c/o Austin Warren
15 W. Davenport St.
Iowa City (Iowa)

Sirs,

The above will be my address until
the end of May. After that, it will be:
219 Freeman Street
Brookline, Mass.

There is no need for hurry in reach-
ing a decision about my essay, SWANN AND
HAMLET. I am leaving New York for a while
and I wanted you to have my address.

32 High Street
New Haven, Conn.

7 October 1941

Dear Red,

The twentieth volume of Les Hommes came out a few
days after you returned the article. I have incorporated
it now and followed your suggestions. That is, I have
recast a few sentences and cut down some of the listings.
Not all, however. Feel free to cut them down more if you
think it wise. I think some of them rather important
for a few of the points I try to make.

These first few weeks at Yale have been strenuous
and taxing. New courses, new students, new colleagues
have bewildered me. Not until yesterday did I see familiar
faces when Bill and Léonie Troy came to spend the day
with me.

I haven't heard from Austin since his marriage,
but Sherman has written that all goes smoothly in Iowa.

Thank you again for telling me about Mrs. Ann
Watkins. Her assistant, Miss Margot Johnson, has refused
to take on my novel. She likes it and feels it should be
published. But she is afraid that she would be unable to
"sell" it. Too introspective, too special, too literary,
too pro-French, etc. I am not taking her verdict literally,
and shall the manuscript around myself, first to those
editors I happen to know are francophiles. Miracles happen
even in the publishing business. Thus I comfort myself.

I hope that you and Cinina are now pleasantly
installed in your new house and that the early term rush
is over. The other day, in reading, I came across the
words "chicken cacciatore" and thought of the wonderful
dinner in your Iowan home. I wish that you were not so
far away.

With faithful regards to you and Cinina,

2

have not been slow in appearing, both favorable and adverse.
The size already attained in the published part justifies a
pause in the reading and an attempt to place the novel in the
career of Romains and to consider the particular form of art
it represents.

Without any doubt, *Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté* is to
be Romains' central work. He has said so himself in his pre-
face to the first volume. But his first important book, pub-
lished in 1908, — the year he chose to open the story of his
novel — was poetry; in fact, he has published five or more
volumes of poetry, and his most recent, *L'Homme Blanc*, of
1937, interrupted the publication of his novel. It is in the
lyricism of this early poetry, *La Vie Unanime*, that Romains
states the initial impulse of his sensitivity which has grown
into a complicated verbalism in his mature writing. "Unanimism"
is his own word, his own formula, the theme of his early poetry
and the key to his recent prose. The unanimist feels the
poetry of the whole: of the whole street, of the whole city,
of all humanity. He is not an individual looking at the world
and being moved by it; rather, he is a part of the whole and
feels the movement of the whole because he is so closely
merged with it. He feels the reality of the street and the
city and the group because his personal feelings have been
absorbed in them. If he remains one, he will be unlimited,
like the sponge which never bursts through soaking up an
infinity of water. His intimate thoughts and his heart are

3

worthy to be scorned when he contrasts his own dream with the
profounder dream of the city. The height of his lyricism is
reached when he seizes the happiness of non-being: "Je connais
le bonheur de n'être presque pas"; and his soul becomes the
street in its various postures of meditation: "Mon âme c'est
la rue au soir qui se recueille."

Romains was not a student of sociology during the
years when he was composing *La Vie Unanime*, between 1904 and
1907. His poetry is not the versified lesson of his teacher
Durkheim at Normale because he had written it before reading
Durkheim or hearing his voice. Although he graciously sent
a copy of his versé to Gustave Le Bon, he had taken care not
to read a line of the sociologist. There were two surer masters
who inspired the lyrical movement of the young Romains and
whose influence is perceptible throughout *Les Hommes de Bonne
Volonté*. These masters were Victor Hugo and Paris. They might
be coalesced into one: the Paris of Victor Hugo.

