Charles Maurras

thumb|That France may live, the King must return. Charles-Marie-Photius Maurras (20 April 1868 – 16 November 1952) was a French author, politician, poet, and critic. He was an organizer and principal philosopher of Action Française, a political movement that is monarchist, anti-parliamentarist, and counter-revolutionary. Maurras also held anti-communist, anti-Masonic, anti-Protestant, and antisemitic views, while being highly critical of Nazism, referring to it as "stupidity". His ideas greatly influenced National Catholicism and integral nationalism, led by his tenet that "a true nationalist places his country above everything". Quotes The bourgeoisie does not understand the labour question. Action Française (30 July 1908), quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), p. 310 There can be no social peace in the Republic, and social reform is impossible without the king. Action Française (1 August 1908), quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), p. 310 Official orators have agreed amongst themselves to leave out one essential point: that to undertake the liberation of the fatherland, Joan had to go directly to the Dauphin Charles, acknowledge the right of his royal blood, and have him crowned and acclaimed on the cathedral square of Reims. Action Française (12 May 1929), quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), p. 162 There are certain conservatives in France who fill us with disgust. Why? Because of their stupidity. What kind of stupidity? Hitlerism. These French "conservatives" crawl on their bellies before Hitler. These former nationalists cringe before him. A few zealots wallow in dirt, in their own dirt, with endless Heils. The wealthier they are, the more they own, the more important it is to make them understand that if Hitler invaded us he would skin them much more thoroughly than Blum, Thorez and Stalin combined. This "conservative" error is suicidal. We must appeal to our friends not to let themselves be befogged. We must tell them: Be on your guard! What is now at stake is not anti-democracy or anti-Semitism. France above all! Action Française (25 March 1938), quoted in Leopold Schwarzschild, World in Trance (1943), p. 268 The Future of the Intelligentsia (1905) L'Avenir de l'intelligence Thanks to the gods, the writing corporation has since then found itself equal to the leaders of the state. It even surpasses them all. They are only members and it is their superb head. Nothing restricts us. We lack nothing either. We had the pleasures of intellectual life, to these are added the satisfaction of greatness in a worldly sense: power and wealth. Letters and sciences lead to everything. How many old students of the normal school, the École nationale des Chartres, or the École des hautes études became presidents of assemblies, ministers of the state! No distinctions adorn us and it is we who embellish them when we deign to accept one. pp. 14–15 thumb|Napoleon personifies the ironic and harsh response of the military men of the XIX century to the literary dreams of the XVIII. Napoleon personifies the ironic and harsh response of the military men of the XIX century to the literary dreams of the XVIII. p. 25 Of these two powers in conflict, Intelligentsia and Force, which seemed to win in the course of the same century? One does not encounter there an influence comparable to the plenary dictatorships of the previous century. One said 'King Voltaire' but nobody says 'King Chateaubriand', who only dreamt of this sceptre, nor 'King Lamartine' nor 'King Balzac', who similarly aspired to tyranny. One did not say 'King Hugo'. The latter had to content himself with the title of 'father', and of whom? Of poets, only the people of his profession. p. 27 Ronsard and Malherbe, Corneille and Bossuet defended in their time the state, the king, the fatherland, property, the family and religion. Romantic literature attacked the laws or the state, public and private discipline, the fatherland, the family and property; an almost unique condition of their success seemed to be to please the opposition, to work towards anarchy. [...] Good society of a vast country cannot reasonably give its active support to a tissue of anarchic declamations or abstruse cryptograms. It is constituted precisely to encourage all the luxuries except the latter. The national sense, the traditional spirit were shocked doubly by these new directions of the intelligentsia. One should not at all forget that French literature was in the past profoundly conservative even when it sang revolutionary songs, and favourable to social life when it penetrated the most secret labyrinth of the human heart. p. 32–34 Literary independence is realised, if one thinks of it, only in the extreme type of the great lord placed by birth or by a stroke of fortune above influences and need (a La Rochefoucauld, a Lavoisier, if you like) and in the corresponding type of the beggar sustained by black bread, his thirst quenched by pure water, sleeping on a pallet, a dog like Diogenes or an angel like Saint Francis, but too occupied with his dream and repeating too often his unum necessarium, to perceive that he is lacking in vital commodities. For diverse reasons both of them, being without needs, are free. They know no other profound joy. For those, the only ones who are right, writing is perhaps a trade. It will never be a profession. p. 45 thumb|Religion is the first of the powers that can oppose the plutocracies, and especially a religion that is as strongly organised as Catholicism. Religion is the first of the powers that can oppose the plutocracies, and especially a religion that is as strongly organised as Catholicism; instituted as a function of the state it loses a large part of its independence and, if money is the master of the state, it loses its outspokenness against money. Material power triumphs without the control of its principal spiritual antagonist. p. 54 The difficulties of this enterprise, if they were even stronger, would be less than the difficulty