Leon
Trotsky: A Drama of the French Working Class: Marcel Martinet's La
Nuit
May
15, 1922
[Leon
Trotsky on Literature and Art, New York ²1972, p. 148-161]
The
French poet Marcel Martinet has written a play which fully deserves
to be called a drama of the French working class. This alone assures
it the right to our attention. Martinet is a Communist who has passed
through the syndicalist school of La
Vie Ouvrière
— that is to say, a good school. As an artist, Martinet studied in
the worthy school of Romain Roll and; consequently one need neither
expect nor fear from him purely propagandist productivity — for
politics are only rarely to be found in a dramatic setting or poetic
nature. Martinet is deeply psychological. All the problems of our
great epoch pass through his individual consciousness and emerge
fired with the light
of
his own personality, or, more correctly, he finds his way to the
general and universal only through the medium of his own personal
individuality. It is this that makes him an artist. Martinet is a
product of the school of Rolland, but spiritually he has outgrown it.
It is this that makes it possible for him to be a Communist.
During
the war, Rolland, having raised himself "above the battle,”
Inspired loyal respect for his personal courage in a period when mass
heroism was covering the plains and villages of Europe with corpses,
but when personal courage even in a modest measure was very scarce,
especially amongst the "spiritual aristocracy." Rolland,
refusing to "howl with the wolves" of his own country,
lifted himself "above the battle," or, to be more precise,
stepped aside from it and entrenched himself in a neutral country.
He
continued during the thunder of war (true this was but faintly heard
in Switzerland) to prize German science and German art, and to
propagate cooperation between both countries. This program of
activity was not, after all, so courageous; but in that period of
raging chauvinism to carry it out needed at least a modicum of
personal independence. And this he had. However, even then the
limitations of his philosophy were clearly discernible as also, if
one may term it so, the egoistic character of his humanitarianism.
Rolland
entrenched himself in neutral Switzerland, but what of the others?
The people could not be "above the battle,” because they
themselves were its cannon fodder. The French proletariat could not
go to Switzerland, and Rolland did not give it any plan of action.
Holland's banner was designed exclusively for his personal use — it
was the banner of a great artist brought up on French and German
literature, above military age, and assured of the necessary means
for passing from one country to another. The limitations of the
Rolland type of humanitarianism were plainly revealed later, when the
problems of war, peace, and cultural cooperation became the problem
of revolution.
Here
also Rolland decided to be "above the battle." He
recognizes neither dictatorship nor violence, whether from the right
or from the left. It is true that historical events do not depend
upon recognition or nonrecognition, and that he as a great poet
retains the right to give his moral and aesthetic criticism. For him,
a humanitarian egoist, this was sufficient. But what of the masses?
As long as the people slavishly suffer the dictatorship of capital,
Rolland poetically and aesthetically condemns the bourgeoisie, but
should the working class endeavor to burst the yoke of their
exploiters by the only means in their power, by the force of
revolution, they in their turn encounter the ethical and aesthetic
condemnation of Holland. After all, the history of mankind is only
material upon which to base artistic production or moral valuations!
Rolland, the pretentious individualist, belongs to the past.
Martinet,
in his relation to human history, is much broader, more realistic,
and more human. He does not place himself "above the battle,"
but attacks the problems of war and peace, the liberation of human
culture and cooperation between nations, not as a problem of personal
values, but as problems of mass activity. He has dramatized the
revolutionary activity of the oppressed in his last production,
called La
Nuit
[The Night]. It is written in blank verse. It is written so finely
that the verse is not a constraint on language, but a means of
raising it above the ordinary, endowing it with a significance of
form corresponding with the deeply historical significance of events.
And so, at least on reading, one feels its necessity.
Is
the drama realistic? Yes, fundamentally as a whole it is, as is also
each individual figure in particular. The characters are alive. But
through their personal existence in every stage of the drama is
delineated the life of their class, their country, and of our
present-day humanity. Above their heads flock unseen social forces,
thus giving a symbolic meaning to the play.
