Another specialty (if I may say so) of the Nouvelle Revue Française, and it was certainly noticed but very little understood, was to judge the writings it published only on their merit and not at all on their tendencies, to accept the excellent without regard to its color, — which allowed it to offer the best. And so, under the cover of the Nouvelle Revue Française was continued the dialogue of which I was speaking just now, with constant concern on our part to maintain the equilibrium of the thought, by means of weights.
That does not look like anything but it is enormous, and I believe that our magazine was the only one not to show itself, in one direction or the other, tendentious. That is what aroused the periodic indignation of Claudel, who protested furiously when he saw, alongside of one of his articles, even if it were at the beginning of a number, an article by Proust, Suarès, Valéry or de Léautaud that seemed to challenge him. It was to this wise eclecticism that the Nouvelle Revue Française owed its extraordinary progressive success, in foreign countries as well as in France; for I do not know a single author of real merit, often unknown at first, who was not launched or sheltered by us.
Of course, I am only speaking of the pre-war Nouvelle Revue Française—before the attitude of a new imposed directorship had forced, alas! the best of its former collaborators to withdraw.
By the juxtaposition of the articles offered, the Nouvelle Revue Française was again and above all a school of thought. It excelled in criticism and contributed greatly to sweeping the literary sky clean of false values, in restoring the cult of the great and healthy tradition, of style and the pure design of thought. It is apparent to-day, I believe, that it did a great deal toward “defending” and “rendering illustrious” our culture. And I lack time to speak of what could be considered as its off-shoot: the theatre of the Vieux Colombier.
Then the war came. A huge war, apocalyptic, which imperilled and endangered everything that was closest to our hearts: the very dignity of man and whatever it is that gives us our reason for living.
It is necessary to take all that up again, to begin again on new foundations. I say: on new foundations — for I am convinced we can not find salvation in a simple return and attachment to the past. Everything must be questioned.
To be sure we have watched a remarkable and almost miraculous rebirth of France. A courageous youth has covered itself with glory, has deserved the gratitude of its elders. And this fact is all the more admirable because war, for its sacrifices, chooses the best who are the first to devote themselves, to offer themselves. It operates a sort of inverse selection and skims off the elite of the country. But the peculiar combative virtues that permitted the rebirth of France are not the same ones that are necessary for the reestablishment of order, once peace is reconquered and assured. Montesquieu considers that what constitutes the extraordinary vitality of France is the diversity of its genius. Yesterday, hardy combatants were needed, to-day it is architects, and there will be some. The need we have of them will bring them to life, and they will respond to the call.
I have great hope; but it must be recognized that our youth, following that frightful upheaval, remains deeply shaken. Under a woefully starless sky, the youth of to-day — at least that new Existentialist school that makes so much noise to-day, that important part of youth, seems to take as its own the gloomy affirmation which I read in the same book of Barrès’ I was quoting:
“From whatever point one considers it, the universe and our existence are senseless confusion.”
And more recently we heard Roger Martin du Gard (or at least one of his heroes) and Jean Rostand repeat — after Barres, but before Camus, Sartre and the Existentialists of to-day: “We live in an absurd world where nothing rimes with anything.…”
Well! I should like to say to the young people disoriented by the absence of faith: to make the world rime with something is up to you alone!
It is up to man, and man is the starting point. The world, this absurd world, will stop being absurd; it is up to you alone. The world will be what you make it.
The more you tell me and insist there is nothing absolute in this world and in our sky, that truth, justice and beauty are man’s creations, the more I insist that it is then up to man to maintain them, that his honor demands it. Man is responsible to God.
There is not a country, however protected it may have been, however far from the field of battle, that has not been more or less reached by the shadow of the new problems, no people that does not feel itself a little liable, no thinking youth who does not ask himself disturbing and serious questions.
I shall not look for any other proof than the letter I received a little before leaving Egypt. That letter from a young student in Bagdad seemed to me so typical and so eloquent that I want to read you the principal paragraphs in it.
“Pardon a stranger for writing you. I believe the writer is responsible for what he writes.”
“You have habituated us, in your books, to a certain perpetual and invigorating restlessness. That restlessness you have taught us is the only hope of a generation sacrificed in advance.”
Those words wrung my heart. I had often heard them; in France and elsewhere, numerous young people consider themselves a part of a “sacrificed generation.” … Useless to tell you that I protest with all my heart against that idea.
I continue the reading of the letter:
“I shall say more; that restlessness is our only nobility. In a word, the gist of your teaching is that we should accept nothing, or consider anything acquired in advance. Now, in the letter my friend X. received from you, I was surprised and disappointed, I confess, to see that you exhort him to hope, because “without hope,” you said, “souls faint and become feeble.”
Here I open the parenthesis. I did not know the young man to whom I was writing that letter at all. He had written an article in Arabic about me, an article that I couldn’t read, and, as I nevertheless felt the desire to express my sympathy to him, I could do it only in a very indefinite way, so I employed vague terms and, I recognize, unfortunately trite.
So I continue my reading:
“To accept hope, Master, is not what you can propose to us now. In these times of suffering and distress, which have just begun, to accept hope would be to fall down, for, even if we are to see better days in our lifetime, it is surely not by contenting ourselves with hoping that we shall find them.”
“No, we must not hope, but remain perpetually restless. That is the only attitude I believe worthwhile and which can safeguard our integrity.”
“So tell me, Master, what you think of it, and whether you believe I am right. Everything of yours that I have read leads me to suppose so, and that is why that sentence in your letter to my friend frightened me. It seems to me that it invites to an abdication of what appears to me our last pretension to nobility.”
“Tell me if it is so.”
How could I answer such a fine letter, and one that moved me all the more because it came from a country that I had thought far away and little touched by the happenings, not very much exposed to our culture?
Oh! my answer is very simple.
At a time when I feel in such great peril, so besieged on all sides, that which constitutes the value of man, his honor and his dignity, all that we live for, our reason for living — it is just knowing that among the young people, there are some, even though they be very small in number, and from any country whatever — who do not rest, who maintain intact their moral and intellectual integrity, and protest against every word of a totalitarian nature and every enterprise that claims to bend, subordinate, subject thought, diminish the soul — for in the last analysis it is the soul that is in question — it is knowing that they are there, those young men, that they are living, they, the salt of the earth; that is just what sustains us, their elders; that is what permits me, already as old and ready to leave life as I am, not to die in despair.