ANATOLE FRANCE
In 1844 , exactly a hundred years before I came into this world, "a child was born not in Bethlehem" but in France who was christened as Jacques Anatole Thibault but was destined to be known throughout the literary world, most fittingly, as Anatole France, thus justifying the statement of Maxim Gorky to the effect that "Anatole France represents profoundly and comprehensively the spirit of the French."
As the eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson relates in his famous book,"To the Finland Station", disparaging Anatole France started soon after his death. "At last, after the flattery and rewards of a lifetime, the younger generation is to reject him...When France died, his place at the academy was filled by an eminent Symbolist, who used the occasion to disparage France; and that group of ultra-Symbolists, the Dadaists, together with some neo-romantic young writers, seized upon the day of his burial to bring out, under the title A Corpse, a fierce manifesto against him" (p.71)
Yet, Anatole France remains what he has been and lives through his imaginative and thought-provoking fictions such as "Penguin Island" and "The Revolt of The Angels" , not to mention his various types of authoritative literary criticisms, while his detractors has gone into oblivion .That's precisely why I thought it most appropriate to commemorate the centenary of his reception of the Nobel Prize for Literature , although I am not aware of a tradition of such a commemoration anywhere in the world. My intention in this endeavour is "not just to praise him but not to allow his detractors to bury him." The most suitable and effective way of achieving this within my most limited capacity is to disseminate his views which are in accord with his whole spirit through the Internet.Thus I have tried to collect as many quotations as possible from his books which, to my mind, will do the job.Of course, I might have missed many of such passages and have added irrelevant passages. No one is obliged to accept what Anatole France have said. Nevertheless reading them with open mind will certainly open the hitherto closed or half-closed minds of even an incorrigible bigot. In any case, as it is very difficult, if not impossible for anyone to read, let alone find, all the books by him, these quotations will provide the easiest way to grapple with his most thought-provoking insights and hopefully may induce them to go to the originals.
In addition to this endeavour through the Internet, I have translated "The Revolt Of the Angels" by Anatole France into Sinhala and got it published to coincide with this centenary.As a matter of fact, It was more than three decades ago, in 1989, that I read any of his works for the first time. It was "Penguin Island." I was mesmerized to such an extent, I started translating it into Sinhala just after I have finished reading it and published it as an author publication.So my fascination with Anatole France has its own history.Notwithstanding my age , some more translations may follow,Who knows!
T.Andradi 12/12/ 2021
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MAXIM GORKY on ANATOLE FRANCE
...Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy have each in his own way shown the soul of The Russian people with a perfect comprehensiveness, and for me, Anatole France represents as profoundly and comprehensively the spirit of the French. There will probably be objections to such a parallel from the Russian side, but that would simply be an argument on tastes. Besides, it is not aesthetic magnitudes that I am comparing, but only the the measures in which the spirit of a nation is expressed, and from this point of view Anatole France is an equal to all the greatest geniuses of the world as far as i am concerned.
... What impresses me in Anatole France above all else is his courage and his spiritual health... He lived at a time of great social catastrophes , but I do not remember if ever his acute mind made a mistaken appraisal of events, although I must say that the connection between his attitude to war and his attitude to the idea of communism was never quite clear to me...
Living in a dirty hell, so artfully, so splendidly organized by the ruling classes of Europe, Anatole France , a man who had the look of a great satyr and the great soul of an ancient philosopher, saw and felt all that was "bad" with am amazing keenness. ...Like Socrates he liked to express the bad in what popular opinion thought was good, and did it competently.His attitude to the regrettable Dreyfus case, the letter he wrote about the persecution of Paul Marguerrite, and much else shows convincingly enough that indifference to people and the world was utterly foreign to his skepticism....
And no one felt the relativeness of our concepts of good and bad better than Anatole France..
Aesthetics was Anatole France's ethics - of the future, In Justice he first of all saw beauty, wisely foreseeing that life would become just only when it was saturated with beauty..
For me, Anatole France is a ruler of thought, he gave it birth, reared it, clothed it effectively in words, and with elegance and grace brought it out into the world: gay and lively, smiling ironically but without malice. He governed its capricious games with the ease of a brilliant musician, the conductor of an orchestra all the members of which deem themselves outstanding talents and are subjective to the point of anarchy....
THOSE WHO DECIDED TO INSCRIBE ON THE TOMBSTONE OF THE WISE MAN'S LAST RESTING PLACE JUST THE TWO WORDS
ANATOLE FRANCE
decided wisely.These words fully express the significance of this man, having enriched our world with the treasures of his talent, left us so that it would be easier for us to really understand and appreciate his art and his charming image.
(Maxim Gorky -Collected Works -Vol.10- pp.183/87)
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While we were in the train during our forced exile by Stalin, "we reread Anatole France." (My Life- Leon Trotsky -p.564)
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