The Gods Are Athirst by Anatole France
**The Gods Are Athirst** is a historical novel by Anatole France, published in 1912, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution, specifically during the years 1793-1794 in Paris. The narrative centers on Évariste Gamelin, a young painter whose idealism leads him to embrace the Jacobin cause, believing in its potential to usher in a new era of justice. France uses Gamelin’s character as a lens to explore the themes of fanaticism and moral ambiguity amid the violent upheaval of the Revolution.
As Évariste becomes increasingly involved with the revolutionary tribunal, he grapples with the stark contrast between his romantic ideals and the grim reality of political justice, which devolves into brutality and bloodshed. The story intricately weaves together the lives of various characters, including Maurice Brotteaux, an older, skeptical artist, and others who represent different facets of society during this tumultuous time.
France critiques the extremes of revolutionary fervor and questions the innate goodness of human nature, suggesting that societal and familial influences shape individual morality. Through satire, he highlights the cyclical nature of violence and the shortcomings of both the revolutionaries and the society they sought to reform. Ultimately, **The Gods Are Athirst** challenges readers to reflect on the complexities of justice and the human condition, revealing the tension between ideological aspirations and the often harsh realities of life.
The Gods Are Athirst by Anatole France
- FIRST PUBLISHED: Les dieux ont soif, 1912 (English translation, 1913)
- TYPE OF WORK: Novel
- TYPE OF PLOT: Historical satire
- TIME OF WORK: 1793-1794
- LOCALE: Paris
The Story:
Évariste Gamelin, a young man who lived with his mother, was a talentless pupil of Jacques David, the painter. The only one of Évariste’s paintings that gained any recognition was a canvas depicting the story of Orestes and Electra. People claimed that Évariste’s painting of Orestes was really a self-portrait.
An older artist, Maurice Brotteaux, lived in the garret of the Gamelin house in 1793. Former nobility, he made his living creating Punch and Judy dolls.
Évariste became an active member of the Jacobins, genuinely believing that their success and complete control would bring about a new and better era for all the people in France. He even planned to change playing cards from pictures of kings, queens, and jacks to symbols of liberty, equality, and fraternity, but his fellow revolutionaries would not finance his designs. Brotteaux, on the other hand, was an atheist, an intellectual, and a skeptic without faith in the goodness of the masses.
Évariste unsuccessfully tried to sell his new designs for playing cards to Jean Blaise, a print seller. Évariste was in love with Blaise’s daughter Élodie, who finally got Évariste, far more naive than she, to propose to her. When Élodie confessed that she had had a lover, Évariste was certain that it must have been a cynical aristocrat who had used her cruelly. On political grounds, he forgave her.
One day, while Brotteaux and Évariste were waiting in a breadline, a woman screamed that her purse was gone and pointed to a cleric, Pere Longuemare, as the thief. The people became excited and ran about accusing Longuemare of being a Capuchin, a member of an order opposed to the Jacobins, even though, by his speech, he was clearly a Barnabite. Brotteaux defended the cleric, but to no avail, until the woman found that she had had her purse all along. The idealistic Évariste believed the incident demonstrated that, in the new society, people were so eager for justice that they would leave their places in the breadline to find a thief. The wiser Brotteaux realized that they simply wanted to accuse others. He later gave Pete Longuemare a place of refuge in his garret.
Madame de Rochemaure, whose late husband had been a procurer for the king, was an intriguer who pretended revolutionary ardor. She, trailed by Henry, a young dragoon, was interested in using her new revolutionary connections to make more money. She wanted to meet Marat, who she had heard was easily swayed by flattery, to interest him in some Swiss financial speculations, but Charlotte Corday killed Marat before Madame de Rochemaure had her chance. However, she managed to use her connections to get Évariste a post as a juror on the Grand Tribunal, the group of Jacobins responsible for trying political crimes. On his first day on the Grand Tribunal, Évariste made an impassioned plea for justice, and the tribunal then voted not to execute an innocent man. Évariste was so excited that he later allowed the experienced Élodie to seduce him; the corruption of the innocent had begun.
Tiring of Henry, Mme de Rochemaure wrote a letter to an old friend who had left France. In it, she quoted a few of Brotteaux’s witty remarks about the new state. Henry, jealously believing that Mme de Rochemaure had become Brotteaux’s mistress again, stole the letter and turned it over to the authorities. Both Mme de Rochemaure and Brotteaux became politically suspect. In addition, the loyal “citoyens” began to say that Brotteaux’s dolls were really meant to be caricatures of Jacobins. When Brotteaux was arrested, a sex worker named Athenais, whom he had once befriended, protested and cried out, “Long live the king!” as the soldiers took Brotteaux away. Athenais was also arrested.
The Grand Tribunal became far less just and bloodier. Trials were no longer held; prisoners were brought up in lots of fifty, convicted, and sent away to be executed. Évariste applauded the efficiency of the new arrangement.
