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Anatole France
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Anatole France
(1844-1924) - pseudonym for Jacques Anatole
Francois Thibault
Writer, critic, one of the major figures of French literature in the
late 19th and early 20th centuries. Anatole France was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1921. In the 1920 France's writings were put on
the Index of Forbidden Books of the Roman Catholic Church. His
skepticism appears already in his early works, but later the hostility
toward bourgeois values led him to support French Communist Party.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as
the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread."
(from The Red Lily, 1894)
Anatole France was born Jacques Anatole François Thibault in Paris. At
early age France acquired a love for books and reading. His father was a
bookseller, who called his shop the 'Librarie de France' – from this the
future writer took his surname. France was educated at the Collége
Stanislaus, where he was a mediocre student. During this period France
adopted his lifelong anti-clericalism and later constantly mocked the
church and religious doctrines in his books. On the whole France's early
years, which he depicted in My Friend's Book (1885), were happy. After
failing his baccalaureate examination several times, France finally
passed it at the age of twenty. In the 1860s he was for a time an
assistant to his father, then he was a cataloguer and publisher's
assistant at Bacheline-Deflorenne and at Lemerre. He also worked as a
teacher.
When his father retired, France took a series of jobs as an editorial
assistant. He became member of the Parnassian group of poets, Gautier,
Catulle, Mendes and others, and built himself a high reputation in the
literature circles. During the Franco-Prussian War, France served
briefly in the army, and witnessed the bloodbath at the Paris Commune in
1871.
In 1875 the newspaper Le Temps commissioned France to write a series
of critical articles on contemporary writers. The next year he started
his weekly column, which were published until 1892 and collected in four
volumes under the title LA VIE LITTÉRAIRE. In 1876 France was appointed
with the help of the leading Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle
(1818-1894) an assistant librarian for the French Senate, a post he held
fourteen years. Leconte de Lisle encouraged France to publish his first
collection of poems, LES POÉMES DORÉS (1873). France's first collection
of stories appeared in 1879.
As a novelist France made his breakthrough with The Crime of
Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). Like his other works, it looked back to the
18th century as a golden age. Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar
Sylvester Bonnard, was the first of series of fictional characters, who
embody France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant
prose and irony and won the author a prize from the French Academy.
In 1877 France married Valérie Guérin de Sauville. The marriage ended
in divorce in 1893, several years after France's liaison with Mme Arman
de Caillavet (Leontine Lippmann), a patron of arts and the great love of
the author. This period inspired France's Christian fantasy about beauty
and wisdom, THAÏS (1890), closely related to Gustave Flaubert's The
Temptation of St. Anthony. LES LYS ROUGE (1894), a roman à clef dealing
with the relationship, gained a huge success.
Between the years 1897 and 1901 France wrote four novels under the
title Contemporary History, a fictional account of Belle Epoque. The
first volume introduced an other important France persona, monsieur
Bergeret, a provisional schoolteacher. The Queen Pédauque (1893)
introduced Jerome Coignard, whom France used as his vehicle for moral
ponderings and advocate for tolerance in The Opinions of Mr. Jerome
Coignard (1893). During the 1890s and early 1900s France argued for
social reforms and attacked the shortcomings of contemporary society and
the church. In 1888 he was appointed literary critic of the importrant
newspaper Le Temps.
France participated in the famous Dreyfus case with other writers, in
front of them Émile Zola with his famous article J'Accuse (1898). France
discussed the affair in the fourth volume of Contemporary History,
entitled Monsieur Bergeret in Paris (1901). He was the first to sign
Émile Zola's manifesto, condemning the false indictment for treason of
Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish army captain, which had been made to protect
high army officials from the scandal of exposed corruption. After the
Dreyfus case in the mid-1890s France's ironic views of contemporary
society became even more poignant and disillusioned.
France resigned his library job at the Senate in 1890, and was
elected to the Académie Française in 1896. He presided at the salon of
Armand de Caillavet until her death in 1910. The last fifteen years of
France's life were shadowed by personal difficulties, some of which he
created himself. His daughter Suzanne died in 1917, his mistress Mme
Arman, whom he started to deceive with other women as early as 1904,
became seriously ill and died in 1910. He deceived his housekeeper, Emma
Laprevotte, whom he later married, and an American woman whom he had
deserted, killed herself in 1911.