The French temperament is periodically assailed by
one form or another of preciosity. The most constant is per-
haps the lyric expression the French give to the beauty of the
city, to the beauty of the parts, of the things of the city:
the light of its sky, the form of its trees, the architecture
of its buildings, the grace of its evenings. The poetic eye
sees this so intensely that the stature of man in the city
is diminished. This is not true of the greatest artists.
Villon and Baudelaire do not sacrifice the drama of man to
his habitation. But Victor Hugo and his disciple Jules Ro-
mains have made their creatures indistinct one from another

5

dog) drawn from every class, who meet or live separately.
Each volume introduces new characters many of whom seem to
be isolated from those we already know, and new intrigues or
enterprises which also seem to bear no relation to the intri-
gues we are already following. But the scheme of the entire
work is intricate and extensive. Every detail has doubtless
been consciously planned, and its reason and relation to the
rest will become apparent only with the unfolding of the
story. In the treatment of so numerous a world it is quite
remarkable that a reader is able to remember most of the
characters. They are described with a touch that is sure and
clear; they are usually given names that are creations in
themselves, e.g. Wazemmes, Havercamp, Champcenais, Saint-
Papoul, Maillecottin; we first see them in the performance
of some act which henceforth will be associated with them;
they will serve not only as instruments in the accomplish-
ment of some act: such as crime, seduction, or political
espionage, but they will serve too as a specific tonality
or picturesque motif which is often the basis of whole pas-
sages and essays. Gradually M. Romains seems to be building
up a community where every type will be represented, where
every human desire, vice and ambition will have its part,
where every profession will be analysed even in its most
tedious details. A bookbinder, a student, a priest, a phy-
sician, a teacher, a business man, a spinster, a countess,
a writer, a prime minister, a general, a cardinal, a workman,
a pimp: the list could be extended indefinitely and the
characters who make it up would not be confused as concerns

6

their physical characteristics, their vocation, and their
most insistent desires. The triumph of clarity in the novel
of Jules Romains has been achieved.

What effect does the unanimist treatment of charac-
ters have on the psychological development of a work of art,
such as a novel? The simple answer to such a question seems
to be that the psychological development of Romains' charac-
ters is superficial. In trying to discover what philosophy
of man Romains incorporates in his work, we are forced to
admit that unanimism tends to destroy the possibility of any
philosophy because it tends to destroy the individual. The
skill with which Romains is able to evoke the unit or the
group: the banlieue-nord of Paris, the ecclesiastical world
of a provincial bishop, the Ecole Normale on the rue d'Ulm—
is not maintained in the psychological motivation or drama
of the characters who inhabit these various worlds. They are
largely automatons or servants of the unit in
which they have a place. The color of the unit is their color,
the success of the unit is their success; the action of the
unit as a whole is the action which they follow irrevocably.

What remains of an individual when subjected to such
treatment is an over-simplified characterization, a picturesque
one, usually pathetic and almost always sexually motivated.
M. Romains is obsessed with the sex impulse and the sexual
adventures of his characters. If some have no real adventures,
they have dreams and thoughts of physical possession. Even
the dog Macaire, who serves as one of the most humorous motifs
in the work, has a dramatic although abortive love escapade.

7

But if sex is the permanent basis for Romains' psychological
dissertations, it also is treated as though it were a unit
in the unanimistic régime, implacable and commanding. An
overwhelming portion of the literary work is consecrated to
erotic didactism. Sex is monotonously the same experience
with a countess, a student, a dog and a minister of foreign
relations. The pattern of courtship and amorous capitulation
is stated over and over again with no psychological variations.
The adulterous scene with the worldly Marie de Champcenais
(Vol. 5) is described with the same hesitations and thoughts
as is the ancillary scene of the young priest Mionnet (Vol.8)
and the very specially prepared scene of assault with the
novelist-critic Allory (Vol. 11). At times it would appear
that the various groups and separate intrigues of the novel
will be united and given coherence thanks to the similar
sex urge in all seven hundred characters and the resultant
irregular sexual relations.

The problem of the hero in *Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté*
is mysterious. And yet not mysterious when one considers that
the rules of unanimism do not provide for a hero. (Soon cri-
tics will be saying that Paris is the hero of this novel, as
they have said that the cathedral is the real hero of *Notre
Dame de Paris*.) Several of the volumes have given most of their
pages to one character: Quinette, the bookbinder, in the
second volume; Louis Bastide, the child, in the sixth; Viaur,
the doctor, in the twelfth; Jallez, the writer, in the eigh-
teenth. Only in four of the volumes so far does it seem im-
possible to name the leading character. But from these

12

ness which Jallez and Jerphanion have in their hearts.) Zola's
Rougon-Macquart traces the epic story of a family through the
generations of the Second Empire and explains the suffering
of his creatures in terms of relentless laws of heredity and
social injustice. Proust's *A la recherche du temps perdu*
limits itself largely to one social class living through the
first two decades of the twentieth century, and analyzes their
moribund complex sensibilities which appear livid in the years
subsequent to the period of their true power. But the parts
of the *Comédie Humaine* are separate novels and the unity
given them by their title remains an exterior unity. Likewise
in the long work of Zola, each division has its particular
focus and conclusion. Proust's work, however, is a novel, and
its internal unity comes from its hero. No one of the elaborate
passages in the sixteen volumes detracts from Marcel's
search for the time of his past.

