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Title: The “victorious” murderer Author: Henriette Marc Date: 1922 Language: en Topics: marriage, militarism, violence, World War I Source: Retrieved on 10th September 2021 from https://forgottenanarchism.wordpress.com/2015/03/22/the-victorious-murderer-henriette-marc/ Notes: Published in La Revue Anarchiste.
It is particularly interesting for women to know how war modified men’s
characters. Did it send them back to their lives more violent or more
weary? This is the issue that several books published since the end of
the war tried to solve, among which, recently, The Pleasure Of Killing,
by André Dax.
Put in such general terms, the question is badly phrased: most of the
true warriors, violent males driven by their instincts, have died in the
war – and that’s for the best – and as for the others, their ability to
forget, without which we could not live, gave them back to their
partners as they were, quite mediocre.
However, we cannot deny that war imprinted the minds – of those who
think, at least – so deeply that many works reminds us of it.
The Pleasure Of Killing is still full, if not of facts of war, of its
consequences, my colleague in charge of the book review section will
forgive me if I tell I a few words what this book adds to the answer to
the earlier question.
War, André Dax proves, wakes up in men its instincts for cruelty, the
call to murder remains heard, and the gesture which was a habit during
these long years can never be forgotten.
His main character, Michel, after having gotten a taste for women and
sex in the tranches, gradually feels the taste for murder rise in him,
and, cheated, kills his rival in an almost automatic gesture, as if to
pierce the flesh and make the blood of the enemy flow was still
something normal and sanctioned by the law.
However, once the crime is committed, he regains consciousness. Should
he give himself up to the justice of men? Who is worthy of judging him?
But he will expiate his crime by going to the Far East, far away from
any civilisation, to live a harsh and difficult life which will redeem
himself in his own eyes. Later, the woman he has never ceased to love,
as a soldier and as a criminal, will meet him there, and, thanks to
love, he will tame the evil beast we all carry within ourselves.
There are in this book many digressions, among other things about the
survival of the souls, which, according to Michel, survive generation
after generation, offering to men the violent or beneficial heredity of
their ancestors.
This book, written in a pleasant if slightly monotonous language is
worth to read. André Dax has observed and thought before he wrote. The
pages in which he describes the miserable future of Europe, destined to
unavoidable decadence, are deep and beautiful. His views on
Christianity, which “in nineteen centuries failed its founding goal
three times” are right. We can only wish a bit more rationalism from
this probably young author, and that, in later works, he base his thesis
on more solid scientific grounds.
His theory is right: war brought the old man back to life: these
multitudes of heredities which the appearances of civilisation had
pushed back deep into our unconscious during this upheaval, like in the
aftermath of any exterior and interior turmoil. There is no need for the
souls of our predecessors on this earth reincarnate in us to explain
this. Soul is a meaningless word. The holdovers from brain and nervous
system cells is largely enough, thanks to the heredity of acquired
characteristics, to transmit throughout the centuries visions of murder
and the aptitude to renew them. This is also accompanied with ancestral
terrors which created gods, souls and all metaphysics. As for violent
jealousy which André Dax tells us about, how could we be surprised to
see it reborn in organisms unbalanced by war, and sent back by it into
primitive barbarity?
Among the first men, war, or more precisely fights, between tribes or
between animals were intimately linked to the sexual instinct.
Carpentier proved this in a thorough study, “War and sexual instinct” –
what François de Curel calls the “dance in front of a mirror” is nothing
else than the need for the male to look stronger in front of the female
he chose. In time of peace, this instinct changes, and it is moral or
intellectual supremacy which men aspire to in order to win women over;
but, with such violent tremors as those caused by a war of this
magnitude, the varnish which Christianity, moralists and philosophers of
all kinds tried to apply on the human machine peels off and the old
instincts are uncovered.
It would be childish to be surprised or outraged against such obvious
facts, we will only ever be poor beings, full of contradictions and
doomed by our very nature to sudden returns to the quasi-animality which
was our fate.
I know, among the people, women who complain about the unfortunate
change that war brought to their partners’ characters. It is as late as
it is useless to lament, it would have been much better to prevent and
help the future soldier to be a deserter, logically revolted against the
cruel and idiotic order which attempted to make him forget the dearly
acquired notions of love and gentleness which made lecherous anthropoids
into civilised and loving men.
Let’s hope the “next one” won’t find them in the same state.