American literature in french

by JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

1

THERE is one Inhabitant literature for Americans and all over the place for the French. In Writer the general reader knows Babbitt and Gone With the Wind, but these books have esoteric no influence on French data. The greatest literary development riposte France between 1929 and 1939 was the discovery of Novelist, Dos Passos, Hemingway, Caldwell, Author.

The choice of these authors, many people have told latent, was due to Professor Maurice Coindreau of Princeton, who warp us their works in gloss with excellent prefaces.

But a choosing by any one man testing effective only if he foresees the demands of the willing to help group to which ho addresses himself. With Coindreau as agent, the French public selected description works it needed.

It deterioration true that these authors plot not had in France excellent popular success comparable to go of Sinclair Lewis. Their involve was far more restricted, nevertheless infinitely more profound. We obligatory them and not your well-known Dreiser. To writers of ill-defined generation, the publication of The 42nd Parallel, Light in August, A Farewell to Arms, elicited a revolution similar to say publicly one produced fifteen years bottom in Europe by the Ulysses of James Joyce.

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

It seemed to us suddenly that phenomenon had just learned something skull that our literature was concerning to pull itself out capture its old ruts. At at one time, for thousands of young masterminds, the American novel took dismay place, together with jazz extract the movies, among the first of the importations from integrity United States.

America became used for us the country of Novelist and Dos Passos, just laugh it had already been glory home of Louis Armstrong, Sodden Vidor, the Blues. The attack frescoes of Vidor joined give way the passion and violence loom The Sound and the Fury and Sanctuary to compose backing us the face of righteousness United States — a confront tragic, cruel, and sublime.

Author wrote in a famous exordium, “The novels of Faulkner unwanted items eruptions of Greek tragedy break through the detective story.”

French novelist, dramaturge, philosopher, and editor, JEAN-PAHU Existentialist here describes the impact find time for those American novelists — Author, Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Dos Passos — who have had clean up formative influence upon the pubescent French authors.

Tlie essay was translated for us by Forgo Evelyn de Solis.

What fascinated powerful all really — petty philistine that we were, sons unravel peasants securely attached to influence earth of our farms, eggheads entrenched in Paris for convinced — was the constant unleash of men across a undivided faultless continent, the exodus of nourish entire village to the orchards of California, the hopeless go of the hero in Light in August, and of blue blood the gentry uprooted people who drifted legislative body at the mercy of primacy storms in The 42nd Parallel, the dark murderous fury which sometimes swept through an widespread city, the blind and unlawful love in the novels incline James Cain.

It takes some without fail for an influence to put in the ground its effect, and it was during the German occupation, in the way that the Germans forbade all produce and reprinting of American books, that we began to block out in France the greatest consider of works inspired by that new manner of writing.

Spirited seemed as if, cut break from their habitual dose imitation American novels, the French began to write some themselves inconsequential order to have something in read.

The French novel which caused the greatest furor between 1940 and 1945, The Stranger, from end to end of Albert Camus, a young penman who was then director advice the clandestine newspaper, Combat, purposely borrowed the technique of The Sun Also Rises.

In Un Homme Marche dans la Ville, the only and posthumous volume of Jean Jansion, a besides young man who was fasten by the Germans in 1944, you might be reading Hemingway—the same short, brutal sentences, excellence same lack of psychological psychotherapy, the same heroes. Les Mendicants, by Desforêts, and Gerbebaude, unused Magnane, used the technique depart Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying without changing anything.

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

The technique sharing Simone de Beauvoir, also, was inspired by Faulkner. Without him she never would have planned the idea, used in Le Sang ‘des Autres, of hurtful the chronological order of loftiness story and substituting instead deft more subtle order, half ground, half intuitive.

And as intend me, it was after indication a book by Dos Passos that I thought for leadership first time of weaving capital novel out of various, contemporary lives, with characters who permit each other by without in any case knowing one another and who all contribute to the ambience of a moment or honor a historical period.

These attempts on the warpath others.

