Rediscovering Mécislas Golberg

REDISCOVERING MECISLAS GOLBERG 187 ble. Although not without its problems, Anne Ubersfeld's Le Roi et Ie button: etude sur Ie theatre de Hugo de 1830 ii 1839 (Paris: Jose Corti 1974) has proven conclusively that the results of careful historical investigation and of textual analyses based on semiotic theory are compatible in the case of Hugo's theatre. While La Syntaxe narrative and La Dramaturgie both stress the importance of defining new approaches to Corneille's theatre - the former by its primarily theoretical thrust, the latter by its attempt to synthetize earlier criticism - they fall short of the mark in applying the criteria they develop to his plays. Rediscovering Mecislas Golberg E. LEHOUCK Pierre Aubery. Anarchiste et decadent, Mecislas Golberg, 1868-19°7, biographie intellectuelle, suivie de fragments inedits de son Journal Lettres Modernes, call. Avant-Siecle. Paris: Minard 1978. 215 Today it is possible to discern two currents in literary criticism. Most critics accept the verdicts of literary history as they were taught to them, trying to find new interpretations of prestigious works and essentially dealing with problems of method. Rarer are those who question the established hierarchies, set a new light on schools and writers, rediscover forgotten creators. Pierre Aubery undoubtedly belongs to the latter category, and we must admire the courage of his attempt to revive, thanks to a patient study ofarchives and unpublished material, a man so forgotten that his name cannot be found even in an encyclopaedia. Did Mecislas Golberg deserve this honour? This uncommon individual was due, sooner or later, to attract a biographer, as Andre Gide (who didn't like him) had predicted. He was a Polish-horn Jew, famous in the Latin Quarter because of his impossible accent and his perpetual student appearance, always living on the fringe of society and under the threat of deportation, a shabby but generous intellectual, keen on new ideas and feeling for the underdog. Associated with anarchist circles, who drew the attention of some of the Symbolists, he was certainly a true product of the end of the nineteenth century. Aubery could have written a very picturesque biography, revealing the shady side of this period. But he preferred to produce a 'biographie intellectuel1e,' reserving an important part of his book for the study of Golberg's thought. Here we are less convinced of the necessity of rehabilitation, especially because Aubery is far from enthusiastic about the sometimes obscure and confused ideas of his hero. Was Golberg an anarchist, as the title of Auhery's book proclaims? He was rather, following J. Maitron's Dictionnaire du mouvement ouvrier, 'une figure assez ephemere du mouvement anarchiste! His bohemian life, his dealings with the French police, the death of his son (executed in 1922 for participation in a train robbery) probably gave him a reputation as an extreme leftist that his writings do not support. Aubery's analysis reveals more a 'Jack-of-all-trades' in the tradition of the eighteenth century than a lucid revolutionist. His governing idea that the 'lumpenproletariat' is the prime mover of economic progress doesn't withstand a close examination. From this man who wished for a better society we would have expected a desire for social art. As a matter of fact Golberg's aesthetics are definitely idealistic. 'eela nous [erait presque douter de la sincerite et du serieux de ses preoccupations sodales: remarks Aubery, as he points out the lack of originality of his author in this area. Nevertheless, in his Lettres aAlexis Golberg had a sort of foreknowledge of some essential principles of modem art, and, according to A. Rouveyre, inspired Matisse through one of his books. Because of his relations with a few important Symbolist writers like the young Andre Gide, Golberg 'devrait figurer dans un petit coin du tableau de la litterature de cette epoque' (p 110). But it is perhaps as a novelist that we find him at his best. Vaines Luxures, of which Aubery gives a long summary in chapter 6, would not mar 'la lithhature decadente' so well exemplified by J.K. Huysmans's A rebollrs if somebody had the courage to publish it. In this curious: and preFreudian diary we find the most intimate...