The "roman-fleuve" of Jules Romains has humorously
been called a "roman-caoutchouc" by a critic in the February,
1941, number of Esprit, one of the few literary reviews still
appearing in non-occupied France. Is there a structural plan
or unity visible in the groupings of the various volumes or
hidden in the true meaning of the title given to the entire
work? Until the publication of the nineteenth, the volumes
always appeared in groups of two. At the end of the fourth
volume there is a letter from the author to his readers which
states that these four volumes form the prologue and announce
the "organic multiplicity" of things. M. Romains said also
that he has planned a carefully symmetrical construction and

13

has resigned himself in advance to the critics' reproach of
no plan and haphazard progress in Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté.
We are convinced that M. Romains knows what he is going to
write, but we are also convinced that after reading twenty
volumes of a novel, we too should have some opinion concern-
ing its plan and purpose.

It is possible that the first four volumes are a
prologue of "organic multiplicity". In them Wazemmes, the
young apprentice, loses his virginity in a very natural way;
Quinette commits his crime; Jallez narrates his childhood
love for Hélène Sigeau; and Jerphanion wanders through the
streets of Paris until he meets a young and attractive mil-
liner. Volumes five to twelve continue many other episodes
announced in the first four and introduce antitheses in huma-
nity. We meet the successful business man Havercamp in Les
Superbes, and the young boy, Louis Bastide, timid and poor,
of Les Humbles; we meet free Masons in Recherche d'une Eglise,
and the Catholic priest Mionnet (who seems to have little
understanding of his faith) in Province; we meet the mediocre
writer Allory in Recours à l'Abîme, and the industrious phy-
sician Viaur in Les Créateurs. Volumes thirteen to sixteen
prepare and describe the first world war. Volumes seventeen
to nineteen bring back Quinette, whose murders are beginning
to induce insanity; and Jallez, who composes poetry and makes
love in Nice; and Clanricard who in 1922 wearies of teaching
and matrimony and is contemplating a trip to Russia, Cette
Grande Lueur à l'Est. Volume twenty, Le Monde est ton aven-
ture, which appeared in September, 1941, in the "Editions de

14

la Maison Française" of New York, carries the scene into Russia. In Odessa, Jallez and the English journalist Bartlett observe the traces of famine and the _mœurs_ of the Soviet Union; in Moscow, Jerphanion and the French minister Bouitton form their first impression of the Russian state. The final sentence of the volume announces the imminent reunion of Jallez and Jerphanion.

Perhaps the order of the volumes and their episodes have little importance in the general plan. Perhaps when we discover who the "men of good will" are, the meaning of the work will be clear. It is doubtless false to pick out from this long repertory of human life the characters who do good (as contrasted with those who do evil) and consider them the men of good will. It would be false to put in the first group: Louis Bastide, Abbé Jeanne and Clanricard; and in the second group: Quinette, Abbé Mionnet and Laulerque. It would also seem erroneous to consider those who submit themselves to society the characters of good will: teachers, priests, workers; and to consider in the opposite group those who try to rule: politicians, capitalists, artists. The conclusion is forced upon us: all are men of good will. All humanity has goodness no matter how distorted it has become in some individuals. Society is one; men are one. A great event, such as a war, proves it. The novel of Romains is to reflect a great modern city in which thousands of individual lives are spent with daily occupations, loves and hates, but all of which feel certain kindred impulses and are joined mysteriously in the

15

meaning of great events. Romains has Poincaré say in *Mission à Rome*: "Cette guerre-ci (des Balkans) sort en somme, à un an d'intervalle, de la guerre italo-turque, qui se rattachait elle-même à tout ce qui couve dans ce coin de l'Europe depuis octobre 1908, et au-delà."

In the character Quinette, who is a murderer, there are many traits of kindliness and sobriety. If his insanity becomes more pronounced in future volumes, his evil acts will be forgiven him, and our first supposition that he was close to the Gidian type of hero, will be false. Romains' abundant use of antitheses, so dear to his master Hugo, which we first saw in the juxtaposition of characters and scenes, we now see in the juxtaposition of traits within a single character. There may, however, be some danger to unanimism in this explanation. Despite all efforts on the part of their creator, perhaps the heroes will end by claiming what is theirs in a novel which claims in its title to concern itself with human nature.

