All the men in the Dreyfus case

It was a sensational judicial scandal that shook France from its foundations between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At the same time it was the first media case in history, the first occasion in which the printed media showed that it could guide public opinion and the intellectuals took sides in defense of human rights. We are talking about the Dreyfus Affaire, of course, a story in which anti-Semitism, power games and political intrigues were intertwined in a sordid way. For the few who did not know it, it was a judicial case that had resonance throughout the entire European continent. In 1894 a French army captain, Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish origin, was found guilty of espionage for Germany and sentenced to hard labor. The sentence, however, left many doubts and the so-called Dreyfus affair split France in two. The nationalist and Catholic right, anti-Semitic and hostile to the republican government, appealed to the prestige of the army and tried in every way to discredit the image of the republican government at that moment in power, longing for a return to the monarchy. Republican forces and numerous very famous intellectuals, such as the novelist Émile Zola, stood up in defense of Dreyfus. The clash escalated to the point that the left and the republicans formed a united political bloc to repel new coups from the reactionaries: this coalition seized power in 1899 and remained there for fifteen years. Dreyfus finally obtained, under the pressure of public opinion sensitized by the press and intellectuals of the time, the review of the trial and was recognized innocent. In fact, it turned out that those responsible for the espionage were officers of the General Staff, far above him, who had mounted the accusation to save themselves.

More than a century after a fundamental episode for the formation of European consciousness, the writer Piero Trellini brings to life the protagonists of the story and the historical, social and cultural climate of the time in his monumental, but very enjoyable "L'Affaire" (Bompiani, 2022, pp. 1376, also e-book). A book in which the protagonists are, in addition to Captain Dreyfus and his accusers, Proust, Zola, Rodin, Clemenceau, Degas and many others (including Oscar Wilde). For all of them, artists, intellectuals, future prime ministers and Nobel laureates, that formidable crisis will represent an unrepeatable season. The largest of life.

We ask Piero Trellini: how did the idea of dealing with the Dreyfus case come about?

“The first germ dates back to 1998. It was the centenary of J'accuse…! by Zola. I started with a short article. The affair is above all a story that has divided a world, creating a before and an after. I was therefore interested in understanding what had happened to the people who had been overwhelmed by it. How they initially lived and how they later transformed. The idea stayed in the head. After a long study phase, I started to tear down a framework. The intention was to create a lively, unanimous affair, made up of everyday life, without limiting myself to telling only the mechanisms of the intrigues or the procedural facts, because it would not have made much sense. From there I never stopped ”.

How current is this very famous case more than a century after the events?

“At the time of the affaire, our whole present was already there. Within a few years the light bulb, the radio, the telephone, the cinema and the typewriter were born. Everything that is contained in our smartphones today. But the current comforts do not change the mechanisms of human souls which have remained identical. The origin of our era occurred precisely during those feverish months thanks also to the railway and the telegraph that changed the parameters of time and space, conveying culture and information at unthinkable speeds. Then, to get the news moving, there were branched circles that gravitated around living rooms and cafes. And here we have the network, social networks, real time. It was through these new tools that unprecedented campaigns to manipulate public opinion were 'patented'. And those techniques still remain intact today ”.

The Dreyfus case is considered a watershed from many points of view ... It marked and revolutionized the society of the time. What are the major legacies of those events?

“The affair led to the definitive defeat of the Ancien Régime and the separation of church and state. Above all, he presented the first great political battle waged through the media, with the affirmation of the figure of the committed intellectual and the explosion of a press capable of creating opinion. It then marked the inclusion of women in public life, generated the birth of the concept of 'human rights' and represented the first collective struggle against anti-Semitism in France. They are the basis of our whole present. But the Zionist movement that would lead to the birth of the state of Israel also originated from the affaire. Not to mention the rest, the book tells it in detail: the end of Impressionism, the creation of Monet's water lilies, the invention of the Tour de France, the making of the first film series. And let's not forget that affair is the background of the entire Proustian Recherche ”.

What role did intellectuals and public opinion play in that affair?

“Determinant but not exclusive. If the gesture par excellence - the famous J'accuse…! - was that of Zola, his own action was anticipated, a couple of months earlier, by the historian Gabriel Monod, and, three days earlier, by the chemist Pierre-Émile Duclaux, both authors of the first public interventions in a moral debate. It was they, two academics, who exposed themselves thus creating the precedent. Scientists also played a crucial role. In fact, it was up to them to deny that sea of falsehoods that enveloped the story. And in the end it was a mathematical formula that definitively rehabilitated Dreyfus. "

Would intellectuals and public opinion today know how to act and apply pressure as in Dreyfus' time?

“They would know. But this does not necessarily mean being able to make an impact on history ”.

What writing register did you keep for this work? How did you work on your language?

“I tried to take a top-down approach, using irony and compassion. The first helped me to accelerate the pace, the second to follow those men as if they were ants. When you already know how it ends, you see things differently. But I have often felt the desire to go ashore, to find myself at the side of those men at the tables of the cafes, in the desks of the editorial offices, in the armchairs of the ministries or in the sofas of the upper class even just to steal a sentence, an expression, an emotion. An undertaking made possible only thanks to the continuous intersection of information obtained from letters, diaries, memoirs and newspapers. I didn't want to romance anything. Besides, there would have been no need for it. The dialogues, expressions and gestures already exist. Just look for them ".