C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Critical and Biographical Introduction
By Paul Desjardins (1859–1940)
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From fierce class-hatred, an inheritance bequeathed by generations of selfish aristocrats, there was but one step to violent upheaval and revolution. Then followed hastily conceived, impractical reconstructions; a brilliant young Emperor with a no less brilliant career, reaching a sudden and tragic downfall; two futile attempts at re-establishing the old Monarchy, on a basis too much shaken by popular distrust and the incapacity or willfulness of former kings; and still another Emperor, carried to the throne on the waves of imperialistic enthusiasm; finally, a great national humiliation, military defeat at the hands of an enemy neighbor, made possible by discord in the heart of the nation, party strife, and administrative corruption and inefficiency.
With defeat came first a deep sense of humiliation, a general feeling of discouragement and, for some years, of depression. M. de Vogüé, himself one of the apostles of the Reaction and a veteran of the Franco-Prussian War, has very aptly characterized this phase of French dejection. He says:—
With a new generation, however, fresh hope was born. The wise outcome of humiliation was introspection and self-criticism and, born of the two, a new sense of duty towards the nation as a whole, a wide-hearted patriotism that learnt the lesson of misfortune in a renewed sense of responsibility and willingness to endure.
It was at this point that literature and politics became very closely interrelated; poets and playwrights formed and expressed views on matters of political importance; while on the other hand diplomats, scientists, professors, began more and more to use literary forms and outlets as a means of spreading their ideas and increasing their influence. Paul Desjardins was one of the most inspired young writers of this group. Born in 1859 as the son of a prominent member of the ‘Institut’ and professor of Rhetoric at the Collège de France in Paris, he became in his turn professor of Rhetoric at the Collège Stanislas and at the Lycée Michelet. His career as professor may perhaps have been less brilliant than that of his father; he is best known as a contributor to the Journal des Débats, to the Revue Bleue, the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and other periodicals. In the history of his nation he will always be remembered as one whose noble convictions and admirable clearness of vision inspired Young France with new ideals and led public thought into wider channels.
His was an active idealism, not content to dream, to plan and hope, but ready to suffer and sacrifice, and eager to awaken “luke-warm allies,” idealists of the dreamy type, and change them from mere believers into active workers for the betterment of human kind. In one of his earliest essays (‘Une Critique’), he has unconsciously expressed his rule of life in the following words:—
Madame Blaze de Bury, his warm admirer and critic, testifies that these were not mere words, but principles firmly rooted in the author’s character. She says:—
Such a “Leader” Paul Desjardins became in 1892 after the publication of his pamphlet entitled ‘The Present Duty.’ Here he not only made clear his fervid convictions, but he used all the impressiveness at his command to awaken a real and active interest in the hearts of his readers. He made a broad division of the men of his day into “positives” and “negatives,” according to the answer they found in their hearts to the question whether we are mere playthings in the hands of a willful Destiny, or whether we have a real object in life. In his own mind there existed no doubt as to the reality of our duties as human beings. He did not go so far as to condemn, in so many words, the “negatives” whom he could even sometimes pronounce charming; he left them to their own way of living, happily thoughtless and irresponsible. But he tried to rally round a common aim all positive minds, whether Christian or Jew, Stoic or Kantian, in short, all those who felt themselves free, responsible human beings. To these he addressed his appeal for greater sincerity, for morality not merely as an outcome of convention, but as the result of conviction and purity of heart. Though surrounded by most discouraging signs of the low state of public morals, the idealist in him still clung to his belief in the Good inherent in all men.
His own fervid hopes kindled the enthusiasm of some of his readers. A group of men, including members of most classes of society as well as adherents to various religious creeds and political parties, joined together and formed a ‘Union of Moral Action,’ the object of which was the gradual formation of a healthy public mind and the creation of a new standard of common morality. This led to more searching questions, to doubts, differences of opinion, and even attacks. Desjardins tried to follow up his first success by a series of articles published in the Journal des Débats under the title ‘The Conversion of the Church.’ His first and all-important commandment was: “Be sincere; follow the honest impulses of your conscience. All outward forms of Faith or Creed are of value only as long as they are the expression of your innermost convictions.” Basing his argument on this principle, he then proceeded to point out wherein lay the weakness of the Church and of similar institutions, namely in the over-cultivation of elaborate, but empty form, coupled with a lack of appreciation for the primitive need which had originally given a meaning to such form. Few of his early followers kept pace with him in this more radical advance, and, partly as a result of this, Desjardins withdrew from publicity and henceforward devoted most of his leisure to literary studies; amongst these, the appreciative essays on Corneille deserve notice.
The current of thought started by Desjardins has been merged in a flood of similar agitation in which his personality has become much less prominent, but it should not be forgotten that he was one of the originators of a movement of great importance for France and therefore for the world at large. The appreciation accorded to his pamphlets at their appearance, and the esteem in which their author was held by his early contemporaries are well illustrated by the fact that Jules Lemaître, one of the foremost modern French critics, actually used Desjardins’s name to coin a new word, “Desjardinism,” by which he wishes to express “whatever is highest and purest and of most rare attainment in the Idealism of the present hour,—the ideal of spiritual life, absolute morality.”