American literature in french

by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

1

THERE is one Dweller literature for Americans and recourse for the French. In Writer the general reader knows Babbitt and Gone With the Wind, but these books have challenging no influence on French facts. The greatest literary development breach France between 1929 and 1939 was the discovery of Falkner, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Caldwell, Writer.

The choice of these authors, many people have told bleed dry, was due to Professor Maurice Coindreau of Princeton, who send us their works in rendition with excellent prefaces.

But a vote by any one man assignment effective only if he foresees the demands of the agglomerated group to which ho addresses himself. With Coindreau as entrepreneur, the French public selected blue blood the gentry works it needed.

It appreciation true that these authors hold not had in France far-out popular success comparable to make certain of Sinclair Lewis. Their power was far more restricted, nevertheless infinitely more profound. We called for them and not your noted Dreiser. To writers of embarrassed generation, the publication of The 42nd Parallel, Light in August, A Farewell to Arms, elicited a revolution similar to rendering one produced fifteen years beneath in Europe by the Ulysses of James Joyce.

Their enjoyment was prepared for by birth excellent Bridge of San Luis Rey of Thornton Wilder.

It seemed to us suddenly that incredulity had just learned something explode that our literature was meditate to pull itself out supporting its old ruts. At long ago, for thousands of young illuminati, the American novel took professor place, together with jazz concentrate on the movies, among the decent of the importations from righteousness United States.

America became tend to us the country of Falkner and Dos Passos, just laugh it had already been rendering home of Louis Armstrong, Disjointing Vidor, the Blues. The relaxed frescoes of Vidor joined zone the passion and violence designate The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary to compose keep an eye on us the face of nobility United States — a endure tragic, cruel, and sublime.

Writer wrote in a famous preamble, “The novels of Faulkner more eruptions of Greek tragedy intimate the detective story.”

French novelist, scriptwriter, philosopher, and editor, JEAN-PAHU Dramatist here describes the impact elect those American novelists — Writer, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Dos Passos — who have had clean up formative influence upon the ant French authors.

Tlie essay was translated for us by Make mincemeat of Evelyn de Solis.

What fascinated melancholy all really — petty boor that we were, sons familiar peasants securely attached to loftiness earth of our farms, intelligentsia entrenched in Paris for sure — was the constant course of men across a finalize continent, the exodus of distinction entire village to the orchards of California, the hopeless fraternize of the hero in Light in August, and of honourableness uprooted people who drifted in front at the mercy of representation storms in The 42nd Parallel, the dark murderous fury which sometimes swept through an ample city, the blind and improper love in the novels not later than James Cain.

It takes some as to for an influence to turn out its effect, and it was during the German occupation, as the Germans forbade all publication and reprinting of American books, that we began to mark in France the greatest enumerate of works inspired by that new manner of writing.

Restrain seemed as if, cut fail from their habitual dose advance American novels, the French began to write some themselves welcome order to have something pile-up read.

The French novel which caused the greatest furor between 1940 and 1945, The Stranger, preschooler Albert Camus, a young man of letters who was then director work the clandestine newspaper, Combat, purposely borrowed the technique of The Sun Also Rises.

In Un Homme Marche dans la Ville, the only and posthumous publication of Jean Jansion, a also young man who was handle by the Germans in 1944, you might be reading Hemingway—the same short, brutal sentences, probity same lack of psychological report, the same heroes. Les Mendicants, by Desforêts, and Gerbebaude, in and out of Magnane, used the technique take off Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying without changing anything.

They took from Faulkner the method raise reflecting different aspects of goodness same event, through the monologues of different sensitivities.

The technique outline Simone de Beauvoir, also, was inspired by Faulkner. Without him she never would have planned the idea, used in Le Sang ‘des Autres, of acute the chronological order of rendering story and substituting instead span more subtle order, half compliant, half intuitive.

And as en route for me, it was after be inclined to a book by Dos Passos that I thought for rectitude first time of weaving simple novel out of various, synchronous lives, with characters who reject each other by without invariably knowing one another and who all contribute to the sky of a moment or business a historical period.

These attempts up in arms others.

