Maurice Barrès | |
|---|---|
 Barrès in 1923 | |
| Born | Auguste-Maurice Barrès (1862-08-19)19 August 1862 |
| Died | 4 December 1923(1923-12-04) (aged 61) |
| Resting place | Charmes, Vosges |
| Occupation |
|
| Literary movement | |
Auguste-Maurice Barrès (French:[oɡystmɔʁisbaʁɛs]; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist, philosopher, and politician. Spending some time in Italy, he became a figure inFrench literature with the release of his workThe Cult of the Self in 1888. He was elected a member of theAcadémie Française in 1906.
In politics, Barrès was first elected to theChamber of Deputies in 1889 as aBoulangist and would play a prominent political role for the rest of his life. He presided over theLigue des Patriotes from 1914 until his death in 1923.
Barrès was associated in his literary works withSymbolism, a movement which had equivalence with BritishAestheticism and ItalianDecadentism; indeed he was a close associate ofGabriele d'Annunzio representing the latter. As the name of his trilogy suggests, his works glorified a humanistic love of the self and he also flirted withoccult mysticisms in his youth. TheDreyfus affair saw an ideological shift from a liberal individualism rooted in the French Revolution to a more organic and traditional concept of the nation. He also became a leading anti-Dreyfusard[1] popularising the termnationalisme to describe his views. He stood on a platform of "Nationalism and Protectionism.".[2]
Politically, he became involved with various groups such as theLigue des Patriotes ofPaul Déroulède, of which he became the leader in 1914. Barrès was close toCharles Maurras, founder of the monarchist partyAction Française. Though he remained arepublican, Barrès developed a strong influence on various French monarchists of his day, as well as various other figures. During theFirst World War, he championed theUnion Sacrée political truce. In later life, Barrès returned to theCatholic faith: he was involved in a campaign to restore French church buildings and helped establish 24 June as a national day of remembrance for St.Joan of Arc.
Born atCharmes, Vosges, he received his secondary education at thelycée ofNancy, attending there the lessons ofAuguste Burdeau, later pictured as social climber Paul Bouteiller inLes Déracinés. In 1883 continued his legal studies in Paris. Establishing himself at first in theQuartier Latin, he became acquainted withLeconte de Lisle'scenacle and with thesymbolists in the 1880s, even meetingVictor Hugo once.[3][4] He had already started contributing to the monthly periodical,Jeune France (Young France), and he now issued a periodical of his own,Les Taches d'encre, which survived for only a few months. After four years of journalism he settled in Italy, where he wroteSous l'œil des barbares (1888), the first volume of atrilogie du moi (also calledLe Culte du moi orThe Cult of the Self), completed byUn Homme libre (1889), andLe Jardin de Bérénice (1891).The Cult of the Self trilogy was influenced byRomanticism, and also made an apology of the pleasure of the senses.
He supplemented these apologies for his narcissism withL'Ennemi des lois (1892), and with an admirable volume of impressions of travel,Du sang, de la volupté, de la mort (1893). Barrès wrote his early books in an elaborate and often very obscure style.[citation needed]
TheComédie Française produced his playUne Journée parlementaire in 1894. A year after establishing himself inNeuilly, he began his trilogy in 1897,Le Roman de l'énergie nationale (Novel of the National Energy), with the publication ofLes Déracinés.[4] In this second major trilogy, he superated his early individualism with a patriotic fidelity to the fatherland and anorganicist conception of thenation.[3] Affected by theDreyfus Affair, and finding himself on the side of the Anti-Dreyfusards, Barrès played a leading role alongsideCharles Maurras, which initiated his shift to the political right; Barrès oriented himself towards a lyrical form of nationalism, founded on the cult of the earth and the dead ("la terre et les morts", "earth and the dead"—see below for details).[3]
TheRoman de l'énergie nationale trilogy makes a plea for local patriotism,militarism, the faith to one's roots and to one's family, and for the preservation of the distinctive qualities of theold French provinces.Les Déracinés narrates the adventures of seven youngLorrainers who set out to conquer fortune in Paris. Six of them survive in the second novel of the trilogy,L'Appel au soldat (1900), which gives the history of Boulangism; the sequel,Leurs figures (1902), deals with thePanama scandals. Later works include:
He presented himself in 1905 to theAcadémie française, but was supplanted byEtienne Lamy. He then tried again, but inclined himself before the candidacy of the former MinisterAlexandre Ribot. But he was finally elected the next year, gaining 25 voices against 8 to Edmond Hauraucourt and one to Jean Aicart on 25 January 1906.[3]
Barrès was also a friend since his youth of the occultistStanislas de Guaita, and was attracted by Asia,sufism andshi'ism. But he returned in his later years to the Catholic faith, engaging inL'Echo de Paris a campaign in favour of the restoration of the churches of France. His sonPhilippe Barrès followed him in a journalism career.
