JULES ROMAINS
261
veins of Paris are oi the same kidney. The whole thing reeks of
trickery. I can't say either that all the Unanimist poems are good
that stretch out between
L'Ame des Hommes
(1904) and
Amour
Couleur de Paris
(
1921). There are some lines of
Europe,
there
is the
Ode
a
la Foule,
beautiful despite Unanimism-and, over
against these, what trash! All the same, in the first seventeen years
of his literary career Jules Romains remains faithful to his calling.
Even those who criticise
Les Copains
(American title: "The Boys
in the Back Room") for imitating the 'mystifications' in vogue
with
Ecole Normale Superieure
students, even they have to salute
the author of
LeVin Blanc
and
Mort de Qulequ'un.
For, in these
two books, the doctrine is limited to determining the choice and
disposition of details which remain humanly believable; nothitlg
is invented to justify orthodoxy. This is 1920.
Alas, the years 1920-1925 are painful. Not that life was
hard-quite the contrary. But nothing tests the artist more sternly
than the hope of success, or the temptation of a fat check. Those
young men who came safely through the war-everything smiled
at them, everything was permitted them, every duchess seemed to
be fascinated by them. It was just then, between
Donogoo-Tonka
and the
Vision Paroptique
("The Paroptical Vision") that Jules
Romains weakened and abandoned himself to facility. What
verve, what intelligence, what graciousness in the former little
sketch, which makes fun of the scientific method by proclaiming
the "cult of scientific error"! What a healthy reaction against the
pedantry of a Sorbonne whose weaknesses Peguy had so frequently
and brutally exposed!
Donogoo
dates from 1920. Two or three
years later all Paris resounded with the quarrel over "paroptical
vision": a young unknown, or known only among a few coteries,
a certain Jules Romains had discovered that men know how to read
blindfold, through their pores. With tooth and nail, this young
man defends against the ironical sceptics, the truth of his "par–
optical" discovery. The Sorbonne, speaking through Georges
Dumas, the psychologist, this time is in the right against Roma.ins.
Articles, insults, calumnies, no matter what: Jules Romains is
famous. As if it were not enough to acquire f arne at this price,
Romains at once exploits his advantage by writing his comedy
Dr.
Knock
(the film version of which is now showing in New
York), by which he gains wealth and glory. When I knew this