The
central figure is old Mariette, a peasant woman seventy years old.
Round her are grouped peasants, men and women, from the northern
parts of the country which have been devastated by artillery. With
her wise courage, with her tender kindness, Mariette governs her
little world completely. This is a French mother! This is a mother of
the French people! She has ingrained peasant ideas, but she has
already lived through an age of new history, through a series of
revolutions, known many hopes and disappointments, and much suffering
for her children. However, despair she did not know, and even now, in
the years of the Great War, she does not want to know it. Her heart
remains an inexhaustible source of tireless kindness.
Mariette's
eldest son is at the front. With her remains her little, silent,
heroic daughter-in-law, Anna Maria, whom the old woman in a tragic
moment of tender confidence calls "a quiet little gray kitten."
With them is the grandson, Louison, twelve years old, whose soul has
become awakened and strong beyond his years in the awful strain of
war.
All
the neighbors meet in the only remaining hut — that of Mariette.
Homeless people, old men who have lost their sons, mothers whom the
artillery of their own or a strange country has robbed of their
children, flock there. They are surrounded by cold, snow,
devastation, war. People who for four years have lived under the fire
and thunder of war, tired of hoping, tired even of despairing, huddle
to their common mother, Mariette, who, though with greater wisdom and
greater goodness, lives and suffers just as they do.
But
something has happened! The sound of the artillery has ceased. The
people are enveloped in a sudden hush. What does this portend?
The
astounding rumor that the war has ended pierces the cold and the
storm. The enemy's soldiers have refused to fight! They have said:
"We do not want to fight any more." They have arrested
their officers, even — is it believable? — their emperor. He is
in their hands, and the soldiers opposing them, after communication
with the others, have also ceased fighting. Why should
they fight? This is the cause of the sudden silence.
More
and more soldiers, half drunk with fatigue, hope, and anxiety, appear
at the hut and corroborate the news. It was the end.
Now
begins something that has never happened before. The enemy soldiers
have seized their emperor, and actually wish to hand him over to the
opposing armies "for safekeeping.” Isn't it wonderful, eh? But
the chief thing is that it
has stopped. At last the end.
But
now comes the Generalissimo Bourbousse. He is an old soldier with a
natural, but partly affected, roughness, and with an affected, though
perhaps partly natural, good naturedness. He is an insignificant
figure, but in his very insignificance dangerous. Bourbousse intends
temporarily to install himself and his staff in Mariette's little
abode, and he asks his hosts to leave their house. But where should
they go to? Around them is a plowed-up desert, covered with debris,
with still unburied corpses, and steeped in cold and snow. Mariette
protests, "for the war has ended,” she cries. Bourbousse
explains that it is from here that he intends to complete the
victory, but finally he gives Mariette and her family permission to
remain in the attic.
The
vanquished emperor suddenly appears on the scene. Some enemy soldiers
have accompanied him here. Bourbousse welcomes the monarch, who has
been beaten in more senses than one, for his body is covered with
bruises. Having entered the enemies' headquarters, the emperor
immediately regains courage. He Is no more among his own soldiers. He
explains to Bourbousse that his, the emperor's, downfall deprives
Bourbousse of the fruits of victory. With whom can the victor treat
now? "Who," he asks, "will sign the treaty?"
Surely not the revolution! Bourbousse becomes anxious, and rightly
so. Thus they discover common interests. Will not, for instance, the
example of the revolution be followed by the victors? "In any
case,” continues Bourbousse, "his Highness can … hm … hm …
make himself quite at home.”
Mariette's
hut is given over to his highness, and the Generalissimo and staff
climb to the attic. The old woman, her daughter-in-law, and grandson
are thrust out of the house — out into the darkness, the cold, and
the snow.
But
the infection is already beginning to spread. There is unrest among
the soldiery of Bourbousse. They seem to be waiting for something.