Among Frace's major later works is Penquin Island (1908), in which
humanity's evolutionary course and the history of France is allegorized
satirically through the transformation of penguins into humans – after
the animals have been baptized in error by the nearsighted Abbot Mael.
The two-volume biography, The Life of Joan of Arc (1908), was poorly
received - Catholics criticized its realistic portrayal of Joan and
historians had much to say about its historical accuracy. The Gods Are
Athirst (1912) was a historical novel about the French Revolution. In
The Revolt of Angels (1914) France used the familiar theme of religious
conflict from Milton's Paradise Lost. The revolt of fallen angels breaks
out again, when a guardian angel, Arcade, is converted to free thought
by Lucretius' summary of Epicurean philosophy De rerum natura. The work,
a strong protest against violence and tyranny, was the author's last
interesting novel.
France died on October 12, 1924, in Tours, where he had moved ten
years earlier. His funeral was attended by the highest ranking members
of the French government. The poet Paul Valéry succeeded to Anatole
France's chair and delivered an unconventional address upon his
predecessor. In stead of the usual complimentary obituary, he made an
attack: "He perfected the art of brushing lightly over the most serious
ideas and problems. Nothing in his books gives the least difficulty
unless it be the wonder itself of encountering none."
"Anatole France was essentially a rationalist: he did not deny the
incongruities and incoherences of experience, but he attempted to write
about them, at least, in a simple, logical and harmonious style. Paul
Valéry has set himself, on the contrary, the task of reproducing by his
very language all the complexities and confusions of our interacting
sensations and ideas. The phenomena with which France usually deals are
the events of life as it is lived in the world; with Valéry the object
of interest is the iolated or ideal human mind, brooding on its own
contradictions or admiring its own flights."
(Edmund Wilson in Axel's Castle, 1931)
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PENGUIN ISLAND
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Anatole France (Jacques-Anatole-Frangois Thibault,
1844-1924)
Type of plot: Fantasy
Time of plot: Ancient times to the present
Locale: Mythical Alca
First published: L'lle des pingouins, 1908 (English translation,
1914)
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Penguin Island, a satiric and ironic burlesque of history, is
doubly amusing to those who are familiar with the history of France,
although the universality of the themes presented makes the satire
recognizable to any reader. Using as his starting point the story of a
blinded monk who mistakenly baptizes a group of penguins, whom God then
changes to men, France satirizes politics, sexual mores, the Church, and
other social institutions.
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Principal Characters
Mael (ma-ёТ), a Breton missionary monk who, in ancient times, preached
to a group of penguins living on an island at the North Pole. The
penguins were baptized and turned into men, and the island was towed to
a point off the Breton coast. Thus began a society that is the author's
satire of French history.
Kraken (kra-kan'), a clever penguin who lives by his wits and turns to
his advantage the ignorance and superstitions of the peasant penguins.
By constructing an imitation dragon and "Killing" it at an appropriate
time, he wins the gratitude of the populace and thereafter accepts
annual tribute from them.
Orberosia (or-ba-ro-zya'), Kraken's mistress and the most beautifu1 of
the penguin women. She appears as a virgin who conquers a dragon in
order that Mael's prophecy might be fulfilled. The "dragon" is one she
and Kraken have fashioned. Orberosian is the island's first and most
important saint.
Eveline Clarence (a-va-len' kla'rans'), a beautiful, talented charmer
who becomes a favorite at political social gatherings. She marries a
rising politician and becomes the mistress of the prime minister. She
lives a long, happy life and, when she dies, leaves her property to the
Charity of St. Orberosia.
M. Hippolyte Ceres (m3;-sys;oe' ё-po-ll' sa-res'), Eveline's husband,
who tires to ruin the prime minister's career when it becomes apparent
that Eveline is his mistress. His action has some effect, for the prime
minister is finally put out of office.
