PARIS FACES THE WINTER
By AMABEL WILLIAMS-ELLIS
"BREAD isn't rationed in England? " " You give no coupons in a restaurant? " " Grown-up people get milk—even in the cities? " " And is it true your gas pressure is quite good, so that you can cook at any time? And do some people even have coal? "
The great debate that everyone in France seems to be holding with himself and with his neighbours has as its background (and perhaps a good part of its cause) a low diet and the realisation that this winter is going to be (materially) as bad as last. " So you see we are very sorry to see the leaves turning."
French people's well-known capacity for uttering home truths assumes just now proportions that startle. There is nothing that is sharp or devastating that can be said about the capitulation, the state of the French forces then, their state now, the conduct of those who collaborated or appeared to collaborate with. the Clermans, who breathed the same air as the Germans, who avoided breathing the same air, about those who ran the black market then, those who run it now, those who run or work in industry or the building trades, who are Ministers, civil servants, politicians, pedagogues, journalists, agriculturalists, who are young or who are old, which is not being said by someone. And that someone may be either inside or outside that particular category.
After I had been in Paris for two days a Swiss man-of-business pounced upon my hesitating remark that the French " seemed tad."
• The Germans meant them to be sad. They used flattery, bribery and hunger. but above all terror. The Nazis were clever at such work. Their best stroke was to induce Petain to go on repeating that the French had deserved defeat, and that it was all their own fault. That was deadly."
Today, chalked up in every street, is the inscription, "Patain an Poteau." "To the stake with Petain." It has not escaped the French that this propaganda of remorse and self-accusation had as its implication that the Nazis had a right to their victory and even a moral justification for their terror. Hence " that sanctimonious old man " is now so hated. Jean Paul Sartre and a younger fellow- writer, Mlle. de Beauvoir.; are two authors who reacted sharply to this particular line. The story of the writing and production during the occupation of Sartre's play Les Mouches is worth telling.
One day a full-length classical Drama about the return of Orestes, his meeting with Electra, his killing of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, complete with the advent of the Furies, was submitted—as books and plays had to be—to the German Censor. Presumably he shrugged his shoulders, • knowing that the French had had this curious addiction to the classical Drama ever since the time of Racine. Anyhow, he passed the play, observing, no doubt, that it followed the traditional story with reasonable faithfulness. Possibly he noticed that an early Rite, a very striking " Festival of the Dead," had been imaginatively recreated by this particular re-teller of the ancient tale. If he did, he perhaps also knew that archaeology, if not Trampriere, gives warrant for it (see Jane Harrison's Ancient Art and Ritual, for example). But these was something that no one noticed—it did not strike even one of the actors, for instance—no
one knew except the author, the producer and the actress who played Electra. It was that when it was seen as a whole on the stage the whole drama was a withering attack not just on the Germans, but on this weary sense of guilt that Vichy was instilling day by day by Press and radio into the unhappy people of France. In this play Aegisthus and Clytemnestra are killed by Orestes, not because they have in the past killed Agamemnon, but because he sees that they are now engaged in killing the people of Argos. They have per- suaded the citizens that, by not rising in defence of Agamemnon, they share with the two actual murderers an inexpiable guilt.
They are parricides. The Nazis play a minor but telling part. Their argument is put into the mouth of Zeus, who supports and advises Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. He particularly congratulates them on the way they have kept command of the bodies of the people by convincing their minds of the half-truth of their negative complicity. But Orestes, landing fresh in Argos, is free of this feeling, and Zeus comes to warn Aegisthus, "as one King to another," that because he feels free he is " dangerous to good order."
The murder of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Electra and Orestes is engineered by Zeus, played as his last card. They now are also open to the attacks of the Furies of remorse, who indeed pursue them. They take refuge in a sanctuary. The Furies wait, the people of Argos surround them, mourning and angry at this fresh crime.
Sartre makes this, the waiting Furies, the waiting people as they encompass the brother and sister, into a terrifying scene. Electra is broken by it (like Lady Macbeth, she had been the first to con- ceive the plan ; like Lady Macbeth, she cannot bear its action and consequences). But Orestes triumphs. The Furies, he says, can have their way with him ; he takes upon himself the whole guilt, and thus the people can feel free from their nightmare. I asked Sartre whether (if the play were to write again) he would now change the terrifying message of this last scene?—which is after all not a total denial of guilt. " Yes," he said, and smiled. " And in a direction much less pessimistic." The point that his ending would be more optimistic is important because Sartre and his colleagues seem likely to play so lively and creative a part in French thought and literature. But their early work has made people believe them to be pessimists. No wonder. Sartre, for instance, is author of a novel called "La Nausee" (Disgust). Alfred Camus (another ex- ceedingly gifted playwright and novelist, and perhaps still editor of Combat) maintains, as a philosopher, a desperate stoicism in the face of what he calls " l'Absurde" (the monstrous illogicality of human fate contrasted with man's desire to understand and to explain), and he is steeped in the ideas of Dostoevsky and of Franz Kaka. But now they have arrived at a stoical or a humane and witty and in any case courageous rejection of pessimism ("Mime avec la bombe atomic").
It is much to be hoped that their books and plays will find translators and publishers here. In France, owing to the paper shortage, it is almost impossible to get their work. Its character will ensure it readers here. For, with its often startling method of presentation, one of the things the English reader will notice first is that it states elegantly, clearly and with passion a great many ideas that we already hold or are on the edge of holding, and nothing is more delightful than to read a new, vigorous and eloquent state- ment of views one, in fact, holds, but about whose tenability one is a little uncertain.
I observe the reading of my English youngers and betters, and believe they especially are likely to like this new French school very much indeed, and are in a sense readier for it with its outspokenness, seriousness, wit and courage than are a comparable audience in France. In France the irrational is a hard pill, but we are quite used to it. To sum up, it seemed to me that on a diet of dry bread, a few vegetables, a little fruit, with only acorn coffee without milk, French writers can still think, still invent, still utter new thoughts with the unmatched clarity, wit, passion and vigour of a great tradition.
But I wish this winter were over for France or that we could at least send her some of our coffee.
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