They talk excitedly, and apparently, by accident, hundreds of them
forgather under the roof of a partly demolished cafe. They want to
understand what has happened. They shout for reasons, ideas, slogans,
leaders. They nominate those who gained their confidence in the
trenches. There is the honest old peasant Goutodiet; the openhearted,
well-spoken Favrol; there is the young Ledru, with the eagle's
glance, but without power. And this is where the real drama of the
beginning of the rising of the suppressed class Is unfolded —
without banners, without proper organization, under inexperienced and
untried leadership.
Goutodiet
was, with all his soul, for the solidarity of the working people, for
the end of the war, for coming to terms with the enemy. He was an
honest narrow pacifist, and the speech of this aged peasant in
soldier's uniform was much better and more agreeable than the
conglomeration of pacifist jokes delivered by Victor Meric. The mass
welcomes Goutodiet, but is not satisfied, because the goal is not
defined and the methods are not dear. Pacifism is passive; the
substance of it is patience; it has hopes and fears, but no definite
plan of action. It is the latter which is at present of most
importance, because the masses have risen.
Favrol
steps forward. His emptiness, his noisy irresponsibility are hidden
under definite suggestions. He tries immediately to formulate a
suggestion which he must have discussed more than once with the
frequenters of the anarchist cafe, viz., to kill the officers,
including Bourbousse, and then
to think of what else to do. The soldiers become attentive; some
agree, but the majority are frightened. The split causes the majority
to lose their heads, and that leads to a demoralizing feeling of
weakness.
Then
young Ledru steps forward. He is not afraid of revolutionary force.
He recognizes that it is unavoidable, but the country would not at
once understand the summary execution of the officers. Extreme
measures which are not at first prepared for by evolutionary methods,
which have no psychological motive, would cause a split among the
soldiers. Premature use of revolutionary terrorism would isolate the
people who took part in it. Ledru suggests that a representative
organ of the revolutionary army be created first, that every hundred
soldiers send a representative to the Soviet, and … here the
curtain falls.
The
revolution spreads in the army and the country. Everywhere soviets
are being formed. In the capital a temporary government has already
been set up of active men from the extreme left reserve of the
bourgeoisie. Their task is to break up and paralyze the revolution —
to control it themselves. For this they utilize the customary methods
of democracy, the weighty authority of official statesmanship, the
artistic web of lies, the distrust of the masses in themselves, the
wait-and-see pacifism of Goutodiet, and the bloody adventurism of
Favrol. Ordinary people, not geniuses, sit in the temporary
government. Their task, however, is not to create anything new, but
to preserve the old order of things. They have the experience and
help of the ruling class to back them up. In this lies their power.
Their first problem was to keep their feet when the first wave of the
revolution passed over them, and to discover its weak, unguarded
points — to plunder, weaken, and exploit the revolution, and to
destroy the faith and morale of the masses before the second, more
deadly, wave could arise.
The
critical moment!
In
the army, in the workers’ districts, the movement is spreading;
soviets have been chosen, local conflicts with the authorities are
going in favor of the revolutionaries, but the real enemy, the ruling
class, is not done away with. The latter maneuver expectantly. It has
a comfortable intelligence department in the capital; it has a
well-known centralized mechanism; it has a very rich experience in
deceit; and it is convinced of its right to victory.
After
the partial success of the first attack against the old regime, it is
necessary to place the movement on a higher level — to give it more
of a national character — in order to assure an internal agreement,
a common aim, and a common method of realizing that aim. Otherwise,
of course, disaster is inevitable.
The
local leaders, men brought out by circumstance — improvised
revolutionaries, who have never before thought of the problems of
mass movement — are buffeted like small pieces of wood on the waves
of that movement, hoping against hope that circumstances according to
their own logic would assure success for them in the future as in the
past. For the solution of every difficulty, the dilettantes of the
revolution can only put forward cliches instead of ideas. "The
people who have risen are invincible”; "You cannot stop
conscience with bayonets!" and so on. But the revolution demands
not general phrases, but regulations corresponding to internal
necessities and to the various stages of the movement. This is
lacking. A fatal delay occurs in the development of events. Ledru,
with political instinct, comprehends the logic of the revolution.