Father Agaric (a-ga-гёк') and Prince des Boscenos (da bo-sa-nos'),
conspirators who attempt to destroy the republic and restore the
monarchy. The revolution they launch is short-lived, failing almost as
soon as it begins.
Greatank (gra-tank'), the most powerful of all the penguins, who
establishes Penguinia's first government on the island of Alca, its
system that of a clan or tribe ruled by a strong warrior.
Draco (dra-кб'), Kraken's son, who founds the first royal family of
Penguinia.
Draco the Great a descendant of Draco who establishes a monastery in
honor of Orberosia; thus the Middle Ages come to the island of Alca.
Trinco (tran-ko'), the great soldier who takes command of the army of
the republic after the monarchy has been abolished. He quickly conquers
and loses most of the known world.
Johannes Talpa (zhoan' tal-pa'), a learned monk who chronicles the early
history of the penguins.
Marbodius (mar-bo-dyus'), a literary monk who leaves a record of his
descent into Hell.
Viscountess Olive (6-lev'), a clever aristocrat who seduces Chatillon in
order to gain his support for the royalists' cause. Viscount Ciena (kla-na'),
a suitor whom Eveline rejects when she learns that he is of modest
means.
God, a deity who finds it necessary to call the saints together in order
to decide what to do about the penguins Mael has baptized.
Chatillon (sha-te-yon'), an admiral used by Father Agaric and the prince
to head the military forces in the unsuccessful revolution.
M. Paul Visire (ma;-syoe' pol've-zer'), Prime Minister of Penguinia and
Eveline's lover.
Madame Clarence (kla-raris'), Eveline's mother.
Pyrot (рётб'), a scapegoat.
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The Story
In ancient times, Mael, a Breton monk, was diligent in gathering
converts to the Church. One day the Devil caused Mael to be transported
in a boat to the North Pole, where the priest landed on an island
inhabited by penguins. Being somewhat snow-blind, he mistook the birds
for men, preached to them, and, taking their silence as a sign of
willingness, baptized them into the Christian faith.
This error of the pious Mael caused great consternation in Paradise. God
called all the saints together, and they argued whether the baptisms
were valid. At last they decided that the only way out of the dilemma
was to change the penguins into men. After this transformation had taken
place, Mael towed the island back to the Breton coast so that he could
keep an eye on his converts.
Thus began the history of Penguinia on the island of Alca. At first the
penguins were without clothes, but before long the holy Mael put clothes
on the females. Because this covering excited the males, sexual
promiscuity was enormously increased. The penguins began to establish
the rights of property by knocking one another over the head. Greatank,
the largest and strongest penguin, became the founder of power and
wealth. A taxation system was established by which all penguins were
taxed equally. This system was favored by the rich, who kept their money
to benefit the poor.
Kraken, a clever penguin, withdrew to a lonely part of the island and
lived alone in a cave. Finally he took as his mistress Orberosia, the
most beautiful of penguin women. Kraken gained great wealth by dressing
up as a dragon and carrying off the wealth of the peaceful penguins.
When the citizens banded together to protect their property, Kraken
became frightened. It was predicted by Mael that a virgin would come to
conquer the dragon. Kraken and Orberosia fashioned an imitation monster.
Orberosia appeared to Mael and announced herself as the destined virgin.
At an appointed time she revealed the imitation monster. Kraken sprang
from a hiding place and pretended to kill it. The people rejoiced and
thenceforth paid annual tribute to Kraken. His son, Draco, founded the
first royal family of Penguinia.
Thus began the Middle Ages on the island of Alca. Draco the Great, a
descendant of the original Draco, had a monastery established in the
cave of Kraken in honor of Orberosia, who was now a saint. There were
great wars between the penguins and the porpoises at that time, but the
Christian faith was preserved by the simple expedient of burning all
heretics at the stake.
The history of the penguins in that far time was chronicled by a learned
monk named Johannes Talpa. Even though the battles raged about his very
ears, he was able to continue writing in his dry and simple style.
