CLERAMBAULT
_Liluli_, the tragi-comedy, was an outcry, a groan, a painful burst of
mockery; it was an elementary gesture of reaction against suffering that
was almost physical. But the author's serious, tranquil, and enduring
settlement of accounts with the times is his novel, _Clerambault,
l'histoire d'une conscience libre pendant la guerre_, which was slowly
brought to completion in the space of four years. It is not
autobiography, but a transcription of Rolland's ideas. Like Jean
Christophe, it is simultaneously the biography of an imaginary
personality and a comprehensive picture of the age. Matter is here
collected that is elsewhere dispersed in manifestoes and letters.
Artistically, it is the subterranean link between Rolland's manifold
activities. Amid the hindrances imposed by his public duties, and amid
the difficulties deriving from other outward circumstances, the author
built the work upwards out of the depths of sorrow to the heights of
consolation. It was not completed until the war was over, when Rolland
had returned to Paris in the summer of 1920.
Just as little as _Jean Christophe_ can _Clerambault_ properly be termed
a novel. It is something less than a novel, and at the same time a
great deal more. It describes the development, not of a man, but of an
idea. As in _Jean Christophe_, so here, we have a philosophy presented,
but not as something ready-made, complete, a finished datum. In company
with a human being, we rise stage by stage from error and weakness
towards clarity. In a sense it is a religious book, the history of a
conversion, of an illumination. It is a modern legend of the saints in
the form of the life history of a simple citizen. In a word, as the
sub-title phrases it, we have here the story of a conscience. The
ultimate significance of the book is freedom, the attainment of
self-knowledge, but raised to the heroic plane inasmuch as knowledge
becomes action. The scene is played in the intimate recesses of a man's
nature, where he is alone with truth. In the new book, therefore, there
is no countertype, as Olivier was the countertype to Jean Christophe;
nor do we find in _Clerambault_ what was in truth the countertype of
_Jean Christophe_, external life. Clerambault's countertype,
Clerambault's antagonist, is himself; is the old, the earlier, the weak
Clerambault; is the Clerambault with whom the new, the knowing, the true
man has to wrestle, whom the new Clerambault has to overcome. The hero's
heroism is not displayed, as was that of Jean Christophe, in a struggle
with the forces of the visible world. Clerambault's war is waged in the
invisible realm of thought.
At the outset, therefore, Rolland designed to call the book "un
roman-méditation." It was to have been entitled "L'un contre tous," this
being an adaptation of La Boëtie's title _Contr'un_. The proposed name
was, however, ultimately abandoned for fear of misunderstanding. The
spiritual character of the new work recalls a long-forgotten tradition,
the meditations of the old French moralists, the sixteenth century
stoics who during a time of war-madness endeavored in besieged Paris to
maintain their intellectual serenity by engaging in Platonic dialogues.
The war itself, however, was not to be the theme, for the free soul does
not strive with the elements. The author's intention was to discuss the
spiritual accompaniments of this war, for these to Rolland seemed as
tragical as the destruction of millions of men. His concern was the
destruction of the individual soul in the deluge produced by the
overflowing of the mass soul. He wished to show how strenuous an effort
must be made by any one who would escape from the tyranny of the herd
instinct; to display the hateful enslavement of individuals by the
revengeful, jealous, and authoritarian mentality of the crowd; to depict
the terrific efforts which a man must make if he would avoid being
sucked into the maelstrom of epidemic falsehood. He hoped to make it
clear that what appears to be the simplest thing in the world is in
reality the most difficult of tasks in these epochs of excessive
solidarity, namely, for a man to remain what he really is, and not to
become that which the levelling forces of the world, the fatherland, or
some other artificial community, would fain make of him.
