THE FORERUNNERS AND EMPEDOCLES
Rolland opened his campaign against hatred almost immediately after the
war began. For more than a year he continued to deliver his message in
opposition to the frenzied screams of rancor arising from all lands. His
efforts proved futile. The war-current rose yet higher, the stream being
fed by new and ever new blood flowing from innocent victims. Again and
again some additional country became involved in the carnage. At length,
as the clamor still grew louder, Rolland paused for a moment to take
breath. He felt that it would be madness were he to continue the attempt
to outcry the cries of so many madmen.
After the publication of _Au-dessus de la mêlée_, Rolland withdrew from
public participation in the controversies with which the essays had been
concerned. He had spoken his word; he had sown the wind and had reaped
the whirlwind. He was neither weary in well-doing nor was he weak in
faith, but he realized that it was useless to speak to a world which
would not listen. In truth he had lost the sublime illusion with which
he had been animated at the outset, the belief that men desire reason
and truth. To his intelligence now grown clearer it was plain that men
dread truth more than anything else in the world. He began, therefore,
to settle accounts with his own mind by writing a satirical romance, and
by other imaginative creations, while continuing his vast private
correspondence. Thus for a time he was out of the hurly-burly. But after
a year of silence, when the crimson flood continued to swell, and when
falsehood was raging more furiously than ever, he felt it his duty to
reopen the campaign. "We must repeat the truth again and again," said
Goethe to Schermann, "for the error with which truth has to contend is
continually being repreached, not by individuals, but by the mass."
There was so much loneliness in the world that it had become necessary
to form new ties. Signs of discontent and revolt in the various lands
were more plentiful. More numerous, too, were the brave men in active
revolt against the fate which was being forced on them. Rolland felt
that it was incumbent upon him to give what support he could to these
dispersed fighters, and to inspirit them for the struggle.
In the first essay of the new series, _La route en lacets qui monte_,
Rolland explained the position he had reached in December, 1916. He
wrote: "If I have kept silence for a year, it is not because the faith
to which I gave expression in _Above the Battle_ has been shaken (it
stands firmer than ever); but I am well assured that it is useless to
speak to him who will not hearken. Facts alone will speak, with tragical
insistence; facts alone will be able to penetrate the thick wall of
obstinacy, pride, and falsehood with which men have surrounded their
minds because they do not wish to see the light. But we, as between
brothers of all the nations; as between those who have known how to
defend their moral freedom, their reason, and their faith in human
solidarity; as between minds which continue to hope amid silence,
oppression, and grief--we do well to exchange, as this year draws to a
close, words of affection and solace. We must convince one another that
during the blood-drenched night the light is still burning, that it
never has been and never will be extinguished. In the abyss of suffering
into which Europe is plunged, those who wield the pen must be careful
never to add an additional pang to the mass of pangs already endured,
and never to pour new reasons for hatred into the burning flood of hate.
Two ways remain open for those rare free spirits which, athwart the
mountain of crimes and follies, are endeavoring to break a trail for
others, to find for themselves an egress. Some are courageously
attempting in their respective lands to make their fellow-countrymen
aware of their own faults.... My task is different, for it is to remind
the hostile brethren of Europe, not of their worst aspects but of their
best, to recall to them reasons for hoping that there will one day be a
wiser and more loving humanity."
The essays of the new series appeared, for the most part, in various
minor reviews, seeing that the more influential and widely circulated
periodicals had long since closed their columns to Rolland's pen. When
we study them as a whole, in the collective volume entitled _Les
précurseurs_, we realize that they emit a new tone. Anger has been
replaced by intense compassion, this corresponding to the change which
had taken place at the fighting front. In all the armies, during the
third year of the war, the fanatical impetus of the opening phases had
vanished, and the men were now animated by a tranquil but stubborn
sentiment of duty. Rolland is perhaps even more impassioned and more
revolutionary in his outlook, and yet the essays are characterized by
greater gentleness than of old. What he writes is no longer at grips
with the war, but seems to soar above the war. His gaze is fixed upon
the distance; his mind ranges down the centuries in search of like
experiences; looking for consolation, he endeavors to discover a meaning
in the meaningless. He recurs to the idea of Goethe, that human progress
is effected by a spiral ascent. At a higher level men return to a point
only a little above the old. Evolution and reversion go hand in hand.
Thus he attempts to show that even at this tragical hour we can discern
intimations of a better day.
The essays comprising _Les précurseurs_ no longer attack adverse
opinions and the war. They merely draw our attention to the existence in
all countries of persons who are fighting for a very different ideal, to
the existence of those heralds of spiritual unity whom Nietzsche speaks
of as "the pathfinders of the European soul." It is too late to hope for
anything from the masses. In the address _Aux peuples assassinés_, he
has nothing but pity for the millions, for those who, with no will of
their own, must be the mute instruments of others' aims, for those
whose sacrifice has no other meaning than the beauty of self-sacrifice.
His hope now turns exclusively towards the elite, towards the few who
have remained free. These can bring salvation to the world by splendid
spiritual imagery wherein all truth is mirrored. For the nonce, indeed,
their activities seem unavailing, but their labors remain as a permanent
record of their omnipresence. Rolland provides masterly analyses of the
work of such contemporary writers; he adds silhouettes from earlier
times; and he gives a portrait of Tolstoi, the great apostle of the
doctrine of human freedom, with an account of the Russian teacher's
views on war.
To the same series of writings, although it is not included in the
volume _Les précurseurs_, belongs Rolland's study dated April 15, 1918,
entitled _Empédocle d'Agrigente et l'âge de la haine_. The great sage of
classical Greece, to whom Rolland at the age of twenty had dedicated his
first drama, now brings comfort to the man of riper years. Rolland shows
that two and a half millenniums ago a poet writing during an epoch of
carnage had recognized that the world was characterized by "an eternal
oscillation from hatred to love, and from love to hatred"; that history
invariably witnesses a whole era of struggle and hatred, and that as
inevitably as the succession of the seasons there ensues a period of
happier days. With a broad descriptive sweep, he indicates that from the
time of the Sicilian philosopher to our own the wise men of all ages
have known the truth, but have been powerless to cope with the madness
of the world. Truth, nevertheless, passes down forever from hand to
hand, being thus imperishable and indestructible.
Even across these years of resignation there shines a gentle light of
hope, though manifest only to those who have eyes to see, only to those
who can lift their gaze above their own troubles to contemplate the
infinite.