Nationalism and the French novel, 1870–1914

Abstract

Thus wrote Renan in September 1870.’ The ‘terrible year’, 1870/71, as Victor Hugo called it, brought the shock of France’s defeat by the ‘barbaric’ Prussians together with the loss of the Rhineland provinces and the collapse of the Second Empire. Prior to these events there was in France a general humanitarianism with a romantic flavour and a belief in continuing progress, inherited from the Enlightenment. One admired German sciences and philosophy, Wissenschaft; some scholars corresponded across the frontiers, such as Renan, with David Strauss and Mommsen.2 France was quite unprepared for war with Prussia and Napoleon III seemed unconcerned while urgent telegrams reached him on his cruise along the Norwegian coast, in the company of Renan. The words nationalisme and patriotisme came to France from England, in the course of the eighteenth century, and came into their own in the French Revolution.3 Patriotism, as held by the Jacobins, means merely love of one’s country, whereas nationalism implies an antagonistic attitude to another country. Chauvinisme, an exaggerated and belligerent nationalism, derives from Nicolas Chauvin, who upheld his patriotic attachment to Napoleon after 1815. The enormous military and political upheaval found its literary expression. One of the first literary reactions to the defeat is contained in Alphonse Daudet’s Contes du Lundi (1872). The poignant story, La dernir through the educational system the population was to be ‘germanised’. The French did likewise after 1919 through their educational system at all levels. During the siege of Paris, a carpenter, (Le Prussien de B&sake) found a small house he owned on the outskirts, emptied of its furniture, but discovered the culprit ‘ca sentait le Prussien’. In his deepseated hatred of the Prussian Belisaire kills him and throws the body into the Seine. La mort de Chauvin recalls the naive patriot in face of the disastrous reality. He is killed by mistake as the Versailles army reaches Paris, victim of the civil war: ‘C’ttait le dernier Francais’.4