Assume for a moment that Catholicism were dead for
centuries, that all tradition of its rites were forgotten. Only the
cathedrals remain, monuments now unintelligible, but retaining their
wonder, from a forgotten faith, dumb and alienated from their purpose.
Then suppose that one day, scholars, with the help of historical
documents, decide to reconstruct the ceremonies once held in them, the
very ceremonies for which they were built, that were their true
significance and the reason for their existence, and without which they
can be nothing but a dead letter; and suppose then that artists, seduced
by the dream of giving back a momentary life to these great, stranded
vessels, try to make of them, for one brief hour, the theatres of that
mysterious drama that was played out in a mist of chants and perfume,
undertake, in a word, to do for the Mass and for the cathedrals what the cognoscenti
of the South have done for the theatre at Orange and for the Tragedies of
the ancient world.
Is there a government that is in the least concerned about France's
artistic past that would not subsidize to a large extent such a
magnificent endeavour? Do you think that what it has done for Roman ruins
it could not fail to do for France's own monuments, for those cathedrals
which are probably the noblest but undeniably the most original expression
of the French genius? Because one might prefer the literature of other
nations to our own literature, their music to our music, their painting
and their sculpture to ours; but it is in France that Gothic architecture
has created its first and its most perfect masterpieces. Other countries
merely imitated our religious architecture, but without ever equalling it.
See them then (I am taking up my hypothesis again), these men of
learning, busying themselves to discover the vanished significance of our
cathedral churches: meaning comes back to carvings and to stained-glass
windows, a mysterious perfume hangs like a cloud once more within the
temple, a sacred drama is played out, the cathedral takes up its song once
again. The government is well advised to grant its subsidy, grants it,
indeed with better reason than in the case of Orange, of the Opéra and of
the Opéra-Comique, for this resurrection of Catholic ceremonies is of
historical, social, plastic, musical interest, whose beauty alone is above
anything any other artist has ever dreamed, and which Wagner alone has
come near to rivalling, in Parsifal, and only then, because he
took them as his models.
Car-loads of snobs descend upon the Holy City (whether it be Amiens,
Chartres, Bourges, Laon, Rheims, Rouen or Paris, any town you care to
mention, we have so many sublime cathedrals!), and, once a year,
experience that thrill which formerly they sought out at Bayreuth or at
Orange, sampling a work of art within the frame that was originally made
to contain it. But there sadly, as at Orange, they can never be anything
but sight-seers and dilettanti; do what they may, the soul to
which once this ritual spoke is theirs no longer. The artists that have
come to perform the chants, the actors brought to play the priests, may be
well coached, may have absorbed the spirit of their parts; the Minister
for Education may spare them neither decorations nor compliments. But, in
spite of all that, we cannot help but say: "Alas! how much more beautiful
the festivals must have been when real priests said the Office, not with
the object of giving to the sophisticated onlookers an idea of what it was
all like, but because they believed in the virtue of their rites as truly
as did the artists who carved the Last Judgement in the tympanum of the
porch, or set the lives of the saints in the stained glass of the apse.
What higher, truer note must all have struck when the assembled people
made their response to the priest, and bowed when the bell sounded for the
Elevation, not with the detachment of actors in a revival, but because
they, too, like their priest, like the man who had carved the stone, had
faith. But alas! these things are as distant to us as the pious
enthusiasm of the Greek people for their theatrical performances and our
'reconstructions' do not give us any idea what they were really like."
Such would we say if the Catholic religion no longer existed and
scholars had succeeded in rediscovering its rites, if artists had
attempted to revive them for us. But it still exists authentically and has
not, as it were, changed since the great century when the cathedrals were
built. There is no need for us to imagine what a thirteenth century
cathedral was like, as a living entity in the full exercise of its
function, there is no need for us, as with the theatre at Orange, to have
recourse to reconstructions, to retrospectives that may be exact but are
frozen in ice. We have but to enter, at no matter what hour of the day,
when the Office is being celebrated. The miming, the singing are not
dependent on actors with no 'conviction'. It is the ministers of Faith who
officiate there, not in a conception of aestheticism, but of faith, and
therefore more aesthetically. No 'extras' could give a greater sense of
reality, of sincerity, to the scene, because it is the members of the
congregation who play the extras here, though such a thought never enters
their heads. It may be said that, thanks to the continuity of these very
rituals in the Catholic Church, and thanks to the unshaken hold of
Catholic faith on the hearts of the French people, the cathedrals are not
only the loveliest monuments of our art, but are the only ones that still
perform the functions for which they were made.
