Not that Anatole
France made a deliberate renunciation: no man of his humanity would of
his own will turn aside. It was instinct which guided him into a
sequestered path, which ran equably by the side of the road of alternate
exaltation and catastrophe which other men of equal genius must travel.
Therefore he has seen men as it were in profile against the sky, but
never face to face. Their runnings, their stumblings and their
gesticulations are a tumultuous portion of the landscape rather than
symbols of an intimate and personal possibility. They lend a baroque
enchantment to the scene.
So it is that in all the characters of Anatole France's work which are
not closely modelled upon his own idiosyncrasy there is something of the
marionette. They are not the less charming for that; nor do they lack a
certain logic, but it is not the logic of personality. They are embodied
comments upon life, but they do not live. And there is for Anatole
France, while he creates them, and for us, while we read about them, no
reason why they should live.
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