Little record was left of the primitive paintings on the isle of Alca,
but later historians believed that the painters were careful to
represent nature as unlike herself as possible. Marbodius, a literary
monk, left a record of a descent into Hell similar to the experience of
Dante. Marbodius interviewed Virgil and was told by the great poet that
Dante had misrepresented him: Virgil was perfectly happy with his own
mythology and wanted nothing to do with
the God of the Christians.
The next recorded part of Penguinian history treated is of modern times,
when rationalistic philosophers began to appear. In the succeeding
generation their teachings took root; the king was put to death,
nobility was abolished, and a republic was founded. The shrine of Saint
Orberosia was destroyed. The republic, however, did not last long.
Trinco, a great soldier, took command of the country; with his armies,
he conquered and lost all the known world. The penguins were left at
last with nothing but their glory.
Then a new republic was established. It pretended to be ruled by the
people, but the real rulers were the wealthy financiers. Another
republic of a similar nature, new Atlantis, had grown up across the sea
at the same time. It was even more advanced in the worship of wealth.
Father Agaric and Prince des Boscenos, as members of the clergy and
nobility, were interested in restoring the kings of Alca to the throne.
They decided to destroy the republic by taking advantage of the weakness
of Cha-tillon, the admiral of the navy. Chatillon was seduced by the
charms of the clever Viscountess Olive, who was able to control his
actions for the benefit of the royalists. An immense popular
antirepublican movement was begun with Chatillon as its hero; the
royalists hoped to reinstate the king in the midst of the uproar. The
revolution, however, was stopped in its infancy, and Chatillon fled the
country.
Eveline, the beautiful daughter of Madame Clarence, rejected the love of
Viscount Ciena, after she had learned that he had no fortune. She then
accepted the attentions of Monsieur Ceres, a rising politician. After a
short time they were married. Monsieur Ceres received a portfolio in the
cabinet of Monsieur Visire, and Eveline became a favorite in the social
gatherings of the politicians. M. Visire was attracted by her, and she
became his mistress. M. Ceres learned of the affair, but he was afraid
to say anything to M. Visire, the prime minister. Instead, he did his
best to ruin M. Visire politically, but with little success at first.
Finally M. Visire was put out of office on the eve of a war with a
neighboring empire. Eveline lived to a respectable old age and at her
death left all of her property to the Charity of Saint Orberosia.
As Penguinia developed into an industrial civilization ruled by the
wealthy class, the one purpose of life became the gathering of riches;
art and all other nonprofit activities ceased to be. Finally, the
downtrodden workmen revolted, and a wave of anarchy swept over the
nation. All the great industries were demolished. Order was established
at last, and the government reformed many of the social institutions,
but the country continued to decline. Where before there had been great
cities, wild animals now lived.
Then came hunters seeking wild animals. Later, shepherds appeared, and
after a time farming became the chief occupation. Great lords built
castles. The people made roads; villages appeared. The villages combined
into large cities. The cities grew rich. An industrial civilization
developed, ruled by the wealthy class. History was beginning to repeat
itself.
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Critical Evaluation
Penguin Island has been the most popular and most widely read of all
Anatole France's books, though by no means the most admired by serious
critics. The reason is not far to seek: Penguin Island is a clever
satirical allegory which skims mockingly over the main landmark events
of French history under the ironic guise of being a solemn historical
narrative about an island civilization inhabited exclusively by
penguins. This fantastic concept naturally gives rise to a lighthearted,
comic approach which seems never to take itself seriously enough to
probe deeply into the causes and meanings of history. Instead it is
breezily anecdotal in method, sparing of detail and extremely sketchy in
its narration, vague in its handling of historical time, and, above all,
cast in a charmingly witty style by a narrator who appears to have his
tongue in his cheek at all times. As a result, the book makes no obvious
intellectual demands on the reader and is fun to read. At the same time,
the book seems rather saucily cavalier, even trivializing, about French
history, and as a novel it is disconcertingly negligent about such
elements of craft as plot, characters, and structure. These weaknesses
have been pointed out repeatedly by serious critics, who tend to be
instinctively suspicious of any work that proves to be both popular and
enjoyable. It can be argued, however, that Penguin Island earns its
popularity honestly, by artfully concealing under an apparently
frivolous surface an implied commentary on some of the most far-reaching
issues in history and historiography. For the casual reader, Penguin
Island can indeed be a merry romp, but for the more thoughtful reader it
provides matter for much profound reflection.
