Chapter XX: 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!"