For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus |  | Author: Frederick Brown
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
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Sales Rank: 186383
Format: Deckle Edge
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 5.8 x 1.5
ISBN: 0307266311
Dewey Decimal Number: 944.081
EAN: 9780307266316
ASIN: 0307266311
Publication Date: January 26, 2010
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Product Description
Frederick Brown, cultural historian, author of acclaimed biographies of Émile Zola (“Magnificent”—The New Yorker) and Flaubert (“Splendid . . . Intellectually nuanced, exquisitely written”—The New Republic) now gives us an ambitious, far-reaching book—a perfect joining of subject and writer: a portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
He writes about the forces that led up to the twilight years of the nineteenth century when France, defeated by Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, was forced to cede the border states of Alsace and Lorraine, and of the resulting civil war, waged without restraint, that toppled Napoléon III, crushed the Paris Commune, and provoked a dangerous nationalism that gripped the Republic.
The author describes how postwar France, a nation splintered in the face of humiliation by the foreigner—Prussia—dissolved into two cultural factions: moderates, proponents of a secular state (“Clericalism, there is the enemy!”), and reactionaries, who saw their ideal nation—militant, Catholic, royalist—embodied by Joan of Arc, with their message, that France had suffered its defeat in 1871 for having betrayed its true faith. A bitter debate took hold of the heart and soul of the country, framed by the vision of “science” and “technological advancement” versus “supernatural intervention.”
Brown shows us how Paris’s most iconic monuments that rose up during those years bear witness to the passionate decades-long quarrel. At one end of Paris was Gustave Eiffel’s tower, built in iron and more than a thousand feet tall, the beacon of a forward-looking nation; at Paris’ other end, at the highest point in the city, the basilica of the Sacré-Coeur, atonement for the country’s sins and moral laxity whose punishment was France’s defeat in the war . . .
Brown makes clear that the Dreyfus Affair—the cannonade of the 1890s—can only be understood in light of these converging forces. “The Affair” shaped the character of public debate and informed private life. At stake was the fate of a Republic born during the Franco-Prussian War and reared against bitter opposition.
The losses that abounded during this time—the financial loss suffered by thousands in the crash of the Union Génerale, a bank founded in 1875 to promote Catholic interests with Catholic capital outside the Rothschilds’ sphere of influence, along with the failure of the Panama Canal Company—spurred the partisan press, which blamed both disasters on Jewry.
The author writes how the roiling conflicts that began thirty years before Dreyfus did not end with his exoneration in 1900. Instead they became the festering point that led to France’s surrender to Hitler’s armies in 1940, when the Third Republic fell and the Vichy government replaced it, with Marshal Pétain heralded as the latest incarnation of Joan of Arc, France’s savior . . .
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
 A bonbon of pop history May 4, 2010
MARGOT SHEEHAN (Gotham City)
7 out of 8 found this review helpful
A luscious bonbon of pop history. Elegantly designed, from its typography (in Sabon, since you ask: the book has a colophon, of course) to its deckle-edge pages, cover design and tasteful choice of illustrations. The signatures in my copy were glued a little too tightly and I sometimes had to tear at them a little to open the book out flat, but this just adds to its Craftsman elegance. I came across only two typos or misspellings. I like to think these were due to the overconfidence of the book editors who, presented with an electronic ms. in what looked like immaculate prose, didn't bother with copy editors and proofreaders, and just zipped it off to the print shop in Lancaster, PA.
Frederick Brown's last books were biographies were acclaimed biographies of Zola and Flaubert. His love for the era fill his narrative with a warm glow. Here he has set himself a trickier subject. This is not the story of a single author finding his voice and battling his critics, or a rhapsody about the greatness of French culture, but an investigation of a proud national civilization in midlife crisis, when a lot of ugly things were said and done.
