Roger Martin du Gard, Albert Camus
Roger Martin du Gard1
Read, in Devenir!, the portrait of old Mazarelles and his wife. From his very first book, Roger Martin du Gard achieves the portrait in depth, whose secret seems to be lost nowadays. This third dimension, which extends the range of his work, makes it almost unique in contemporary literature. Our present literary production could, in fact, when it is valid, claim descent from Dostoevski rather than from Tolstoi. Inspired or impassioned shadows outline the commentary in motion of a reflection on man’s fate. Doubtless there is also depth and perspective in Dostoevski’s characters; but, unlike Tolstoi, he does not make such qualities the rule for his creation. Dostoevski looks above all for movement, Tolstoi for form.
There is the same difference between the young women in The Possessed and Natasha Rostov as there is between a character in the movies and one on the stage: more animation and less flesh. In Dostoevski these weaknesses on the part of a genius are compensated for by the introduction of a further, spiritual dimension, rooted in sin or sanctity. But, with a few exceptions, such notions are considered old-fashioned by our contemporaries, who have as a result retained from Dostoevski only a legacy of shadows.
Combined with the influence of Kafka (in whom the visionary triumphs over the artist), or with the technique of the American behaviorist novel, assimilated by artists who have more and more difficulty, emotionally and intellectually, in keeping up with the acceleration of history and who, in order to deal with everything, go deeply into nothing, this imperious example has produced in France an exciting and disappointing literature, whose failures are on a par with its ambitions, and of which it is impossible to say whether it exhausts a fashion or foreshadows a new age.
Roger Martin du Gard, who began writing at the beginning of the century, is, on the other hand, the only literary artist of his time who can be counted among Tolstoi’s descendants. But at the same time he is perhaps the only one (and, in a sense, more than Gide or Valéry) to anticipate the literature of today, by bequeathing problems that crush it and also by authorizing some of its hopes. Martin du Gard shares with Tolstoi a liking for human beings, the art of depicting them in the mystery of their flesh, and a knowledge of forgiveness—virtues outdated today. The world Tolstoi described nevertheless formed a whole, a single organism animated by the same faith; his characters meet in the supreme adventure of eternity.
One by one, visibly or not, they all, at some point in their stories, end up on their knees. And Tolstoi himself, in his winter flight from family and glory, wanted to recapture their unhappiness, universal wretchedness, and the innocence of which he could not despair. The same faith is lacking in the society Martin du Gard was to depict and also to a certain extent lacking in the author.
This is why his work is also one of doubt, of disappointed and persevering reason, of ignorance acknowledged, and of a wager on man with no future other than himself. It is in this, as in its invisible audacities or its contradictions accepted, that his work belongs to our time. Even today it can explain us to ourselves, and soon, perhaps, be useful to those who are to come.
There is a strong possibility, in fact, that the real ambition of our authors, after they have assimilated The Possessed, will be one day to write War and Peace. After tearing through wars and negations, they keep the hope, even if it’s unadmitted, of rediscovering the secrets of a universal art that, through humility and mastery, will once again bring characters back to life in their flesh and their duration. It is doubtful whether such great creation is possible in the present state of society either in the East or in the West.
But there is nothing to prevent us from hoping that these two societies, if they do not destroy each other in a general suicide, will fertilize each other and make creation possible once
again. Let us also bear in mind the possibility of genius, that a new artist will succeed, through superiority or freshness, in registering all the pressures he undergoes and digesting the essential features of the contemporary adventure.
His destiny then will be to fix in his work the prefiguration of what will be, and, quite exceptionally, to combine the gift of prophecy with the power of true creation. These unimaginable tasks cannot, in any case, do without the secrets contained in the art of the past. The work of Martin du Gard, in its solitude and its solidity, contains some of these secrets and offers them in a familiar form. In him, our master and our accomplice at the same time, we can both find what we do not possess and rediscover what we are.
• • •
“Masterpieces,” said Flaubert, “are like the larger mammals. They have a peaceful look.” Yes, but their blood still runs with strange, young ardor. Such fire and such audacity already bring Martin du Gard’s work closer to us. The more so, after all, if it does look peaceful. A kind of geniality masks its relentless lucidity, apparent only upon reflection, although then it takes on added dimension.
It is important to note, first of all, that Martin du Gard never thought provocation could be an artistic method. Both the man and his work were forged by the same patient effort, in withdrawal from the world. Martin du Gard is the example, a rare one indeed, of one of our great writers whose telephone number nobody knows. He exists, very strongly, in our literary society. But he has dissolved himself in it as sugar does in water.
Fame and the Nobel Prize have favored him, if I may so express it, with a kind of supplementary darkness. Simple and mysterious, he has something of the divine principle described by the Hindus: the more he is named, the more he disappears. Furthermore, there is no calculation in this quest for obscurity. Those who have the honor of knowing him as a man realize his modesty is real, so real that it appears abnormal.
I for one have always denied that there could be such a thing as a modest artist; since meeting Martin du Gard my certainty has begun to waver. But this monster of modesty also has other reasons, apart from the peculiarity of his character, for seeking to live in withdrawal from the world: the legitimate concern every artist worthy of the name has to protect the time needed for his work.
This reason becomes imperative the moment the author identifies his work with the construction of his own life. Time then ceases to be merely the place where the work is done, but becomes the work itself, immediately threatened by any diversion.
Such a vocation rejects provocation and its calculated stratagems, instead accepting in everything concerned with literary creation the law of true craftsmanship. When Martin du Gard began his career as a writer, men were entering literature (the history of the Nouvelle revue française group is clear proof of this) rather as one enters the religious life.
Today, people enter it or pretend to do so—as if in mockery; it is merely a pathetic derision which can, with a few writers, have its effectiveness. With Martin du Gard, however, there was never any doubt about the seriousness of literature.
The first of his published novels, Devenir!, is a clear indication of this, being the story of a literary vocation that fails through lack of character. He makes the person in whom he depicts himself say: “Everyone has a little genius; what people don’t have anymore these days, because it’s something you have to acquire, is a conscience.”
The same character likes neither too polished an art, which he describes as “castrated,” nor “geniuses who are essentially adolescent.” I hope readers will forgive the author for the truth and topicality of his second remark. But the “big guy,” as Martin du Gard calls him in the novel, continues squarely in the same vein. “In Paris, all writers seem to have talent; actually, they have never had time to acquire any: all they have is a kind of cleverness which they borrow from one another, a communal treasure in which individual values are frittered away.”
It is already obvious that if art is a religion, it will not be an attractive one. On this point Martin du Gard quickly cut himself off from the theoreticians of art for art’s sake. Symbolism, which caused so much exquisite damage among the writers of his generation, never had any effect on him, except in certain stylistic indulgences2 which he later outgrew, like adolescent acne. He was only twenty-seven when he wrote Devenir!, and the writer who is quoted with enthusiasm in this first work is already Tolstoi.
From here on, Martin du Gard was to remain faithful all his life to an ascetic vocation, an artistic Jansenism that would make him shun ostentation and effect, in order to sacrifice everything to uninterrupted labor on a work he wanted to make endure. “What is difficult,” says this precocious and perspicacious thinker, “is not to have been someone but to stay that way.” Genius runs the risk, in fact, of being no more than a fleeting accident. Only character and work can transform it into fame and a livelihood.
Hard work, and the organization and humility that go with it, are thus at the very core of free creation and consequently indispensable in a craft
