FRANCE in the nineteenth century cannot be understood without an appreciation of the role of the utopians,
any more than the Revolution of 1789 can be without a knowledge of the philosophes of the Enlightenment.
The utopians were historically important because they introduced the genius into politics.
The genius became the nucleus
of a new class, challenging the
state, demanding power and threatening to dismember the traditional centralised authority,
an elite like the nobles, and with similar pretensions.
Genius, men generally believed in this period, could not be acquired;
it was something that one was born with, but, as with nobility, one could associate with it and become assimilated to it.
One of the marks of genius was that one was understood by other geniuses. So those who accepted their leadership
could enter into this new class of illumines.
Against the nobles, who spoke as the representatives of local community life, the geniuses spoke in the name of a new community of the enlightened. The genius indeed was a new kind of
individual ideal.
Hitherto the chivalric hero, the saint, the courtier, the honnete homme, had been universal models,
but only for private conduct. The attainment of that status brought self gratification, honour and public respect,
but no political power.
The genius was much more dangerous. Until the eighteenth century genie had meant simply talent
or skill. But with Diderot the genius was held up as an exceptional apparition, standing outside his time, almost outside
his species, whose importance was that he could perceive truths others could not.
He was therefore not subject to common
standards, ethical rules or controls. He produced great ideas and `every great idea', as Lamartine said, `is a struggle
against society, a revolution'.
The basis for this new role for the intellectuals had been laid in the eighteenth century.
Around 1700 the `man of letters' usually lived in a state of insecurity and constraint, shackled by an arbitrary censorship
exercised simultaneously by the king, the parlement and the Sorbonne. He often had to use pseudonyms or conceal his
identity altogether.
Only in the second half of the century did a few of them manage to live by their pens. These
successes did a good deal to raise the status of what was becoming almost a profession. The government began employing
writers to influence public opinion, `to prepare the way for legislation', as Moreau described his own function.
But it was slow to accept advice from them.
`It is not up to an obscure writer,' said L'Averdy, `who often has not a
hundred ecus to his name, to indoctrinate persons in office.' A book about L'Homme de lettres published in 1764, by
one of them, admitted with regret that they were `kept outside the state'.'
The first stage in their ascent was for
them to win honour, respect and security. They did not think of power yet. They solicited the subsidies, pensions
and presents, of tiny amounts, which the government gave them a mark at once of patronage, disdain and fear.
They were for long treated essentially as entertainers.
Voltaire complained of the `excessive disparagement attached
to this equivocal state' of the writer.
Montes quieu was appalled when he learnt that his son was developing a taste
for learning: `He will never be anything', he exclaimed in horror, `but a man of letters, an eccentric like me.'
He had planned to buy him a state office, the mark of respectability (which he of course enjoyed also, as member of
a parlement). However, as the censorship relaxed, books on politics gave the writers increasing authority.
Foreign admirers in particular did much to raise their status. It was the philosophes, not the nobles, whom the
visitors from abroad came to see.
That was one reason why the writers assumed with such vigour the mission of
French culture abroad. Frederick II invited Voltaire to his table, to the horror of the French king. On the eve
of the ' Revolution in 1778, Mercier wrote, `the influence of writers is such that they can today proclaim their
power and no longer disguise the legitimate authority they have over men's minds'.
Extract from “France 1848 – 1945 Politics & Anger”, Written by Theodore Zeldin. Oxford University Press.
Oxford New York Toronto Melbourne: 1979.
