Maurice Barrès and the Fate of Boulangism: the Political Career Of
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This dissertation has been 65—3845 microfilmed exactly as received DOTY, Charles Stewart, 1928— MAURICE BARR^S AND THE EATE OF BOULANG- BM: THE POLITICAL CAREER OF MAURICE BARRES (1888-1906). The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1964 History, modern University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan Copyright by Charles Stewart Doty 1965 MAURICE BARRES AND THE FATE OF BOULANGISM: THE POLITICAL CAREER OF MAURICE BARRES (1888-1906) DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Charles Stewart Doty, A.B., M.A. The Ohio State University 1964 Approved by Department of History V ita September 8, 1928 Born - Fredonia, Kansas 1950 ..................... A. B., Washburn Municipal University, Topeka, Kansas 1953-1954 • • • Research Assistant, Department of History, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 1955 ..................... M.A., University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 1957-1960 . Graduate Assistant, Department of History, The Ohio S ta te U niv ersity, Columbus, Ohio I960 ...................... Part-time Instructor, Department of History, Denison University, Granville, Ohio 1960-1961 . Part-time Instructor, Department of History, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 1961-1964 . Instructor, Department of History, Kent S ta te U niversity, Kent, Ohio Fields of Study Major Field: History Studies in Modern Europe, 1789-Present, Professors Andreas Dorpalen, Harvey Goldberg, and Lowell Ragatz Studies in Renaissance and Reformation, Professor Harold J. Grimm Studies in United States, 1850-Present, Professors Robert H. Brem- ner, Foster Rhea Dulles, Henry H. Simms, and Francis P. Weisenburger i i table of contents Page INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 1 CHAPTER I . FROM LITERARY TO POLITICAL REBEL (1 8 6 2 -1 8 8 8 ) ........................... 4 I I . THE CAMPAIGN OF 1889 33 I I I . BARRES AND THE FAILURE OF BOULANGISM AS A PARTY AND parliamentary bloc (1889-1893)................................................... 83 IV. MAURICE Da RRES AS POLITICIAN AND DEPUTY ........................................ 128 V. AT THE CROSSROADS (1 8 9 3 -1 8 9 7 ) ........................................................ 158 VI. THE NaNCY PROGRAM OF NATIONALISM (1 8 9 8 ) ...................................... 202 V II. BARRES AND THE NATIONALIST aND ANTI-DREYFUSARD LEa GUES (1898-1906) 231 CONCLUSION............................................................................................................ * 270 APPENDIX............................................................................... 274 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................277 LIST OF MAPS Map 1. Distribution by arrondissement of Boulangist vote in P aris in 1889 ....................................................................................... 77 2. Departments which, in 1889 , elected Deputies who sat in Boulangist bloc ................................................................................... 79 i i i INTRODUCTION A few weeks before his death in 1923 Maurice Barres wrote, "I was born in 1862. These sixty years are the lowest point in the sweep [courbe] of French energy. An epoch of deep depression. This depres sion governed my destiny."^ In those years Barr&s was a major critic of this lack of "energy" with an enormous influence in the world of ideas. Originally he criticized the shortage of energy as one of the principal wriT -vrs to revive the psychological novel in France. Before he was thirty his novels, which emphasized individuality, had so taken young French in tellectuals by storm that he was virtually "the prince of youth." His influence was so great on young writers in the 1890's that the French novel was very much under his spell for two decades. Also in the 1890's he emerged as a political thinker with one of the foremost intellectual attacks on the Third French Republic. His attack in the name of national ism, a presidential republic, federalism, and social reforms ir.itia.ny had considerable influence on young men of both Left and Right. Although he lost his devoted following in the first decade of the twentieth century, his political ideas persisted in riddling the thought of the French Right. Because he enjoyed such a great influence on his own and subse quent generations as a novelist and political thinker, Barres scholars have tended to concentrate on these aspects of his career. They have not shown us the Barrfes who was a follower and leader of political movements, ^Maurice Barr&s, Mes Cahiers (Paris, 1929-1957), I> 8. 