Iain Pears - The Dream of Scipio

Yet there was fear in Pierre Barneuve’s mind, a deep knowledge of the power of the beliefs he so detested, a fear that one day the tentacles of superstition would reach out and ensnare his son. His wife’s passivity, her refusal to argue, made her all the more dangerous. He knew that one day Julien would have to decide between them. Was he to be his mother’s or his father’s child? He knew he had manliness and rationality on his side. But he was also dimly aware in a corner of his mind that Julien loved his mother. The idea that he was afraid of his son and had been ever since he was born was absurd, of course, but it was true nonetheless. He had, with his customary incision and lack of sentiment, dismissed all possibility of eternity for himself. The decisions the child took would confer or deny his immortality.

When he heard of Sautel, the fear within him awoke, and he moved swiftly. Julien was not to go to the excavations. He was not to associate with a priest. If there was any deviation from his wishes, the boy was to be sent back to pass the summer under his father’s watchful eye. It never occurred to him that his wife would disobey him, nor yet that the child would disobey his mother. Nor did either do so, nor did they need to: the damage was already done. Our lives can change direction in an instant, and it is possible that an entire adult can be determined by only a few such moments, sparkling like gold in the dross of everyday experience.

Lodged forever in Julien’s mind was the memory of that bird, brilliant in the summer sunlight, and the magic of the moment of discovery was linked completely to the kindness of the young priest. Set against both was the brooding authority of his father, never questioned but now suspected to be dark and lifeless in contrast to the brightness of what it forbade.

It would not be too much of an exaggeration, indeed, to claim that Julien’s entire life was spent seeking to recapture that sensation, that his progression and thoughts and decisions constantly had this unknown goal in mind. It was the phoenix that led him, at school, to concentrate on the classics, so that by fourteen he had a knowledge of Latin and Greek that surpassed that of many a university student. The words of Père Sautel led him to volunteer for the trenches in 1916, and it was the phoenix again that gave him the quiet determination necessary for the agrégation, and sustained him in his career thereafter.

His father, who tried to be as kindly as duty allowed, encouraged and supported his son throughout, little knowing how much of the child’s drive came from resentment of him. He got a quiet pleasure from every examination his son passed, every glowing report that came from school, every time someone mentioned the boy’s undoubted talents. Certainly, he would have preferred that Julien had wished to become a physician like himself, or pursued a career in law—for he dreamed of his son as a deputy, even perhaps a minister in the government—but he contented himself with excellence in any field, and the prospect of a son one day as an eminent professor—the Sorbonne? The Collège de France?—was more than sufficient to satisfy his desires.

And when Julien excelled, he was rewarded, each gift bestowed with care, and received dismissively. His father was hurt, doubtless, by this coldness and could not understand why, as Julien grew into manhood, the closeness he had so often dreamed of seemed further away than ever. But each time Julien accepted a present with only perfunctory thanks, his father persuaded himself that this was manly restraint in a youth commendably reluctant to show emotion.

The grand cruise around the Mediterranean—the presents ever more generous, but no more effective—was the reward for success in examinations. Had his father called him in and said, “I know your mother would have been as proud of you as I am” or, “I wish your mother had been here to see you now,” then his heart would have softened so easily. But he wished to claim Julien for his own and said nothing of his wife. And all Julien could say in reply was:

“Thank you, Father. That is very kind.”

WHAT WAS Olivier’s influence, his reputation, when Julien first began to study him seriously in the 1930s? Not that of a great poet, by any means; he was hardly mentioned in the same breath as Dante, Boccaccio, or Petrarch. He was known to only a few interested in Provençal literature, and although those who had read him knew his importance, his little piece of eternity was guaranteed mainly by the horrors of his crime and punishment. Only when Julien came across Olivier as a bibliophile and collector, an early pioneer of the renaissance in learning, did he reconsider the man and the poetry. Julien was drawn to him for obvious reasons: he, too, was struggling to ensure that, in the madness that afflicted all humanity, some little spark of purity would continue. He, too, had a debt to honor, one owed to both Manlius and Olivier, to continue the great task they had begun. In his own mind, Julien’s life as teacher, and later as censor, complemented his labors in the library and archives, each an aspect of the greater project to allow thought itself to survive, even if it was a guttering candle rather than a ferocious blaze. From 1940 onward his study became an obsession in the same way that women became obsessed with ensuring that clothes continued to be washed on a Tuesday, that men became enraged if their game of boules was disrupted on a Saturday or if they could no longer sharpen their razor. The continuation of normal, civilized existence became the goal of daily life, to be attained through struggle.

Understanding the poetry came later; he initially conceived of Olivier as a man of the greatest promise destroyed by a fatal flaw, the unreasoning passion for a woman dissolving into violence, desperately weakening everything he tried to do. For how could learning and poetry be defended when it produced such dreadful results and was advanced by such imperfect creatures? At least Julien did not see the desperate fate of the ruined lover as a nineteenth-century novelist or poet might have done, recasting the tale to create some appealing romantic hero, dashed to pieces against the unyielding society that produced him. Rather, his initial opinion—held almost to the last—was of Olivier as a failure, ruined by a terrible weakness.

He took the lesson but could not help himself. Julien was still attracted to the Provençal’s poetry precisely because of the incandescent passion he considered so dangerous. Olivier’s words stirred his blood, created in him images of a different history. It was an effort to subjugate the lyrical, magnificent poems of love to the full force of critical reason, to disregard the expressions of desire and seek out the meanings that surely must lie underneath, to see longing as allegory, the beloved as metaphor, the love as a reflection of faith in the divine.

At least, the pure physicality of the poetry proved one thing beyond doubt. However much he may have collected the classics of philosophy and joined them to the theological masterpieces he must have read as well, Olivier de Noyen perfectly failed to understand them. While Manlius argued about the need to maintain the supremacy of reason in the face of the irrational that was eradicating all he held dear, Olivier embraced the opposite, unable to subdue his passions and falling victim to his weakness.

MANLIUS DID not lie to his friend; Bishop Faustus did indeed write to him, asking if he would consent to become Bishop of Vaison. But he did so only after Manlius had spent several months courting the saintly man, slowly convincing him of both the need and the appropriateness of such an appointment. He had acted because of the discomfort that came over him as he saw others, of lower origin, less education, and smaller ability, lording over the region with so little skill and foresight. For many years he stuck to his determination to turn his back forever on public life and live quietly on his estates. He was, after all, one of the richest and most powerful men in the province even when he did nothing but write poetry.