of causing our dignity, our honour to survive under the rule of the impending plutocracy. That is not the most difficult thing; that is that which is impossible. Thus exposed to perish under a victorious quantity, intellectual quality absolutely does not risk anything in making an effort; if it loves itself, if it loves our last relics of influence and liberty, if it has some visions of the future and some ambition for France, it is fitting for it to lead the reaction of the desperate. Faced with this sinister prospect, the national intelligentsia should ally itself with those who try to do something beautiful before sinking. In the name of reason and nature, consonant with the ancient laws of the universe, for the welfare of order, for the duration and progress of a threatened civilisation, all hopes are borne on the ship of Counter-Revolution. p. 65 Inquiry into the Monarchy (1925) Enquête sur la monarchie After the Commune, thousands of workers were shot, while the leaders were allowed to escape; a King of France would have punished the leaders mercilessly, but he would have spared the people. p. 448, quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), p. 310 What are Pavia or Rosbach...compared to Sedan or Waterloo? Revolutions have succeeded revolutions. The state is bankrupt. Three times foreign invaders have occupied Paris. We have had two civil wars. We have witnessed the making of Italian unity and German unity and the enormous expansion of the double Anglo-Saxon empire. Never has political France been so small. And since then she has accomplished her masterpiece of smallness. She has turned herself into a Republic, in other words she has deliberately chosen to be weak and defeated. pp. 496-497, quoted in Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (1994; 1996), pp. 123-124 At the Sign of Flore (1931) Au Signe de Flore Comte put to flight the pernicious and artificial doctrine according to which there is an opposition between the interests of the ruler and the ruled, for the latter derives his greatest benefit from being directed and guided... Renan finally made me aware of the service any élite, when it sincerely concerns itself with the highest considerations, renders and must render to the multitude, even unconsciously. pp. 10-11, quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870–1940 (1964), p. 144 This pre-existing capital brings men fortune and honour, equips and refines them from the moment they come into the world, without anything having been done about it by these happy animals... Whatever brings together this beneficent capital is therefore a good thing; whatever dissipates it is less good. Work is good, saving is good... It is in the closely knit and stable circle of the home that production, acquisition, conservation have the greatest chance of success, for the personal instinct is there moderated and regulated by immediate affection, and generosity balanced by healthy egoism. Thus strength, duration and hereditary are related and linked; so are also the constitution of great families, the accumulation of vast possessions, the possibility of education and culture. p. 12, quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870–1940 (1964), p. 145 In London and Berlin, at the time when Berlin and London flourished, the government was dynastic; it was so in Paris when Paris flourished. Dynastic succession creates the coherence of all the strength of an empire. Etymology would tell one that, in the absence of history. Not only because dynasty does without the exhausting system of electoral and parliamentary competition, but because it is good and beautiful that the authority of the sovereign authority should not be a force fashioned by human hand, that it should come to us from the most ancient times, and that the centuries should have created it for us and transmitted it to us, named it and imposed it on us ready-made, helped as it were by its legitimacy, that right of the leaders which is based on the fact that they played the major part in the creation of the country. p. 48, quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870–1940 (1964), pp. 147-148 That France may live, the King must return. p. 49, quoted in Herbert Tint, The Decline of French Patriotism 1870–1940 (1964), p. 148 For a French Awakening (1943) Pour un réveil français We are Gallo-Romans. And, nevertheless, let us try to maintain a very clear and proud feeling about it. Before Caesar and his legions, what a beautiful and noble race already covered the French hexagon! ... And what a magnificent blood this Gallic race bequeathed to us!! I do not need to recall the virtues and qualities of the classical Gaul: his superhuman bravery, his taste in intellectual matters and in matters of eloquence: Rem militarem et argute loqui. The art of fighting and that of speaking well, the generosity, the enthusiasm, the ardour, the readiness to take risks, the instinct to undertake enterprises and conquests, a mystical philosophy, but learnt from the highest speculations of the great sages of Egypt, Greece and Etruria, a religion full of poetry, a poetry full of dreams, fierce and graceful, or sublime, rituals which ranged from human sacrifice to the solemn picking of the sacred mistletoe by the priestess in a white robe armed with a golden sickle, and, in nature, a serious effort at clearing a vast extent of forests, an already scientific agriculture and nascent industries that were much advanced. pp. 69–70 Gallic strength, Roman order, such is, in my opinion, the civil state of our fatherland. p. 75 In spite of the boiling aspect of the French character which, in times of difficulty, erupts with ferocity and which takes the form of an excessive gaiety in entertainments ... there are no human beings more orderly than the French. Their economics, the care they take to keep accounts, their skill in organising simple pleasures that cause them to forget their fatigue, the careful grooming of the women, the fine order of their meals, even in humble homes, everything in