Novelists From France

"“Sheep run to the slaughterhouse, silent and hopeless, but at least sheep never vote for the butcher who kills them or the people who devour them. More beastly than any beast, more sheepish than any sheep, the voter names his own executioner and chooses his own devourer, and for this precious “right” a revolution was fought.” (Voters' strike)"

"Presque tous les hommes ressemblent à ces grands palais déserts dont le propriétaire n'habite que quelques pièces; et il ne pénètre jamais dans les ailes condamnées."

"Où finit la correction? Où commence le martyre? Dans l'entre-deux, des milliers d'enfants peuplent un enfer qui ne fait pas de bruit."

"Il s'en est fallu de très peu que les larmes de Judas ne fussent confondues, dans le souvenir des hommes, avec celles de Pierre. Il aurait pu devenir un saint, le patron de nous tous qui ne cessons de trahir."

"On atteint aisément une âme vivante à travers les crimes, les vices les plus tristes, mais la vulgarité est infranchissable."

"Come to the edge. We might fall. Come to the edge. It's too high! COME TO THE EDGE! And they came And he pushed And they flew."

"Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."

"Ce qui fait le poète, n'est-ce pas l'amour, la recherche désespérée du moindre rayon de soleil d'autrefois jouant sur le parquet d'une chambre d'enfant?"

"J’aime tellement l’Allemagne que je suis heureux qu’il y en ait deux."

"Le mythe de Prométhée signifie que toute la tristesse du monde a son siège dans le foie. Mais qui oserait reconnaître une vérité si humble?"

"Me voici devant tous un homme plein de sens Connaissant la vie et de la mort ce qu'un vivant peut connaître Ayant éprouvé les douleurs et les joies de l'amour Ayant su quelquefois imposer ses idées Connaissant plusieurs langages Ayant pas mal voyagé Ayant vu la guerre dans l'Artillerie et l'lnfanterie Blessé à la tête trépané sous le chloroforme Ayant perdu ses meilleurs amis dans l'effroyable lutte Je sais d'ancien et de nouveau autant qu'un homme seul pourrait des deux savoir"

"Nous voulons explorer la bonté contrée énorme où tout se tait"

"J'ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère L'automne est morte souviens-t'en Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre Odeur du temps brin de bruyère Et souviens-toi que je t'attends"

"Passons passons puisque tout passe Je me retournerai souvent Les souvenirs sont cors de chasse Dont meurt le bruit parmi le vent"

"Voici que vient l'été la saison violente Et ma jeunesse est morte ainsi que le printemps Ô soleil c'est le temps de la raison ardente"

"Et l'unique cordeau des trompettes marines"

"Un jour Un jour je m'attendais moi-même Je me disais Guillaume il est temps que tu viennes Pour que je sache enfin celui-là que je suis Moi qui connais les autres"

"Ô bouches l'homme est a la recherche d'un nouveau langage Auquel le grammairien d'aucune langue n'aura rien à dire"

"Je passais au bord de la Seine Un livre ancien sous le bras Le fleuve est pareil à ma peine Il s'écoule et ne tarit pas Quand donc finira la semaine"

"Passent les jours et passent les semaines Ni temps passé Ni les amours reviennent"

"Mon beau navire ô ma mémoire Avons-nous assez navigué Dans une onde mauvaise à boire Avons-nous assez divagué De la belle aube au triste soir"

"Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine Et nos amours Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne La joie venait toujours après la peine Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure Les jours s'en vont je demeure"

"L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante L'amour s'en va Comme la vie est lente Et comme l'Espérance est violente"

"Adieu faux amour confondu Avec la femme qui s'éloigne Avec celle que j'ai perdue L'année dernière en Allemagne Et que je ne reverrai plus Voie lactée ô sœur lumineuse Des blancs ruisseaux de Chanaan Et des corps blancs des amoureuses Nageurs morts suivrons-nous d’ahan Ton cours vers d'autres nébuleuses"

"La géométrie est aux arts plastiques ce que la grammaire est à l'art de l'écrivain."

"De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes, d'une part, la choréographie, d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il est résulté, dans Parade, une sorte de sur-réalisme."

