IMÁGENES DEL PROYECTO ARQUITECTONICO

Charles Maurras was the leader o f a Royalist, right wing, political organisation, the

Action Française. He has been seen as one o f the most significant European

influences on Eliot’s politics, and critics who have written on E liot’s attitude to fascism usually quote from Eliot’s article, "The Literature o f Fascism", the famous formulation: "Most o f the concepts which might have attracted me in fascism I seem already to have found, in a more digestible form, in the work o f Charles Maurras" (VIII, p.288). (This article concentrated on the practice and theory of fascism in Italy, and sought to draw intellectual distinctions between the Italian experience and the doctrines o f the Action Française.) W illiam M. Chace has suggested that "It is through Maurras that Eliot was to be introduced to a school o f continental thinking that helped to define his entire intellectual life" (p. 129).

Kenneth Asher’s thesis is equally embracing: "Simply put, it seems to me that from beginning to end, Eliot’s work, including both the poetry and the prose, was shaped by a political vision inherited from French reactionary thinkers, especially from Charles M a u r r a s . B o t h o f these seem to me to overstate Eliot’s debt to Maurras, and in so doing to ignore the importance o f Benda’s critique.

In the previous chapter, I began this discussion o f classicism by citing Eliot’s tri-partite self-definition in the preface to F or Lancelot Andrew es (1928). This definition derives from the "classique, monarchique, catholique" ideology which Maurras had been promoting since the beginning o f the century, primarily

Kenneth Asher, T. S. E liot and Ideology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp.2-3.

through the newspaper U A ction Française;^^ Eliot’s appropriation o f it has been seen as "an attempt to construct a systematic Maurrassian model or myth of English cultural h i s t o r y . E l i o t had first hand experience o f the Action Française

during his time in Paris in 1910-1911. Unfortunately, very few o f Eliot’s letters from this period (only four between 1910 and 1914) have survived to be published, and scholars are thus deprived o f a vital resource in giving an account o f this period o f his life.^®

In December 1926, Maurras and the Action Française were condemned by the Archbishop o f Bordeaux, at the instigation o f the Pope Pius XI as "athées ... anti-chrétiens ... a n t i c a t h o l i q u e s , and many o f Maurras’s writings were placed on the Roman Catholic Indexas Expurgatorius o f proscribed books In his

commentary opening The Monthly Criterion o f November 1927, Eliot cited the condemnation as one o f the three most significant events o f the previous ten years (the others being the Russian revolution and the "transformation o f Italy") which had compelled the man o f letters to attend to subjects outside his own competence. The importance of, and the link between these events was that they "compel us to consider the problem o f Liberty and Authority, both in politics and in the

Torrens, p.312. Bergonzi, p .l 16.

Nancy D. Hargrove’s essay in Thormahlen, ed., pp.33-57, is an interesting and suggestive portrait o f the intellectual and cultural activities o f the time, derived from a range o f contemporary sources.

Torrens, p.312.

See Ernst Nolte, Three Faces o f Fascism, tr. Leila Vennewitz (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), pp.76-7, who discusses this incident in the context o f the relationship between the Action Française and fascist ideas.

organization o f speculative thought. Politics has becom e too serious a matter to be left to politicians" (VI, p.386).

As Asher points out, Eliot’s statement in the preface to F or Lancelot

Andrewes, coming after the condemnation, enacted a measure o f ideological

solidarity with Maurras even while the latter was a controversial figure (p.56). During the first half o f 1928, Maurras, the Action Française, and their attitude to Christianity and to the Roman Catholic church in particular, became the subject of a controversy in The Criterion, the principal disputants being Eliot himself, and Leo Ward, a Roman Catholic author and pamphleteer. Eliot’s article, "The Action

