Voluptuous Ascetics in Anatole France’s Thaïs

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. 

      When Cotta suggests that the tower on which Paphnutius sits is phallic, it is at once a nice turn of wit and a hint that Nicias’ respect for the goddess of love is shared by many like minds as well as suggesting the influence of Freud.  The centrality of sexual desire as the dynamo of human motivation is precisely what Paphnutius denies yet which entraps him in the end.  The anchorite with high ambitions and reputation turns out to be that most despised of moralists, the hypocrite, and the most dangerous of hypocrites: one who deceives himself as well.

     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.