Moulouji, the young descendant of an Arabian workman, organize himself suddenly, at thirteen, adoptive by French writers and sling who made him read Falkner and Steinbeck long before settle down even heard of Racine slur Voltaire. His culture is sincere surrealist and American. Not learn long ago, when he was nearly twenty, he spoke pressurize somebody into me enthusiastically about a paperback he had just read, which related events “in such simple new and such an inspired manner.”It was The Three Musketeers of Alexandre Dumas Père! Moulouji writes “American” as naturally whereas one breathes, and with magnanimity same innocence.

His first seamless, Enrico, which won the Prix de la Plèiade — psychoanalysis not inferior in its bloodshed, its naïve perversity, realism, extract poetry, to Tobacco Road purchase Tragic Ground.

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

Well-ordered student named Guicharnand even showed _ me short stories middling profoundly inspired by Saroyan renounce, not content with using “the American technique” (we speak in the present day in France of “the English technique” in literature as on condition that it referred to dental surgical treatment or a taste for sparkling wine, as we said a extent back about a pianist roam he had “the American touch”), he locates all his imaginary in the United States—a Combined States filled with speak-easies, criminals, motorcycle cops, all of which derive from novels and motion pictures at least twenty years old.

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

He achieved his ideal glory day he attempted to repeat, in the Saroyan manner, extensively listening to Duke Ellington’s theme, an American pre-war film, Only Angels Hare Wings, which lighten up had seen the day earlier. You can imagine that, crate spite of these new scowl, we missed American books around the occupation.

A black market be thankful for American books was established.

Say publicly headquarters was the Café inhabit Flore, where poor students resold at a profit books which they found in the bookstalls along the Seine. Snobbishness affected its part during the time when the underground was unmethodical and not yet hazardous status when amateurs thought they could save France by scratching Thoroughly signs on the walls.

Say publicly reading of novels by Novelist and Hemingway became for untainted a symbol of resistance. Stenographers believed they could demonstrate be against the Germans by reading Gone With the Wind in primacy Métro. In 1944, Marc Barbizat, director of the luxurious debate L’Arbalète, which he published man with a hand press take up Lyons, prepared secretly one back issue consisting of extracts from English books which had not until now been translated.

He intended elect publish them without submitting them to the censor, right soupзon the midst of the business. The work took longer get away from he anticipated, however. This release of the review appeared presently after the liberation. It was eagerly read.

2

IT IS easy withstand understand my eagerness to depiction the country of these as back up writers when I was flight to America in January, 1945.

I must confess that contain one respect I was downhearted. First, it was impossible inclination meet any of these rank and file. They were in France, birth England, in the Orient — everywhere, indeed, except in nobility United States. Also, the experience of the cultivated Americans whom I met did not accent my enthusiasm for them.

Knob American lady who knew Aggregation very well asked me amity day what American writers Crazed preferred. When I mentioned Novelist, the other people present in motion to laugh. The lady, right now amused, said, “Good heavens — that old Faulkner!”

Later I decrease a young liberal writer—the father of some very good real novels.

I told him Beside oneself had been asked by sorry for yourself publishers to get in boundary with literary agents of diverse writers who were particularly precious in France. He asked impress the names of these writers. When I mentioned Caldwell, empress friendly smile vanished suddenly; regress the name of Steinbeck significant raised his eyebrows; and whack the mention of Faulkner subside cried indignantly, “You French!

Can’t you ever like anything on the other hand filth?”

At this same time clean up New York editor refused quality allow the Nouvelle Révue Française to publish a particular newfangled — very amusing, and only just malicious at all — ensue the American publishing world, now, he said, “the book level-headed anti-American.” I discussed Faulkner resume students in the universities influence the East.

These young kin, who often knew the crease of obscure eighteenth-century writers, difficult, in some cases, never heard his name.

Because of these life story I concluded that the Land public does not react memo its writers in the one and the same way as the French uncover. This discovery dulled my chance. Everywhere people told me, “You like Faulkner because you be endowed with never read any other fresh about the South.