Française, M. Maurras and Mr. Ward", in The M onthly Criterion o f March 1928,

was a response to Ward’s book The Condemnation o f the 'Action F rançaise’. Eliot was concerned about the justification o f "the condemnation by the Vatican o f an important intellectual movement" (VII, p. 195), especially as it applied to the "morality and moral influence o f a contributor to this number o f The Criterion"

(VII, p. 196)."^' As w ell as attempting to refute Ward’s arguments, Eliot used the context o f the controversy to praise Maurras as a man o f letters, asserting that he had "written as fine prose as any French author living," and more politically that "if anything, in another generation or so, is to preserve us from a sentimental Anglo-Fascism, it will be some system o f ideas which will have gained much from the study o f Maurras" (VII, pp. 196-7). Quite what this hybrid Anglo-Fascism

Eliot was referring to the second part o f Maurras’s "Prologue to an Essay on Criticism"; this essay was his only contribution to the magazine. It had been written in 1896, and yet curiously Eliot decided to disinter and translate it. Torrens suggests that: "Eliot ... chose to translate the old Maurras essay shortly before his own discourse on Dante because it mirrored his long-standing concern for keenness o f sensibility at the same time as it reminded readers and writers o f the need for lucid control over one’s impressions" (p.316).

denoted is unclear, and Eliot was wrong in his b elief that Maurras would become a significantly influential figure in England."^^

Leo Ward’s main contention, which he reiterated throughout his two contributions to the debate in The Criterion, was that the Action Française sought to de-Christianize contemporary French culture, while espousing and exploiting the forms o f religion. Maurras was avowedly agnostic, but Eliot expressed guarded admiration for his position: "His attitude is that o f an unbeliever who cannot believe .... The peculiarity o f Maurras’s agnosticism (or atheism if you like) is that he recognises that he has much more in common, in the temporal sphere, with Catholics than with Protestants or atheists" (VII, p. 197). Ward had suggested that Maurras, for pragmatic political reasons, had suppressed his agnosticism and ceased to make anti-Christian statements publicly because the majority o f supporters o f the Royalist cause were Catholics. According to Ward:

Maurras perceived long ago that France needs above all to be held together and stabilized, especially by monarchical and authoritarian institutions. Nothing is so fissiparous as mysticism and individualism. Christ was the Mystic and therefore Individualist p a r excellence. He is therefore the most dangerous o f disruptive influences. France therefore must be de-

A writer who has acknowledged Maurras’s continuing influence is C. H. Sisson; see his "Looking back on Maurras" (1976), English Perspectives: Essays on

Liberty and Government (Manchester: Carcanet, 1992), pp.87-95. W. H. Auden

suggested that the Action Française did exert a pernicious and significant anti- Semitic influence upon the generation o f G. K. Chesterton and Hillaire Belloc, and upon the succeeding generation o f Eliot and Pound, ("G. K. Chesterton’s non- fictional prose," in Forewords and Afterwords, sel. Edward Mendelson [London: Faber & Faber, 1974], p.396; cited by Torrens, p.321.) Maurras him self was

consistently and violently anti-Semitic (see for example Nolte pp.60-1, 82-3, and J. S. McClelland, ed., intro.. The French Right: from D e M aistre to M aurras

[London: Jonathan Cape, 1970]), and Eliot would have been aware o f the centrality o f anti-Semitism in his politics. This is not the place to engage with the issue o f Eliot’s anti-Semitism: controversy provoked by Julius is ongoing as this thesis is being written. Response to his book has provoked debate as to the extent to which Eliot’s anti-Semitism derived from Maurras; see Menand for example.

