L'artiste moderne

An essay ("The modern artist") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

My dear M****, when you did me the honor of asking for an analysis of Salon, you said: "Be brief, do not compile a catalogue.  Give me a general impression, something like a narrative of a spirited philosophical stroll through a gallery."  Well then, you will be served heartily, and not because your program agrees (and, as it were, it does agree) with the manner in which these deadly articles in Salon are actually conceived; or because this method may be easier than any other – brevity always takes more effort than prolixity; but because, very simply and most of all in the present case, no other program is possible. 

Certainly, my burden would have been greater still if I had been lost amidst a forest of originalities; if the modern French temperament, suddenly modified, purified, and rejuvenated, had yielded flowers so vigorous and of a scent so varied that they would have created irrepressible astonishment, provoked an abundance of praise and chatty admiration, and required the formation of new categories in the critical lexicon.  But thankfully (for me) none of this occurred.  No explosion; no unknown geniuses.  The thoughts suggested by the aspect of this Salon are of an order so simple, so old, so classic, that it would undoubtedly take but a few pages to develop them.  So do not be surprised that the banality of the painter engendered the commonplace in the writer.  Besides, you would lose nothing in such a belief, for could there be anything more charming (it pleases me to think that we share an opinion on this matter), more fertile, and of a nature more positively exciting than the commonplace?     

Before I begin, allow me to vent one regret that is, I believe, only seldom expressed.  We had been informed that we would be receiving guests, and not exactly unknown guests, as the Avenue Montaigne exhibition already made the Parisian public aware of some of these charming artists who had wallowed in anonymity for far too long.  For that reason I held a party to renew my acquaintance with Leslie, that rich, naïve, and noble humourist, one of the most accentuated expressions of the British mentality; with the two Hunts, the first an opinionated naturalist, and the second the ardent and witting creator of pre-Raphaelism; with Maclise, the audacious composer, as enthusiastic as he is sure of himself; with Millais, that meticulous poet; with J. Chalon, that mixture of Claude and Watteau, historian of beautiful afternoon events in the great Italian parks; with Grant, that natural heir to Reynolds; with Hook, who knows how to flood his Venetian Dreams with a magic light; with the strange Paton, whose mind veers towards Fuseli and then wanders with the patience of another epoch, that of the graceful chaos of the pantheists; with Cattermole, the watercolor painter of history; with that other fellow, so surprising that the name escapes me now, that visionary architect who on paper can construct cities whose bridges have elephants as columns and let pass between their colossal limbs all the sails of the world, the gigantic three-masted ships!  Lodgings for these imaginary friends were even prepared and of a singular color for these favorites of the bizarre muse.  But, alas!  For reasons which I do not know and whose explanation, I think, cannot be articulated on the pages of your journal, my expectations were disappointed.  In this way, tragic ardors, gesticulations in the manner of Kean or Macready, intimate kindnesses of home, Oriental splendors reflected in the poetic mirror of the English mind, Scottish greenery, enchanting freshnesses, and fleeting depths of watercolors like that decor, however small, we will not be able to consider in this "philosophical stroll," at least not this time around.  Enthusiastic representatives of the imagination and of the soul's most precious faculties, were you then so poorly received the first time that you might judge us unworthy of understanding you?

In this way, my dear M***, will we be obliged to adhere to France.  And please believe that I would experience immense joy in assuming a lyrical tone to speak about the artists of my country.  But unfortunately in a critical mind exerted so rarely, patriotism only plays an absolutely tyrannical role, and we have to make some humiliating confessions.  The first time I set foot in Salon, I made, on the stairs themselves, the acquaintance of one of our most respected and subtle critics, and to my first question, to that most natural question which I simply had to ask, he responded: "Flat, mediocre; I have rarely seen Salon as bleak."  He was at once both wrong and right.  An exhibition which possesses a number of works by Delacroix, by Penguilly, and by Fromentin cannot be bleak.  But generally speaking I see that his assertion was correct.   That mediocrity has dominated every age is indubitable; but that it reigns now more than ever, that it has become absolutely triumphant and cumbersome, this is as true as it is distressing. 

