Octave Mirbeau’s scathing 1891 essay exposing the persecution of writer Remy de Gourmont, fired from the National Library for criticising blind patriotism. A masterpiece of satirical journalism defending intellectual freedom against nationalist hysteria.
M. Remy de Gourmont is a writer of exceptional talent and one of the most profound minds I know. But he has the unforgivable fault of not being rich, and literature, so sweet to M. Émile Richebourg, doesn’t pay his bills. One must live, after all, talent or no talent. There are a few who know just how difficult this necessary problem is to solve. M. Remy de Gourmont had accepted a position at the National Library, which he fulfilled admirably. This position hadn’t been handed to him through some random connection. By a rather peculiar phenomenon in the bureaucratic machinery that governs us, he was actually in his rightful place. Indeed, I believe few men possess, as he does, such knowledge of history, philosophy and literature. At once a passionate artist and a dogged scholar, a sort of Benedictine monk, always yearning for some noble learning, always pursuing lofty mental enquiries. At the Library, then, he had his life twice over: his material life, for he contents himself with little and sets his ideals beyond dreams of money, and his spiritual life. He aspired to nothing else.
Knowing perfectly well what ingeniously sordid mixtures go into the making of contemporary celebrity, and how much moral dignity and aesthetic integrity one often has to forget to achieve it, he did his best, obscure and industrious. His leisure hours brought no change of environment or passion. At the Mercure de France, he was one of the most assiduous, one of the most noticed among the young contributors to this elite group; and he wrote beautiful books, like that strange and metaphysical Sixtine, which contains truly admirable pages, beauties of thought, and genuinely superior artistic impressions. It seemed that the life of such a man, devoted to such distant speculations, resigned to finding satisfaction in inner joys, who bothered no one, disputing no one’s share of stolen honours and successes—it seemed that this silent life, cloistered in duty and pure art, ought to remain sheltered from all adventure, preserved from all violent and public collisions. Well, no. I know a librarian in a French town. He is a gentle fellow, terribly thin, terribly sad, with six children. His position doesn’t provide the bread necessary for his family’s survival. To supplement his meagre income, he wrote each week, in one of the local papers, some harmless literary articles, some theatre reviews on the solemn occasions of Parisian touring companies. This modest moonlighting displeased the Municipal Council. Through a deliberation in which it was declared and explained that “the functions of librarian were incompatible with literary work”, this fantastical council ordered the librarian to choose between the library and literature, reserving the right, “in case of non-compliance, to take such immediate and protective measures as it saw fit”. This is what happened to M. Remy de Gourmont, but with unforgettable aggravations and unheard-of refinements of stupidity.
The story is worth telling and commenting upon.
Today the press is free, but on condition that it remains strictly in its role of public stupefaction. We forgive its lapses in language, provided that, as in the music-hall ditty, the little patriotic closing number comes to palliate and moralise the preceding obscenities. We tolerate it showing us blooming backsides, sexes in fury or joy, but only in the radiant glow of the tricolour flag. Let’s be vulgar, abject; let’s stir up filthy passions and idiotic muck, but let’s remain patriotic. One can steal, murder, slander, betray, be a frenzied brute, a cowardly brigand—that’s nothing, if one organises “uproar” in theatres, if one insults women who come from Germany, if one vomits on the genius of beautiful works, if one goes about, howling stupid refrains, to lay vindictive wreaths on the tomb of that mediocre painter Henri Regnault. For Henri Regnault has become one of the numerous symbols of the Fatherland; his cult is obligatory and national, like taxes and military service. One can no longer say he lacked genius without immediately receiving death threats; one can’t even express doubt about the artistic value of his tomb without suddenly seeing a thousand fists raised in fury towards you, and a thousand glares striking you with homicidal rage. It’s truly exasperating. That we honour his memory is fine. He died bravely, but he wasn’t the only one, alas… How many died in that painful year who were his equal? How many in whom stupid bullets extinguished beautiful flames of unknown genius? And this memory that survives him, that survives his forgotten work, why prostitute it in dubious escapades?