Christianized. But the Roman Church (which Maurras regards as Græco- Latin and not necessarily Christian) is systematic and institutional and cohesive. Therefore he would establish the Church as a social glue seeing that no better way can be found o f de-Christianizing France. (VII, p.364) This is Ward’s summary o f his view o f Maurras; unless they had read Ward’s book, as Eliot had, readers o f The Criterion would not have come across it until Ward’s reply to Eliot’s first article was published in June 1928. Ward believed that although Maurras was anti-Christian he saw that the Church could be used as a force for social control and the promotion o f Monarchist ideology. Maurras’s anti­ romanticism caused him to attack "mysticism in general" (VII, p.365), and to insist on "the external machinery o f the Church and its aesthetic grandeur to the

exclusion o f its spiritual purpose" (VII, p.366). Eliot countered this contention suggesting that Ward had abused the evidence by quoting Maurras selectively and out o f context, particularly from an early work by Maurras, Le Chemin de Paradis,

a book which Eliot did not "defend, if one presumes it to be a manual o f conduct." However he did attempt to minimise the implications o f its attack on the Church on the grounds that it was "the tiresome but harmless bumptiousness o f a young Frenchman o f that epoch" (VII, p.201)jEliot’s principle counter to Ward’s

K

contention in his book that Maurras had an anti-Christian influence was his personal testimony, with which he concluded his first contribution:

I felt a reluctance to meddle with a matter that concerns primarily another Communion than mine, and with a matter that concerns another nation than mine. What decided me was Mr. Ward’s suggestion that the influence of Maurras, indeed the intention o f Maurras, is to pervert his disciples and students away from Christianity. I have been a reader o f the work o f Maurras for eighteen years; upon me he has had exactly the opposite effect. This is only the evidence o f one; but if one can speak, is it not his duty to

testify? (VII, p . 2 0 l f

E liot’s claim that he felt reluctant to meddle with a matter that concerned another nation than his own seems, in its acknowledgement o f the local and the contingent, to run counter to the consistent implication o f other statements that there is a community o f ideas which should transcend national boundaries. Beside the relativist perspective implied in this acknowledgement, his personal testimony is a weak response, which lacks authority.

Ward’s response to Eliot, along with Eliot’s reply, and Ward’s final

rejoinder, were published in the number o f June 1928. In addition to summarizing his position Ward showed that Eliot had not refuted his main contentions, and further showed that certain doctrines o f the Action Française ran counter to orthodox Christian teaching in inspiring "thousands among the Catholic youth o f France with a spirit o f real racial and class hatred" (VII, p.STl)."^"^ Although Eliot had written that "Mr. Ward does not appear to be interested either in the political aspect or in the literary aspect" o f the papal condemnation (VII, p. 196), Ward’s conclusion clearly showed that he was concerned with the political consequences o f Maurras’s ideology. He suggested that Eliot was misguided in believing that such an ideology might be a solution for English problems, for Maurras’s theories - as Eliot stated - had specific application in France. Ward believed that Eliot’s

Eliot appended to the article a bibliography o f texts relevant to this controversy, including La Trahison des Clercs, o f which he wrote: "This is the most important statement o f the case against Maurras that has been made by any Frenchman who is not Roman Catholic. It is an important book, which must be dealt with separately; and M. Benda’s case against Maurras is only incidental to his main thesis" (VII, p.203).

For Maurras’s racism, and its associated antagonism towards romanticism, Jews, Marxists, and democrats see McClelland, pp.30-1.

allegiance to Maurras was an unfortunate consequence o f his interest in continental ideas:

I am wholly unable to believe that any fruitful inspiration is to be derived from what Mr. Wyndham Lewis has well described as ‘the senseless bellicosity o f the reactionary groups o f the Action Française type’. As a sincere friend o f the Mon th ly Criterion I can only hope that it is in no danger o f becoming a refuge where French philosophies go to when they die. (VII, p.372)

