TWO IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS
I
THE Interviewer.—In its fight against Naturalism, or Realism, we recognize, dear Master, that art, that literature at least, at the time of your Nourritures terrestres, with its tendency toward the artificial, smelled terribly musty. But, without going back to it, let us pass on. I should like, I was telling you, to make one criticism of your introduction1, which appears to me important. It seems, if I understand you (and I am thinking particularly of some sentences in your conclusion), it seems, I say, as though man were forced to choose between the Christian position and that taken by Goethe. As though there were not many ways to escape the hold of Christianity without joining Goethe!
I.—I do not say …
He.—And in the first place, when you speak of the “help of Grace,” I think you embody in those words all supernatural intervention, every appeal to any religion whatever. But, even then, man has many ways of exerting himself without going over to Goethe and the field remains clear …
I.—Nevertheless, the examples I quote, of Nietzsche, Leopoldi and Hoelderlin (and I could have quoted many others) should leave no doubt as to my idea. Goethe does not teach heroism, and we need heroes. Christianity can lead us into heroism, of which one of the finest forms is saintliness; but every hero is not necessarily a Christian.
He.—Nor every Christian a hero! Heaven only knows! I know only too many, and you too, who are beyond the pale.
I.—Free thinking does not always retain the indulgent smile of Renan, the sarcasm of Voltaire, or the detachment of France. The non-acquiescence to dogmas and simple integrity of mind has been able to lead many to martyrdom. A martyr without palms, without hope of reward and, for this reason, all the more admirable. Without going that far, let us say that human dignity, and that sort of moral bearing, of “consistency” to which we attach all our hopes to-day, gets along very well without the support and comfort of the Faith. In these recent times, Christians have given fine examples, both Protestants and Catholics, before which we have only to bow our heads; but I hold it a very grave error to think, with a great number of fine minds, that France must and can find her salvation only in attachment to a Credo.
When a ship is in distress, those who kneel down and intone chants address prayers and supplications to the Most-High … that is fine; tears come into my eyes only at the thought of it. And at least they keep back the cries of the women and children, and the crazed rushing about that would disturb the maneuvers of the crew.But just the same, if the ship is to be saved, it will not be by clasped hands.
He.—Montherlant says some daring things in this respect.
I.—Which please me. And wait a minute; I see in him an excellent example of anti-Christianity not like Goethe’s.
He.—You would like from him, don’t you agree, parallels to the Lives of the Saints and The Golden Legend, some biographies that would, in themselves, have nothing legendary about them, which he would write so well! valorous heroes, entirely human, according to his taste (and yours doubtless); among others, the Marshal Strozzi, cousin to Catherine di Medicis.
I.—I remember only in what special esteem he was held by Montaigne who admired in him, at the same time, the warrior of great merit in his “military competence” and the scholar; a very fine passage in the Essays congratulates him on having chosen Caesar’s Commentaries for bedside reading. “They should be,” he said, “the breviary of every military man.”
He.—What Montaigne does not tell us and that Brantôme told, is that Strozzi, as learned in Greek as in Latin, had translated Caesar into the Greek language with “Latin annotations, the finest additions and instructions for soldiers,” says Brantôme, “that I ever saw or that were ever written.”
I.—That should delight Montherlant, indeed.
He.—The account of his death is of a nature especially likely to please him, such as we read it in Vieilleville’s Mémoires. When Strozzi was mortally wounded by a musket shot at the siege of Thionville, on June 20, 1558, the Duke de Guise went to him, Vieilleville tells us, exhorting him to repentance. But you must read the text itself: I copied it; one would hate to change or lose a single word. Listen. He took a note-book from his pocket and read to me:
Then the Duke de Guise, “recalling the name of Jesus:—‘What Jesus, for heaven’s sake,’ said Strozzi, ‘are you trying to bring to me? I deny God. My good times are over.’ And the prince redoubling his pleas told him that he should think of God and that that very day he would be face to face with Him. ‘Heavens!’ he responded, ‘I shall be where all the others are who have been dead for six thousand years’.”
I.—Six thousand years!… To-day we know that is an understatement.
He.—Wait a minute! Wait a minute! And Vieilleville adds, in his charming manner, don’t you agree? “Everything is in the Italian language.”
I.—I recognize that this ending does not lack grandeur. It is almost as difficult, if not more so, to die well as to live well. But then Strozzi had neither wife nor family with him. Ah! I understand Montaigne’s wishing to die far away from his people, a death all his own, not distorted by pity or sympathy.… It is an article of death that one expects from the great souls under discussion. In the death struggle they relax, let themselves go to the priest who is lying in wait, with the aid of a wife’s objurgations, or a sister’s, or a mother’s. Then the Church is quick to take possession of their past and of their very resistance which at first they had opposed to it.
