Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in FranceBrandes, Georg
History
Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 3. The Reaction in France
Brandes, Georg
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Naturalism in literature; Romanticism
Events such as these, and language such as the above quoted, show
plainly enough how determinedly the Revolution was attacking the
principle of authority. It was highly significant that patents of
nobility were burned in the same bonfire with the images of the saints,
and that disbelief in the sacred ampulla led to the flouting of
royalty. From the moment when the authority of religion was overthrown,
the magic power of authority in every domain was gone.
It was supplanted by the watchword: Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.
But this watchword contained at least two fundamental principles
instead of one. Liberty as a fundamental principle may be regarded as
emanating from Voltaire, fraternity from Rousseau. And equality and
liberty did not combine well. When, not long before the Revolution,
Saint-Martin, the mystic, proclaimed his mysterious doctrine of
the Holy Trinity (Ternaire)--liberty, equality, and fraternity,
which always had been, and always should be--he did not foresee the
possibility of disunion, of conflict, between these principles.
Voltaire says somewhere: "It was a wise provision that made of the
Trinity one God; if there had been three they would have come to
blows." In 1793 Saint-Martin's trinity revealed the contradictions
which lay latent in it.
In the month of April the new Declaration of the Rights of Man which
Robespierre had drawn up and persuaded the Jacobins to accept as
their programme was published, and in the same month, whilst the
violent dispute between Robespierre and Vergniaud was going on, there
emanated from the opposite camp the plan of a constitution, evolved
by Condorcet, Barrère, Thomas Paine, Pétion, Barbaroux, Sièyes, and
others, and drawn up by Condorcet.
If we place these two documents side by side, we have before us in
embryo the two ideas which in the future were to struggle for the
mastery, namely, the idea of liberalism and the idea of socialism, the
former derived from Voltaire, the latter from Rousseau. As the two
programmes deal point by point with the same subjects, the difference
strikes us here as it does nowhere else.
In the first years of the Revolution there had been no mention of
socialism. Men aimed at freeing capital from unjust burdens, not at
limiting its power. This is clearly shown by the fact that the first
proof which the victorious bourgeoisie gave of their authority after
the storming of the Bastille was the publication of a decree that
the printers were to be held responsible for every book or pamphlet
published by writers without known means of subsistence (_sans
existence connue_). This regulation was published on the 24th of
July 1789, exactly ten days after the capture of the Bastille. The
bourgeoisie took care, as soon as they had mounted themselves, to draw
the ladder up after them. Their first act, when they had won their own
place by the aid of the pen, was to take the pen out of the hand of the
classes below them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account