In the press, in the street, in Parliament, at the theatre, patriotism sprawls and bawls, covering with its drunkard’s cloak the most shameful weaknesses and the worst infamies. No matter. We must respect it, we must submit without revolt to its compromising violence, its dangerous brutalities, its odious vandalisms, its iconoclastic savagery; we must bow our backs beneath the flood of inane sentimentalities that flows from it and overflows upon us. Authority, so quick to launch its bands of constables on harmless strollers, finds itself disarmed against this brigandage. It says: “It’s excessive, but so respectable.” And do you know why patriotism is so respectable, whilst being excessive? Because it’s one of the best agents of governable ignorance, one of the surest means of keeping a people in eternal brutishness. But as soon as one gravely enters into the discussion of serious ideas, without accompaniment of disgusting ribaldries and pompous refrains, then society complains and protests, and justice bares its fangs. Yes, we are free to meet where we want and write what we want, but Gegout is still in prison for not finding admirable the beautiful inquisitorial laws that M. Joseph Reinach is preparing for us; but here they shoot workers guilty of wanting to live and asking for bread, which is an insufferable pretension; but they take away the bread of those whose crime is to affirm opinions that don’t bear the ministerial stamp or bourgeois approval. Such was the case of M. Remy de Gourmont.
M. Remy de Gourmont published, in the penultimate Mercure de France, an article entitled “The Patriotism Plaything”. M. de Gourmont is not one who thinks at random; he knows what he says and what he does. The article was of beautiful ironic eloquence and impeccable logic. Unless through incomprehension—which isn’t rare—or bad faith—which is almost the general rule—there was no mistaking the meaning of these pages. I don’t know what M. de Gourmont’s ideas about the Fatherland are; I don’t have to investigate them, and he didn’t have to express them, for it wasn’t about the Fatherland; it was about patriotism, and these are two very different things that exclude one another. M. de Gourmont was denouncing the patriotism I speak of, this abject patriotism, negating all beauty, become an electoral exploitation, an ignoble means of mountebank advertising, the noisy and filthy sewer of human stupidity and coarseness.
He didn’t rail against Germany, being a philosopher; didn’t hide his admiration for Goethe, Heine, Wagner, being also a poet and artist; finally, he lacked enthusiasm for Henri Regnault, saying that a bullet is incapable, however Prussian it might be, of giving genius to one who has none: three sacrileges in the patriotic liturgy.
The article made a noise. It was discussed, distorted, denounced, for the press, thus understood, is a beautiful institution with admirable intellectual morals. Someone, whom I cannot name—for he is anonymous like a crowd—and who hadn’t read the article—for when would this someone have time to read anything?—and who spoke of it only by hearsay, put special passion into the attack, a particular hatred, allowed himself perfidious and customary insinuations. To hear him, one might have thought M. de Gourmont—this Catholic—was a dangerous anarchist, come from who knows what social hells to dynamite Paris and blow up France. Perhaps he even believed it. M. de Gourmont was quite astonished by all the racket he had raised. It was the first time he had entered into battle with the major press; he was ignorant of its polemical resources. He felt stupefaction and sadness, and disdained to respond. Other work, which he loves, called to him, and in the silence of his labour, he forgot this article and the unexpected clamour of reprobation that had greeted it. But the administration didn’t forget. Worried and ordered to act severely against the dangerous internationalist who, writing about Germany, hadn’t provoked it to immediate wars and hadn’t laid the obligatory wreath on Regnault’s tomb, they dismissed him. Before leaving his post, for his dignity, M. de Gourmont wanted to bring things back to the truth. They refused to hear him. Had he insulted Goethe? No. Had he promised to shoot Haeckel? No. Then what was his crime? And—height of audacity—M. de Gourmont confessed to keeping a tender cult for the memory of Jules Laforgue, who had been reader to the Empress Augusta… So he wouldn’t have shot him either, that one, a spy no doubt?… What could one expect from a librarian who obstinately refused to shoot anyone? M. de Gourmont was pitilessly sacked.
This is where we have come to, after innumerable revolutions; and such is the great intellectual freedom we enjoy. We tremble before ideas; the slightest philosophical question terrifies us. And we make grand gestures and strike sublime attitudes to proclaim that we are the sole initiators of civilisation and the torch-bearers of progress—we, the incorrigible vaudevillians, the cooers of flat romances. Those who have something to say and do must always bear the penalty of our intellectual timidities and moral cowardices. Ah! yes, we are a great people.
M. de Gourmont has withdrawn, with great dignity. He even asked his friends, who wanted to organise a protest against the unqualifiable measure striking him, to make no fuss around his name. And I think he must have handed over his functions to some impatient military man, who will no doubt have sworn to restore Alsace and Lorraine to us forthwith. I can see him from here, this military man, and I hear him, when he passes the shelves where Goethe’s works stand, bellowing in his hoarse voice of absinthe and patriotism:
“…Bloody bastard… bloody swine… Prussian… I’ll give you statues… Bang… Bang…”
And he’ll get promoted.
Octave Mirbeau, Le Figaro, 18 May 1891
This is one of 50+ rare French literary texts translated into English for the first time on this site.
Léon Hennique Novel 