![]() ![]() In an open letter to the French president, published Jan. Marcel Proust used the bickering and backbiting in French society over the affair as background noise in his monumental “In Search of Lost Time.”īut it was Emile Zola who struck the most stirring and telling blow for Dreyfus. The ranks of the anti-Dreyfusards were equally formidable, among them Edgar Degas, Paul Cezanne, Auguste Rodin and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Among the Dreyfusards were Camille Pissarro, Claude Monet, Paul Signac and Mary Cassatt. The Dreyfus affair split French society, pitting artist against artist, intellectual against intellectual. Georges Picquart submitted irrefutable evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence, he was told, “What does it matter to you that this Jew remains on Devil’s Island”? They refused to admit their error out of fear that such an admission would besmirch the French army’s honor and undercut its fighting ability. Most French generals soon realized they convicted the wrong man. ![]() He was the “model citizen defending his right to justice,” Duclert writes, “and he was the model patriot never doubting the capacity of his country to move toward justice and truth.” In a new biography, Vincent Duclert contends that Dreyfus was not afraid to stand up for himself. Indeed, some historians see Dreyfus the patriot, not Dreyfus the victim. But on the eve of the 100th anniversary of his exoneration in 1906 and the official end of the tumultuous affair that convulsed France for a dozen years, that view may be changing. His decision to accept a pardon is one of the cornerstones of a long-standing French perception that Dreyfus is the model of a submissive victim. “We were prepared to die for Dreyfus,” said poet Charles Peguy, “but Dreyfus was not.” Those who believed that he was innocent and had called for his exoneration were deeply disappointed. It was a matter of life or death, for Dreyfus feared that he would not survive the notorious penal colony on Devil’s Island, where he had been sent after a military court convicted him of betraying his country. IN 1899, A BROKEN Alfred Dreyfus accepted a presidential pardon - and its implication that he had committed treason against France. ![]()
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