Quite recently he resisted the empty boasting of Favrol, rejecting
his proposal to shoot the officers. In the past they have limited
themselves to the arrest of Bourbousse. Today Ledru feds that a
fateful crisis is approaching. The masses do not realize that the
chief difficulties are still to come. The enemy seizes, without a
struggle, any unfortified position, and immediately afterwards pushes
its tentacles further forward. Tomorrow the "good-natured"
Bourbousse will again be leader of the armed forces of reaction and
will crush the movement in its infancy. Ledru comes to the conclusion
that there is needed a cry of danger, thunderous warnings,
encouragement to ruthlessness. Now he is for decisive measures, the
shooting of Bourbousse, but the logic of the revolution, which the
young leader, with his finger on the troubled pulse of the masses,
has already mastered, finds only a belated reflection in the minds of
its semi-leaders
At
the head of the mass there is no organization which can reason
collectively, which can consider in common the relation of events to
one another, and thus to intervene at the right moment. There is no
revolutionary party. Unanimity only occurs in a movement as long as
it meets no obstacles. As soon as the position becomes complicated,
improvised leaders without experience, without a program, always
begin to fight amongst themselves. Each one has his own course, his
own method. There is neither discipline of thought nor of action.
Difficulties, inadequacies, deficiencies — the consequences of war
and of the revolution itself — stand out more sharply. Hesitation
appears. Then follows loss of morale. Those who before kept their
doubts secret now shout at the tops of their voices. There is nothing
easier than to oppose the present difficulties with the problems of
tomorrow. Those who have not lost faith endeavor to shout above the
skeptics — but each in his own way. The masses grope about amid the
growing difficulties and try to follow their leaders, but the
dissension frightens and weakens them.
Here
there appears on the scene a member of the temporary government,
Bordiet Dupatois. An experienced demagogue, with a political
knowledge not of a very high caliber, but with a practically flawless
instinct for the division and demoralization of the mass and the
corruption of its leaders. All the art of the French Revolution is at
the disposal of Dupatois, who is fat, who pretends to be simple and a
humorist, and who wears a coachman's cape inside out. He makes his
way slowly through the crowd of soldiers, spies, and listens,
chatters, flatters the revolutionaries, praises the leaders, makes
promises, reproaches in a friendly fashion, and shakes hands with
everybody. From the moment when he appears at the entrance of the
revolutionary headquarters of Ledru, large numbers of soldiers, tired
of waiting and uncertainty, already put their hopes in him, as if he
were a harbor of safety. The uninvited guest Dupatois welcomes them
to the revolutionary headquarters in the tone of a benevolent host,
and praises Ledru in such a sly fashion as must inevitably shatter
the young leader's authority. Favrol is already on the side of the
temporary government. The honest Goutodiet is not heard of because
events have become too complicated for him. He has become muddled and
has melted into the "muddled crowd." Ledru understands the
trend of events, but he now stands before the crowd, not as a leader
of the revolution, but as a hero of tragedy. With him and around him
there is no organization but a few of his hardened followers who are
used to thinking and fighting together. There is no revolutionary
party. The energy of the masses, which has been wrongly directed, has
become an irritant poison directed against the parent growth itself,
gradually weakening it. Dupatois is already firmly established. He
transforms doubts, uneasiness, worry, fatigue, uncertainty, into
political flattery. Amongst the crowd he has his paid and voluntary
agents. They interrupt Ledru, protest, grumble, curse, thus creating
the necessary atmosphere for Dupatois.
In
the chaos of the stormy meeting a sudden shot is heard and Ledru
falls dead.
The
greatest moment for Dupatois approaches. He says a few complimentary
words over the grave of his fallen "young friend," in
which, admitting the latter's faults and foolhardiness, he pays
compliment to the altruism of ideals destined to bear no fruit.