After my eyes had wafted for some time over these platitudes put to good use, all this silliness painstakingly polished, all these stupidities or falsehoods so expertly constructed, I of course was led in the course of my reflections to consider the artist in the past and to place him beside the artist of the present.  And then the terrible, eternal question arose, as it inevitably did at the end of these discouraging reflections.  It seemed like pettiness, puerility, a lack of curiosity, the flat calm of fatuousness have succeeded ardor, nobility, and turbulent ambition, both in the fine arts as well as in literature, and that nothing, for the moment, can furnish us with any hope of the spiritual blossomings as abundant as those of the Restoration.  And I am not the only one oppressed by these bitter reflections, believe me, and I will prove it to you at once.  So I used to say to myself: back then, what was the artist (Lebrun or David, for example)?  Lebrun was erudition, imagination, a knowledge of the past, a love for the great and the magnificent.  David, that colossus injured by myrmidons, wasn't he also the love of the past, the love of the great and magnificent united with erudition?  And now, what is an artist, that old brother of the poet?        

To respond properly to this question, my dear M***, one should not be afraid of being too hard.  Scandalous favoritism sometimes provokes an equivalent reaction.  The artist today and for a number of years has been, despite his absence of merit, a simple enfant gâté, a spoiled child.  What amount of honors, what amount of money have been handed over to these men without souls or learning!  Surely I am not averse to the introduction into an art of means that are alien to it; nevertheless, to give one example, I cannot but feel sympathy for an artist like Chenavard, always pleasant, as pleasant as books, and graceful to the point of slowness.  At least with him (he may be the target of the plunderer's jokes, what do I care?) I am sure that he speaks of Vergil or of Plato.  Préault has a charming gift, an instinctive taste that throws itself upon the beautiful like a predator upon its natural prey.  Daumier is gifted with luminous good sense which colors all his conversation.  Despite the bewildering leaps of his discourse, Ricard lets us see at every moment that he knows a lot and has taken into consideration a wide number of different sources.  It is useless, I think, to speak of the conversation of Eugène Delacroix, which is an admirable mix of philosophical solidity, spiritual lightness, and burning enthusiasm.  In addition, I cannot recall anyone else who would be worthy of conversing with a philosopher or poet.  Besides, you would hardly find anything more than the enfant gâté.  I beseech and beg you, tell me in what salon, in what cabaret, in what earthly or intimate meeting you have ever heard a spiritual word uttered by an enfant gâté – a profound, brilliant, and concentrated word that might make us think or dream, a suggestive word, nothing more!  If such a word is uttered, it can only come from a politician or philosopher, or even from someone of unusual vocation – a hunter, a sailor, a taxidermist.  But from an artist, an enfant gâté, never.

The enfant gâté has inherited the privilege of his precursors, a legitimate privilege at that time.  The enthusiasm that welcomed David, Guérin, Girodet, Gros, Delacroix, and Bonington still illuminates his scrawny person in a charitable light.  And while good poets and vigorous historians labor to make a living, the imbecile sponsor pays magnificently for the indecent little stupidities of the enfant gâté.  Note that I would not complain if such good fortune befell deserving men.  I am not one of those who envy a singer or a dancer who has reached the zenith of her art, a fortune acquired by hard work and daily peril.  I fear I may fall into the vice of the late Girardin, of sophisticated memory, which would one day reproach Théophile Gautier for having his imagination cost more than the services of a sub-prefect.  This was, if you will remember, during those black days when the public was appalled at hearing you speak Latin: pecudesque locutae!  No, I am not unfair to such a degree.  And yet it is good to raise a hue and cry over modern stupidity, when in the same period in which a gorgeous painting by Delacroix would have difficulty finding a buyer at a thousand francs, Meissonier's imperceptible figures have gotten ten or twenty times that price.  But these lovely days are over: we have slipped even lower, and Mr. Meissonier, who despite all his merits, had the misfortune to introduce and popularize petit bourgeois taste, is a veritable giant compared to our contemporary bauble-makers. 