But the breach of the French government with Rome seems likely, in no
short time, to bring up for discussion, and probable adoption, a project
of M. Briand's*,
the effect of which must be that, at the end of five years, our churches
may, and often will, be alienated from their true purpose; not only will
no government subsidy be forthcoming for the celebration of the rites, but
the very fabrics will be transformed in what ever way may seem fit for
those in authority: to serve the purpose of museums, lecture halls or
casinos. Oh! Monsieur André Hallays, you go on repeating that all life is
taken out of works of art, as soon as they no longer fulfil the aims that
presided over their creation, that a utensil that becomes a trinket and a
palace that becomes a museum become frozen, can no longer speak to our
heart, and in the end just die - I hope that you are going to pause for a
moment to denounce the more or less clumsy restorations that every day are
threatening the French towns that you have taken under your protection,
and that you are going to get up, make your voice heard, harass, if need
be, M. Chaumié, bring round, if necessary, M. de Monzie to the cause,
rally M. John Labusquière, to reassemble the Commission for historic
monuments. Your ingenious zeal has often proved effective, you cannot
allow all the churches in France to die in one single blow.
Today there is not a single socialist with any taste who does not
deplore the mutilations that the Revolution inflicted on our cathedrals,
so many statues, so many stained-glass windows smashed. Well then, it
would be better to devastate a church than to deconsecrate it. As long as
the Mass is celebrated in it, however mutilated it may be, at least it
still retains some life. The day it is deconsecrated it is dead, and even
if it were protected as an historic monument from scandalous
appropriations, it is still nothing more than a museum. One might say to
the churches what Jesus said to his disciples: "Unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." (John VI,
53), these somewhat mysterious but profound words of the Saviour becoming,
in this new sense, an axiom for aesthetics and architecture. When the
sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ, the sacrifice of the Mass,
shall no longer be celebrated in our churches, the life will have gone out
of them. The Catholic Liturgy is one with the architecture and the
carvings of our cathedrals, because these things derive from the self-same
symbolism: we know that there is scarcely a scrap of sculpture in a
cathedral church, no matter how secondary in importance it may seem, which
has not its symbolic value. If the statue of Christ on the Western porch
of Amiens cathedral is raised up on a pedestal decorated with roses,
lilies and vines, it is because Christ said: "I am a rose of Sharon, a
lily of the valleys. I am the true vine."
If at his feet are carved the adder and the basilisk, the lion and the
dragon, it is because of the verse in Psalm XCI: Inculcabis super
aspidem et leonem. To his left, in a small bas-relief, is
represented a man who lets his sword drop at the sight of a wild animal,
while at his side a bird continues to sing. This is the "coward who has
not the courage of a thrush", and what this bas-relief means to symbolize,
in effect, is cowardice as opposed to courage, because it is placed
beneath the statue that is always (at least in the earliest times) to the
left of the statue of Christ, the statue of St Peter, the apostle of
courage.
And the same for the thousands of figures that decorate the cathedral.
So, the religious ceremonies share the same symbolism. In an admirable
book that I would one day like to have the opportunity to pay full
acknowledgement, M. Emile Mâle analyzes, on the authority of Guillaume
Durand's Rational des divins offices, the first part of the
Office for Easter Saturday in the following terms:
"The day begins with the extinction of every lamp in the church to show that the ancient Law, which once gave light to the world, has been abrogated.
Next, the celebrant blesses the new flames which symbolize the new Dispensation, causing them to leap from the stone walls, as a reminder that, in the words of St Paul, Jesus Christ is the headstone of the corner of the world. Then the Bishop and the Deacon move towards the choir and stop before the pascal candle.