With
this secretly insincere eulogy he succeeds in winning over even the
most revolutionary of his opponents. The revolution is broken. The
power of the provisional government is assured. Is not this a
historical drama of the French proletariat?
The
same peasants forgather at old Mariette's. With all her heart she was
on the side of the revolutionaries. How could it be otherwise?
Mariette — a mother of the French people — is France itself. She
is a peasant, with mind and memory loaded and enriched by age after
age of struggle and suffering. She remembers her sons fallen in the
battles of the great revolution, which ended with a Caesarist
dictatorship. She has witnessed the return of the Bourbons, the new
revolution, new treacheries, internal strife amidst the working class
itself, the hopes and disappointments of the Commune, its terrible
downfall, the monstrous, cowardly, and crafty militarism of the Third
Republic, the Great War, in which the best of their generation had
been wiped out and the very existence of the French people
threatened. … All this has old Mariette, a mother of the French
people, lived through, felt, and thought over in her own way. She was
a common peasant, who, by her experience and mother's instinct, had
raised herself to the level of the working class, its hopes and
struggles.
Absolutely
on the side of the revolutionaries, Mariette gave them a mother's
blessing, awaited their victory, and hoped for the return of her
eldest son from the trenches. But the revolution was shattered, and
all the sacrifices had been in vain. Bourbousse is again head of the
army. The delusion of brotherhood with those who deposed their
emperor is dispersed like smoke.
The
enemy is retreating, and the enemy must pay in full for the
devastation he has caused!
Forward!
To arms!! Bourbousse is in command, and after a considerable lapse in
the development of events, after the internal strife, this
persecution of the retreating enemy, this "forward"
movement, seems to the people who are being hoodwinked like a way of
surmounting the crisis — a way out of the cul-de-sac
The peasants, both men and women, turn from Mariette, though she had
upheld their spirits during the blackest months of the war. She had
raised their hopes in the revolutionary days to an unaccustomed
degree, and so doing had deceived them, and they revenge themselves
mercilessly upon her for their shattered dreams. One after another
leaves the house of the old peasant woman with words of bitter
reproach upon his lips.
Mariette
is alone. Her grandson, Louison, is sleeping restlessly upon his bed.
Her daughter-in-law, Anna Maria, breaks her heroic silence to tell
old Mariette that she (Anna Maria) is on her side. She has been with
her during the war, during the times when revolutionary hopes ran
high, and she is with her now in the bitter days of defeat and
isolation. Mariette clasps her quiet, gray kitten to her heart. Anna
Maria goes up the steps to her room, and Mariette sits near the bed
where her grandson, the future France, lies under the oppression of a
nightmare — the new France, which is growing under the thunder and
lightning of this most terrible epoch.
And
there, on the floor above, is Anna Maria — the new French mother
who will relieve the old, tired Mariette.
A
knock on the door is heard. Three men enter carrying a fourth — the
corpse of the first-born son. He had perished during the strife of
the last few days, during the persecution of the revolutionary army
of the enemy, after the destruction of his own revolution.
The
last shred of hope is shattered about the poor old head. The three
men who have just entered place that which had once been her son by
the side of the bed where the grandson lies asleep. But no — the
grandson is not asleep. On the contrary, he has heard all. Beautiful
is the tragic dialogue between himself and his grandmother.
They
both (the past and the future) bow at the bedside where the "present"
lies dead.
Louison
again lies dreaming.
Mariette
feels that she has no more strength to bear her sufferings. She has
nothing to expect — nothing to live for; and she feels that it is
now time to quit the old life and to go forward into the night which
lies brooding outside her window. But in that inexhaustible bourn of
hope and kindness, the mother's heart, the old woman again finds
herself. She has a daughter-in-law and a grandson, and a new life is
built up upon the ruins of the old. It must
be, it shall
be, better than the past life is the watchword.