It will be helpful, in assessing the enduring value of Penguin Island,
to recall the circumstances of its composition. When it was published in
1908, France was a celebrated and practiced man of letters who, at the
age of sixty-four, was at the peak of his late-blooming creative powers.
That same year, he had at least completed and published, after a quarter
century of intermittent effort, a life of Joan of Arc in two volumes,
which was a seriously intended work of historiography. During the
preceding decade, he had, for the only time in his career, become active
in public life, intervening in the Dreyfus Affair and making political
speeches in favor of the socialist point of view. During that same
decade, his voluminous imaginative writing had also had an unwonted
emphasis on history, politics, and current events. The evidence is that
by 1908, France had become somewhat disenchanted with public life, and
had perhaps exhausted himself physically and soured his interest in
history by the long struggle to complete The Life of Joan of Arc.
Penguin Island, rapidly composed in a few months, was perhaps a means of
relaxing for France, after so much earnest and carefully researched
historical writing, and was perhaps also a means of exorcising his
troubled disenchantment with public affairs. It was a work conceived in
a light vein which, by treating history as comic fantasy, might restore
a badly needed sense of proportion to his own outlook, grown too grimly
serious because of the nature of the historical and current events with
which he had been so deeply concerned for a full, turbulent decade. By
mocking his own erudition and solemn preoccupation with politics and
history—which is the underlying spirit of Penguin Is/and—France seems to
have aimed to relieve himself of the burdens he had assumed for so long
and to bid an ironic farewell to his own activism.
Perhaps the best evidence in Penguin Island that the author was trying
to purge himself of his own high moral seriousness might be found in the
way the Dreyfus Affair is represented in the book. Called "The Affair of
the Eighty Thousand Trusses of Hay," andfeaturing "amiddle-class Jew
called Pyrot, desirous of associating with the aristocracy" who is
accused of treason, the episode of modern Penguin history, which is a
transparent parody of the Dreyfus Affair, is turned into pure farce. All
sides in Penguinia's "Pyrot Affair" are roundly mocked, the Pyrotists as
much as the anti-Pyrotists, the socialists as much as the capitalists,
the heroes as much as the villains. Even the most disinterested defender
of Pyrot's innocence, a man named Colomban (clearly a parodic equivalent
of Emile Zola), is presented as a naive simpleton. The net effect of
this globally satirical representation is to put distance between the
narrator (France) and the events being narrated. No longer the
passionate moralist who had so eloquently defended Dreyfus and Zola
during the actual affair, France wished, in writing Penguin Island, to
see recent events from a safe distance and from a posture above the
battle, perhaps to remind himself that, viewed under the aspect of
eternity, the fierce passions aroused by the affair—in himself as well
as in others— must appear ludicrously petty.
Indeed, the effect of the ironic narrative tone throughout Penguin
Island is to place all human history and all the learned endeavors to
recover that history in the same remote, slightly ludicrous perspective.
By the inspired invention of a society of penguins baptized by a
nearsighted priest and thus coopted into the human family, France
contrived to make the very premise underlying his composition a parody
of human history. Thus he plants in the minds of his more reflective
readers, at least, grave doubts about the way historical events occur
and even graver doubts about the way historians reconstruct and
interpret those events. That the bantering tone conceals profound
questions about the nature and meaning of history appears most clearly
in the famous concluding chapter, "The Endless History," which predicts
the future of Penguinia as a cyclical process of expansion, conflict,
and devastation followed by a new expansion arising out of the ruins and
launching the cycle again. The conception of history as an endlessly
repeated cycle of greed and violence, from which nothing is ever
learned, is symbolically expressed by the device of closing the chapter
with exactly the same words as were used to begin it. Through the prism
of hindsight, Penguin Island must be seen as an ingenious travesty of
French history, entertaining as farce yet at the same time subtly
disturbing as an implied meditation on the limits of historiography.
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