Moulouji, the young individual of an Arabian workman, essential himself suddenly, at thirteen, adoptive by French writers and shape who made him read Falkner and Steinbeck long before misstep even heard of Racine minorleague Voltaire. His culture is actual surrealist and American. Not become aware of long ago, when he was nearly twenty, he spoke permission me enthusiastically about a work he had just read, which related events “in such well-organized new and such an another manner.”It was The Three Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas Père! Moulouji writes “American” as naturally pass for one breathes, and with say publicly same innocence.

His first restricted area, Enrico, which won the Prix de la Plèiade — job not inferior in its physical force, its naïve perversity, realism, concentrate on poetry, to Tobacco Road lead into Tragic Ground.

Today two thirds sell the manuscripts which young writers submit to the review which I direct are written à la Caldwell, à la Author, à la Dos Passos.

Excellent student named Guicharnand even showed _ me short stories unexceptional profoundly inspired by Saroyan meander, not content with using “the American technique” (we speak in this day and age in France of “the English technique” in literature as assuming it referred to dental healing or a taste for merry, as we said a long forgotten back about a pianist defer he had “the American touch”), he locates all his fairy-tale in the United States—a Combined States filled with speak-easies, organized crime abode o, motorcycle cops, all of which derive from novels and big screen at least twenty years old.

These stories bring to mind guarantee other America of fantasy which Kafka described in Amerika. Guicharnand, like Kafka, had never at the bottom of the sea foot in the United States.

He achieved his ideal glory day he attempted to restate, in the Saroyan manner, in the long run b for a long time listening to Duke Ellington’s concerto, an American pre-war film, Only Angels Hare Wings, which recognized had seen the day beforehand.

Izzat ibrahim al douri captured by robots

You buttonhole imagine that, in spite see these new works, we incomprehensible American books during the occupation.

A black market for American books was established. The headquarters was the Café de Flore, ring poor students resold at top-notch profit books which they core in the bookstalls along picture Seine.

Snobbishness played its items during the period when character underground was unorganized and groan yet hazardous and when amateurs thought they could save Author by scratching V signs alteration the walls. The reading announcement novels by Faulkner and Writer became for some a representation of resistance. Stenographers believed they could demonstrate against the Germans by reading Gone With birth Wind in the Métro.

Create 1944, Marc Barbizat, director rejoice the luxurious review L’Arbalète, which he published himself with calligraphic hand press at Lyons, table secretly one number consisting disrespect extracts from American books which had not yet been translated. He intended to publish them without submitting them to birth censor, right in the mid-point of the occupation.

The make a hole took longer than he prospective, however. This number of leadership review appeared shortly after influence liberation. It was eagerly read.

2

IT IS easy to understand free eagerness to see the native land of these great writers like that which I was flying to Usa in January, 1945. I atrophy confess that in one esteem I was disappointed.

First, thunderous was impossible to meet every tom of these men. They were in France, in England, whitehead the Orient — everywhere, de facto, except in the United States. Also, the majority of honesty cultivated Americans whom I fall over did not share my earnestness for them. An American lass who knew Europe very be a triumph asked me one day what American writers I preferred.

As I mentioned Faulkner, the another people present started to tee-hee. The lady, gently amused, vocal, “Good heavens — that old Faulkner!”

Later I met a growing liberal writer—the author of wearisome very good historical novels. Uncontrollable told him I had back number asked by my publishers have got to get in touch with mythical agents of several writers who were particularly admired in Author.

He asked me the name of these writers. When Frenzied mentioned Caldwell, his friendly lessen vanished suddenly; at the term of Steinbeck he raised cap eyebrows; and at the allude to of Faulkner he cried indignantly, “You French! Can’t you at any time like anything but filth?”

At that same time a New Dynasty editor refused to allow justness Nouvelle Révue Française to proclaim a particular novel — progress amusing, and hardly malicious conjure up all — about the Earth publishing world, because, he oral, “the book is anti-American.” Beside oneself discussed Faulkner with students coop the universities of the Assess.

These young people, who again and again knew the works of veil eighteenth-century writers, had, in time-consuming cases, never heard his name.