This candle, as Guillaume Durand tells us, is a triple symbol. Extinguished, it stands for the column of cloud which led the Jews by day, for the ancient Law, and for the body of Jesus Christ. Lit, it symbolises the column of fire which Israel saw in the darkness, the new Law, and the glorified body of Jesus Christ, risen. The Deacon makes allusion to this triple meaning by reciting in front of the candle the formula of the Exultet.
But he lays especial emphasis upon the resemblance between the candle and the body of Jesus Christ. He recalls that the immaculate wax is the product of the bee, an insect at once chaste and fruitful, like the Blessed Virgin who brought the Saviour into the world. To give visual form to this likeness of the wax to the divine body, he sticks into it five grains of incense, which are reminders of the five wounds of Christ and the perfumes bought by the holy women for the embalming of His body. Finally, he lights the candle from the newly kindled flame, and all the lamps in the church are lit, as a sign that the new Law has been spread throughout the world."
But this, it will be said, is an exceptional Feast-Day. In answer to
that objection, let me give an interpretation of the daily celebration of
the Mass. It will be seen that it is no less symbolic.
The sad and solemn chant of the Introit begins the Office. It
tells of the patient waiting of the patriarchs and the prophets. The
choral accompaniment of the priests is the choir of the saints of the
ancient Dispensation, sighing for the coming of the Messiah whom they
shall not see. Then the Bishop enters, imaging the figure of the living
Christ. His coming symbolizes the coming of the Saviour, for which the
nations have waited. On the occasion of the major feasts seven candles are
carried before him, as a reminder that, in the words of the Prophet, the
seven gifts of the Holy Spirit rest upon the head of the Son of God. He
moves forward beneath a triumphal canopy whose four bearers symbolise the
four Evangelists. He has with him two acolytes, one on his right, one on
his left, who represent Moses and Elias who were shown with Christ at the
Transfiguration on Mount Tabor. Their presence signifies that Jesus had
with Him the authority of the Law and the Prophets.
The Bishop takes his place upon his throne and sits there silent. He
seems to be taking no part in the first stage of the ceremony. His
attitude means something. He recalls to us by his silence the
fact that the first years in the life of Jesus Christ were passed in
obscurity and reflection. The Sub-Deacon, on the other hand, goes to the
desk, and, turning to his right hand reads the Epistle in a loud voice. In
this we are to see the first act in the drama of the Redemption.
The reading of the Epistle is the preaching of St John the Baptist in
the wilderness. He speaks before the Saviour has begun to make His voice
heard, but he speaks only to the Jews. The Sub-Deacon, symbol of the
Forerunner, turns towards the North, which is the side of the Ancient Law.
When he has finished reading, he bows before the Bishop, as the Forerunner
humbled himself at the feet of Jesus Christ.
The chanting of the Gradual, which follows the reading of the
Epistle, still refers to the mission of St John the Baptist, and
symbolizes the call to repentance which he addressed to the Jews on the
eve of the New Dispensation.
Then, the celebrant reads the Gospel. This is a solemn moment, for it
marks the beginning of the Messiah's active life, when His word is heard
for the first time in the world. The reading of the Gospel stands for His
preaching.
The Creed follows the Gospel, as Faith follows the declaration of the
Truth. Its twelve articles have reference to the vocation of the Twelve
Apostles.
"The very robes which the priest wears at the Altar", continues
Monsieur Mâle, "and the objects which he uses in the celebration are no
less symbolic." The Chasuble, which is put on over the other
vestments, is Charity, which is superior to all the precepts of the Law,
and is itself the supreme Law. The Stole which the priest places
round his neck, is the light yoke of the Lord, and because it is written
that every Christian shall love this yoke the priest kisses the stole when
he puts it on and takes it off. The Bishop's two-pointed Mitre
symbolises the knowledge he must have of both the Old and the New
Testament. Two ribbons are attached to it, as a reminder that the
Scriptures must be interpreted according to the letter and according to
the Spirit. The Bell is the voice of the preacher. The frame
from which it is suspended is an image of the Cross. The cord, woven of
three strands, signifies the triple meaning of the Scriptures, which are
to be interpreted in three senses - historical, allegorical and moral.
