Chapter 39

In 1909 M. Duhamel received his degree in medicine and shortly after appeared the four plays which, with his poetry, “Des Légendes, des Batailles,” a collection of verse published by “L'Abbaye” in 1907; “L'Homme en Tête,” in 1909; “Selon ma Loi,” in 1910; and “Compagnons,” in 1912, gave him a definite place in the literary hierarchy. These plays were “La Lumière,” which appeared in 1911; “Dans l'Ombre des Statues,” in 1912; “Le Combat,” a symbolic drama invers libres, in 1912; and “L'Œuvre des Athlètes” in 1920. All of these were produced on the Paris stage and all save the lasthave appeared in translations by Sasha Best inPoet Lore, Boston, in 1914 and 1915.

These dramas, as well as his early poetry, show the influence of Walt Whitman. His message is conveyed through the medium of symbolism, his method being to create types rather than individual studies, and his purpose to bring art closer to the masses. The result, as might have been expected, is drama of no great popularity.

Almost simultaneously with his work as poet and dramatist M. Duhamel achieved prominence as a critic. For some years he was critic of poetry forLe Mercure de France, and his articles contributed to that publication were collected in book form in 1914 under the title of “Les Poètes et la Poésie.” His earliest critical work, however, was a collaboration with M. Charles Vildrac, called “Mots sur la Technique Poétique.” “Propos Critique,” published in 1912, is largely devoted to comments on the efforts of the younger and, at that time, comparatively unknown writers, and it is of special interest that many of these writers are now famous.

“Paul Claudel: le philosophe—le poète—l'ecrivain—le dramaturge,” published in 1913, is considered by some of Duhamel's admirers as the best of his critical works, marked as itis by the same gifts of analysis and charm of style which distinguished his briefer critical writings.

It is, however, chiefly of his work since the beginning of the war, and the direction which his ideas and aims have taken under the influence of the war, that this article is concerned.

When the war broke out it found Georges Duhamel—then about thirty years of age—intent upon his literary work: poetry, criticism, interpretation, which had put him in the first rank of littérateurs of his country. Mobilised in the Medical Corps he first went to Verdun and found himself in the thick of the carnage; but he was soon transferred to the Marne where in the comparative quiet of a hospital he was able to make the observations and write the reflections which have carried his name throughout the civilised world. During the four years of the war he produced four remarkable volumes: “Vie des Martyrs” (The New Book of Martyrs), “Civilisation,” “Possession du Monde” (The Heart's Domain), and “Entretiens dans le Tumulte” (Interviews in the Tumult), four of the most noteworthy and important books inspired by the war.

Plunged at once into the great war hopper whose purpose was to reduce all human material to a homogeneous mass that would furnish energy for the war machine, Duhamel preserved his perspective and his individual outlook both upon the war and upon life. Nothing illustrates this so strikingly as some of his stories in “Civilisation,” gathered from scenes with which he came into contact after he had become a seasoned soldier.

No stronger proof is needed of the essential wholesomeness and strength of Duhamel's make-up than the fact that while these stories, and those of “Vie des Martyrs,” were inspired by the horrors of the war, they do not depict horrors, nor do they create an atmosphere of horror. It is not the picture of healthy men in the flower of youth, in the vigour of virility fed to the war machine and left lacerated and broken, that Duhamel impresses upon the imaginations of his readers. Itwas thus that he had seen them in the first days of the siege of Verdun, in an improvised ambulance where from minute to minute new torments developed to increase their previous torments, while the fragile roof over their heads became a great resounding board for the projectiles of the siegers and the assieged. He had, however, the vision to see them in another light, and he was filled with pity and admiration for the French poilu. It is these two emotions, rather than horror, which make the atmosphere and colour of the two books of war stories. He sensed the significance of pain and saw the reactions of strong men to suffering. He saw man in his agony give the lie to the most misleading of all statements: that man is born equal. For neither in living nor in dying is there equality. Men are equal, we trust, before God, and they are alleged to be equal before the law, but after that equality of man does not exist.

It is this book particularly that makes Duhamel the interpreter of the poor, the obscure, the stupid, the inarticulate. With an unerring intuition he reaches the soul. His sympathies are so large, his understanding so comprehensive, and his reflection of them so complete, that his readers suffer with the suffering. It seems impossible to depict the sufferings of these poor martyrs, sent like droves of cattle to be struck down for what purpose they knew not, more accurately and convincingly than he does. With the reader's sympathy thus awakened, one wonders that the individual can be deprived of his own right to judge whether the cause is great enough for him to lay down his all; to be crushed by the chariots of the god of war.