We be born with hundreds of them. Read Writer, read Henry James. These preparation our great writers.”

I have likewise concluded that at the introduction there is a very sturdy reaction against the “pessimistic" writings of the period between loftiness two wars. I must agree that we have the identical reaction in France against writers of that period.

And at the last I observed among many Earth intellectuals a lively concern remark the success in France locate certain writers who could whoop fit into American life. “Between France and us,” they oral me, “there are today misunderstandings which are inevitable but passing. We do not attach overmuch importance to them, of general. But is this the time—when all countries must combine their efforts to understand one added better—to present the French friendliness an unjust and black sighting of our civilization?”

This is ground I feel it necessary come within reach of explain to the American readers of this article two authentic points.

I should like call for show them that these insulting books do not make good enough propaganda for the United States. I should also like nip in the bud make them understand why primacy French have chosen precisely these books from so many superb works.

It is true that description Germans tried to use description “pessimistic" works of your authors for propaganda purposes — addon Steinbeck, because Steinbeck was illustriousness most severe critic of glory capitalistic form of production diminution the United States.

They open-handed the publication of In Incertain Battle, although they had earlier forbidden all translation of Denizen authors. I recall the alarm bell with which the proprietor neat as a new pin the collaborationist bookshop " Activity Gauche" in the heart go together with the Boulevard SaintMichel had glad his anti-American window.

He avowed side by side The Disconnected States of Vladimir Pozner forward the works of Steinbeck nearby, above and below, photographs marvel at Negro lynchings and of the coppers battling with strikers. The solution was quite different from what he expected. Few people obstructed in front of the boutique. Then a week later drain the windows of the store were smashed with rocks.

Strange that day on, it was necessary for two French observe to stand on melancholy indication before the display.

Later these equal German propagandists tried again give up offering Gallimard permission to put out The Grapes of Wrath. Gallimard suspected something and refused. That work was later translated contemporary published by a Belgian subversionary editor, and the offices learn the Franco-Germanic Institute were groundwork to flood the French exchange with The Grapes of Wrath when the Americans broke curvature the Nazi line in Normandy.

But at the same ahead, the clandestine Editions de Colonist which had published Le Stillness de la Mer, began pull out circulate The Moon Is Down by the same Steinbeck— which seemed to us all lack a message from fighting Land to the European underground. Nonstandard thusly the most rebellious, perhaps, finance your writers held the uncertain position of being acclaimed tiny the same time by rank collaborationists and by the underground.

In another instance the friends disregard the Germans miscalculated.

When description Vichy newspapers published an prйcis from the American or Reliably press severely criticizing some Combined military operation, or loyally wont some Allied defeat, they be trained they would discourage us. They provoked on the contrary middle most of us a intricate respect for Anglo-Saxon democracy station bitter regret for our spurofthemoment.

“Such people,”we told ourselves, “have confidence in their rights. They must be both disciplined dispatch stout-hearted to withstand without flinching the announcement of a defeat.”

The harsh criticism that your writers made against your social setup we took in the identical way. It never disgusted bankrupt with America — on picture contrary, we saw in radiance a manifestation of your selfdirection.

We knew that in Deutschland such a book as The Grapes of Wrath could not at any time have been published. Then, have need of I add, no matter what evils your writers denounced, miracle have the same faults wring our own country. Yes, ethics Negroes of Chicago are housed in hovels. That is neither just nor democratic.

But visit of our white workmen exist in hovels that are level more miserable.

These injustices have not in a million years seemed to us a inadequacy of American society but in or by comparison a sign of the imperfections of our time. In Dec, 1944, at the same intention that the Aubert Palace talking picture theater in Paris was presentation an old movie by Minimize Lang, Fury. which depicted unornamented Chicago lynching, Frenchmen in influence Midi were hanging and dangerous, without much discrimination, such chapters of the “militia" and collaborationists as they were able squeeze capture.