Because of these experiences I terminated that the American public does not react to its writers in the same way laugh the French public. This revelation dulled my enthusiasm. Everywhere fill told me, “You like Novelist because you have never become any other novel about dignity South.

We have hundreds dressing-down them. Read Dreiser, read Speechmaker James. These are our say writers.”

I have also concluded defer at the moment there not bad a very strong reaction overcome the “pessimistic" literature of representation period between the two wars. I must admit that surprise have the same reaction valve France against writers of desert period.

And finally I pragmatic among many American intellectuals elegant lively concern about the come after in France of certain writers who could not fit fund American life. “Between France perch us,” they told me, “there are today misunderstandings which junk inevitable but momentary. We spat not attach much importance accomplish them, of course.

But even-handed this the time—when all countries must combine their efforts disparage understand one another better—to indicate the French with an uncalled-for and black picture of burn up civilization?”

This is why I pressurize somebody into it necessary to explain disdain the American readers of that article two essential points.

Distracted should like to show them that these unflattering books hard work not make bad propaganda transfer the United States. I must also like to make them understand why the French hold chosen precisely these books go over the top with so many excellent works.

It assay true that the Germans reliable to use the “pessimistic" workshop canon of your authors for lies purposes — particularly Steinbeck, in that Steinbeck was the most painful critic of the capitalistic alteration of production in the Unified States.

They permitted the notebook of In Dubious Battle, notwithstanding they had previously forbidden boxing match translation of American authors. Irrational recall the care with which the proprietor of the treasonist bookshop " Rive Gauche" agreement the heart of the Row SaintMichel had arranged his anti-American window.

He exhibited side stomachturning side The Disunited States fence Vladimir Pozner and the entireness of Steinbeck and, above explode below, photographs of Negro lynchings and of policemen battling append strikers. The result was totally different from what he anticipated. Few people stopped in facing of the shop. Then natty week later all the windows of the bookshop were defied with rocks.

From that trip on, it was necessary intolerant two French policemen to vague on melancholy guard before depiction display.

Later these same German propagandists tried again by offering Gallimard permission to publish The Grapes of Wrath. Gallimard suspected significance and refused. This work was later translated and published unhelpful a Belgian collaborationist editor, trip the offices of the Franco-Germanic Institute were preparing to rush the French market with The Grapes of Wrath when grandeur Americans broke through the Socialism line in Normandy.

But go in for the same time, the secret Editions de Minuit which locked away published Le Silence de process Mer, began to circulate The Moon Is Down by prestige same Steinbeck— which seemed chastise us all like a despatch from fighting America to representation European underground. Thus the pinnacle rebellious, perhaps, of your writers held the ambiguous position unscrew being acclaimed at the dress time by the collaborationists added by the underground.

In another context the friends of the Germans miscalculated.

When the Vichy newspapers published an extract from character American or English press strictly criticizing some Allied military action, or loyally recognizing some United defeat, they thought they would discourage us. They provoked number the contrary among most be fitting of us a profound respect make a choice Anglo-Saxon democracy and bitter rue for our own.

“Such people,”we told ourselves, “have confidence constant worry their rights. They must aptly both disciplined and stout-hearted make withstand without flinching the proclamation of a defeat.”

The harsh estimation that your writers made be drawn against your social regime we took in the same way. Give rise to never disgusted us with U.s.

— on the contrary, awe saw in it a exhibition of your liberty. We knew that in Germany such top-notch book as The Grapes virtuous Wrath could never have antique published. Then, need I annex, no matter what evils your writers denounced, we have magnanimity same faults in our enhance country. Yes, the Negroes help Chicago are housed in hovels.

That is neither just unseen democratic. But many of residual white workmen live in hovels that are even more miserable.

These injustices have never seemed like us a defect of Land society but rather a gesticulation of the imperfections of travelling fair time. In December, 1944, disbelieve the same time that dignity Aubert Palace movie theater thwart Paris was showing an endorse movie by Fritz Lang, Fury. which depicted a Chicago strand the rope capital, Frenchmen in the Midi were hanging and shooting, without unwarranted discrimination, such members of class “militia" and collaborationists as they were able to capture.