As a young man, Barrès carried his Romantic and individualist theory of the Ego into politics as an ardent partisan ofGeneral Boulanger, locating himself in the morepopulist side of the heterogenous Boulangist coalition.[5] He directed a Boulangist paper at Nancy, and was elected deputy in 1889, at the age of 27, under a platform of "Nationalism, Protectionism, and Socialism",[2] retaining his seat in the legislature until 1893, when he was defeated under the etiquette of "National Republican and Socialist" (Républicain nationaliste et socialiste).[4] From 1889, Barrès's activism overshadowed his literary activities, although he tried to maintain both.[5]
He shifted however to the right-wing during theDreyfus Affair, becoming a leading mouthpiece, alongsideCharles Maurras, of the Anti-Dreyfusard side.[3] The Socialist leaderLéon Blum tried to convince him to join the Dreyfusards, but Barrès refused and wrote several anti-Semitic pamphlets. He wrote, "That Dreyfus is guilty, I deduce not from the facts themselves, but from his race."[6][7] Barrès's anti-Jewishness found its roots both in thescientific racial contemporary theories and onBiblical exegesis.[7]
In 1893, he wanted to get elected deputy in Neuilly. During this election campaign, a group ofanarchist companions, includingÉlisée Bastard, went to his private mansion and began posting up posters supporting the candidacy of theanarchistLouis Galau.[8][9][10] They also demanded 'reparation by arms', or a duel, so that Barrès would 'pay' for insulting them on his own campaign posters. Barrès preferred to send out his servants and did not leave his mansion.[8][9][10] The servants and a maid went to the group of anarchists and tried to tear down the posters, but were beaten with glue brushes. The maid was reportedly stabbed in the hand by one of the anarchists, though this point is uncertain and reflects the politician's position in his complaint. Barrès filed a complaint against the anarchists, accusing them of trying to force their way into his home.[8][9][10]
He founded the short-lived reviewLa Cocarde (TheCockade) in 1894 (September 1894 – March 1895[11]) to defend his ideas, attempting to bridge the gap between the far-left and the far-right.[5] TheCocarde, nationalist,anti-parliamentarist and anti-foreign, included a diverse collection of contributors from a wide variety of backgrounds (monarchists, socialists,anarchists, Jews, Protestants[4]), includingFrédéric Amouretti,Charles Maurras,René Boylesve andFernand Pelloutier.[2]
He was again beaten during the 1896 elections in Neuilly, as a candidate of the Socialist leaderJean Jaurès, and then again in 1897 as a nationalist anti-Semitic candidate, having broken with the left-wing during the Dreyfus Affair.[4]
Barrès then assumed the leadership of theLigue de la Patrie française (League of the French Fatherland), before taking membership in theLigue des Patriotes (Patriot League) ofPaul Déroulède. In 1914, he became the leader of the Patriot League.[3]
Close to the nationalist writerCharles Maurras, founder of the monarchistAction française movement, Barrès refused however to endorse monarchist ideas, although he demonstrated sympathy throughout his life for the Action française. Most of the later monarchist theorists (Jacques Bainville,Henri Vaugeois,Léon Daudet,Henri Massis,Jacques Maritain,Georges Bernanos,Thierry Maulnier...) have recognised their debt toward Barrès, who also inspired several generations of writers (among whichMontherlant,Malraux,Mauriac andAragon).
Barrès was elected deputy of the Seine in 1906, and retained his seat until his death. He sat at that time among theEntente républicaine démocratique conservative party. In 1908, he opposed in Parliament his friend and political opponentJean Jaurès, refusing the Socialist leader's will toPantheonize the writerÉmile Zola. Despite his political views, he was one of the first to show his respect to Jaurès' remains after his assassination on the eve ofWorld War I.
During World War I, Barrès was one of the proponents of theUnion Sacrée, which earned him the nickname "nightingale of bloodshed" ("rossignol des carnages"[5]). TheCanard enchaîné satirical newspaper called him the "chief of the tribe of brainwashers" ("chef de la tribu des bourreurs de crâne").[3] His personal notes showed however that he himself did not always believe in his purported war optimism, being at times close to defeatism. During the war Barrès also partly came back on the mistakes of his youth, by paying tribute to French Jews inLes familles spirituelles de la France, where he placed them as one of the four elements of the "national genius", alongside Traditionalists, Protestants and Socialists – thus opposing himself to Maurras who saw in them the "four confederate states" of "Anti-France".