Discredit of the imagination, contempt of the great and magnificent, love – no, this word is too beautiful – exclusive practice of a profession: when it comes to an artist, I believe that these are the principal reasons of his debasement.  The more imagination he possesses, the better then must he master his profession so as to accompany his imagination on its adventures and surmount the difficulties which it so avidly seeks.  And the better he masters his profession, the less will he boast of it and showcase it, so that his imagination will shine in all its brilliance.  This is what wisdom says.  And wisdom also says that he who only possesses ability is a beast; and the imagination which he wishes to forsake means he is a madman.  Yet however simple things may be, they are above or beneath the modern artist.  A concierge's daughter says to herself: "I will go to the Conservatory, I will appear in the Comédie-Française, and I will recite the verse of Corneille until I obtain the rights of those who have recited such verse for a very long time."  And she proceeds to do exactly what she said she would.  She is very classically monotone and very classically annoying and ignorant; but she has succeeded in that which was very easy, that is, to obtain by patience the privileges of the member. 

And the enfant gâté, the modern painter, says to himself: "What is imagination?  A danger and a burden.  What is the reading and contemplation of the past?  Time lost.  I will be classic, not like Bertin (since the classic changes place and name), but like ... Troyon, for example."  And he proceeds to do exactly what he said he would.  He paints, he paints, and he clogs his soul, and he paints some more, until at length he resembles the artist of the moment, and by his stupidity and ability he gains approval and the money of the public.  The imitator of the imitator finds his imitators and each of them in this way pursues his dream of grandeur, clogging his soul ever the more tightly, and most of all, not reading anything, not even The Perfect Cook, which nevertheless could have opened up to him a less lucrative but more glorious career.  Once he masters the art of sauces, icing, glazing, smearing, juices, and stews (I am talking painting), the enfant gâté assumes proud attitudes and repeats to himself with more conviction than ever that all the rest is useless.

There was a German farmer who came to find a painter and told him: "Mr. Painter, I want you to paint my portrait.  You will picture me seated at the main entrance to my farm, in the large armchair bequeathed by my father.  At my side you will paint my wife with her bedpost; behind us, coming and going, my daughters who are preparing our family supper.  On the large street which runs to the left, some of my sons coming back from the fields after having rounded up the cows into the stable; others, with my grandchildren, are bringing back the carts full of hay.  While I am contemplating these sights, do not forget, I beg you, the smoke puffs from my pipe that emerge shaded by the setting sun.  I also want the sounds of the Angelus ringing in the neighboring church bells to be heard.  It is there that we all got married, parents and children.  It is important that you paint the air of satisfaction which I am enjoying at this moment of the day as I contemplate at once my family and my riches augmented by a hard day's work!"     

Long live this farmer!  Without suspecting it he has understood painting.  The love of his profession has elevated his imagination.  Which one of our fashionable artists would be worthy of carrying out this portrait, and whose imagination could attain this level?

With a Friend Like Harry

Upon graduation from high school eighteen years ago, I was convinced – as are most of us, I suppose – that a fifteen- or twenty-year reunion would be something extraordinary.  Everyone’s life would be so utterly different that we would approach classmates with remarks appropriate for such a hiatus and be shocked to learn that these were not the people with whom we attended classes, but their spouses.  Some people would have mutated so drastically as to be unrecognizable, and all in all the experience would be akin to going to a masquerade at a zoo of futuristic intergalactic humanoids.  The only question remaining would be on which side of the glass (or bars) we should look for our old chums.  Well, I don’t know about you, but the few people I’ve seen from my graduating class over the years haven’t changed appreciably.  Let me rephrase that: they changed more over the course of high school than they have since, which is to be expected given the hormonal and orientational zigzags that highlighted our existence at that time (especially true for men).  So it would surprise me greatly if at some point before our school’s glorious silver reunion I were to encounter a classmate whom I knew reasonably well and be unable to identify that person when prompted.  More surprising still would be a reuniting that did not seem that random, that smacked even of some sinister plot, and that began to take over details in my life until that long-lost coeval became, well, a sort of advisor.  Yes, this can really only happen in a work of fiction, and that would be this odd but entertaining film.