"The poems I am writing at the moment will be much closer to your present way of thinking.I am trying to renew poetic style,but within a classical framework.On the other hand,I don't want to lapse into imitating others.Letter to Picasso 1918"

"Moi qui sais des lais pour les reines Les complaintes de mes années Des hymnes d'esclave aux murènes La romance du mal-aimé Et des chansons pour les sirènes"

"A la fin tu es las de ce monde ancien Bergère ô tour Eiffel le troupeau des ponts bêle ce matin Tu en as assez de vivre dans l'antiquité grecque et romaine"

"Et ma vie pour tes yeux lentement s'empoisonne"

"On ne fait non plus de cas de pauvres que de couillons: on les laisse à la porte; jamais n'entrent."

"Le rire pour l'âme et le vin pour le corps."

"I think I see another motive in the French writers who in 1914 adopted the attitude of M. Romain Rolland – the fear that they would fall into national partiality if they admitted that their nation was in the right. It may be asserted that these writers would have warmly taken up the cause of France, if France had not been their own country. Whereas Barrès said, "I always maintain my country is right even if it is in the wrong," these strange friends of justice are not unwilling to say: "I always maintain my country is in the wrong, even if it is right." There again we see that the frenzy of impartiality, like any other frenzy, leads to injustice."

"The true clerc is Vauvenargues, Lamarck, Fresnel, … Spinoza, Schiller, Baudelaire, César Franck, who were never diverted from single-hearted adoration of the beautiful and the divine by the necessity of earning their daily bread. But such clercs are inevitably rare. … The rule is that the living creature condemned to struggle for life turns to practical passions, and thence to the sanctifying of those passions."

"For the intellectual class, expertise has usually been a service rendered, and sold, to the central authority of society. This is the trahison des clercs of which Julien Benda spoke in the 1920s. Expertise in foreign affairs, for example, has usually meant the legitimization of the conduct of foreign policy and, what is more to the point, a sustained investment in revalidating the role of experts in foreign affairs. The same sort of thing is true of literary critics and professional humanists, except that their expertise is based upon noninterference in what Vico grandly calls the world of nations but which prosaically might just as well be called “the world.” We tell our students and our general constituency that we defend the classics, the virtues of a liberal education, and the precious pleasures of literature even as we also show ourselves to be silent (perhaps incompetent) about the historical and social world in which all these things take place. ...Humanists and intellectuals accept the idea that ... cultural types are not supposed to interfere in matters for which the social system has not certified them."

"One of the principle causes is that the modern world has made the clerc into a citizen, subject to all the responsibilities of a citizen, and consequently to despise lay passions is far more difficult for him than for his predecessors."

"If shame is cried upon him, … he will point out … that today he has to earn his living, and that it is not his fault if he is eager to support the class which takes a pleasure in his productions."

"The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action..."

"That teaching of modern metaphysics which exhorts man to feel comparatively little esteem for the truly thinking portion of himself and to honor the active and willing part of himself with all his devotion..."

"Philosophy, which formerly raised man to feel conscious of himself because he was a thinking being and to say, ‘I think therefore I am,” now raises him to say … “I think, therefore I am not,” (unless he takes thought into consideration only in that humble region where it is confused with action)."

"What these thinkers despise in the man of study is precisely the man who … does not predicate the capture of its environment by the species, or who, if he does predicate it, as the scientist does by his discoveries, retains for himself only the joy of knowledge and abandons the practical exploitation of his discoveries to others."

"Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; today he is divine because he has been able to create equipment which makes him the master of matter."

"Formerly, leaders of states practiced realism, but did not honor it… With them morality was violated, but moral notions remained intact. … The modern governor, owing to the fact that he addresses crowds, is compelled to be a moralist, and to present his acts as bound up with a system of morality."

"The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt."

"From his loftiest pulpit the modern clerc assures man that he is great in proportion as he is practical."

"The modern moralists extol … the cult of practical activity in defiance of the disinterested life."

"When Machiavelli advises the Prince to carry out the Machiavellian scheme of action, he invests those actions with no sort of morality or beauty. For him morality remains what it is for everyone else, and does not cease to remain so because he observes (not without melancholy) that it is incompatible with politics. … For him evil, even if it aids politics, still remains evil. The modern realists are the moralists of realism. For them, the act which makes the State strong is invested with a moral character by the fact that it does so, and this whatever the act may be. The evil which serves politics ceases to be evil and becomes good."

"For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics."

"Up until our own times men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and morality. One was Plato’s and it said: “Morality decides politics”; and the other was Machiavelli’s, and it said “Politics have nothing to do with morality.” Today we receive a third. M. Maurras teaches: “Politics decide morality.”"

"Teachers … preach “the superiority of the intelligence”; but they preach it because in their opinion it is the intelligence which shows us the actions required for our interests, i.e. from exactly the same passion for the practical."