When the priest takes hold of the cord to ring the bell he expresses
symbolically the supreme truth that the knowledge of the Scriptures must
issue in action.
Thus everything, down to the least gesture made by the priest, down to
the very stole he wears, is part of a symbolic harmony, which helps to
make up the profound feeling that fills the whole cathedral and which, as
M. Mâle so rightly says, is the very genius of the Middle Ages.
No comparable spectacle, no such mirror of knowledge, spirit and
history has ever been offered to the eyes and to the understanding of men.
The same symbolism extends even to the music which fills the vast hollow
of the building, for its seven Gregorian tones image the seven theological
virtues and the seven ages of the world. It is no exaggeration to say that
a performance of Wagner at Bayreuth is a trifling thing compared with High
Mass in Chartres cathedral.
It need scarcely be pointed out that those only who have studied the
religious art of the Middle Ages are capable of completely analyzing the
beauty of such a spectacle. All the more reason, therefore, that the State
should see to it that the continuity is not broken. So the State
subsidizes the teaching of the Collège de France, which reaches only a
small number of persons, and must seem like a cold dissection when set
beside the close-knit symbolism of the Resurrection in the High Mass as
celebrated in a cathedral. Compared with such symphonies, the performances
given in all our other subsidized theatres are but literary trivia. But
let me hasten to add that those who can read the symbolism of the Middle
Ages like an open book are not the only people for whom the living
cathedral, that is to say the carved and painted building, with its
echoing music, provides the greatest of all spectacles. A man may have a
feeling for music even if he knows nothing about harmony. I am aware that
Ruskin, explaining the spiritual meaning that determines the arrangement
of the chapels in the apse of cathedral, says: "You will never be able to
feel the charm of architectural forms if you are not in sympathy with the
thought from which they have emerged." It is no less true, however, as we
all of us know, that a man wholly ignorant of these things, a simple
dreamer, may enter a cathedral without trying in any way to understand,
content to let his emotions take charge, and get from what he sees and
hears an impression, which, although it will doubtless be less clear-cut,
may be no less powerful. As literary evidence of this state of mind, which
is very different, to be sure, from that of the scholar of whom I have
been speaking, which enables a man to walk about a cathedral, as in some
"forest of symbols which gaze upon him with familiar eyes", and still,
when the Office is being said, feel powerful though vague emotions, let me
quote a beautiful passage from Renan which he entitles The Double
Prayer.
"One of the loveliest religious spectacles that one can witness nowadays (and which one will soon be able to witness no longer, should the Chamber pass the Act in question) is to be found at nightfall in the cathedral of Quimper. When darkness fills the aisles of the huge building, the faithful of both sexes assemble in the nave and sing the Evening Prayer in the Breton tongue to a simple and appealing rhythm. The only light comes from two or three lamps. On one side are the men, standing; on the other, the kneeling women, with their white coifs, produce the effect of a motionless sea. The two sections chant, alternately, and the phrase begun by one is completed by the other. What they are singing is very beautiful. When I hear it I feel that, with a very few changes, it might be adapted to any state of mind to be found in the human race. Especially does it set me dreaming of a form of prayer which, with certain variations, might suit equally, both men and women."
Between this state of day-dreaming, which is not without its charm, and the more self-conscious pleasure of the 'connoisseur' in matters of religious art, there are many degrees. Let me, for instance, refresh your memory by quoting what Gustave Flaubert says when describing, though with the intention of interpreting it in a modern sense, one of the most beautiful parts of the Catholic liturgy.
"The priest dipped his thumb in the sacred oil, and started to anoint her: first upon the eyes ... on the nostrils that had been greedy of warm breezes and the heady scents of love ... on her hands, so avid of soft stuffs ... and, lastly, on her feet which had once moved swiftly when she had hastened to the satisfaction of desire, and now would never move again."