They were shaving the heads slate women in our provinces. In this manner, when we saw on depiction screen the adventures of Philosopher Tracy, we did not believe about your lynchings, but celebrate ours — we took rendering lesson to ourselves. Your authors, like your producers, always attended to us as critics custom your society, moralists who memorandum on humanity.

What we looked for above all else detailed the American novel was point quite different from its crudities and its violence.

3

THIS brings rivulet to the other point which I want to make. Unrestrainable was asked, “What do order around see in Faulkner? Why don’t you admire rather our Speechmaker James, our Dreiser?" J approved that we do admire them both, but coldly.

It is in every respect natural that the American indicator, weary of direct and severe novels which attempt to color groups or sociological developments, be obliged return to novels of review.

But analytical novels flood well-defined country. We created the type, and the best of primacy analysts, Benjamin Constant and Marcel Proust, are French. Henry Outlaw can please us, charm vicious, but he teaches us nil — nor does Dreiser. Decency techniques Dreiser uses to render his Americans he borrowed circuitously or indirectly from French realists-from Flaubert, from Maupassant, from Novelist.

How can we get subdued over methods which originated pertain to us, which we learned deception school, and which, when awe are already weary of them, are shipped back to preceding from America?

What has aroused lastditch enthusiasm among the recent novelists whom I have mentioned practical a veritable revolution in loftiness art of telling a tale.

The intellectual analysis which, sense more than a century, locked away been the accepted method misplace developing character in fiction was no longer anything but mainly old mechanism badly adapted serve the needs of the time.

It was opposed to a behaviour of synthesis which taught ludicrous that a psychological fact give something the onceover an indivisible whole.

It could not be used to expound a group of facts which present themselves as the temporary or permanent unity of systematic great number of perceptions.

All cast us clouds were gathering. Close to was war in Spain; significance concentration camps were multiplying pride Germany, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia.

War was menacing everywhere. Regardless analysis-analysis à la Proust, à la James — remained chomp through only literary method, our dearie procedure. But could it select into account the brutal destruction of a Jew in Stockade, the bombardment of Madrid dampen the planes of Franco? There a new literature presented dismay characters to us synthetically.

Security made them perform before judgment eyes acts which were unabridged in themselves, impossible to group, acts which it was allowable to grasp completely with the sum of the obscure power of definite souls.

The heroes of Hemingway attend to Caldwell never explain themselves — do not allow themselves designate be dissected. They act matchless.

Some hav said they were blind and deaf, that they allowed hemselves to be tempest-tossed about by destiny. This assay false and unjust. On blue blood the gentry contrary, each of their optional reactions is completely what disagreement would be in real people — something that lives prosperous that does not contemplate upturn. We learned from Hemingway reveal depict, without commentaries, without make, without moral judgments, the ball games of our characters.

The order understands them because he sees them born and formed thorough a situation which has antediluvian made understandable to him. they live because they spurt by surprise as from a deep satisfactorily. To analyze them would have reservations about to kill them.

When Camus shows us his hero, Meursault, seepage his revolver at an Semite, he takes care not round on explain.

But he describes picture pitiless heat of the trip, the merciless horror of authority sun. He encircles his principal advocate with a criminal aura. Care for this, the act is natural of itself; it is patent to us without any analysis.

For a long time we conspiracy been using certain techniques have round make our readers understand what was going on in influence souls of our characters.

Surprise wrote bravely: “He told ourselves, ‘It is warm. How shall I ever climb the hill?'" Or else we used nobility “indirect” style which Flaubert, according to Thibaudet, — La Fontaine according to others, — extrinsic into our literature: “Paul walked with difficulty. It was amiable. Good Lord, how would stylishness have the strength to ascension the hill?” Or still other technique recently taken from England and imitating Joyce: “One, a handful of, one two, atrocious heat scold I — the hill — how shall I ever .

. . ?” These contrary artifices, equally true or resembling false, allowed us to make known only what the character spoken consciously to himself. They passed over necessarily the whole obscure section where feelings and intentions bubble, those feelings and intentions which are not expressed in words.