The course of events is indeed what I mention above, and the person who usurps my place in this narrative is Michel (Laurent Lucas), a husband and father of three hampered by the usual battery of familial duties and restrictions.  In a rather bizarre locale for such life-altering happenings, the bathroom of a gas station, Michel meets Harry (Sergi López), a man probably his age (both actors were born in the same year) but otherwise as different from him as can be.  It is Harry who recognizes Michel, a gentle, perhaps overly passive sort, but Michel cannot place Harry, who speaks French with a pronounced Spanish accent and is as brash and pushy as Michel is pliable.  After numerous attempts to elicit a memory or some kind of repressed memento of their former friendship, Harry plays his trump card and recites a preposterous poem that Michel wrote in high school called "The Dagger in the Skin of the Night."  Since, in films, quoting someone’s work back to him begets either flight or an unbreakable bond, the two men decide that they should honor the past and become buddies once more, and to that end, Harry and his girlfriend follow Michel and his family on their vacation in the countryside.

Who exactly had been privy to this poem apart from its juvenile creator, we may never know, but a rather unpleasant thought crosses our minds at this juncture and the script never persuades us that this conclusion may be incorrect.  I will not say what it is because the more I reflect on that possibility, the more likely it seems.  A better way of engaging the subject is to consider the following: we are duly aware that Harry is up to no good, for if Harry had only happy and caring intentions for Michel and his family, we wouldn’t be watching a mystery but an afterschool special.  We doubt that the film will simply devolve into bloodletting (although, be warned, it is not free of violence), because blurbs would inevitably betray this derailment and it would be shelved alongside so many other films involving an intruder in the family.  So what could Harry’s secret be?  Not much is revealed by telling you that Harry, being the altruistic fellow he is, takes one look at Michel’s plain but stable life and thinks that he has wasted his time being a family man.  "You are a great writer," Harry tells him, in some form, more than once.  But what he is really saying is: "You are a coward.  You have chosen the easy bourgeois path and taken as few risks as possible."  That’s all well and good, but what purpose could such reprimands serve?  If Harry wants Michel to do him a favor, his mafioso tactic of bestowing upon him an unwanted gift (in this case, a lovely sports utility vehicle that the family of five cannot possibly afford) would make perfect sense.  Harry would then bide his time and then, one day in the near future, come to Michel with a request.  He needs him to do something that is rather unpleasant, but he knows he can count on him because they’re such good friends.  After all, he gave him that SUV.  And the next thing we know, the local mayor is bound and gagged in the trunk of that four-wheeled token of friendship and the two of them (Michel with some repulsion, Harry like a hurricane) are beating him into bloody oblivion.              

But this is precisely what does not occur.  Harry’s acts and words (his motto is "solve every problem") are not high-interest loans that require no payment for the first twelve months then balloon to unwieldy amounts thereafter.  Rather, Harry seems to embody everything that Michel thinks he should be doing but doesn’t have the wherewithal to pull off.  These tips for better living include dealing with Michel’s bickering elderly parents, returning to writing (Harry also quotes a equally ridiculous science fiction story that a teenage Michel left incomplete), and having sex like a real man, like Harry has with his girlfriend Plum.  Yes, Michel could be so different if he just tried, so why doesn’t he try?  After all, he has nothing to lose but a boring life and a deadweight family who doesn’t appreciate the artistic genius he’s held bottled up all these years.  You may also ask why nothing is made of the fact that Harry is a foreigner from "the South," and why he seems to embody every vice taken to its socially accepted limit (and sometimes well past it).  Why not, Michel, says Harry.  And again and again Michel finds himself repeating those words, and then acting on them as if they had been his ideas all along.  Is this just more evidence of that truthful adage about friends knowing more about you and what you need than you do yourself?  Let's just say that's one interpretation.

Terror's Advocate

            While your ancestors were eating acorns in the forest, mine were building palaces.

                                                                                                        Jacques Vergès*

You may initially be rather appalled at the controversial subject of this documentary, born to a Vietnamese mother and a father hailing from this region of France, the first place in the world to use the Euro, and you may end your viewing no more sympathetic to his causes.  Yet he couldn’t care less.  The agenda that makes Vergès get up in the morning is the freedom of anticolonialist fighters and political radicals who, in his estimation, have not been given a fair shake.  As an attorney of some of the more notorious political criminals in recent memory, his record continues unblemished.  “I have had clients, friends, who were sentenced to death.  Several dozen.  Not one of them was executed.” 