M. Duhamel, in “Vie des Martyrs,” has succeeded in making his martyrs immortal. To him has been given in a superlative degree that seeing eye, that understanding heart, that power of vision which, perhaps more than any other gift, enriches life, since it enables the fortunate possessor to ridhimself of the trammels of his own narrow existence and live the lives of many.

He has made a contribution to behaviouristic psychology in these little stories, or better said sketches from life, that will endure. He has been able to convey to unenlightened man the difference between thebonand themauvais blesséand to show that it is soul difference as well as bodily difference. He has portrayed in simple colours the desire to live, and the determination to live, factors which physicians know are most important in forecasting the chances of recovery of every sick man. And with it all there is tenderness, which the author has had the power to convey through delicacy of style that makes prose poetry of much of his narrative of the thoughts, aspirations, sentiments, and plans of individual men who, from their appearance and position, are the most commonplace of the commonplace. There is no anger, violence, hatred, or despair in any of his pictures. There is sometimes irony, but it is of so gentle a nature that it strengthens the impression of sympathy with his characters, rather than suggesting judgment of them.

“A human being suffers always in his flesh alone, and that is why war is possible,” says M. Duhamel in “Civilisation.” This is one of those marvellous epitomes of human conduct, of which he has framed many. It is vouchsafed to but few to understand and suffer another's pain. To the majority of mankind it is denied. Were it not so, the fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind would displace greed.

There are so many remarkable features of M. Duhamel's war books, such, for instance, as what may be called the thesis of “Vie des Martyrs”: that men suffer after their own image and in their own loneliness; or of “Civilisation”: that consciousness has outrun life; that it has created for itself reactions and inhibitions so intricate and profound that they cannot be tolerated by life, that I was keen to learn how these attitudes had developed. When questioned, this is what he said:

“I am forced to divide things in the way practiced in the sciences; that is to say, not to confuse the study of facts with conclusions drawn from them. In these two books I showed as faithfully as I could the life and sufferings of soldiers during the war. In the latter two (“The Heart's Domain” and “Interviews in the Tumult”) I drew conclusions from the facts established in the first two. This procedure seemed to me the best way to handle anti-war propaganda. The weakness of most books results from the fact that the idea or subject is confused with other, regrettably often sentimental, considerations. The procedure employed in the sciences seems to be more orderly, and therefore more convincing for the exposition of my ideas. These books awoke a great echo, because they corresponded closely to the state of mind of sensible men who are bent on doing everything to make war impossible. Because of this I was looked upon as a Pacifist, and I regard this as an honour. I have never been politically active nor do I belong to any political group. However I am a Pacifist and an Internationalist. I believe that it is only the individual that can be an Internationalist. A nation will never be Internationalist for the reason that Pacifism and Internationalism are indissolubly bound up with individualism.”

M. Duhamel's work cannot, therefore, be considered solely in the light of its literary qualities. By his own admission he is a writer with a purpose, and this purpose is the suppression of war. In the interview he stated that this purpose fills all of his work and “will be, I believe, the axis of my work all my life.”

Regarding the four war books in this light, a sincere critic can hardly escape the conviction that the author has accomplished the first part of his task with immeasurably greater success than the latter part. Of the convincing appeal of the two books which aim only to present vivid and truthful pictures of the sufferings of the soldiers during the war there can be no question. But of the author's power as a propagandist against war, as expressed in the two latter books, it is by no means easy to form so satisfactory an estimate.

Duhamel does not believe that the war developed amodus vivendifor the world. He thinks it left us where it found us, only exhausted. Unless something is devised while this exhaustion is being overcome, the conflict will be taken up again. He believes that a revolution is necessary, but not a revolution in the sense of the term that applies to the affairs of Russia or Ireland.

When Duhamel is read in the light of history, especially of the last one hundred and twenty-five years, one is less hopeful than if he were ignorant of history. If anyex cathedrastatement is justifiable it would seem to be this: the world war flowed more or less directly from the revolutionary movement which began with the dissemination of the doctrine of the French philosophers, especially Rousseau, toward the end of the Eighteenth Century. His discourse “On the Origin of Inequality Amongst Men” is the fountainhead of modern socialism and the source from which the ferment that brought about the world revolution emanated. Rousseau's thesis was that civilisation had proven itself to be the curse of humanity and that man in his primitive state was free and happy.

“The first time he knew unhappiness was when convention stepped in and said 'you must not do this and you must not do that,' and the State stepped in and said 'this is private property.' The first man who bethought himself of saying 'this is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him was the real founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseries and horrors would he have spared the human race who, snatching away the spade and filling in the ditches, had cried out to his fellows: 'beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one.'”

