in which a section of our company is living is in flames. We
have not seen a soul stirring. We can only hope that it is well with
them.
I am deeply happy to have lived through these few months. They have
taught me what one can make of one's life, in any circumstances.
My fellow-soldiers are splendid examples of the French spirit. . . .
They swagger, but their swagger is only the outer form of a deep and
magnificent courage.
My great fault as an artist is that I am always wanting to clothe the
soul of the race in some beautiful garment painted in my own colours.
And when people irritate me it is that they are soiling these beautiful
robes; but, as a matter of fact, they would find them a bad encumbrance
in the way of their plain duty.
_Christmas Morning._
What a unique night!--night without parallel, in which beauty has
triumphed, in which mankind, notwithstanding their delirium of
slaughter, have proved the reality of their conscience.
During the intermittent bombardments a song has never ceased to rise
from the whole line.
Opposite to us a most beautiful tenor was declaiming the enemy's
Christmas. Much farther off, beyond the ridges, where our lines begin
again, the _Marseillaise_ replied. The marvellous night lavished on us
her stars and meteors. Hymns, hymns, from end to end.
It was the eternal longing for harmony, the indomitable claim for order
and beauty and concord.
As for me, I cherished old memories in meditating on the sweetness of
the Childhood of Christ. The freshness, the dewy youthfulness of this
French music, were very moving to me. I remembered the celebrated
_Sommeil des Pèlerins_ and the shepherds' chorus. A phrase which is sung
by the Virgin thrilled me: '_Le Seigneur, pour mon fils, a béni cet
asile_.' The melody rang in my ears while I was in that little house,
with its neighbour in flames, and itself given over to a precarious
fate.
I thought of all happinesses bestowed; I thought that you were perhaps
at this moment calling down a blessing upon my abode. The sky was so
lovely that it seemed to smile favourably upon all petition; but what I
want strength to ask for perpetually is consistent wisdom--wisdom which,
human though it may be, is none the less safe from anything that may
assail it.
The sun is flooding the country and yet I write by candle-light; now and
then I go out into the back gardens to see the sun. All is light, peace
falling from on high upon the deserted country.
I come back to our room, where the brass of the pretty Meusian beds and
the carved wood of the cupboards shine in the half-light. All these
things have suffered through the rough use the soldiers put them to, but
we have real comfort here. We have found table-implements and a
dinner-service, and for two days running we made chocolate in a
soup-tureen. Luxury!
O dear mother, if God allows me the joy of returning, what youth will
this extraordinary time have brought back to me! As I wrote to my friend
P----, I lead the life of a child in the midst of people so simple that
even my rudimentary existence is complicated in comparison with my
surroundings.
Mother dear, the length of this war tries our power of passive will, but
I feel that everything is coming out as I was able to foresee. I think
that these long spells of inactivity will give repose to the
intellectual machine. If I ever have the happiness of once more making
use of mine, it is sure to take a little time to get moving again, but
with what new vigour! My last work was one of pure thought, and my
ambition, which all things justify, is to give a more plastic form to my
thought as it develops.
_Sunday, December 27, 9 o'clock_
(5th day in the first line).
It appears that the terrible position, courageously held by us on
October 14th, and immediately lost by our successors, has been retaken,
and 200 metres more, but at the price of a hundred casualties.
Dear mother, want of sleep robs me of all intelligence. True, one needs
little of that for the general run of existence here, but I should have
liked to speak to you. The only consolation is that our love needs no
expression.
Very little to tell you. I was quite stupefied by the day's work
yesterday, spent entirely in darkness. From my place I had only a
glimpse of a pretty tree against the sky.
To-day, in the charming early morning I saw a beautiful and extremely
brilliant star. I had gone to fetch some coal and water, and on the way
back, when daylight had already come, that extraordinary star still
persisted. My corporal, who, like me, was dodging from bush to bush back
to our house, said:
'Do you know what that star is? It is the sign for the enemy's patrol to
rally.'
It was true, and at first I felt outraged at this profanation of the
sky, and then (apart from the ingenuity of the thing) I told myself that
this star meant, for those poor creatures on the other side, that they
could take the direction of safety. I felt less angry about it then. The
sign had given me so much joy as a star that I decided to stick to my
first impression.
_December 30._
Your Christmas letter came last night. Perhaps in this very hour when I
am writing to you, mine of the same day is reaching you. At that time,
in spite of the risk, I was enjoying all the beauty, but to-day I
confess it is poisoned for me by what we hear of the last slaughter.
On the 26th we were made to remain on duty, in positions occupied only
at night as a rule. Our purely defensive position was lucky that day,
for we were exposed only to slight artillery fire; but on our right a
regiment of our division, in one of the terrible emplacements of
October 14th, received an awful punishment, of which the inconclusive
result cost several hundred lives. Here in our great village, where our
kind hostess knew, as we did, the victims, all is sadness.
_Same day._
. . . Nothing attacks the soul. The torture can certainly be very great,
especially the apprehension, but questions coming from the distance can
be silenced by acceptation of what is close. The weather is sweet and
soft, and Nature is indifferent. The dead will not spoil the spring. . . .
And then, once the horror of the moment is over, when one sees its place
taken by only the memory of those who have gone, there is a kind of
sweetness in the thought of what _really exists_. In these solemn woods
one realises the inanity of sepulchres and the pomp of funerals. The
souls of the brave have no need of all that. . . .
_4 o'clock._
I have just finished the fourth portrait, a lieutenant in my company. He
is delighted. Daylight fades. I send you my thoughts, full of
cheerfulness. Hope and wisdom.
_January 3, 1915._
. . . Yesterday, after the first satisfaction of finding myself freed
from manual work, I contemplated my stripes, and I felt some
humiliation, because instead of the great anonymous superiority of the
ordinary soldier which had put me beyond all military valuation, I had
now the distinction of being a low number in military rank!
But then I felt that each time I looked at my little bits of red wool I
should remember my social duty, a duty which my leaning towards
individualism makes me forget only too often. So I knew I was still free
to cultivate my soul, having this final effort to demand of it.
_January 4, despatched on the 7th_
(in a mine).
I am writing to you at the entrance to an underground passage which
leads under the enemy emplacement. My little job is to look out for the
safety of the sappers, who are hollowing out and supporting and
consolidating an excavation about twelve metres deep already. To get to
this place we have to plunge into mud up to our thighs, but during the
eight hours we spend here we are sheltered by earthworks several metres
thick.
I have six men, with whom I have led an existence of sleeplessness and
privation for three days: this is the benefit I derive from the joyful
event of my new status; but as a matter of fact I am glad to take part
in these trials again.
Besides, in a few days the temporary post which I held before may be
given to me altogether. Horrible weather, and to make matters worse, I
burnt an absolutely new boot, and am soaking wet, like the others, but
in excellent health.
Dear, I am now going to sleep a little.
_January 6, evening._
DEAR MOTHER,--Here we are in a billet after seventy-two consecutive
hours without sleep, living in a nameless treacly substance--rain and
filth.
I have had several letters from you, dear beloved mother; the last is
dated January 1. How I love them! But before speaking of them I must
sleep a little.
_January 7, towards mid-day._
This interrupted letter winds up at the police-station, where my section
is on guard. The weather is still horrible. It's unspeakable, this
derangement of our whole existence. We are under water: the walls are of
mud, and the floor and ceiling too.
_January 9._
. . . My consolations fail me in these days, on account of the weather.
This horrible mess lets me see nothing whatever. I close with an ardent
appeal to our love, and in the certainty of a justice higher than our
own. . . .