Vergès’s subsequent tears are hardly reptilian: he often believes in those people he chooses to defend even more strongly than they do in themselves (he even married one of them).  As a twin, a half-Asian, a converted Muslim, a former soldier, a staunch anticolonialist, and an intellectual all in one busy and enigmatic person, Vergès’s mission in life is to support the unsupportable and defend the indefensible.  The consequences of his actions are, however, well beyond what his vacillating ideals might imagine.

Although ostensibly a documentary, Terror’s Advocate is nothing like the biopics to which we have grown accustomed.  We meet people from Vergès’s past and present who praise him, often anecdotally, but cannot agree on who or what he is.  That his ethnicity, place of birth, and physical distance growing up away from Europe made him favor the politically disenfranchised is obvious.  His compassion, while present, ebbs and flows in limited quantities; to him, the essence is the principle of the matter.  The right to self-determination, a right that we are coming to understand as vital (albeit under the aphoristic caveat of giving someone a rope and letting him fashion his own particular knot), is what each person and nation state wants.  In this way, Vergès is hopelessly modern, in love with the concept of defending those whom others detest and provoking those upon whom society can do nothing but smile.  One of his alleged contributions to legal proceedings, for example, rejects the entire system as a sham and the terms used as relative to the oppressor and oppressed.  Upon the independence of this country on July 3, 1962, Verges founded a publication that inspired the last novel of a well-known American writer.  As his list of headline-making clients continues, Vergès becomes more steeped in the ways of the world, choosing his parties with an attenuated plan at hand.  Now especially involved in Middle Eastern and African affairs, he also becomes a moving target for the Israeli secret service.  And then, on the eve of expensive attempts to free this leader, he vanishes completely for eight years.

What he does in those years apart from write a book called Agenda (Simoen, Paris, 1978, although hardly mentioned online) is left open to debate.  Some of his acquaintances claim to have spotted him in Paris, and finally he admits that he did spend some time in his adopted hometown.  But he was also traveling to some of the farthest reaches of Asia, from which he finally returned in 1978, “thin, tanned, with a hardened expression,” as well as utterly penniless.  Has he been in touch with his wife and children?  A French journalist compares his Algerian wife, the Pasionaria of the FLN, to this member of the Résistance, who in no small irony is believed to have been murdered by Vergès’s most infamous client.  Surely, it is suggested, a woman of such strength would not tolerate such negligence.  So Vergès starts again, now mostly bereft of his political leanings, empathizing with the perpetrators of another violent attack in Paris itself.

And this is where, about halfway through, the film changes from biography to newsreel, and where we become painfully aware of the worldwide interconnections among revolutionary cells which have abandoned their political principles for power and gain.  Suddenly it is no longer about Jacques, but about the house he built.  The knowledge that a powerful French intellectual would succor their cause did not lead terrorists to do anything they wouldn’t have done alone, but it did tell them that, on one front at least, they were winning.  The world was scared of their crimes, scared for its children, scared for a future of random violence against civilians designed to show how effete and indifferent their governments really were.  Is that the goal of insurrectionists?  Wasn’t it once the last resort of oppressed peoples to rage against their overlords?  But violent, politically-driven nonconformity is as sellable and hollow as the material inequalities it despises.  Just don’t tell Jacques Vergès.

*Note: Jacques Vergès died on August 15, 2013, at the age of 88, in Paris. 

Baudelaire, "L'ennemi"

A work ("The enemy") by this French poet.  You can read the original here.

My youth was but a darkling storm,         
Crossed here and there by brilliant suns;  
By rain and thunder ravaged, torn,          
My garden fruit, less red, undone.             

The autumn of my thoughts is here,             
With spades and rakes my shade will loom,    
To reconstruct this land of tears,              
Where water laps large holes like tombs.        