The
night passes. …
The
old woman climbs heavily up the stairs to her daughter-in-law and
calls; "Anna Maria, it is time to get up — it is already
dawn!"
With
this the play ends. It is a veritable drama of revolution; a
political tragedy of the working class; a tragedy of all its past and
a warning for the future. No other proletariat but the French is so
rich in historical memories, for no other but the French has had such
a dramatic destiny. But this very past weighs down upon it like a
terrible threat for the future. The dead are like a chain fettering
the living. Each stage has left behind it not only its experiences,
but also its prejudices, its formulas deprived of content, and its
sects who refuse to die.
Goutodiet?
We have all met him. He is a worker with the instincts of the petty
bourgeois, or a petty bourgeois attracted to the workers' cause —
the democrat, the pacifist, always for half measures, always for
going half the way. He is Bourderon, the father of the people, whose
honest limitations have in the past proved more than once a brake on
the revolution.
And
we all know Favrol, knight of the phrase, who today preaches a bloody
settlement in order tomorrow to show himself in the camp of the
victorious bourgeoisie. Favrol is the most widespread, the most
multifarious, and in all its variety the most uniform type in the
French working-class movement. He is Hervé, the shouter, the vulgar
reviler, the anti-militarist, "without a fatherland," the
preacher of sabotage and direct action — and then the patriotic
oracle of the concierges, the journalistic tool of the drunken
chauvinism of a petty bourgeois clique. He is Sebastian Faure, the
libertine, the pedagogue, the Malthusian, the smooth-tongued orator,
the anti-militarist, always furnished with a program full of promises
freeing him from the necessity of undertaking any practical step, and
always ready for a shameful deal with the "prefect," if the
latter only knows how to flatter him.
Verbal
radicalism, a policy of irreconcilable formulas which in no way lead
to action, and consequently sanction inaction under the cloak of
extremism, have been and remain the most corrosive element in the
French working-class movement. Orators who begin their first phrase
and do not know what they are going to say next; adept bureaucrats of
journalism whose writings bear no relation to actual events:
"leaders" who never reflect on the consequences of their
own actions; individualists who, under the banner of "autonomy"
— whether of provinces, towns, trade unions, organizations,
newspapers, or what not — guard inviolate their own petty bourgeois
individualism from control, responsibility, and discipline;
syndicalists who not only have no sense of what is needed, but who
are instinctively afraid to say what exists, to call a mistake a
mistake, and to demand from themselves and from others a definite
answer to any question, and who mask their helplessness under the
accustomed wrappings of revolutionary ritual; great-souled poets who
wish to deluge the working class with their reservoirs of magnanimity
and confusion of ideas; stage artists and improvisors who are too
lazy to think, and who feel hurt that people exist in the world who
are able and accustomed to think; chatterers, players with words,
village oracles, petty revolutionary priests of churches struggling
one against the other — it is here that is to be found the terrible
poison in the French working-class movement; here is the menace, here
the danger!
Martinet's
drama speaks out on this in bold language, making the highest truth
of life, historical
truth,
correspond with artistic truth. Speaking through the medium of
artistic creation, the drama is a call to the proletarian vanguard
for internal purification, increased unity, and discipline.
The
last act takes place in an atmosphere heavy with tragedy; the play as
a whole is called La
Nuit.
Superficially it may appear to be imbued with pessimism — almost
with despair. It is in fact inspired by a deep uneasiness, by a
natural anxiety. France has been drained of blood. The best of her
generation lie buried. Mariette's first-born son did not return from
the war to set up the new order. But there is the grandson, twelve
years old at the end of the war and now, therefore, sixteen.
In
such a time months appear as years. Louison personifies the future.
About his young head, waking with feverish energy, is breaking the
dawn of tomorrow, and it is this that is meant by that last
exclamation of Mariette's, bespeaking peace and hope. But it is
essential that Louison should not repeat the history of Ledru.
Remember this, you, the best workers of France! Martinet's drama is
not a gloomy prophecy, but a stern forewarning.