It was the dissemination of this doctrine and the writings of Voltaire which led to the “Feast of Reason,” and the publication of the “Encyclopédie” that led to the world volcanic eruption of 1789, which had its repetition in 1914.

It seems that most of these ideas were to be found in the writings of Adam Weishaupt, an apostate Catholic, who founded the secret society known as the “Illiminati” in 1776. It is interesting to compare some of his statements with Duhamel's aspirations.

“When men united themselves into nations, national love took the place of universal love. With the division of the globe into countries benevolence restricted itself behind boundaries that it was never again to transgress. It became a virtue to spread out at the expense of those who did not happen to be under our dominion. In order to attain this goal it became permissible to despise foreigners and to deceive and offend them. This virtue was called patriotism. Patriotism gave birth to localism, to the family spirit, and finally to egoism. Thus the origin of states or governments of civil society was the seed of discord and patriotism found its punishment in itself. Do away with this love of country, and men will once more learn to know and love each other as men; there will be no more partiality; the ties between hearts will unroll and extend.”

Duhamel wants to develop this relationship between men, but he wants to do it in a very different way.

This moral revolution will be accomplished when men love one another, and when they reward good for evil. Even though this had not been shouted from the housetops and whispered through the lattice, in every tongue and in every clime for the past twenty centuries, we should still feel that M. Duhamel is in error, for these precepts are at variance with the teachings of biology, the science for which M. Duhamel has so much respect. You might just as well ask a man who is drowning not to struggle as to ask a man to return good for evil—that is unless he is doing it as a stunt, an artefact, or in redemption of the promise to be saved. It is against nature. First teach him to put a new valuation on life and to get new standards of what makes life worth living. Then M. Duhamel will have a foundation to build upon.

That M. Duhamel is no less earnest than sincere in his purpose is proved by his lectures through Europe during the last few years, as protagonist for the suppression of war; and also by the fact that he was one of the co-founders of “Clarté,” so named for the book by Barbusse, which is a group of men who preach anti-militarism, the intellectual solidarity of nations, and the social equality of all citizens.

“Possession du Monde” is by virtue of its title a frank avowal of its aim to set forth the author's idea of finding some satisfactory substitute for the world possession for which the war was fought. It is the effort of a wholesome, buoyant, sympathetic man, after having been brought into contact with the horrors of the war, to find a substitute for orthodox religion; the expression of an emotionally religious man without a creed. M. Duhamel, who was brought up a Catholic, lost all religion, he said, when he was fifteen years old.

The panacea which Duhamel offers in this book for human suffering and world ills is the conscious striving for happiness by means of a sort of “culture of the soul.” He puts a personal construction upon happiness and holds that it is and should be the object of all humanity and of the whole world of living things. He quotes Maeterlinck to the effect that “As man is created for health, so was man created for happiness.” This soul culture is rather an attitude of feeling toward things than an attitude of thought. There is no attempt to think out any of the problems which have puzzled men for ages. Neither is there any denying of them. He simply says substantially: I am a practical man. Of course I take things as they are—or as they seem to be—but I take the best that is in them. I take the sunshine, the flowers, the wisdom of the ages, the art that has come down to us, the science, human love, the fine qualities of friendship, work, play, my sorrows and adversities, even religion—but I take only what is good out of them all; and I take that temperately, sanely, according to the limitationswhich nature and circumstances have imposed. And I am happy. You can do likewise and you can be happy.

But can I take poverty and want, and particularly can I take them with equanimity while my neighbour or brother is swaggering with riches, some of which he has robbed me because he is stronger or cleverer than I? Duhamel's formula for achieving happiness, as well as his conception of what constitutes happiness, only fits the average man, and it has been proven countless thousands of times that there is no such person. It is sufficient, perhaps, for people who feel normally and do not think for themselves. So it may be sufficient for the present for a mass of people who want to be led—if they are pious and healthy.

But how about the people who are different, or who are not healthy, or who think they are safer custodians of wealth and power than their so-called brothers? It brings no help to the people who are tortured by an insistent need to think things out for themselves, or else to find something which will answer their questions as to the why. Nor does it tell those who are handicapped, physically, mentally, or even temperamentally, how they can overcome their handicaps so as to, as it were, extract the honey from the flowers. The world is full of people with all degrees of unusualness and abnormality. One may ignore them, but no scheme of things can deny them. Duhamel uses them by preference as a basis for his fiction.