Who knows if flowers newly dreamt,  
Shall find upon this washed shore's bend
That mystic fare and sweet vim's chart?        

O pain, as time devours life, pain!                    
Dark Enemy that eats our heart!                   
On spilled blood fed, in strength it gains! 

Pascal, "Contre l'Indifférence des Athées"

An essay ("Against the atheist's indifference") by this French thinker.  You can read the original here.

May those who combat religion learn at least what it is before they do battle.  If religion boasted of having a clear view of God and of possessing that view uncovered and unveiled, it could be combated by saying that there is nothing visible in our world that could demonstrate its existence.  But religion states quite on the contrary that man lives in darkness and far from God, and even bestows such a name upon Him in the Scriptures: Deus absconditus.  Religion may then try to establish these two things: that God has left palpable marks in the Church to be recognized by those who sincerely seek Him out and that, nevertheless, He has cloaked these marks in such a way that they will be not perceived except by those who search with their wholeness of their hearts.  What advantage could they possibly derive from professing to seek the truth amidst their negligence if they believe that nothing will be revealed?  This darkness which they inhabit and which the Church contests only establishes one of the tenets that the Church endorses without touching upon any other, and, far from ruining its doctrine, actually confirms it.

To combat the Church, they would have to believe that they have exerted all efforts to look everywhere, even in those things that the Church offers to teach them, but without any satisfaction.  Were they really to talk thus they would indeed combat one of the Church's pretensions.  But what I hope to show here is that this manner of speech could be produced by no reasonable person.  I would even say that no one has ever spoken in this way.  We know all too well how persons of this mindset act.  They think they have spared no effort to instruct themselves; in actuality, they spent a few hours perusing the Scriptures, then questioned some clergyman on the truths of faith.  We know all too well that afterwards they boast of having searched unsuccessfully in books and among men.  But in reality I cannot prevent myself from informing them that this negligence is not acceptable.  This is not about the superficial interest of an unknown person; this is about us and about our whole existence.   

The immortality of the soul is something that matters so dearly to us and that touches us so profoundly that one would have to have lost all feeling for being if one were indifferent to what this immortality might be.  All our actions and all our thoughts may take very different routes depending on whether or not one may in this process hope for eternal goods, and whether or not, in pursuing these goods from the point of view that should be our ultimate aim, it is impossible to approach the matter with sense and judgment.

Therefore our primary interest and primary task is to clarify the subject on which our entire conduct depends.  And this is why, among those who are not persuaded, I detect a large difference between those who work with all their might to instruct themselves and those who live without bothering or thinking about the subject.

I can only have compassion for those who wail in sincere doubt, who look upon the matter as the greatest of evils, and who, sparing nothing to escape this predicament, research their principal and most serious occupation.  But I have a very different opinion of those who live their life without thinking about the very end of life, who only do so because they cannot find within themselves the light to persuade them, and who, neglecting to look elsewhere, then do not examine in depth whether this attitude is one that people accept out of simple credulity or one of which a few obscure persons among them have, as it were, a solid base.  This negligence in an affair that deals with themselves, with their eternity, with their entirety, irritates me more than one would expect – it surprises and repulses me; to me it is a monster.  I do not say this out of the pious zeal of spiritual devotion.  On the contrary, I surmise that self-esteem, human interest, and the simplest rays of our reason would usher in such sentiments.  One should not see for that reason what is seen by the least enlightened among us.  

One need not have a sublimated soul to understand that no true or solid satisfaction is to be found, that all our pleasures are mere vanities, that our evils are infinite, and that eventually death, who threatens us at every instant, will need in a matter of years or perhaps even a matter of days to place us in an eternal state of happiness, unhappiness, or annihilation.  Between us and Heaven, Hell or Nothingness there is only life – which is the most fragile thing in the world.  And with Heaven being uncertain for those who doubt that their souls are immortal, they can await then only Hell or Nothingness.   

There is nothing more real or more terrible than this.  We may be as brave as you'd like – this is the end that awaits the most beautiful life in the world.

It is in vain that they steer their thoughts from the eternity that awaits them as if they could annihilate it and no longer think about it.  Yet it subsists despite them, it advances; and the death that must reveal this eternity will infallibly place them in little time in the horrible necessity of being eternally annihilated or unhappy.