Évariste’s sister Julie had run away to England a few years earlier with her lover. When they returned to France, they were captured, and the lover was condemned to death. Even old Mme Gamelin tried to intercede for Julie’s lover with Évariste. Évariste, however, was an adamant supporter of the new justice, confirming the symbolic fact that his portrait of Orestes was really a self-portrait. Besides his cruelty to his sister, Évariste was obsessed with the desire to discover and punish Élodie’s first lover. He thought the man must be Jacques Maubel, a quiet but aristocratic young gallant. There was no evidence to support this claim, but Évariste, irritated by Maubel’s lack of faith in the people, had Maubel arrested and executed. In reality, Élodie’s first lover was Henry, who was now a dragoon but, in those days, a clerk. Élodie, the symbol of France itself, was so impressed by Évariste’s cruel power in having Maubel killed that she loved her tribune more than ever.
Brotteaux, Pere Longuemare, Mme de Rochemaure, and Athenais were all brought up before the Grand Tribunal, convicted without trial, and executed in the same lot of fifty. Évariste did not say a word. A short time later, Robespierre, feeling that enough blood had been shed, tried to reform the Grand Tribunal, but the people turned on him and killed him. Soon, the mob switched again and killed the members of the Grand Tribunal, including Évariste. For a time, Paris was bathed in anarchy and chaos.
The mob was as irresponsible as the tribunes had been; they killed many, both aristocrats and peasants, political supporters and opponents. After Paris had become quiet and orderly again, Élodie became the mistress of a calm, nonpolitical young engraver named Philippe Desmahis. Two people entirely unconcerned with politics or causes, governments or liberty, they managed to survive the grim Reign of Terror.
Critical Evaluation:
Anatole France was born in the revolutionary era just before the mid-nineteenth century and lived through World War I. His generation saw the rising and unending conflict between religion and science; the rapid growth of industrial capitalism, with its early promise and later disillusionment; the brutalization of workers which led to proletarian revolutionary movements; and the optimism about man’s future which displayed itself in world fairs. Literary experimentalism was active, with new forms and approaches to subjects more the rule than the exception. Through all this, France was a man of perspective and a satirist. Although his literary forms, in poetry, essay, and novel, were traditional, his satirical wit could be sharp, as when he defined justice as “the preservation for each of what is his own—for the rich his wealth, for the poor his poverty.” Like Voltaire, his great eighteenth-century predecessor, he was skeptical of organized religion and the sincerity of human motives.
In The Gods Are Athirst, a novel of the Revolution, France condemns the violence and extremism of the jurors on the Revolutionary Tribunal. Although the painter Évariste Gamelin is the novel's central character, the aristocrat Brotteaux acts as the mouthpiece for the author’s ideals. France treats Gamelin’s romantic notion that men are innately virtuous with complete scorn, ascribing instead to Brotteaux’s more cynical evaluation that virtue is instilled in children through their parents’ beatings. Nevertheless, with his characteristic complexity and insight, France does not outright condemn the struggling idealist Gamelin. He can sympathize with his fanaticism even while he indicts it; while he bitterly attacks the atrocities perpetrated by the men on the Tribunal, he can still defend them in terms of his skeptical view of humanity: “. . . whoever might have agreed to put himself in their places would have acted as they did.”
France is a critic of man; not a misanthrope by any means, but a critic who can make readers simultaneously laugh and squirm. The Gods Are Athirst is not anti-French, nor, indeed, anti-revolutionary. Like the short story “The Procurator of Judea,” the content is to show people as they really are—doing the things men have done throughout history—to make us realize that we must somehow learn to do better.
Principal Characters:
- Évariste Gamelin, a young painter
- Maurice Brotteaux, Évariste’s friend and a maker of dancing dolls
- Madame Gamelin, Évariste’s mother
- Madame de Rochemaure, the wife of the king’s former procurer
- Jean Blaise, a print seller
- Élodie, his daughter
- Pere Longuemare, a Barnabite monk
- Jacques Maubel, a young gallant
- Julie Gamelin, Évariste’s sister
- Athenais, a sex worker
- Marat, and
- Robespierre, French revolutionaries
- Henry, a dragoon
- Philippe Desmahis, an engraver
Bibliography
Allan, Stacie. "'The Gods Want Blood' by Anatole France (Translated by Douglas Parmée)." British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 7 Oct. 2024, www.bsecs.org.uk/criticks-reviews/the-gods-want-blood-by-anatole-france-translated-by-douglas-parmee/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.
"Anatole France - Biographical." The Nobel Prize, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1921/france/biographical/. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.
"The Gods Are Athirst." Cyclopedia of Literary Characters, 4th ed., May 2015, pp. 954–55. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=102942482&site=ehost-live. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.
Sachs, Murray. "Anatole France." Critical Survey of Long Fiction, Fourth Edition, Jan. 2010, pp. 1–8. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lkh&AN=164537776&site=ehost-live. Accessed 22 Oct. 2024.