We must watch the character Pierre Jallez in his future appearances. There is much of both Louis Farigoule and Jules Romains in him. (For Louis Farigoule was once a student at Normale and then became the writer Jules Romains; and Jules Romains remembers that once he was called Louis and perhaps rolled a hoop through the streets of Paris.) Nothing can be prophesied about this "work in Progress", but let us continue to follow Jallez, who in his very detachment from the characters around him, even from those he loves, and in his

16

philosophical attitude toward events and ideas and matters of the heart, is perhaps destined to succumb as a hero or conquer as a hero. From the susceptible soul of Pierre Jallez we may see the emergence of a hero, or at least the thoughts of a hero, while around him and under him will continue to agitate the hundreds of episodes which he will bring together in some way, at some time.

V

All such prophesy is tenuous and it may be stimulated by an effort to make a novel out of *Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté* when the work really is a genre which claims some place within the loose limits of the novel but whose general literary effect is closer to the traditional effect of another genre. *Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté* is a work of lyricism. The poet of *La Vie Unanime* has recapitulated his first themes, but the action into which he has forced them is so diffuse that the force and unifying focus which action in a novel should have, are subordinated to effects of lyric quality. There are numerous instances of "action" and "history" in each of the volumes, but their accumulation and their unfolding follow what may be the theory of unanimism in that they do not stand for significance in themselves but for some larger motive which rules their destiny. We follow action and history in *Les Hommes de Bonne Volonté* as we follow symbol or allegory. The daily tritenesses of so many men of good will shift our attention to the clarity with which they are narrated, to their color and their speed, to the very form which

17

they take in adhering one to another, like the various layers
of a coral island.

There is the lyricism of events and of the vacilla-
tion of human beings. And all these forms of lyricism are
spoken without much difference of tone, because all men are
joined by their common good will, and a simple act of any
one of them is known and understood by all. The lyricism of
Romains states that no single act is important in itself,
but whether or not it is felt by the group, is important. He
has chosen the lyricism of a period in history of great up-
heaval: "Nous sommes dans un temps qui semble encore promis
à de fortes secousses, qui semble même les appeler..." (Vol.
19, p. 168), and the lyricism of war fills some of his most
moving pages. Here is the announcement of the war of 1914,
which is a song about the meaning of war in which the leading
words are personified as in the poetry of Victor Hugo:

Il n'allait pas leur falloir huit jours pour saisir par
voie d'évidence que s'ouvrait la grande guerre finale de
la Liberté, du Droit et de la Civilisation. Ce à quoi
l'Histoire les appelait, c'était la grande bataille, com-
mencée il y avait cent vingt ans, interrompue et toujours
différée depuis, des Démocraties contre les Absolutismes,
le grand soulèvement des Peuples contre les Rois et les
Empereurs. [Vol. 14, pp. 292-3.]

Constantly throughout the work is heard the lyricism
of Paris: the noises in the rue Réaumur (Vol. 3); the Clo-
serie des Lilas and the meeting of poets (Vol. 4); little
Louis Bastide selling his bags of coffee (Vol. 6); the indus-
trial landscape — pages in which Romains equals the lyricism
of Zola and Verhaeren (Vol. 9). The strong abundant lyricism
of the city cuts across many of the pages in the twentieth

18

volume. The vision of poverty striken Odessa of 1922 incites
in Jallez humanitarian and philosophical thoughts. In this
new volume observations on our period as a whole become more
and more important: the degradation of our world was announced
by the first world war and since that time, like some gigantic
forest fire, one part after another has been caught in the
general conflagration. "La guerre a été la trompette du sabbat.
Depuis, tout se peut, tout se voit, tout revient." (Vol. 20,
p. 292).

But the adventure of man is eternal, believes Jallez.
And the earth itself covers his aventure. The vastness of this
new literary work is like the vastness of the new Russia which
Jallez discovers. It is an endless land which man needs for
his endless adventure. "Sire, tout est dans le caractère
français," Maykosen says to William II (Vol. 15, p. 214), and
one feels that in his novel Jules Romains is attempting to
describe the drama of modern humanity as it operates on the
French character and the French nation. France will be the
most lucid sufferer of the modern tragedy. It would seem
that M. Romains believes this tragedy to be the impotency
of the multitudes to use the liberty which they had acquired.
The men of good will of our century enter life as dancers
enter a round which has been opened up for them and dance
mechanically. What can be the future, if they
persist in using only the normal and reasonable means for
the mastery of events?

New Haven, October, 1941.