Romain Rolland deliberately refrained from casting his hero in a heroic
mold, the treatment thus differing from what he had chosen in the case
of Jean Christophe. Agenor Clerambault is an inconspicuous figure, a
quiet fellow of little account, an author of no particular note, one of
those persons whose literary work succeeds in pleasing a complaisant
generation, though it has no significance for posterity. He has the
nebulous idealism of mediocre minds; he hymns the praises of perpetual
peace and international conciliation. His own tepid goodness makes him
believe that nature is good, is man's wellwisher, desiring to lead
mankind gently onward towards a more beautiful future. Life does not
torment him with problems, and he therefore extols life amid the
tranquil comforts of his bourgeois existence. Blessed with a kindly and
somewhat simple-minded wife, and with two children, a son and a
daughter, he may be considered a modern Theocritus wearing the ribbon of
the Legion of Honor, singing the joyful present and the still more
joyful future of our ancient cosmos.
The quiet suburban household is suddenly struck as by a thunderbolt with
the news of the outbreak of war. Clerambault takes the train to Paris;
and no sooner is he sprinkled with spray from the hot waves of
enthusiasm, than all his ideals of international amity and perpetual
peace vanish into thin air. He returns home a fanatic, oozing hate, and
steaming with phrases. Under the influence of the tremendous storm he
begins to sound his lyre: Theocritus has become Pindar, a war poet.
Rolland gives a marvelously vivid description of something every one of
us has witnessed, showing how Clerambault, like all persons of average
nature, really takes a delight in horrors, however unwilling he may be
to admit it even to himself. He is rejuvenated, his life seems to move
on wings; the enthusiasm of the masses stirs the almost extinguished
flame of enthusiasm in his own breast; he is fired by the national fire;
he is physically and mentally refreshed by the new atmosphere. Like so
many other mediocrities, he secures in these days his greatest literary
triumph. His war songs, precisely because they give such vigorous
expression to the sentiments of the man in the street, become a national
property. Fame and public favor are showered upon him, so that (at this
time when millions of his fellows are perishing) he feels well,
self-confident, alive as never before.
His pride is increased, his joy of life accentuated, when his son Maxime
leaves for the front filled with martial ardor. His first thought, a few
months later, when the young man comes home on leave, is that Maxime
should retail to him all the ecstasies of war. Strangely enough,
however, the young soldier, whose eyes still burn with the sights he has
seen, is unresponsive. Not wishing to mortify his father, he does not
positively attempt to silence the latter's paeans, but for his part, he
maintains silence. For days this muteness stands between them, and the
father is unable to solve the riddle. He feels dumbly that his son is
concealing something. But shame binds both their tongues. On the last
day of the furlough, Maxime suddenly pulls himself together, and begins,
"Father, are you quite sure ...?" But the question remains unfinished,
utterance is choked. Still silent, the young man returns to the
realities of war.
A few days later there is a fresh offensive. Maxime is reported missing.
Soon his father learns that he is dead. Now Clerambault gropes for the
meaning of those last words behind the silence, and is tormented by the
thought of what was left unspoken. He locks himself into his room, and
for the first time he is alone with his conscience. He begins to
question himself in search of the truth, and throughout the long night
he communes with his soul as he traverses the road to Damascus. Piece by
piece he tears away the wrapping of lies with which he has enveloped
himself, until he stands naked before his own criticism. Prejudices have
eaten deep into his skin, so that the blood flows as he plucks them from
him. They must all be surrendered; the prejudice of the fatherland, the
prejudice of the herd, must go; in the end he recognizes that one thing
only is true, one thing only sacred, life. A fever of enquiry consumes
him; the old Adam perishes in the flame; when the day dawns he is a new
man.
He knows the truth now, and wishes to strengthen his own faith. He goes
to some of his fellows and talks to them. Most of them do not understand
him. Others refuse to understand him. Some, however, among whom Perrotin
the academician is notable, are yet more alarming. They know the truth.