The most useful parts of the book are the chapters about the Union Generale bank, the Panama Scandal, and the soap-bubble-like political enthusiasm for General Boulanger. These were the hot crises of the "peaceful" decade of the 1880s. I've read about them before, but always found my eyes glazing over. Momentous events and sparkling personalities, yes; but there are just too many of them. Brown handles them all with entertaining concision.
The heart of the book, unsurprisingly, is the section on the Dreyfus Affair. For most people this has always been an infernal puzzlement. Many of the basic facts are still unknown, largely because most of the principal players lied like troupers. We've all learned the baby-talk version: Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a colorless nobody, is accused of espionage; convicted and exiled to the legendary Devil's Island for four long years; but finally revealed to be the victim of a cruel conspiracy by the fire-breathing anti-Semites of the French officer corps and Catholic hierarchy.
Brown's patient unfurling of the tale makes it clear that the Affair was never really about Dreyfus himself, or his guilt or innocence. The leftist and anti-clerical "Dreyfusards" found the case a convenient club for taunting and whacking their political enemies. Almost from the start, they used the foreign press to sound the alarm that the French Army and Church had connived to railroad an innocent man because he was a Jew. Infuriated by this international propaganda war, the "anti-Dreyfusards" fell into the ambush and circled the wagons. They fell over themselves to defend the conviction even when a cursory review of the facts suggested that there were other, bigger spies than Dreyfus and there was a good chance Dreyfus himself was innocent. Secret dossiers were passed around, new notes were forged and "discovered," and the ministry of defense seemed to condone it all: this was war, after all. Even Col. Picquart, head of military intelligence, found himself transferred to Algeria when he found the forgeries and tried to prove that Dreyfus was innocent.
Brown tries hard to seem scrupulously fair. However he appears to have skipped some basic research. For example: he tells us that Dreyfus's handwriting bore no resemblance to the script on the "bordereau" (the original incriminating document that got Dreyfus sent to Devil's Island). But really the two hands look very much alike. As indeed they also resemble the handwriting of Major Esterhazy, the "real" spy. Anyone can compare samples in various places on the internet, but you won't find them reproduced here. This is a glaring omission. It was these handwriting samples that convicted Dreyfus. You really have to see how closely they resemble each other to understand how anyone believed in poor old Dreyfus's guilt in the first place.
As Edith Piaf said, er, sang, "Non Je Ne Regret Rein" July 23, 2010
Thomas M. Sullivan (Lake George, NY USA)
Someone once wrote that but for the uncounted careers and lives shattered or lost, the personal and public fortunes scattered or purloined, the military scandals and misadventures, and the viciously irreligious religious disputes, nineteenth century French political life would make a marvelous comic opera. It came too late, but one can easily imagine Gilbert & Sullivan concocting a delightful operetta of the Dreyfus Affair were it not for the fact that the duplicitous machinations of the Army General Staff, the pernicious irresponsibility of the popular press, and the noxious fulminations of execrable anti-Semites would combine to suggest a libretto more fantastical than any `Mikado' or "Pinafore.'
Despite my fondness for one or two chanteuses, I have never been particularly intrigued by post-Revolutionary French domestic history (excepting Napoleon and his tumultuous era) because I have found trying to follow the ebb's and flow's of the various regimes, up to and including to the present day, not really worth the effort. The royals may have been despotic by definition but at least they possessed a facially consistent claim to legitimacy and internal symmetry as evidenced by the fact that a very considerable part of the population never fell out of love with the idea of them, if not their earthly embodiments. But one has to admit that the French are a beguiling bunch, even as they defy comprehension, and so I took a chance on this book because of its stated premise. After all, there is nothing in French history more difficult to get a handle on than how it unfolded in the nineteenth century. And, with Ms. Piaf, I have no regrets.