the private life of the people attests to a cautious and systematic temperament that does not tolerate improvisation. p. 78 The French woman is, in France, everywhere a queen: at the salon, the farm, the shop, the large store. p. 80 France was called the 'feminine nation'. It would be better to call it the 'androgyneous people'. It is the androgyne of Plato, the male and female being which grants the sceptre alternately to the mind and to the heart when it does not confer sovereignty, as often happens, to the simultaneous synthesis of both. p. 81 The king is so visible that he is almost too responsible for everything: the republic, a collectivity that cannot be responsible for anything, serves as a nickname for everybody and nobody, a good-for-nothing and destructive anonymity. p. 108 To feel national is to feel royalist. p. 109 Quotes about Charles Maurras We are at the end of the Enlightenment. Have you read Charles Maurras? Steve Bannon, quoted in Emma-Kate Symons, 'Steve Bannon loves France', Politico (22 March 2017) These elements in French society were now to be given a lead by a man of genius whose power of argument, of sophistry, of tenacity, served to give an appearance of life to the dead monarchy and who provided a framework of political doctrine within which nearly all the critics of the Republic on the Right were to work and which was not without its influence on some critics of the Left. Denis William Brogan, The Development of Modern France (1870–1939) (1940), p. 366 Maurras was no optimist; human life at best was hard; the wise man accepted this fact and adjusted himself to the world as it was and ever would be, a world in which the race was to the swift and the battle to the strong, in which mere sentimental pity was a weakness and an intellectual crime. Like Nietzsche, Maurras despised Christianity and thought its politically dangerous sentiments of "he hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble" order highly noxious. In his early writings he gave free expression to this hostility, but as a realist, a positivist, he had to admit that France had been profoundly marked by the teaching of the Church; and as a practical politician, he had to face the fact that many of his potential supporters were likely to be alienated by the frank expression of his distaste for Christianity. So whatever regrets he had for the old gods, he had to recognize that they were conquered, that the day of the "laurel, the palms and the paean" was over. He accepted the fact that the French tradition was Christian, but, fortunately, Christian with a Roman and Hellenic superstructure. Denis William Brogan, The Development of Modern France (1870–1939) (1940), p. 367 Maurras, like Bannon, was a Catholic nationalist, and he argued in the early 1900s that the Enlightenment had elevated the individual over the nation. (One person who knows Bannon said he has spoken of the coming end of the Enlightenment.) To Maurras, a hero of the modern French right wing, the French Revolution ideals of "liberty, equality and fraternity" were a liberal cosmopolitan corruption of France's authentic identity. Bannon has approvingly cited Maurras' distinction between the "legal country," led by elected officials, and the "real country" of ordinary people, as a frame for the populist revolt underway. Maurras even warned about the nefarious influence of Islam in Europe. Michael Crowley, 'The Man Who Wants to Unmake the West', Politico Magazine (March/April 2017) Maurras had converted to monarchism during a visit to the eastern Mediterranean in 1896 when he realized how little influence republican France had in comparison to the monarchical empires of Great Britain, Germany and Russia. The Dreyfus Affair convinced him that the Republic had fallen into the hands of the "four confederate states" of Jews, Protestants, freemasons and foreigners, and that only a restored monarchy could bring back a strong state, a united nation and national greatness. Robert Gildea, Children of the Revolution: The French, 1799–1914 (2008), p. 277 Maurras's nostalgia for his native province had inspired him to learn the Provençal language and eventually to join the Félibres, a tiny group of southern émigrés in Paris who sought to promote the Provençal renaissance inaugurated by the poet Frédéric Mistral. From this provincial, back-to-the-soil milieu emerged the guiding principles of Maurras's peculiar brand of royalism: political decentralization, restoration of the pre-revolutionary provincial boundaries, opposition to statism, official recognition of Provençal. Such doctrines hardly appealed to the cosmopolitan young Parisian who had recently observed the failure of Bavarian separatism and the enviable vitality of the unitary German Empire. In a subsequent letter Bainville declared himself in favor of centralization and accused Maurras of exaggerating the intelligence of France's rural population. William R. Keylor, Jacques Bainville and the Renaissance of Royalist History in Twentieth-Century France (1979), p. 18 The ultra-nationalist writer Charles Maurras believed there were “two Frances”. The one he loved was the "pays réel", the real country: a rural France of church clocks, traditions and native people fused with their ancestral soil. Maurras loathed the “pays légal”, the legal country: the secular republic, which he thought was run by functionaries conspiring for alien interests. Simon Kuper, 'Macron, Le Pen and the battle for the idea of France', The Financial Times (4 May 2017) Rather than be outraged, we need to understand. I fight all the antisemitic ideas of Maurras, but I find it absurd to say that Maurras must no longer exist. Emmanuel Macron, quoted in 'Macron criticized over comments on antisemitic figure Philippe Pétain', The Jerusalem Post (30 December 2020) External links Category:1868 births Category:1952 deaths Category:Catholics from France Category:Conservatives Category:Politicians from France Category:Political authors from France Category:Philosophers from France Category:Anti-communists