So it is that before this artistic realization, the most complete ever
since all the arts collaborated in it, of the highest dream to which
humanity has ever been raised, one may dream in many different ways, and
the setting is sufficiently large for us all to find our place in it. The
cathedral that shelters so may saints, patriarchs, prophets, apostles,
kings, confessors, martyrs that whole generations crowd up to the entrance
of the porches, frequently supplicating, in anguish, raising up the
edifice all atremble beneath the sky like an extended lament, while angels
lean down smilingly from the high galleries which, in the pink and blue
incense of evening and the dazzling gold of morning, truly appear like
"balconies in the sky", the cathedral, in its vastness, could just as
readily give sanctuary to the literati as to the believer, to
the vague day-dreamer as to the archaeologist; what matters is that it
remains a living entity and that from one day to the next France is not
transformed into a parched beach on which great sculpted shells appear as
if stranded, empty of the life that inhabited them, and no longer even
being held to the ear that would hear in them the vague murmur of times
gone by, mere museum pieces, from museums that are themselves frozen in
ice. "It is not too late", M. André Hallays wrote a few years ago, "to
reinstate an absurd idea, that was born, so it seems, in the minds of some
of the inhabitants of Vézelay. They wanted Vézelay church to be
deconsecrated. Anticlericalism inspires great follies. To deconsecrate
that basilica is to take away from it what little spirit remains to it.
The moment the little lamp that shines in the depths of the choir is
extinguished, Vézelay is left as nothing more than an archaeological
curiosity. In it you will breathe only the sepulchral odour of museums."
It is only by continuing to fulfil the office for which they were
historically designed that these buildings, be they forced to die slowly
at the task, retain their beauty and their vitality. Do we really believe
that in the museums of comparative sculpture, the famous mouldings on the
wooden stalls carved for Amiens cathedral could give any idea of the
stalls themselves, in their venerable and still functioning antiquity?
Whereas in a museum a guard stops us getting too close to their mouldings,
these priceless stalls, so ancient, so famous, so beautiful, continue to
exercise their modest function as stalls at Amiens - which they have
fulfilled for several centuries to the great satisfaction of the people of
Amiens, - like those artists who have achieved great glory but continue
nevertheless to keep up a little employment or give lessons. These
functions consist, before even providing instruction to the soul, of
providing support for the body, and which, sat upon during every Office
and displaying only their backs, they carry out with modesty. And again,
the constantly rubbed wood of these stalls has little by little assumed,
or rather has allowed to show through, that dark purple that appears to
come from its heart and that, to the extent of no longer being able to
look at the colours on paintings that seem very clumsy in comparison,
immediately enchants the eye. It is like like a sort of intoxication we
experience through taste, in the ever more inflamed ardour of the wood
that is like the sap, flowing through the tree throughout the years. The
naivety of the characters carved in the wood take from the material in
which they are brought to life something that is doubly natural. And for
all those fruits, flowers, leaves, branches, Amienese vegetation that the
Amienese sculptor has carved into the wood from Amiens, the various
rubbings and polishings they have felt over the years has brought out
wonderful contrasts of tone in which a leaf stands out in a different
shade from the stem, bringing to mind those noble tones that M. Gallé knew
how to bring out from the harmonious heart of oak trees.
It is not only to the Canons following the Office from the stalls, that
the railings, the misericords and the banisters recall the Old and the New
Testaments, it is not only to the people filling the vast nave, that the
cathedral, if M. Briand's project was voted through, will find itself
closed, will no longer be able to hold Mass or prayers.
I said just now that nearly all the images in a cathedral church are
symbolic. But some are not. Those are the images painted or carved by folk
who, having contributed their pence to the decoration of the cathedral,
have wished to keep for themselves a place there for all time, so that
they may, from some upper niche, from the embrasure of some window, follow
silently the sacred Office, and share soundlessly in the prayers, sæcula
sæculorum. We know that the oxen of Laon, who, with Christian
humility, had dragged to the top of the hill on which the cathedral
stands, the materials destined for its building, were rewarded by the
architect by having their statues set at the foot of the towers, where you
may see them still, lifting their horns in the stagnant heat of the sun
and amid the jangle of bells, there, above the vast and sacred arch,
dreaming the dreams that speed forth above the plains of France. For the
beasts this was as much as could be done; for men a greater favour was
reserved.
