The European Concert and French Politics

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After the Unification of Germany by Bismark (1866 - 1871), The Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and The Balkan Troubles (1875-1877), the reorganization of national lines diminished the interdependence and harmony of European nations. The conflicts and methods used to effect the changes in the region left a heritage of bitterness between the continental states in the spirit of more than one generation. It is not surprising that the international climate should have been troubled after the events of one generation. However, it is alarming that the atmosphere did not, after a significant period of time, improve.

Germany's defeat over France in the Franco-Prussian War moved French politics from any hopes of a royal restoration (1873) to a predominantly republican government. This form of Republicanism was strongly anitclerical, made advancements toward safeguarding the civil liberties of the indvidual, protected the right of assembly, lifted restrictions upon the press, removed local governemnt from the strict control of the central government, and permitted the formation of trade unions. The most enduring of the achievements of the first phase of the Republic's history were the educational reforms. These reforms included compulsory and free state schools for elementary education (1881-1882) and improved standards in state secondary schools and technical schools.

The period which extended from 1871 to 1914 in Europe was filled with impressive achievements in many fields. Achievements included the improvement of existing railways, canals, roads, and new buildings as well as the steady progress of science which was marked by such notable triumphs as the promulgation of the electron theory and the discovery of radioactivity. In the field of the arts, the accomplishments were hardly less distinquished. They included the work of such masters of psychological realism as Tolstoy, Zola, Thomas Hardy, the Berlin novelist Theodore Fontane, and the Norwegian Bjornson; the tales of adventure in exotic lands by Rudyard Kipling, H. Rider Haggard, and Pierre Loti; the elaborately styled novels of Edith Wharton and Henry James; the first works of of such writers of the postwar period as Thomas Mann, John Galsworthy, and Marcel Proust. In painting and poetry the most significant movement was that of impressionism. Its imagery suggested an artistic reflection of the new dynamism and new feeling of speed and change that modern technology introduced into European life. Impressionistic painting was charcterized by an attempt to portray reality, not as something existing, but as something in the process of becoming or ceasing to be; every impressionistic picture, whether it was painted by Degas or by Toulouse-Lautrec, portrayed a moment in time in such a way that it enabled the observer to sense the unceasing processes of growth and decline. The poets of impressionism also sought to express reality in terms of fleeting sensations, momentary moods, and vague perceptions; this made it more difficult for the general reader to understand the poetry of Verlaine and Mallarme, or Detlev von Liliencron and Rilke, than it had been to understand that of Lamartine or Eichendorff.

Impressionism affected the philosophy as well as the art of the last years of this period. Both Freud's psychoanalysis and Bergson's philosophy of vitalism were intimately connected with it. The Viennese doctor's notions would be incomprehensible without impressionism's view of reality as composed of constantly changing moods, impressions, and ideas. Bergson's emphasis upon the spiritual as opposed to the mechanical forces in life was influenced by impressionism's implicit denial of materialism as a philosophy. Bergson's philosophy had great influence on the writers of the years immediately preceding the outbreak of World War I, leading some of them like Alain-Fournier and Francis Jammes, Andre Gide and Stefan George, Charles Peguy and Gabriele D'Annunzio to abandon the passive art-for-art's sake attitude of earlier impressionist poets and turn to a new activism which sought to change society.

If Impressionism reflected the achievements of the era, the city of Paris reflected Bergson's philosophy of vitalism. This new spirit was typified by the mood and heartbeat of Paris, which, in the mid-1880s, became the intellectual and artistic capital of the world. It was in this period that Paris was described as the place to which good Americans went when they died, but thousands were refusing to wait until then. With hordes of other tourists Americans were trooping yearly to the spirited and elegant city on the Seine to marvel at the Eiffel Tower or new opera house, to hear Gounod's Faust or Bizet's Carmen, to eat fraises de bois in charming restaurants along the Boulevard Montparnasse, to shop on the Rue de Rivoli, to gape at the sinful night life of Montmartre, and to watch the racing at Longchamps. More serious visitors came to work, or to hear Henri Bergson lecture at the College de France, or to learn to write in a city whose literary vitality had never been greater. French poetry was being revolutionized by the influence of Baudelaire's followers Rimbaud, Tristan Corbiere, Verlaine, and Mallarme, and fierce battles raged between naturalists like de Maupassant and their detractors. Every year saw a new sensation or a new movement, like the neo-romantic decadence that became fashionable with the publication of J.K. Hysman's A Rebours or Lianne de Poughy's Sapphic Idylle.

Such were the political, philisophical, literary and artistic characteristics of Paris from 1871 to 1914. It was on this stage of dynamism and hidden volitality that expatriate writers such as Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Natalie Barney, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Djuna Barnes honed their talents and created their legacies.

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