And here is the doubt of a terrible consequence; and it is assuredly a woeful condition to be entrapped within that doubt; but nevertheless it is an indispensable task to search when one is there.  Thus he who doubts and does not search is at once both very unjust and very unhappy.  Whether it is with this condition, calm and satisfied, that one makes one's profession and finally one's vanity, and however this same condition may be the subject of one's joy and one's vanity, I have no term with which to name such an extravagant creature.

Where can one find such sentiments?  What subject of joy awaiting misery without recourse?  What subject of vanity that sees into the impenetrable darkness?  What consolation in never waiting to be consoled?

The relaxation through this ignorance is monstrous and one should make these persons feel the extravagance and stupidity of living their life in this fashion, and of representing what happens within themselves, to confuse them with a view of their own madness.  Because here is how men reason when they choose to live in ignorance of what they are and not to seek enlightenment.

I know not who placed me in this world, nor what the world is, nor what I am.  I am in terrible ignorance of all things.  I do not know what my body is, what my senses are, what my soul is; and this part of myself which thinks what I say and which reflects upon everything and itself, knows itself no more than the rest.  I see these horrific spaces in the Universe which confine me, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse, without knowing why I am located in this place rather than in another, nor why this little time I have been given to live has been assigned at this point rather than at another point during the course of eternity that preceded me and that which shall come in my wake.  I see only infirmities everywhere that devour me like an atom, like a shadow that lasts only a second without returning.  All I know is that I will soon have to die; but what I know least about is this death that I do not know how to avoid.

In the same way that I do not know where I come from, I also do not know where I am going.  I only know that, departing this world, I will fall forever into Nothingness or into the hands of an irritated God, not knowing in which of these two conditions I will have to spend eternity.

Here is my condition full of misery, of weakness, of obscurity.  And from all this I therefore conclude that I must spend all the days of my life without dreaming of what will come to pass, and that I have nothing to do but to follow my inclinations without reflection or inquietude in doing everything needed so as to tumble into eternal unhappiness in the event that what is said is true.  Perhaps I could find some enlightenment amidst my doubts; but not wanting to make the effort, not taking a step in this search, and treating with contempt those who will labor with this care in mind, I would like without foresight or fear to tempt such a great event, and let myself gently be led to death uncertain of the eternity of my future condition.

In reality it is to the glory of Religion to have as enemies such unreasonable men.  Their opposition is so minutely dangerous in their contradiction of the establishment of basic truths which Religion teaches us.  Because the Christian faith seeks in principle to establish these two things: the corruption of nature and the redemption of Jesus Christ.  For if they do not demonstrate the truth of redemption in the saintliness of their mores, they at least admirably show the corruption of nature by sentiments so denatured.

Nothing is as important to man as his condition; nothing is as redoubtable to him as eternity. And in this way, if he finds men indifferent to the loss of their being and in peril of an eternity of misery, this is not natural.  They are completely other with regard to all other things: they fear even the smallest things, they see them in advance, they feel them.  And this same man who passes his days and nights in rage and despair owing to the loss of a fee or for some imaginary offense to his honor, is the same man who knows he will lose everything in death and who remains nevertheless without inquietude, without trouble, and without emotion.  This strange insensibility to the most terrible things in a heart so sensitive to the most frivolous – this is an incomprehensible enchantment and a supernatural slumber.

A man in a prison cell not knowing whether his judgment has been pronounced and not having more than an hour to learn of it, and this hour being sufficient, if he knows that he has been judged, to have it revoked, it is then against nature for him to use this hour not to inform himself as to whether his judgment has been pronounced, but to play and amuse himself.  This is the condition in which these people find themselves, with the difference being that the evils which threaten them are others than the simple loss of life and brief torture of which the prisoner will learn.  Nevertheless they run without care towards the precipice after having placed something before their eyes to impede their view of it, and they mock those who might warn them. 