Theirs was the privilege to penetrate within the church and take the
places that would still belong to them, even after death, whence they
could still, as in their lives, follow the divine sacrifice, whether,
leaning from their marble sepulchres they lie with heads just turning to
where the Epistle or the Gospel lesson is read each day, able to see and
feel, as in the church of Brou, the constricting tracery, about their
carven names, of emblematic flowers interwoven with the sacred monogram,
or sometimes retaining, even in death, as at Dijon, the glowing colours of
life, in stained-glass windows set with all the glory of their blazoned
robes, purple, and lapis and the purest azure, which hold the sunlight
captive, catching its fire and filling its fragile beams with radiance,
and then, on a sudden, giving them release, setting them to wander with
aimless glory through all the spaces of the nave now radiant with their
tints. Astray, and palpably unreal, with naught to occupy them, they still
are donors, and because of that have merited the guerdon of a prayer in
perpetuity. It is their wish that the Holy Spirit, each time that He
descends, should recognize his own. It is not only kings and princes who
there display the insignia of their rank, the crown, the Order of the
Golden Fleece. Money-changers, too, are openly displayed, checking
accounts, merchants selling furs (see in Mâle the reproductions of these
two windows), butchers slaughtering, knights in heraldic surcoats,
craftsmen carving a pillar's capital. Oh, all of you, from your windows in
Chartres, Tours and Bourges, in Sens, Auxerre and Troyes, in
Clermont-Ferrand and in Toulouse, coopers, furriers, grocers, pilgrims,
ploughmen, armourers, weavers, stone masons, butchers, basket weavers,
cobblers, money-changers, oh you vast silent democracy, faithfully and
obstinately there within hearing of the Sacred Office, not dematerialized
but more beautiful than in the days of your life, in the glory of heaven
and the blood-line of the precious window - no longer will you listen to
the Mass that was assured to you through the most undeniable sums of your
money donated to the building of the church. No longer will the dead
govern the living, according to the profound saying. And the forgetful
living will have ceased to carry out the wishes of the dead.
But let us leave the ruby-hued coopers and the pink and silver basket
weavers, to inscribe at the base of the window the "mute protestation"
that M. Jaurès would know how to deliver with such eloquence, and that we
implore him to bring to the ears of the deputies, and leaving aside this
innumerable and silent host, ancestors of the electors with whom the
Chamber scarcely concerns itself, by way of conclusion, let us sum up.
Firstly: the very same protection of the most beautiful works of French
architecture and sculpture that will die on the day they no
longer serve the purposes of worship for which they were created, which is
their function as they are its organs, which is their meaning because it
is their soul, forces on the government a duty to demand that worship be
celebrated in cathedrals in perpetuity instead of the Briand project that
authorizes it to turn the cathedrals, after a period of a few years, into
whatever museums or conference halls (at best) that they see fit, and
even, if the government does not take this initiative, to prohibit the
clergy if it deems the location too costly (and due to the fact that it
will no longer be subsidized, one could say that it gives it the stronger
hand) from any longer celebrating the Offices in them.
Secondly: the preservation of the greatest artistic unity that could
ever be imagined, historic and yet living, the millions needed for
reconstruction for which no expense can be deferred if it were no longer
to exist, to experience Mass in cathedrals, forces upon the government a
duty to subsidize the Catholic Church for the upkeep of a creed that
otherwise concerns the conservation of the most noble of French art (to
continue to hold solely to this profane point of view), that the
conservatories, musical or comedy theatres, enterprises for the
reconstitution of ancient tragedies at the theatre at Orange, etc. etc.,
all organizations with a debatable artistic goal, conserving works of
which many are unworthy (what else is there when compared to the choir at
Beauvais, or the statues at Rheims, The Days of the Adventuress
or M. Poirier's Son-in-law1?), whereas the
masterpiece that is the mediaeval cathedral with its thousands of painted
or carved figures, its hymns, its Offices, is the most noble of all those
to which France's genius has ever aspired.
