A biting satirical essay by Octave Mirbeau on Maurice Barrès’s entry into politics. With sharp wit and irony, Mirbeau skewers the absurdity of political life and the illusion that politicians work for public happiness. A masterpiece of French political satire from the Belle Époque.
People have been having a laugh at Maurice Barrès for his taste for politics, and some of his friends, anxious about a literary future that looks so promising, are alarmed to see him plunge so early into an absurd existence where his delicate mind will encounter nothing but constant vexations and disagreeable surprises. There he is, buried forever “in the bosom of committees,” they say, and we will soon see him writing “machinations” just like Jules Ferry, that great politician. Indeed, I can’t see what place there is in this Chamber—born of universal suffrage’s ignorance and governmental corruption—for an exceptional writer like Maurice Barrès. And I can’t imagine what he will be able to do or say there. Certainly the charming author of A Free Man will bring to that place—if he brings anything other than disdain, boredom, and quinine—habits of intellectual elegance, refinements of thought, which run a strong risk of remaining misunderstood, even ridiculed, for the sole reason that they will be original and curious. I prefer to believe that Maurice Barrès—so well defended against the “machinations” of his political self by a spiritual dandyism and an artist’s particular soul—has only engaged in this new path, only imposed upon himself the fatigue of injurious contacts, through the ironic hope of observing man in the environment most favourable to the development of his passions, to the blossoming of his stupidity. The worst that could result from this electoral adventure is, I like to imagine, one of those exquisite books that bring us such joy.
One thing troubles me, however. Maurice Barrès has been elected deputy. So he must have done what was necessary for that? These sorts of events don’t happen without one thinking about them and pushing for them; they necessarily imply work and consent. Now, that’s what worries me. Maurice Barrès has spoken at voters’ meetings; he has, perforce, posted programmes, distributed or sent by post dreadful little papers containing professions of faith, perhaps—oh horror!—opinions on the referendum, perhaps even, to “foil last-minute manoeuvres,” he has had odious hawkers plaster up the inevitable lie! lie!! lie!!! by which one recognises the candidate who is a true candidate! What did he write? What did he say? I would like to know.
I would like to know, and I tremble to learn it. And here is why:
Someone asked one of our greatest philosophers, who has written admirable pages on politics, why he had always so carefully kept himself apart from all active and militant politics.
“It’s because,” replied the philosopher, “active politics requires special aptitudes for lying and stupidity that I don’t possess. To be elected to anything at all, one must be as stupid as universal suffrage, or flatter it by spouting and making one’s own the immeasurable inanities it loves. I don’t feel I have the courage. I reflect, I observe, I educate myself, and what I have to say, I say in my books. There’s always someone—somewhere—a kindred spirit to whom this gives pleasure. But what do you want me to say to voters that they would understand? What do you want me to say to deputies that wouldn’t make them smile with pity? In the current state of our customs, our education, active politics is only permitted to idlers who imagine they are something by being deputies, and whom vanity alone drives to solicit a legislative mandate, as others mount a hunting pack or a racing stable; it’s permitted to failures who, having succeeded at nothing, are always good enough to be part of a group and to vote with that group for generally absurd things, which they who vote don’t understand, nor the group that makes them vote, nor the group leader who elaborated them. Finally, I defy any scientist, writer, or artist to present themselves to voters with the integrity of their opinions and conscience, and tell them: ‘Take me as I am.’ No, no… the crowd is terrified of truth and horrified by beauty. It only chooses men who are made in its image.”
⁂
I was recalling these words whilst reading, the other day, in a newspaper, this sentence: “Politics is an art of experience and observation, applied to creating, for men, the greatest possible source of happiness.”
This definition struck me as admirable. It struck me as admirable in itself and especially for the aggravating fact that it’s not Vincent de Paul, nor Leo Tolstoy, nor a dreamer, nor a poet, nor a madman, nor a hoaxer, nor an ironist who gives it to us, but an opportunist with a level head and balanced heart. I didn’t expect to see an opportunist indulge, even in the Platonism of a definition, in such an unexpected access of axiomatic generosity. Note that this opportunist isn’t some unconscious, run-of-the-mill opportunist like so many others. This one is a believer. He knows the doctrine, he practises it. Thus he is always for the banker against savings, for railway companies against passengers, even crushed passengers; for mining companies against miners, even buried miners; for illness against the sick, for misery in general against the miserable in particular.
This is what, in the bourgeois world, so proud of its moral conquests, is called a wise man. In his capacity as a wise man, this wisest of the wise stands for many other truths equally beautiful and courageous. I can’t enumerate them here, for they are innumerable, and I would fear they would appear, in the long run, rather monotonous, for they apply to everything and everyone, all resemble each other and vary only in enthusiasm, according to the greater or lesser ferocity of things, the greater or lesser social or financial importance of persons. No one knows like him how to cover with light graces, with sentimental and flowery chatter, the harsh and dark struggle-for-life lurking in the heart of every good moderate; no one better conceals, beneath the most engaging smiles, the fangs sharpening in jaws impatient to tear into human flesh. So I was surprised and genuinely charmed to learn, from an opportunist’s own mouth, that politics was an art, which was a source, which was happiness, which was ours. And for a long time, I dreamed before this series of mysterious connections.
So Emmanuel Arène, Joseph Reinach, Terreil-Mermeix, Paul de Cassagnac, Constans, Léon Say were working for my happiness. They were digging through the hard rock of prejudices, routines, injustices, they were picking, drilling, boring, mining without rest, to make spring from the soil a source, a great source, a miraculous and cordial source, where I might bathe. They were experimenting with new joys, observing unknown felicities, to nourish me with them, to stuff me with them. Not thinking of themselves, resigned and paternal, each morning they asked themselves: “Let’s see, what happiness shall I invent for him today?” At night, bent over my sleep, they covered me with their wings, like guardian angels, and they murmured: “Are you truly happy?… Is there something missing that we haven’t thought of?… Do you wish for a happiness we haven’t given you?”
And that’s not all.
From the dark depths of History, from the depths of those silent spaces where dead centuries sleep, I should have heard voices, distant and tender voices telling me:
“We are the Kings, the Emperors and the Conquerors, and this happiness you enjoy, it’s we who conceived it, prepared it, developed it, transmitted it. We worked for you without truce or rest; it’s to conquer for you a happiness that we strove to make, from century to century, greater and deeper, that we reigned. Don’t think happiness is a modern invention. It’s as old as politics; and politics is as old as the world. It dates from the day when two men having met, the stronger began to despoil the weaker, to take his weapons, his clothes, his freedom, his intelligence; that is to say, to make him happy by lightening him of all that. We acted no differently; we acted on a grander scale, that’s all. And your masters today do what we did. They continue the good tradition, for you must know this: it’s in the dust of our thrones that they picked up this ineffable happiness of which it seems to us you have an insufficiently jovial idea.”
And I suspected nothing.
Not only did I suspect nothing, but I grew irritated against these shadows of the past, against these charitable persons of the present, these devoted souls, these beings of abnegation and sacrifice, whom I accused of troubling my peace, my reason, my enthusiasms, my hopes for a future of justice. I was happy, indubitably happy since the beginning of the centuries, and I didn’t know it… I was happy, how many times and in how many ways? Happy through ministers, deputies, senators, prefects and mayors; happy through royalists, Bonapartists, opportunists and radicals. And all these happinesses that came to me in pressed and joyful crowds, I was ignorant of them. How could I have lived so long in such aberration?
—And you, Monsieur Maurice Barrès, are you also going to make me happy?
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