In his conception of happiness Duhamel reads himself and his own emotions into all things. He avers that the algæ growing in a tank of water with nothing but a few grains of dust and sunlight are happy because they subsist and work out their humble joy. Has any sentient soul told him he was happy under parallel circumstances? That is the question. He reads his own philosophy into the algæ. To him to be living as nature intended one to live is to be happy. But who can say? Just here I am reminded of a quotation from Anatole France of which Duhamel makes use in this book: “Menhave cut each others' throats over the meaning of a word.” People might argue forever over the meaning of the word “happiness” and never get anywhere.

Duhamel says that happiness is the ultimate end of life and that religion is the search for happiness in a life to come after this. Everybody wants to be happy in this life and some people expect to be happy in a life after this—of these two assertions there can be no doubt. But Duhamel says there is no life after this, and that the sole object of life is to be happy in this world. He does, however, speak of “saving the soul,” and he implies his belief in God. He says substantially that the plants are happy because they are fulfilling their destiny, or doing what God meant them to do; and implies that man will be happy if he does the same. Very likely. But shall he strive to fulfill his destiny—to do what God meant him to do—merely in order to be happy? Or shall he strive to fulfill his destiny—and happiness will follow incidentally? Which should be his conscious end, happiness or the fulfilment of his destiny? Most religious people would say the latter. Duhamel says the former. But, for working purposes they are about the same, except that, for people who are at all temperamental or who meet with many discouragements, it is frequently difficult to strive for a happiness which seems elusive. Whereas, such people, if they are spiritually minded, can always find a stimulus in trying to do what they were intended to do. And if they believe in God the stimulus becomes greater. And if they can believe that the soul grows through every honest effort—that nothing is ever lost, whether the result appears to be success or failure—and that the limits of its growth are not bounded by what their senses can tell them in this life, their capacity for striving becomes sometimes amazing. How else account for the man who expends ten times the effort in playing a losing game that he would have spent in one that promised an easy success?

That the soul will find its greatest happiness in the contemplationof itself, is Duhamel's belief. “He is the happiest man who best understands his happiness; for he is of all men most fully aware that it is only the lofty idea, the untiring courageous human idea, that separates gladness from sorrow,” he quotes from Maeterlinck. A man should think about his soul at least once every day. But it would be safe to say that for one man who finds happiness in a life of contemplation ten find it in a life of action. The wholesome, sane, average, happy men—of whom Duhamel is an excellent example—are mostly men of action. The very existence of this book is a contradiction of his happiness of contemplation theory as applied to himself. It may well be questioned whether Duhamel would have written “Possession du Monde” if he had not been the kind of man who finds happiness in giving expression to every emotion. Besides self-study is safe only for strong natures. Self-analysis was the undoing of the man in one of Duhamel's best books, “Confession de Minuit.”

Finally, what is “happiness”? Is it merely a feeling? Gladness? If that were all, and the ultimate end of life, would not the logical conclusion be that the happiest—and therefore the most successful—man would be the joyful maniac?

The publication of M. Duhamel which has the greatest popularity is the one that his admirers would wish he had not written: “Possession du Monde.” It is a protest against the evaluation of life commercially, and a plea for a moral or spiritual standard. This is a topic for an epoch maker, and one who has not a vision or a plan should not essay it. M. Duhamel may have both, but he does not reveal them. He displays only the wish that the world should be better. In the jargon of the Freudian, it is a wish-fulfilment that does not realise. It is neither well done nor convincing, and it has been well and convincingly done by many writers, and still we have not profited by it. Amiel did it; Maeterlinck did it; Karr did it; and “others too numerous to mention.” They may have had some effect upon individuals, but the history of the pasteight years shows that they had no effect upon the world at large, its evolution, or devolution. Moreover, there is a note of unction and self-satisfaction running through the book that is displeasing, if not offensive. It is quite true, or likely to be true, that “to think about the soul, to think about it at least once in the confusion of every crowded day, is indeed the beginning of salvation,” but there is a book in which this is said in a more convincing way than M. Duhamel can ever hope to say it.

Viewed from a literary standpoint alone, the book is in keeping with, if not quite up to, the standard of his other works. His prose is always musical, and he often creates an atmosphere rather than an edifice. He is never emphatic, mandatory, severe, superlative. He is soft, gentle, often ironical, but always human.

Two remarkable pieces of fiction constitute Duhamel's output since the four war books: “Les Hommes Abandonnés” (Abandoned Men) and “Confession de Minuit” (Midnight Confession). The first contains eight histories which try to prove that when men are gathered together in a crowd they are abandoned by the individual soul. It is an illustration on the reverse side in favour of individualism.

