The translations of quoted French phrases are my own.
The usefulness of
distinguishing eras in literary history is indisputable, but they are never
more than a convenience. Anatole France,
who wrote well into the twentieth century, turned not only from the schools of
Realism and Naturalism, but from the preceding Romantic assumptions as well and
wrote as an heir of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and, in particular, as
a follower of Voltaire.
Heavy on theme as
France typically is, the characters in Thaïs, even the central ones, are
rather representative types or spokespersons for points of view than convincing
personalities. The two principals,
Paphnutius and Thais, describe a narrative chiasmus as the monk realizes that
beneath his pious reputation, he is in fact the slave of his desires while the
abandoned Thais discovers her discipline and piety in spite of her once libertine
lifestyle. The formal symmetry of this
movement is satisfying quite apart from the thematic implications, though the
latter are in the foreground.
If the story is a
sort of anti-clerical parable, an inverted saint’s life, Paphnutius is, of
course, a negative exemplum. Though France was an atheist, the novel can
hardly be called anti-Christian. Paphnutius’
co-religionists, from St. Anthony
through Ahmes, Albina, and Palemon, and ultimately including Thaïs
herself, are all depicted as sincere and benevolent, whether their beliefs are true
or not. Even asceticism, from which the
author might be expected to recoil, is not confined to Christianity, but
represented as well by Timocles the skeptic whom Paphnutius encounters
meditating naked on the banks of the Nile like a saddhu (and indeed he
is said to have visited India).
Timocles matches Paphnutius’ austerities without adopting any of his faith. All decisions have become for Timocles a
matter of indifference. He reflexively responds
to any question with the Skeptic’s ἐποχή (suspension of
judgment, withholding of assent). He
may seem grotesque in his withdrawal from life, but he is not self-interested
or hypocritical. He declares quite
simply that there is no certainty in the world and that impressions are always
subjective. “Les mêmes choses ont
diverses apparences.” (“The same things have diverse appearances.”)
The Banquet like
the Symposia of Plato or Xenophon, like other dialogues, and like the novels of
Thomas Love Peacock or Charles Erskine Scott Wood’s Heavenly Discourse,
introduce characters who represent various points of view. France conveniently labels each of his
Hellenistic banqueters so there may be no confusion: thus Dorion is an
Epicurean; Eucritus a Stoic, Zenothemis a Gnostic, Hermodorus a syncretist
Serapian, and Marcus an Arian Christian.
They trade opinions not with the urgency of the true believer or the
proselytizer, but with the casual detachment of people passing a pleasant
afternoon together for whom the discussion is a worthy end in itself.
The likeliest
spokesperson for France himself is, of course, none of these believers in
religion or systematized philosophy. He
doubtless shares some of the attitudes of Cotta, the urbane Roman host to whom
the civilized social order is the chief good, for whom the central role of
religion is to define and reinforce a sense of community. To him “il y a en tout dieu quelque chose
de divin” (“every god has something divine in him”). Yet the nation is what is important. “La patrie doit être mise au-dessus de
tout, et même des dieux, car elle les contient tous” (“fatherland must come
first, even before the gods, for it contains them”). His faith in stability and happiness rests on
the strength of the imperial navy and army and the prosperity of the
economy. Open-minded about religion, he
is no more dogmatic about politics.
Cotta says that he had in his youth sympathized with the Republic, but
that he has come to believe that only a strong government can assure its
citizens a peaceful and productive life.
While Cotta is
represented as a sensible man, the reader never doubts that the author’s heart
is with Nicias. Should this character be
based on a historical figure, it would likely be Nicias of Miletus, a poet
associated with Theocritus some of whose epigrams are extant. It may be, too, that the character owes
something to Nicias of Kos whom Cicero recalls as a witty raconteur who served
an excellent mushroom dish at a dinner party.
Possessing
Cotta’s capacious broadmindedness while lacking his obtrusive patriotism,
Nicias is the very soul of geniality. When
he speaks of the divine, it is often in a light and teasing manner, as though
he and the gods are on familiar terms, such as his joking that if god loves,
that is an imperfection or the more metaphysical claim that god is in “disgrace”
due to the fact that “l'infini ressemble parfaitement au néant” (“the
infinite is indistinguishable from nothingness”).
He is perfectly
at ease with the fact that “nous ne savons rien” (“we know nothing
whatever”) we are unable even to distinguish between being and not being. He approaches Gorgias in his skepticism, declaring that, in addition to the lack of any certain
knowledge, “il est impossible aux hommes de s'entendre” (“people cannot
[fully] understand each other”).
For him, however,
there is one element of life that evades Nicias’ otherwise universal Skeptic’s ἐποχή:
eros. The entire company enjoys the
beauty of Philina and Drosea (whose looks are their only function in the novel), and they all salute Thais with
cries like “—Salut à la bien-aimée des dieux et des hommes!” (“Hail to
the one beloved of both men and gods!”), but it is Nicias who cautions
Paphnutius against offending love.
In fact Nicias is
untroubled by the fact that we are unable even to distinguish being and not
being. Furthermore, “il est impossible aux hommes
de s'entendre” (“people cannot ever [fully] understand each other”). His equipoise in the face of the loss of any
foundation for thought proves the success of his strategy of simply not caring
about what he cannot change and passing his time in life in the most civilized
and pleasant manner. The company enjoys
the beauty of Philina and Drosea (whose looks are their only function in the
novel), they all salute Thais with cries like “—Salut à la bien-aimée des
dieux et des hommes!” (“Hail to the one beloved of both men and gods!”),
but it is Nicias who cautions Paphnutius against offending love.
Je t'avais bien averti, mon
frère, que Vénus était puissante. C'est elle dont la douce violence t'a amené
ici malgré toi. Écoute, tu es un homme rempli de piété; mais, si tu ne
reconnais pas qu'elle est la mère des dieux, ta ruine est certaine.
I have warned you, my friend that Venus is powerful. It is she who has brought you here with gentle violence in spite of yourself. Listen, you are a man full of piety, but, if you don’t recognize her as the mother of the gods, your ruin is certain.
If philosophy is
the pursuit of the good life, ideas must be judged by the lived experience of
their advocates. For France, the wisest
people have no occult wisdom; they undergo no dramatic enlightenment. For the most part they simply practice good
will and enjoy each other’s company despite differences in creed and
lifestyle. They accept their human
nature, looking with admiration on the opposite sex, dining together and
conversing to further their intimacy while feeding their bodies. Among this group are some, the wiser sort, it
seems, who have less need of myth and ritual while remaining moral and
philosophical. For France, who was a
materialist, the rational course is to recognize the prerogatives of the body
with its desires for sex and food and the mind with its need for social
interaction. Rather than rejecting one’s
natural qualities, France, like his Nicias, seeks to indulge all passions, but in
a civilized manner unlikely to bring the ill consequences of dissipation. While Paphnutius will seem misguided to all,
and he is certainly unhappy in his fate, the self-abnegating life Thais chooses
will also find few imitators. The ascetic
voluptuaries lose out to the practitioners of the Delphic slogan μηδὲν άγαν “nothing
in excess.” Most readers are likely to
feel in concert with Anatole France that there could scarcely be a better way
to spend an afternoon than at a banquet such as Cotta offers, enjoying visual,
verbal, and gustatory pleasures as the sun descends toward dusk.