To their penetrating vision the nature of the popular idols has long
been plain. But they are cautious folk. They compress their lips and
smile at one another like the augurs of ancient Rome. Like Buddha, they
take refuge in Nirvana, looking down calmly upon the madness of the
world, tranquilly seated upon their pedestals of stone. Clerambault
calls to mind that other Indian saint, who took a solemn vow that he
would not withdraw from the world until he had delivered mankind from
suffering. The truth still glows too fiercely within him; he feels as if
it would stifle him as it strives to gush forth in volcanic eruption.
Once again he plunges into the solitude of a wakeful night. Men's words
have sounded empty. He listens to his conscience, and it speaks with the
voice of his son. Truth knocks at the door of his soul, and he opens to
truth. In this lonely night Clerambault begins to speak to his fellows;
no longer to individuals, but to all mankind. For the first time the man
of letters becomes aware of the poet's true mission, his responsibility
for all persons and for everything. He knows that he is beginning a new
war, he who alone must wage war for all. But the consciousness of truth
is with him, his heroism has begun.
"Forgive us, ye Dead," the dialogue of the country with its children, is
published. At first no one heeds the pamphlet. But after a time it
arouses public animosity. A storm of indignation bursts upon
Clerambault, threatening to lay his life in ruins. Friends forsake him.
Envy, which had long been crouching for a spring, now sends whole
regiments to the attack. Ambitious colleagues seize the opportunity of
proclaiming their patriotism in contrast with his deplorable sentiments.
Worst of all for Clerambault in that his innocent wife and daughter
have to suffer on his account. They do not upbraid him, but he feels as
if he had aimed a shaft against them. He who has hitherto sunned himself
in the warmth of family life and has enjoyed the comforts of modest
fame, is now absolutely alone.
Nevertheless he continues on his course, although these stations of the
cross become harder and harder. Rolland shows how Clerambault finds new
friends, only to discover that they too fail to understand him. How his
words are mutilated, his ideas misapplied. How he is overwhelmed to
learn that his fellows, those whom he wishes to help, have no desire for
truth, but are nourished by falsehood; that they are continually in
search, not of freedom, but of some new form of slavery. (In these
wonderful passages the reader is again and again reminded of
Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor.) He perseveres in his pilgrimage even
when he has lost faith in his power to help his fellow men, for this is
no longer his goal. He passes men by, marching onward towards the
unseen, towards truth; his love for truth exposing him ever more
pitilessly to the hatred of men. By degrees he becomes entangled in a
net of calumnies; his troubles develop into a "Clerambault affair"; at
length a prosecution is initiated. The state has recognized its enemy in
the free man. But while the case is still in progress, the "defeatist"
meets his fate from the pistol bullet of a fanatic. Clerambault's end
recalls the opening of the world catastrophe with the assassination of
Jaurès.
Never has the tragedy of conscience been more simply and more
poignantly depicted than in this account of the martyrdom of an average
man. Rolland's ripe spiritual powers, his magical faculty for combining
mastery with the human touch, are here at their highest. Never was his
outlook over the world so extensive, never was the view so serene, as
from this last summit. And yet, though we are thus led upwards to the
consideration of the ultimate problems of the spirit, we start from the
plain of everyday life. It is the soul of a commonplace man, the soul it
might seem of a weakling, which moves through this long passion. Herein
lies the marvel of the moral solace which the book conveys. Rolland was
the first to recognize the defect of his previous writings, considered
as means of helping the average man. In the heroic biographies, heroism
is displayed only by those in whom the heroic soul is inborn, only by
those whose flight is winged with genius. In _Jean Christophe_, the
moral victory is a triumph of native energy. But in _Clerambault_ we are
shown that even the weakling, even the mediocre man, every one of us,
can be stronger than the whole world if he have but the will. It is open
to every man to be true, open to every man to win spiritual freedom, if
he be at one with his conscience, and if he regard this fellowship with
his conscience as of greater value than fellowship with men and with the
age. For each man there is always time, for each man there is always
opportunity, to become master of realities. Aërt, the first of Rolland's
heroes to show himself greater than fate, speaks for us all when he
says: "It is never too late to be free!"