Thus true Religion is proven not only by the zeal of those who seek God, but also by the blindness of those who do not seek Him and who live in this horrible negligence.  There needs to be a strange reversal in the nature of man to live in such a condition, and still more to make a vanity of it.  Because once they have entire certainty that they have nothing to fear after death apart from falling into Nothingness, would this not be more a subject of despair rather than of vanity?  Is this not, therefore, inconceivable madness, not having been assured of anything, to glorify being in such doubt?

And nevertheless it is certain that man is so denatured that his heart retains in this endeavor some seeds of joy.  This brutal respite between the fear of Hell and of Nothingness seems so grand that not only those who truly wallow in these doubts glorify the matter, but also even those who do not wallow therein believe that it is glorious for them to pretend to be – since experience makes us see that the majority of those involved belong to this second category and that these people are disguised and are not what they want to appear to be.  They are people who have heard said that the fine manners of the world consist of getting carried away in this vein.  This is what they call "having shed the yoke," and most of them only do it to imitate others.

But however small the amount of common sense they may possess, it is not difficult to get them to understand to what degree they abuse themselves in searching for esteem in this way.  This is not how to obtain it; and I would say the same thing to those persons of the world who employ a healthy judgment of things and who know that the only path to success is to be honest, faithful, judicious and capable of making use of one's friends, because men naturally do not like what can be useful to them.  For what advantage is there for us to hear said by a man that has "shed the yoke," a man who does not believe that there is a God who watches over his actions, that he considers himself the only master of his conduct, that he does not think of being aware in this regard of anyone but himself?  Does he think in so doing he has henceforth instilled our confidence in him, and from this can expect consolations, advice and help in all of life's needs?  Does he believe he has elated us by saying that he doubts that our soul is anything more than a bit of wind and smoke, even telling us this in a proud and happy voice?  Is this something to be said gaily?  Isn't this, on the contrary, a sad statement, perhaps the saddest statement in all the world?

If they thought seriously about the matter they would see that this is so badly formulated, so contrary to good sense, so opposed to honesty, and so distant in every way from the good manner that they seek, that nothing is more capable of bestowing upon them the contempt and aversion of mankind and have them seem to be persons without spirit or judgment.  And, indeed, if one were to make them aware of their sentiments and the reasons they have to doubt Religion, they would say things so feeble and base that they would persuade us rather of the contrary.   This was what one person said one day on the subject: if you continue such debates, he told them, you will convert me for real.  And he was right; for who would not hate to be viewed with such sentiments as would make them companions to people so contemptible?    

Thus those who only feign these sentiments are quite unhappy to constrain their natural being to render themselves the most impertinent of men.  If they are angry in their heart of hearts for not having more light, they cannot hide it.  Such a declaration would not be honest; there is no shame apart from not doing so.  Nothing reveals more of a strange weakness of mind than not to know what is man's unhappiness without God.  Nothing indicates a greater baseness of heart than not to want the truth regarding eternal promises. Nothing is more cowardly than to brave God.  May they then leave these impieties to those who were already badly born to be capable of them: may they be the least honest of persons if they cannot yet be Christians; and may they recognize finally that there are only two types of people: those who serve God with all their hearts because they know Him and those who seek Him with all their hearts because they do not know Him yet.   

It is therefore for those who seek God sincerely and who recognize their misery in desiring truly to escape this conundrum that it is just to work, with the aim of helping them to find the light that they do not possess. 

But for those who live without knowing Him and without seeking Him, they deem themselves so unworthy of their own care, may they not be worthy of care by others.  One would have to show all the charity of the Religion they despise not to despise them until one abandons them to their folly.  Yet because this Religion obliges us to regard them always as being capable of Grace in this life, Grace that might enlighten them, and to believe that, in short order, they might be more filled with faith than we are, and that, conversely, we too might fall into the blindness which they inhabit, we have to do for them what we would want done for us if we were in their place and beseech them to take pity on themselves, and at least to take a few steps to see whether they might not find this light.  May they devote to the reading of this work a few hours of which they would otherwise make little use.  Perhaps they will find something here, or at least they would not lose too much.  But for those imbued with perfect sincerity and veritable desire to know the truth, I hope that they will be satisfied and convinced of the proofs amassed here of a Religion so divine.