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PARTISAN REVIEW
guish, however, from the jack-of-all-trades that M. Farigoule* has
become, the writer that was Romains. (It is indeed, folly of the
most pernicious sort to demand of the artist precisely those virtues
which belong to the politician. "Happy the society," said Diderot,
after Confucius and other wise men, "Happy the society in which
every one sticks to his own work and only to that!") As a writer,
Jules Romains can fairly ask to be judged by the standards of
his craft.
No doubt one could have discovered in the birth of the Unani·
mist movement, a premonitory sign of the
Seven Mysteries:
every
founder of a school is suspect of careerism. At the same time, it
must be admitted that, in the 'free' capitalist jungle, every artist
who doesn't found at least two rival schools is doomed to twenty
years of washing cars, depending on his luck, or of selling at cut
prices Latin, Greek, or God knows what. Together with Naturism,
Futurism, Humanism, Romanism, lnstantism, Paroxysm, lntimism,
etc.... Unanimism was simply one of innumerable sects in which,
after the failure of the 'Symbolist' mutual.advertising gang, cer–
tain young gentlemen who were impatient of fame organized them–
selves. One would have preferred to have Romains get his start in
some other way; his school, which protested against the sterile and
anarchistic individualism of the 19th century, had still (as yet)
some good intentions, or at least good will. A pity that, to sustain
his glory as "leader," the novelist had to stick to the narrow path
of orthodoxy.
If
Le Bourge Regenere,
if
Mort de Qulequ'un
(pub–
lished in English as "Death of a Nobody") properly illustrate the
Unanimist metaphysic-the first in a manner both genial and
truculent, the second not without
grandeur-Puissances de Paris
(1919) shows the dangers of the system. The 150 pages of this
little volume profess to show how, within a great city, various
"nuclei" (in the form of Parisian squares or streets) "achieve
self consciousness."
It exists without perfection. Where does it begin to become
something else than a number of intersecting streets? When
does it become a street in flower? It is like the middle of a
sheaf, whose binding, firm and warm, one can take in one's
hand.
This, it seems, is the Rue du Havre. All the other arteries and
*Romains' real name is Farigoule--Eo.