E liot’s reply to Ward is unpersuasive. He seemed reluctant to engage with Ward’s contention that Maurras’s acknowledgement that "Catholic Christianity is essential to civilisation," still allows the Church simply to be conceptualized as a secular institution with a secular agenda, i.e. social cohesion. Eliot nuanced his previous testimony, making an implicit admission about his own political agenda: "I never supposed that M. Maurras could influence towards Christianity anyone who was not influenced towards his political theory" (VII, p.375), thus as long as the particular individual has "any tendency towards interior Christianity", their I allegiance to Maurras would not be put it in jeopardy. Eliot concluded his reply

making reference to his recent controversy with The Calendar o f M odern Letters

concerning neo-classicism: "By other critics than Mr. Ward Th e Criterion has been called an organ for a ‘Frenchified’ doctrine called neo-Thomism" (VII, p.376). In his rejoinder Ward was more forceful than Eliot, though hardly

conclusive. But he asserted that the Action Française represented a political as well as spiritual threat to the Papacy, in that Catholicism was becoming increasingly identified with the reactionary ideologies o f such groups, and therefore "a firm stand on the part o f the Papacy was both legitimate and necessary" (VII, p.378).

Eliot closed the controversy, realising that it had run its course, and that the differences between Ward and him self were irresolvable. He had brought the issue

to his readers’ attention, and made an unambiguous statement about his own allegiances; furthermore the debate enacted Eliot’s b elief in the inter-relatedness of French and English culture, and o f the necessary relations between religious and secular authority. However, as Roger Kojeckÿ has written: "Despite the show of learning he made in the Criterion debate on the papal condemnation, he does not appear to have studied the political writings o f Maurras particularly closely. Always aware o f Maurras’s excesses, he primarily valued his literary work, and in a general way the rationalistic elitism and r o y a lis m .V a n e s s a Davies seeks to posit 1928 as a watershed year in which "the real commitment to French thought which the review had demonstrated at its inception" declined into ideology because o f a "preoccupation with the writings o f M a u r r a s .H o w e v e r , in view o f the fact that Eliot only published two articles by Maurras in the magazine, this rather overstates the case. It is unlikely that the rather narrow premises o f the debate would really have enhanced anyone’s understanding o f the force o f movements such as the Action Française in contemporary society, nor the antagonism towards it o f writers such as Benda; nor does it shed light on the extent to which Maurras’s anti-semitism influenced Eliot. However, the controversy can be seen as an

important political event in The Criterion, for even though Eliot had written that he had been "expressing [his] personal views, and that The Criterion is not

committed to these" (VII, p.375), it is clear that The C riterion’s political

Roger Kojeckÿ, T. S. E lio t’s Social Criticism (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), p.223.

Vanessa Davies, "A Diet o f Dead Crow: Aspects o f French Culture in the

Criterion (1922-1939)," in Studies in Anglo-French Cultural Relations: Imagining

philosophy was associated in the minds o f some o f its readers with Eliot.

Eliot remained an admirer o f Maurras almost until the end o f the latter’s life, even during the time that Maurras was imprisoned in France, convicted o f war-time treason. In 1948, he contributed a "Hommage à Charles Maurras" to the newspaper Aspects de la France et du Monde, and in a talk in 1955, shortly after Maurras’s death, said:

I have sometimes thought that if Charles Maurras had confined him self to literature, and to the literature o f political theory, and had never attempted to found a political party, a movement - engaging in, and increasing the acrimony o f the political struggle - if he had not given his support to the restoration o f the monarchy in such a way as to strengthen instead o f reducing animosities - then those o f his ideas which were sound and strong might have spread more widely, and penetrated more deeply, and affected more sensibly the contemporary mind.'^^

It is unclear what Eliot wanted here. Maurras was an ideologue, and he was also a political activist. He never confined him self to literature, or simply to writing. These statements indicate, at best, an error o f judgement on Eliot’s part. At worst, they demonstrate a wilful ignorance o f the part that ideas such as those put forward by Maurras had played in the genocide and destruction o f the previous decade.

Maurras was a supporter o f the Vichy government,"^^ whereas in June 1940 Benda was compelled to flee Paris, and his books and notes were confiscated by the German army."*^ That Eliot could have suggested that Benda and Maurras shared even a "common tendency" is surprising, and his conjunction o f the two