Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

CHAPTER 23: PARIS IN THE YEAR ZERO

1. Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, London: Heinemann, 1987, page 250. Herman, Op. cit., page 343.

2. Herman, The Idea of Decline in Western History, Op. cit., page 343.

3. J.-P. Sartre, Self-Portrait at 70, in Life Situations, Essays Written and Spoken, translated by P. Auster and L. Davis, New York: Pantheon 1977, pages 47— 48; quoted in Herman, Op. cit., page 342.

4. Ibid., page 334.

5. Ronald Hayman, Writing Against: A Biography of Sartre, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986, page 64. Herman, Op. cit., page 334; Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 57.

6. Herman, Op. cit., page 335.

7. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 95.

8. Herman, Op. cit., page 333.

9. Ibid., page 338.

10. Heidegger’s notion that the world revealed itself to ‘maladjusted instruments’ fitted with Sartre’s own developing ideas of ‘l’homme revolté’. Hayman, Op. cit., pages 132–133.

11. Herman, Op. cit., page 339.

12. Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper, Paris After the Liberation: 1944–1949, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994, page 199.

13. Ibid., pages 81 and 200.

14. Ibid., pages 156 and 164.

15. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 248. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., pages 159–161.

16. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 155.

17. Herman, Op. cit., page 343; Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 258.

18. Herman, Op. cit., page 344.

19. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., pages 444ff.

20. Herman, Op. cit., page 346.

21. Maurice Merlau-Ponty, Humanism and Terror, Boston: Beacon Press, 1969, pages xvi—xvii.

22. Herman, Op cit., page 346.

23. Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, London: Jonathan Cape, 1940, translator Daphne Harley; see also: David Cesarani, Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind, London: Heinemann, 1998, pages 288–290, for the fights with Sartre.

24. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., pages 347–348.

25. Ibid., page 348.

26. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 158.

27. Stanley Karnow, Paris in the Fifties, New York: Random House/Times Books, 1997, page 240.

28. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 265.

29. Karnow, Op. cit., page 240. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 202.

30. Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 266. Karnov, Op. cit., page 242.

31. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 382.

32. Karnow, Op. cit., page 251. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 207.

33. See Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., page 307 for a discussion of the disagreements over America.

34. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 405.

35. Ibid., page 408.

36. Some idea of the emotions this episode can still raise may be seen from the fact that Annie Cohen-Solal’s 1987 biography of Sartre, 590 pages, makes no reference to the matter, or to Kravchenko, or to other individuals who took part.

37. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 409.

38. Ibid., pages 411–412.

39. Ibid. See Cohen-Solal, Op. cit., pages 332–333 for an account of their falling out.

40. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 416.

41. ‘Nikolas Bourbaki’ was the pseudonym of a group of mainly French mathematicians (Jean Dien-donné, Henri Carton et al.), whose aim was to recast all of mathematics into a consistent whole. The first volume of Elements of Mathematics appeared in 1939 and ran for more than twenty volumes. For Oliver Messaien, see: Arnold Whittall, Music Since the First World War, London: J. M. Dent, 1977; Oxford University Press paperback, 1995, pages 216–219 and 226–231; see also sleeve notes, pages 3–4, by Fabian Watkinson to: ‘Messaien, Turangalîla-Symphonie’, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Decca, 1992.

42. See Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: Une Vie, Paris: Gallimard, 1996, pages 296ff, for the writing of The Myth of Sisyphus and Camus’ philosophy of the absurd. For the Paris art market after World War II, see: Raymonde Moulin, The French Art Market: A Sociological View, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987; an abridged translation by Arthur Goldhammer of Le Marche de la peinture en France, Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967.

43. See: Albert Camus, Carnets 1942–1951, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1966, circa page 53 for his notebook-thoughts on Tarrou and the symbolic effects of the plague.

44. Simone de Beauvoir, La Force des Choses, Paris: Gallimard, 1960, page 29, quoted in Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 206.

45. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971, page 346.

46. Ironically, Mettray, the prison Genet served in, was an agricultural colony and, according to Genet’s biographer, ‘the place looked at once deceptively pastoral (no walls surrounded it and the long lane leading to it was lined with tall trees) and ominously well organised …’ Edmund White, Genet, London: Chatto & Windus, 1993, page 68.

47. Genet fought hard to ensure that black actors were always employed. See White, Op. cit., pages 502–503, for his tussle in Poland.

48. Andrew K. Kennedy, Samuel Beckett, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, pages 4–5.

49. James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, London: Bloomsbury, 1996, page 54.

50. Kennedy, Op. cit., page 8.

51. Knowlson, Op. cit., page 175.

52. Beevor and Cooper, Op. cit., page 173.

53. Kennedy, Op. cit., pages 6, 7, 9 and 11.

54. Knowlson, Op. cit., page 387.

55. Kennedy, Op. cit., page 24.

56. Ibid., page 42.

57. Godot has always proved popular with prisoners – in Germany, the USA, and elsewhere. See: Knowlson, Op. cit., pages 409ff, for a discussion.

58. See Kennedy, Op. cit., page 30, for a discussion.

59. Ibid., pages 33–34 and 40–41.

60. Claude Bonnefoy, Conversations with Eugène Ionescu, London: Faber & Faber, 1970, page 65.

61. Ibid., page 82.

62. See Eugène Ionescu, Present Past, Past Present: A Personal Memoir, London, Calder & Boyars, 1972, translator Helen R. Lane, page 139, for Ionescu’s thoughts on ‘the end of the individual.’

63. Bonnefoy, Op. cit., pages 167–168.