“Confession de Minuit” is particularly significant as being named by the author in the interview as his favourite work. “As a human research I believe that it is the one with the most meaning,” he said of this novel; and it is, therefore, a matter of self-congratulation on the part of the writer that he found this book to be the one which interpreted to him the author's particular genius in the most convincing and interesting light The story has its bearing upon the author's theories because it illustrates more clearly than any of his other works a statement made by him in the interview:

“People often reproach me with being interested only in my stories with sick people or with children. Healthy men do notregister the motives which govern them. When one studies a sick person one is able to see the relations between moral characteristics which in the healthy man exist, but are hidden.” However, I hold that the average man, healthy, typical, scarcely exists in literature, and that the most interesting creations from the human point of view had for their subjects men who were unbalanced—from Hamlet to Leopold Bloom; from Raskolnikov to Dorian Gray.

“Confession de Minuit” is the self-revelation of a man who was decidedly unbalanced. As a bit of art work the book is unique and remarkable. Almost the unity of a short-story is preserved without recourse to any of the usual machinery of the ordinary novel, such as plot, action, or conversation, except a very little of the most casual nature. To a person who reads fiction for character delineation this absence of trappings is a distinct gain.

“Confession de Minuit” is the story of a man than whom a more uninteresting person could hardly be found in life; and yet as told by the man himself, Duhamel sustains the interest of the reader in the recital of pitiful weakness from the first page to the last without one lapse into dryness or loss of sympathy for the character, with whom, in the flesh, it would have been hard to feel any sentiment besides pity. It opens with the incident which causes the man to lose his position as a small clerk in an office through an utterly senseless—although perfectly harmless—performance: yielding to a sudden impulse to touch the ear of his employer just to assure himself that the employer was really made of flesh and blood, as himself. As society, or in this case the employer, is more afraid of an insane person than of a criminal, the reader does not share the man's feeling of injustice because he is first confronted with a revolver and then thrown speedily and bodily out of the office where he had been a faithful worker for several years; although he is able to pity the victim. The story, as told by the man himself, traces his rapid deteriorationthrough progressive stages of self-pity, self-absorption, and inability to get hold of himself, to make an effort to re-establish himself, or even to seek advice or sympathy, until the last night when he pours out his “confession” to a stranger, with the statement that, on account of his failure in every relation in life, he is never going home to his old mother who has supported him with her small income and her needlework—nor is he ever going anywhere else, so far as the reader can see. He does not commit suicide. In fact, the story leaves one with the impression that he is merely “going crazy.” Whether or not he is insane when the recital begins with the commission of the insane act is a matter for neither the novelist nor the critic to state.

The great art of the writer lies in his ability to sustain interest at a high level in a pure character study of what is frequently described as a “shut-in personality.”

This novel seems to have been written without reference to the author's happiness or “cult of the soul” theory. It might almost be construed as a contradiction of it. One might put a fatalistic construction upon it, if one did not take a material point of view of health and disease. I do not see how anyone could get away from the conviction that the man who makes the “Midnight Confession” of his own pitiful failure in life is a victim of either his own mental limitations, or else of his particular environment, or of both. The only other way in which anyone might account for his utter inability to get hold of life or to stand up against his first discouragement is the refuge of the Radical Socialist—that society gave him no chance, the concrete illustration being the cruel way in which constituted authority, or his employer, treated his first downward step. But if the author had intended to condemn the employer and to excuse the man he would hardly have selected for this step an act which would so readily arouse a question as to the man's sanity, nor would he have followed the incident with a story in which the only development wasrapidly increasing loss of touch with the outside world. No philosophy, or religion, or cult could have helped this man, who was handicapped with a nature so weak that it could not resist an impulse which would have been suppressed instantly by any well-balanced person; nor could it have given him the strength to withstand the simple discouragements that are the inevitable lot of all men. He simply was not able to cope with something—define it as one may.

One moral the story teaches. And that is the nobility of sympathy with even the weakest, most despised, and least interesting of human beings.

M. Duhamel consecrates his life to the prevention of war. It is a noble gesture. He is gifted, sane, articulate, and temperamentally adapted and adjusted to the task. Were he a platonist and not a neo-platonist, I am sure greater success would crown his efforts. Twenty-five hundred years ago a man who penetrated the mysteries of life and death more deeply than anyone before or since said to his pupils who had gathered to speed him to the Great Beyond, the ship having returned from Delos and the Eleven having decided to release Socrates from his fetters:

“The body fills us with passions and desires, and fears, and all manner of phantoms and much foolishness; and so, as the saying goes, in very truth we can never think at all for it. It alone and its desires, cause war and factions and battles for the origin of all wars is the pursuit of wealth.”

Until that pursuit can be substituted, the labours of M. Duhamel and his co-founders of “Clarté” are likely to be in vain.

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