And in this article I have only spoken about cathedrals so as to
demonstrate the most striking aspect and the most shocking in the mind of
the reader, of the consequences of the Briand project. But we know that
the distinction between cathedral churches and others is totally
artificial, since it is sufficient, on the occasion of a Feast-Day, to set
up a cathedra for a bishop, to momentarily transform a church into a
cathedral. What I have said about cathedrals applies to all the beautiful
churches in France, and as we know there are thousands of them. As we
follow a French road between fields of sainfoin and pear orchards that
give way at each side so as to make it "so beautiful", at almost every
turn you catch sight of a steeple raising itself up against the stormy or
clear horizon, intersecting, on rainy days that are also bathed in
sunshine, a rainbow that, like a mysterious halo reflected upon the sky
next to the same interior of the partly open church, juxtaposes on the sky
its rich and distinctive colours of stained glass; at almost every turn
you catch sight of a steeple raising itself up above the houses that look
down to the ground, like an ideal, soaring out in the voice of its bells,
to which, as you come closer, are mingled the cries of birds. And as often
as not you can be sure that the church above which it rises up contains
beautiful and solemn conceptions, both carved and painted, and other
conceptions that not having been called to such a distinct existence and
have retained more of their vagueness, in the creation of beautiful lines
of architecture, but as powerful, although more obscure, and capable of
capturing our imagination in the burst of their flight or imprisoning it
completely in the curve of their descent. There, from the charming
balusters of a Roman balcony or from the mysterious sill of a half-open
Gothic porch that unites with the illuminated darkness of the church the
setting sun in the shadow of the great trees that surround it, we must
continue to see the procession emerging from the multicoloured shadow that
falls from the trees onto the stone of the nave and follow, in the fields,
between the squat columns that surmount capitals of flowers and fruits,
the roads of which we could say, as the Prophet said to the Saviour: "All
her paths are peace". In the end I have only evoked in all this an
artistic interest. That does not mean to say that the Briand project does
not threaten other interests and that I am indifferent to these other
interests. But, after all, it is from this point of view that I have
chosen to position myself. It would be wrong of the clergy to reject the
support of artists. Because to see how many deputies, when they have
finished voting on their anticlerical laws, go off on a tour of English,
French or Italian cathedrals, bringing back an antique chasuble for their
wife to have made into a cloak or a door-curtain, elaborating in their
study projects for laicization in front of a photographic reproduction of
an "interment", haggling with a second-hand dealer over a panel from a
reredos, travelling far and wide in search of fragments of church stalls
to serve as an umbrella-stand for their vestibule and on Good Friday going
to the "Schola cantorum", if not even to the church of Saint-Gervais,
listening "religiously", as the saying goes, to the Mass of Pope Marcel,
we might think that the day we persuade all people of taste of the
obligation of the government's to subsidize religious ceremonies, we will
have found, united and risen up against the Briand project, a number of
deputies, and even anticlericals.
Marcel Proust.
First printed in Le Figaro, 16 August 1904 and reprinted in Chroniques. A shorter and partially rewritten version of this article was printed in Pastiches et Mélanges, and translated in Marcel Proust. A Selection from his Miscellaneous Writings. Where identical passages have occurred I have selectively used Gerard Hopkins' translation.
1. Le Gendre de M. Poirier, play by Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau, 1854. L'Aventurière, play by Émile Augier, 1848.
From Wikipedia:
Aristide Briand (1862 - 1932) French statesman who served eleven
terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and
was a co-laureate of the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.
From the beginning of his career in the Chamber of Deputies, Briand
was occupied with the question of the separation of church and state. He
was appointed reporter of the commission charged with the preparation of
the 1905 law on separation, and his masterly report at once marked him
out as one of the coming leaders. He succeeded in carrying his project
through with but slight modifications, and without dividing the parties
upon whose support he relied.