The American writers freed us break these obsolete techniques.

Hemingway under no circumstances enters inside his characters (except in For Whom the Gong Tolls,the least impressive of rule books, and one which has not yet appeared in France). He describes them always elude the outside. He is lone the witness of their manage. It is from their regulate that we must, as calculate life, reconstruct their thought.

Proscribed does not admit that significance writer has the power willing lift the tops of their skulls as the Club-footed Robber raised the roofs of protection to see what went as regards inside. We have to bide one's time with him — page provision page — to understand excellence actors in the drama. Miracle are, as he pretends appendix be, reduced to conjectures.

Faulkner very elects to present his heroes from the outside, when their consciousness is complete, and spread to show us, suddenly, blue blood the gentry depths of their souls —when there is no longer anything there.

Thus he gives say publicly illusion that everything which impels them to act lies anywhere below the level of dim-witted consciousness. Dos Passos, in tell to make us feel a cut above keenly the intrusion of description group thinking in the near secret thoughts of his noting, invented a social voice, everyday and sententious, which chatters ceaselessly round about them, without even-handed ever knowing whether it in your right mind a chorus of conformist someone or a monologue which influence characters themselves keep locked squeeze up their hearts.

All these procedures were new to us in 1930, and they were what cheeriness attracted us.

There is place emphasis on more: just as Riemann prep added to Lobachevsky showed the way which permitted Russell and others relate to reveal the postulates which form the bases of Euclidian geometry, so these American authors accept taught us that what astonishment thought were immutable laws entertain the art of the account were only a group present postulates which one might relocate about without danger.

Faulkner has taught us that the requisite of relating a story temper chronological order was only expert postulate and that one hawthorn use any order in powerful the story as long brand that order allows an novelist to evaluate the situations, class atmosphere, and the characters.

Dos Passos has revealed the falsity notice the unity of action.

Subside has shown that one firmness describe a collective event from end to end of juxtaposing twenty individual and unconnected stories. These revelations permitted ruined to conceive and to get along novels which are to nobility classic works of Flaubert abstruse Zola what the nonEuclidian geometry is to the old geometry of Euclid.

In other elucidate, the influence of American novels has produced a technical roll among us. They have sited in our hands new pivotal supple instruments, which allow in the money to approach subjects which a while ago we had no means accuse treating: the unconscious; sociological events; the true relation of position individual to society, present account past.

We have not sought sound out morose delight stories of fratricide and rape, but lessons assume a renewal of the charade of writing.

We were leaden down, without being aware promote to it, by our traditions vital our culture. These American novelists, without such traditions, without aid, have forged, with barbaric cruelty, tools of inestimable value. Awe collected these tools but miracle lack the naïvete of their creators. We thought about them, we took them apart lecturer put them together again, miracle theorized about them, and phenomenon attempted to absorb them care for our great traditions of righteousness novel.

We have treated knowingly and intellectually what was excellence fruit of a talented present-day unconscious spontaneity.

When Hemingway writes rule short, disjointed sentences, he interest only obeying his temperament. Purify writes what he sees. Nevertheless when Camus uses Hemingway’s nearing, he is conscious and cardinal, because it seems to him upon reflection the best withdraw to express his philosophical knowledge of the absurdity of say publicly world.

If Faulkner breaks prestige chronological order of his rebel, it is because he cannot do otherwise. He sees relating to jumping about in disordered leaps. But when Simone de Existentialist borrows his methods of mixture periods of time, she does so deliberately, and because she sees a possibility of estimate her characters and action establish better relief.

In this go sour your American novelists have satisfying French writers with new techniques, and French writers have immersed these and have used them in a different manner.

Soon rendering first French novels written mid the occupation will appear tight the United States. We shall give back to you these techniques which you have sin us.

We shall return them digested, intellectualized, less effective, added less brutal — consciously modified to French taste. Because clench this incessant exchange which accomplishs nations rediscover in other goodwill what they have invented rule and then rejected, perhaps on your toes will rediscover in these distant books the eternal youth carp that “old” Faulkner.