Author Brown does an absolutely superb job of portraying the social and religious atmospheres of the time and the ever-roiling tensions between `secular republicans' and the generally religious-oriented monarchists. As noted by other reviewers, his succinct descriptions of the era's two principal public scandals, the Union Generale and the Panama Canal fiasco, are models of historical story-telling, as is his account of the Dreyfus Affair which was the logical, arguably inevitable, culmination of the period's events and serves as the coda of this excellent work. Eiffel, de Lesseps, Boulanger, Clemenceau, MacMahon, Zola, the reformers and those badly in need of reform, are all present and adroitly accounted for as Brown recounts his tale. And I must admit I found the enterprise both illuminating and a complete pleasure to read.
The author is a word composer of exceptional skill. He writes like a fine athlete strides: forceful yet restrained, purposeful yet elegant, altogether obviously knowing where he's going and how he's going to get there. And he wields his manifestly impressive vocabulary as a scalpel rather than a sword. Have your dictionary at your elbow and delight in exploring words you either never acquired or have forgotten.
In sum, a terrific read that, and I'm reluctant to say this, might just encourage me to pay more attention to the history of those arcane Frenchmen rather than only their songs.
There are many reasons to like this book. August 12, 2010
Robert S. Hanenberg (San Francisco)
There are many reasons to like this book.
First, it is about a culture war, and if you think that the US culture war will come to an end someday soon, consider the poor French, who endured theirs from the before the 1789 revolution to around 1905, when the church was finally separated from the state.
As with our culture wars, the left (the enlightenment, the secular side) kept winning, and the right (the Catholic Church, the peasantry in certain areas, the old aristocracy) kept retreating. But not graciously. For every defeat, blame was put upon the Jews. For instance, the Eiffel Tower, a symbol of science and progress, was vilified by the right because it did not come from traditional architectural roots, like the Sacre-Coeur. Jews had to be responsible, so the blame was put on the Jew Eiffel. Except that neither he nor any of his ancestors were Jewish. The same was true of the Union General, an investment house dedicated to improving the status and wealth of the church. It was betrayed by its pious founder, but Jews were found to blame. The same was true of the Panama Canal Company, which seems to have corrupted large sections of the French government. I kept thinking that if France had lost World War I, some French Hitler might have come to power in France. The preconditions were there.
The outcome was a victory by the left, a separation of church and state, but it consumed French passions for over a hundred years. This book helped me to understand the current antipathy of the French to the Moslem burka, which does not seem to bother the Americans or the British.
Another reason to read this book is that it is composed of good stories. The account of the Dreyfus affair is the best I have ever read. The section on Boulanger--a handsome but limited man who nearly became a dictator--is hilarious. The book is a series of essays on various topics. Each is an interesting story in itself. Taken together they illustrate the overall theme.
Finally, the author is funny. One politician he describes as "a high-strung little man, who looked more like a ninepin than a pillar of state." Of another who was told to temper his enthusiasm, "he might as well have asked Zephyr to guard against blowing."
Nineteenth century prose is extravagant and rhetorical to our ears. Brown has absorbed some of it, which is a mixed blessing. He writes that "the brigadier was a rare bird, and republicans in Paris reacted to news of his sighting like grackles suddenly befriended by a raptor." I had to look up several of his abstruse classical references. I am glad that someone continues to use them.
FOR THE SOUL OF FRANCE March 4, 2010
Marc Ehrlich
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
One of the best books on 19th century France that I have ever read. It explains the dangers for a country when groups cannot accept political change. The endless factionalism between monarchists, bonapartists, and republicans which never resolved itself lead to directly to the breakdown of the army and the fingerpointing which became the defeat in 1940.For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus
For the soul of France March 16, 2010
Albertus J. Ekelmans (U.S.A. Houston TX)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book written by Frederick Brown is in my opinion of very high value. It describes the situation and the mentality prevalent during the years 1800/1900. where France was allready pritty well bankrupt, but still ready to embark on any other war with Germany. One could say, what else is new, but the mere fact that England and the USA were willing to join and created the basis for WW11 is of major interest. Even today we see the results of the desisions in the Treaty of Versailes that followed the war of 1914 /18, that in principle was a part of the thingking at the time. Do not be surprised to see no difference with the leaders of today
Showing reviews 1-5 of 12
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