The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1926-11-20
Anatole France

writers of our time.
Anatoe France Is such "a unique figure in mod.
ern European culture that to judge and evaluate
him Is very difficult thing aad one which can be
done from the most diverse points OF view. shall
attempt to give short sketch of his development
and few touches Of his socialcultural growth.
Anatole France was born In 1s45; his life may be
divided into three parts: From his FIRST work writ
ten in 1875-to the Dreyfus Affair; from the latter
to the World War; and the last period-from the
war up to the present Anatole France began as
Parnassien- The Parnasse was an extraordinary
refined school Of bourgeois culture. Up to the time
Of the Commune, the inteectuals OF the bourgeoisis
were permsated with a certain bitter pessimism.
The rule of the regime of the big bourgeolse called
forth certain In the best part Of the French
tntelligentsia- The intelecuals tried to separate
themselves from the spirit of the merchants and
the inhumanity which found especially raw
preston under the regime OF Napoleon III and Of
the bourse. At the same time, this inteligentsia
had not the slightest intention OF organizing any
kind Of effective, political protest. Among the
gifted poets and writer's there were only very few
who had inclination towards politics. The poll :
tics of the government seemed impure the revolu-
tionary politics all that lay between
petty and useless. Hence the striving of the artists
after formal content hence their philosophic renec
lions the imperfections life and their height
ened pessimism. These were the features with
which the leaders of those days. the leaders of the
Parnassus, endowed: Lecomte de PIsle, the
FOmanticst akin to him, Alfred de vigny, such
ters as Heredia, Gautier and others. The same
spirit also dominated the great romanticst Faubert
The young Anatole France did not exactly incline
towards pessimism, but he likewise felt himself to
be a pure esthete Ear from the hideous chaos of
life, filed with the plastic wisdom common to the
chosen strata of the refined bourgeois inteigentsia
Skepticism predominated in Anatole France already
then In his eyes all truths uncertain and
vacilating Towards Christianity he maintained a
mocking attitude; he liked oppose to it epicurean
heather moods. In the eyes of Anatole France the
world had nothing serious to exhibit and even this
world seemed to him the product of chance If life
worth living, then solely for tthe sake of the
esthetic enjoyment the esthetic working-up of ex-
periences, and sti moreits esthetic reproduction.
Already then, Anatole France stood out as a prom
tnent stylist At the bottom that which constituted
Anatole Frances unique charm, was the union of
his eclectic STYLE of his immense knowledge of all
epochs from which he chose his themes, with his
fine skeptical SMILE which shone forth from all of
bis pictures and characters las IL he smiling
Q little at his own marionettes as if he wanted to
say that he less than anything else belonged to
this marionette world.
With his f'Abbe Colgnard' "a wise topper and skep-
&c whom he had set in the milieu of the middle
eges-Anatole France had brought. himself fame not
only in France, but thruout the whole world At the
same time he also stepped to the foreground as a
critic. It is very characteristic that Anatole
France, in this his last quality adhered exclusively
at the time to the formal artistic performance.
Eola, who at that time began to draw the serious
furrow Of his deepreachng naturalism inspired him
with horror, and France wrote article him at
that time which is more like an exasperated pamph-
let than critical essay Kurdin the not unknown
Russian publicst of socialrevolutionary tendency,
dedicated article to Anatole France and Jules
Lemaitre, similar gourmet in the field of esthetic
culture. in which he does differentiate the one
from the other at all.
Anatole France, from all appearances represen-
kative OF the skeptical literature of decadence Of
She seventies and eighties differed nevertheless very
essentially from Jules Lemaitre which was sufhci-
ently demonstrated by the Dreyfus affair. The
skeptic, Jules Lemaitre. a true bourgeois, was