He.—Yet you admit …
I.—Why yes; I admit all the rest. I give in; I acquiesce, and even, as well as I can, I understand …
He.—It concerns the salvation of souls. Put yourself at their point of view.
I.—That’s all I do, I roared, put myself at other people’s point of view. I’ve done nothing else all my life; to such a degree that it is my own point of view which becomes difficult for me to find again later. And yet that is the important thing. To depend constantly on others in order to judge, form an opinion, is to take the savor from the salt.
He.—“And if the salt loses its savor, with what shall it be salted?” Yes, I know you have been nourished on the gospels. You come back to them in spite of yourself.
I.—Now you annoy me. It is true: I feel you there, on the scent of some sentence that may compromise me.… Mind your own business and simply do your duty as an interviewer. If you try again to make me talk more than I intend to, I shall slam the door in your face. Consider that final.…
Come now! Sit down again. But let us go back to literature. May I ask you in my turn, if during the long time that I have left you, you have progressed in your book.
He.—To tell the truth, no. But it is mellowing. What bothers me is that I should like to say nothing in it that is not essential, general, universal.
I.—But my dear friend, be sure to tell yourself that, in art, nothing general is attained except through the particular. That is what Goethe understood so well.
He.—Haven’t you anything more to say to me about him?
I.—Not to-day at least. You have worn me out. Come back.
II
I.—I let myself be carried away ridiculously the other day; I beg you to excuse me. Immediately after your departure, reflecting on what had put me out, I thought that …
He.—Allow me: it is you who are coming back to it. However you promised to touch on nothing with me again except literary questions.
I.—But on certain days you stifle at always hiding what fills up your heart.
He.—You were then thinking that … you were saying?
I.—That what upsets and holds me back is certainly not the Gospels, which contain better advice than any other book in the world. And I was even forced to understand very quickly that what I was looking for formerly in communism (in vain, for where I hoped to find love, I found only theory), was what Christ teaches us, teaches us with all the rest additional.
He.—Then, what stops you?
I.—It is that act of blind credulity the Church requires: Faith. Reason itself, with love, leads me to the Gospels; so why deny reason?
He.—Does the Faith deny it?
I.—Good heavens, yes; that is, strictly speaking, what makes up “believing.” One believes contrary to all verification, to all evidence. In order to “believe” you have to put out your eyes. The object of belief, to stop looking at it in order to see it. You know very well that belief in a personal God, in Providence, implies abdication of everything reasonable in us. I even prefer, and very much so, the Quia absurdum to every rational effort of some to attach to a divine plan the dangerous effects of forces and natural laws, or the criminal follies of mankind. It is franker and more honest, and the believer has won the game as soon as he refuses to play it. Won for himself at least. For, as for me, to believe in that God he proposes to me would lead me very quickly into saying with Orestes:
In whatever direction I turn my eyes,
I see only misfortunes that condemn that God.
I find more consolation in considering God as an invention, a creation of man, that man composes little by little, tends to form more and more, by means of his intelligence and virtue. It is in Him that creation has its end, its aim, and not from Him that it emanates. And as time does not exist for the Eternal, that amounts to the same thing, for Him.
He.—It seems to me Renan said just about that.
I.—Oh! don’t interrupt me, I beg you! I have enough trouble already following my thoughts … Where was I?… Oh, yes. Faith. And notice that for them, the believers, nothing but that counts. A life devoted to search for the truth is nothing, for the only truth, for them, is that Truth that one “would not search for if one had not already found it.” And that Truth, all found, is sufficient for everything, suffices to cover every life of dissipation and error.
He.—It is true also that belief in that Truth brings about a betterment in the life.
I.—Or at least should bring it about. But what is the use of quibbling about it? The very property of dogma is to be indisputable. So let’s not dispute it.
He.—And yet you admit the teaching of the Gospels.
I.—With all my heart, yes; but outside of (apart from) Faith. Now, if I should put every teaching of Christ into practice, conform my life to it, in the eyes of the believer, none of all that would count without Faith.
He.—You are wrong. All that retains its importance. I fear you have been misinformed. You are judging from your old memories. The Church of to-day shows itself ready to recognize, even in unbelievers, good habits and good will, every effort toward the good and the true. Deploring only that these efforts are not offered to the Lord, the Church to-day is much more disposed to pity than to condemn.
I.—Why yes; I am not ignorant of the fact that the Church has very charitably and wisely withdrawn its frontal attack. It would no longer condemn Galileo, good heavens! It does not stop, nor will it stop in its progress backwards. L’Histoire Universelle of Bossuet makes even priests smile to-day. Step by step, the Church is losing ground, beats a retreat, yields.…
He.—And in this withdrawal orthodoxy is strengthened.