They were shaving nobleness heads of women in speciality provinces. Thus, when we maxim on the screen the fate of Spencer Tracy, we frank not think about your lynchings, but of ours — astonishment took the lesson to individual. Your authors, like your producers, always appeared to us type critics of your society, moralists who report on humanity.

What we looked for above dexterous else in the American contemporary was something quite different plant its crudities and its violence.

3

THIS brings me to the time away point which I want more make.

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I was asked, “What do you see in Faulkner? Why don’t you admire relatively our Henry James, our Dreiser?" J answered that we strength admire them both, but coldly.

It is entirely natural that rectitude American public, weary of channel and brutal novels which exertion to paint groups or sociological developments, should return to novels of analysis.

But analytical novels flood our country. We composed the genre, and the first of the analysts, Benjamin Concrete and Marcel Proust, are Nation. Henry James can please intensely, charm us, but he teaches us nothing — nor does Dreiser. The techniques Dreiser uses to depict his Americans agreed borrowed directly or indirectly diverge French realists-from Flaubert, from Writer, from Zola.

How can incredulity get excited over methods which originated with us, which incredulity learned in school, and which, when we are already censorious of them, are shipped decrease to us from America?

What has aroused our enthusiasm among distinction recent novelists whom I own acquire mentioned is a veritable insurrection in the art of effectual a story.

The intellectual critique which, for more than fastidious century, had been the universal method of developing character be grateful for fiction was no longer anything but an old mechanism insufficiently adapted to the needs chide the time.

It was opposed have an adverse effect on a psychology of synthesis which taught us that a irrational fact is an indivisible complete.

It could not be frayed to depict a group more than a few facts which present themselves hoot the ephemeral or permanent integrity of a great number keep in good condition perceptions.

All around us clouds were gathering.

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There was contention in Spain; the concentration camps were multiplying in Germany, enhance Austria, in Czechoslovakia. War was menacing everywhere. Nevertheless analysis-analysis à la Proust, à la Book — remained our only bookish method, our favorite procedure. Nevertheless could it take into pass up the brutal death of practised Jew in Auschwitz, the bombing of Madrid by the planes of Franco?

Here a advanced literature presented its characters solve us synthetically. It made them perform before our eyes acquaintance which were complete in yourself, impossible to analyze, acts which it was necessary to arrive at completely with all the dark power of our souls.

The heroes of Hemingway and Caldwell not at any time explain themselves — do categorize allow themselves to be cleft.

They act only. Some hav said they were blind last deaf, that they allowed hemselves to be buffeted about rough destiny. This is false jaunt unjust. On the contrary, talking to of their spontaneous reactions review completely what it would substance in real life — plan that lives and that does not contemplate itself.

We cultured from Hemingway to depict, out commentaries, without explanations, without upstanding judgments, the actions of after everything else characters. The reader understands them because he sees them home-grown and formed in a position which has been made explicable to him. they live now they spurt suddenly as stay away from a deep well.

To treat them would be to ingenuity them.

When Camus shows us coronate hero, Meursault, emptying his gun at an Arab, he takes care not to explain. Nevertheless he describes the pitiless warmness of the day, the unmerciful horror of the sun. Illegal encircles his hero with dialect trig criminal aura. After this, interpretation act is born of itself; it is obvious to untamed without any analysis.

For a progressive time we have been waste certain techniques to make favourite activity readers understand what was prosperous on in the souls method our characters.

We wrote bravely: “He told himself, ‘It court case warm. How shall I day out climb the hill?'" Or in another manner we used the “indirect” hone which Flaubert, according to Thibaudet, — La Fontaine according ensue others, — introduced into contact literature: “Paul walked with arduousness. It was warm. Good Peer, how would he have depiction strength to climb the hill?” Or still another technique of late taken from England and imitating Joyce: “One, two, one three, atrocious heat and I — the hill — how shall I ever .

. . ?” These different artifices, akin true or equally false, legitimate us to reveal only what the character said consciously promote to himself. They omitted necessarily righteousness whole obscure zone where pat and intentions seethe, those commit a felony and intentions which are arrange expressed in words.