1 who was a polemical journalist and editor, who was, in short, a politi cian and engagg intellectual. This study will attempt to complement these other works by concentrating on Barr&s as politician and activist: his beginning as a follower of Boulangism, his search for a new mode of political expression when Boulangism fails in 1889, his seeming failure to found a viable political movement at the very time he found personal political and literary recognition in his 1906 election to the French Academy and to the Paris constituency which he represented until his death in 1923. These were the most important years for Barres, because they shaped his political ideas. By 1906, his ideas had fully matured. In dwelling on the political career of Barrfcs this study, first of all, will show that there was an interplay between his ideas and ac tion and that both evolved through stages, often under the influence of key figures and events. His literary rebellion led to his involvement in the political rebellion of Boulangism. His campaign in a working- class district and his participation at the extreme Left of the Chamber of Deputies moved him into socialism. After the collapse of Bounalgism, he tried to build both a new political movement in socialism and nationalism and a new political success at Neuilly (1893 and 1896), Nancy (1898), and Paris (1903 and 1906). This examination of his political involvement will show that the ideas of Barr&s were not born full-blown, as he and most Barres scholars have contended. Instead, the ideas evolved under the impact of events, earlier ideas, and the influence of men and move ments such as Alfred Gabriel, Paul Dlroulede, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and the Boulanger and Dreyfus Affairs. Secondly, this study will show the fate of Boulangism as it was reflected in the political career of Barr&s. It will examine what Bou langism meant to Barres and its other participants, how they moved into socialism and nationalism, and how Barrfcs and the old Boulangists failed in their attempt to build a new mass movement like Boulangism out of na tionalism and the Dreyfus Affair. CHAPTER I FROM LITERARY TO POLITICAL REBEL (1862-1888) Maurice Barr&s originally entered politics for psychological and literary reasons. As a young writer in the 1880's he rebelled against the literary and educational conventions of his youth, pseudo-scientific naturalism and positivism. To Barrfes, tK se conventions dehumanized man, destroyed his individuality and ego, and submerged him in the mediocre, barbarian herd. The literary rebellion of Barres took the form of dica dence or symbolism. It rejected the world of positivism as false and sought reality by magnifying the individual ego. By 1887-1888 even thi3 failed Barres. His whole world seemed to conspire against him. His novels had failed to give either him or his protagonist self-fulfillm ent in the ivory-tower, his literary efforts went unrecognized, and he felt crushed by a political, literary, and social world which, in its common place meanness, attacked him and his movement. In the emotional crisis which these feelings created, Barres concluded that he could break out of this psychological impasse only by abandoning the ivory-tower and seek ing the people. By uniting himself with the mass in political action, he could re s to re h im self. At th a t very tim e a p o litic a l movement came in to being which re b e lle d a g a in st conventional p o litic s in th e same way th a t symbolism re b e lle d a g a in st conventional l it e r a t u r e . That movement was Boulangism, and for a Barres forced into politics by psychological needs, such a movement inevitably drew him into it. 5 I The intellectual world against which Barr&s rebelled originally took: him and attempted to shape him in its image. His father, as a civil engineer from Charnes—sur—Moselle (Vosges), was prosperous enough to send him to the college of Malgrange in 1873. From there, the young Maurice advanced to the lyc£e at Nancy in 1877. At both, he and nis classmates received an almost official philosophy of optimism which reflected the mood of France itself. Faith in science as the solution to all human problems had triumphed. The positivism of Comte turned into the scient ism of Taine and Kenan, who dominated intellectual circles in the days following 1870. Taine1s race, milieu, et moment, which had expressed an earlier realism, became the rationale of naturalism with Zola and Daudet as the successors of Flaubert. The political outlet for these philoso phies was Opportunism. For twenty years the Opportunists held power with the rhetoric of Le<5n Gambetta's 1869 Belleville Program, which promised to bring a democratic republic, separation of church and state, and free dom for labor to organize when the opportunity arose. Except