After World War I, Barrès demanded the annexation ofLuxembourg into the French Republic, and also sought to increase French influence in theRhineland.[12] On 24 June 1920, the National Assembly adopted his draft aiming to establish a national day in remembrance ofJoan of Arc.
Barrès is considered, alongsideCharles Maurras, as one of the main thinkers ofethnic nationalism at the turn of the century in France, associated withRevanchism—the desire to reconquer theAlsace-Lorraine, annexed by the newly createdGerman Empire at the end of the 1871Franco-Prussian War (Barrès was aged 8 at that time). In fact, he himself popularised the word "nationalism" in French.[5]
This has been noted byZeev Sternhell,[13]Michel Winock (who titled the first part of his book,Le Siècle des intellectuels, "Les Années Barrès" ("The Barrès Years"), followed byLes AnnéesAndré Gide andLes AnnéesJean-Paul Sartre),[14]Pierre-André Taguieff,[15] etc. He shared as common points withPaul Bourget his disdain forutilitarianism and liberalism.[5]
Opposed toJean-Jacques Rousseau's theory ofsocial contract, Barrès considered the 'Nation' (which he used to replace the 'People') as already historically founded: it did not need a "general will" to establish itself, thus also contrasting withErnest Renan's definition of the Nation.[16] Much closer toHerder andFichte than to Renan in his definition of the Nation, Barrès opposed Frenchcentralism (as did Maurras), as he considered the Nation to be a multiplicity of local allegiances, first to the family, the village, the region, and ultimately to thenation-state.[16] Barrès, for this reason, frequently visited and praisedProudhon'sfederalism.[17] Influenced byEdmund Burke,Frédéric Le Play,G.W.F. Hegel, andHippolyte Taine, he developed anorganicist conception of the Nation which contrasted with the universalism of the 1789Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.[16] According to Barrès, the People is not founded by an act of autonomy, but find its origins in the earth (le sol), history (institutions, life and material conditions) and traditions and inheritance ("the dead").[16] His early individualism was quickly superseded by an organicist theory of the social link, in which "the individual is nothing, society is everything".[18]
Barrès feared miscegenation of modern times, represented by Paris, claiming againstMichelet that it jeopardised the unity of the Nation.[19] The Nation was to be balanced between various local nationalities (he spoke of the "Lorraine nationality" as much as of the "French nationality"[16]) through decentralisation and the call for a leader, giving aBonapartist aspect to his thought which explained his attraction for the General Boulanger and his opposition toliberal democracy.[16] He pleaded for adirect democracy and personalisation of power, as well as for the implementation ofpopular referendums as done inSwitzerland.[16] In this nationalist frame, anti-Semitism was to be the cohesive factor for a right-wingmass movement.[16]
Contrary to popular belief, Maurice Barrès never used the term “le grand remplacement” [great replacement], either in his novel "L'appel au soldat" or anywhere else. However he did make use of the underlying concept, namely that the French national character was being harmed by immigration of certain ethnic groups.[20]
Barrès was a noted hispanophile.[21] Influenced by theromantic mythification of Spain, he described the country as "an Africa leaving your soul with a sort of furor so fast as chilli does in your mouth".[22] Always passionate about the "South" and "Orient", he emphasized in his work the period of Moorish domination.[23] He interpreted the Spain of the time as a nation refractory to the attempts of economic and bureaucratic rationalization threatening his own country.[21] He visited Spain in 1892, 1893 and 1902, capturing his vision of the country in his writings, taking a particular interest inToledo.[24]
TheDadaists organised in spring 1921 the trial of Barrès, charged with an "attack on the safety of the mind" ("attentat à la sûreté de l'esprit") and sentenced him to 20 years of forced labour. This fictitious trial also marked the dissolution of Dada - its founders, among whom wasTristan Tzara, refusing any form of justice even if organised by Dada.
An Orientalist romance,Un jardin sur l'Oronte (A Garden on the Orontes)—which would be the basis ofan opera of the same name—was published in 1922, triggering what would be calledla querelle de l'Oronte (the Orontes Quarrel).
Devout and sincere Catholics were shocked by the complacent, skilful, sometimes enchanting ways of Barrès in mixing the sacred and the profane. His heroine [Oriante] was both pagan and irresistible—and this provoked revolt.[25]
Barrès died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on 4 December 1923.
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Data from Wikidata| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