I.—My mind refuses to submit itself to any orthodoxy whatever.
He.—And yet you recognize the excellency of the Gospel precepts. Their finest putting in practice loses all meaning without Faith.
I.—Say that they take on a different one, and one for which I have a preference.
He.—Yes, through pride.
I.—I was expecting that word. Believers owe it to themselves to give a disparaging interpretation to everything great and noble and fine in independence.
He.—Independence! Ah! the time has come to talk about it! Yet you recognize that to-day it is important to group, organize, bring under the yoke in order to employ, to subject, to make useful.…
I.—Finish it; say, to administer the oath.… One can always find excellent motives for repudiating reason and keeping man from thinking. Unite wills, that’s all very well; nothing great is accomplished without submission and discipline. But, through a forced devotion, to prevent reason from exercising itself, to regulate thought on order, that can lead only to a general stupefying. Amissa virtute pariter ac libertate, with no one left to be aware of it, no one to suffer from it; for inactivity of the mind is like that of the body, and every other form of sloth; first one accepts grumblingly, then the mind quickly takes its ease in an outwardly devotional acquiescence, and that’s just where the danger lies; Invisa primo desidia, postremo amatur.
He.—What in the world has gotten you to quoting so much Latin?
I.—That’s because, for the past few days, I have been buried in Tacitus.
He.—Do you read him easily?
I.—More easily than I would have thought; but not without a translation on the opposite page, and with inexpressible satisfaction. Without doubt I am delighted with the impulsive manner of a Stendhal, whose idea one seems always to be surprising on getting out of bed, before making one’s toilet. I do not like thoughts which are made up and decked out, but those that are concentrated and compact. Tacitus’ sentence is taut. It is his Life of Agricola that I am reading, and from the beginning I was conquered. What authority! What gravity! What fervor! How pleased I am, more than by ease or grace, with that austere, savage asperity! I take this book with me; I read as I walk; I roll under my tongue without exhausting all the bitter sap, some of the vigorous sentences by which my will is stiffened: “With the voice we should have lost our memory, if it had been as easy to forget as to remain silent” … Si tam in nostra potestate esset oblivisci quam tacere. What precedes it is equally fine. Reread it.
He.—You read a great deal.
I.—I have never read so much, nor so well; with a sort of eagerness as in my youth and which, when I think of my age, appears to me a little ridiculous; but I can’t do anything about it; I think as little as. possible about my age, and when I think of it, it is to say to myself: hurry up. But this digression carries us.…
He.—Not at all. It leads us back to God. Everything leads the attentive soul back to God. Why don’t you recognize in the “hurry up” His Call? “Hurry up and give me your heart, love Me.”
I.—I am going to try to explain myself. Not so much to explain to you as to explain to myself the point at which my thought has slowly arrived almost in spite of myself.
There can be no question of two Gods. But I take care not to confuse, under this name of God, two very different things, different to the point of opposing each other. On one hand, the whole of Cosmos and the natural laws that govern it; matter and forces, energies; that is the role of Zeus; and that can be called God, but on taking out of the word all personal meaning and morality. On the other hand, the fascicles of every human effort toward the good and the beautiful; the slow mastery of brute forces and their putting into service in order to realize the good and beautiful on earth; that is the role of Prometheus; and Christ’s role, too; it is the unfolding of man, and all the virtues have part in it. But this God does not inhabit nature at all; he is created by man, or, if you prefer, it is through man that he creates himself; and every effort to exteriorize him by prayer remains futile. It was with him that Christ joined; but it is to the other one he addresses himself when, dying, he utters his despairing cry: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?…”
He.—In order that “all be accomplished,” says the believer.
I.—But I who do not believe see in it only a tragic misapprehension. There is no desertion there because there was never an understanding; because the god of natural forces has no ears and remains indifferent to human sufferings, either in attaching Prometheus to the Caucasus, or in nailing Christ to the cross.
He.—Allow me: it was not natural forces that crucified Christ; it was man’s malignity.
I.—The God whom Christ represents and incarnates, the God-Virtue, must fight at the same time against Zeus and man’s malignity. That last word of Christ (the only one of the seven words of the Crucified reported by two Evangelists, the simple apostles Matthew and Mark, who report only that word) keeps me from confusing Christ with God, if all the rest had not already warned me. How can one not see, in that tragic word, not a letting go, a treachery on God’s part, but this: that Christ, believing and making others believe that he was one with God, was mistaken and deceived us; that the One he called “my Father” had never recognized him for Son, that the God he represented, that he himself, was only, as he sometimes says, “the Son of Man?” It is that God only whom I am able and wish to adore.
1 It concerns the Introduction to the Theatre of Goethe, which had just appeared in The Figaro during the spring of 1942.