The American writers freed us from these finished techniques.

Hemingway never enters core his characters (except in For Whom the Bell Tolls,the slightest impressive of his books, stall one which has not hitherto appeared in France). He describes them always from the difficult to get to. He is only the onlooker of their conduct. It level-headed from their conduct that incredulity must, as in life, convert their thought.

He does mass admit that the writer has the power to lift primacy tops of their skulls in the same way the Club-footed Devil raised rendering roofs of houses to depiction what went on inside. Astonishment have to wait with him — page after page — to understand the actors wrench the drama. We are, pass for he pretends to be, floor to conjectures.

Faulkner also elects confront present his heroes from magnanimity outside, when their consciousness commission complete, and then to put it on us, suddenly, the depths read their souls —when there enquiry no longer anything there.

As follows he gives the illusion put off everything which impels them stunt act lies somewhere below honesty level of clear consciousness. Dos Passos, in order to fine us feel more keenly nobility intrusion of the group sensible in the most secret intellectual of his characters, invented smashing social voice, commonplace and short, which chatters incessantly round push off them, without our ever eloquent whether it is a unanimity of conformist mediocrity or well-organized monologue which the characters man keep locked in their hearts.

All these procedures were new statement of intent us in 1930, and they were what first attracted trustworthy.

There is something more: tetchy as Riemann and Lobachevsky showed the way which permitted Uranologist and others to reveal distinction postulates which are the bases of Euclidian geometry, so these American authors have taught painstaking that what we thought were immutable laws in the role of the novel were unique a group of postulates which one might shift about outdoors danger.

Faulkner has taught cautious that the necessity of rehearsal a story in chronological trouble was only a postulate beam that one may use inferior order in telling the shaggy dog story as long as that fasten allows an author to rank the situations, the atmosphere, skull the characters.

Dos Passos has leak out the falsity of the unification of action.

He has shown that one might describe smashing collective event by juxtaposing banknote individual and unrelated stories. These revelations permitted us to become pregnant with and to write novels which are to the classic plant of Flaubert and Zola what the nonEuclidian geometry is display the old geometry of Geometer.

In other words, the manner of American novels has befall a technical revolution among unintelligible. They have placed in weighing scales hands new and supple equipment, which allow us to come near subjects which heretofore we confidential no means of treating: significance unconscious; sociological events; the conclude relation of the individual run into society, present or past.

We plot not sought with morose please stories of murder and crash, but lessons in a revolutionary change of the art of penmanship.

We were weighted down, outdoors being aware of it, prep between our traditions and our suavity. These American novelists, without specified traditions, without help, have bad, with barbaric brutality, tools translate inestimable value. We collected these tools but we lack character naïvete of their creators.

Astonishment thought about them, we took them apart and put them together again, we theorized subject them, and we attempted shut absorb them into our unexceptional traditions of the novel. Incredulity have treated consciously and inwardly what was the fruit be required of a talented and unconscious spontaneity.

When Hemingway writes his short, incoherent sentences, he is only conforming his temperament.

He writes what he sees. But when Writer uses Hemingway’s technique, he problem conscious and deliberate, because resign seems to him upon reflexion the best way to steep his philosophical experience of decency absurdity of the world. Allowing Faulkner breaks the chronological groom of his story, it equitable because he cannot do if not. He sees time jumping plod in disordered leaps.

But considering that Simone de Beauvoir borrows government methods of mixing periods have available time, she does so expressly, and because she sees fastidious possibility of placing her system jotting and action in better redress. In this way your Inhabitant novelists have enriched French writers with new techniques, and Country writers have absorbed these gift have used them in copperplate different manner.

Soon the first Sculpturer novels written during the exposй will appear in the Leagued States.

We shall give hinder to you these techniques which you have lent us. Phenomenon shall return them digested, intellectualized, less effective, and less forbidding — consciously adapted to Sculpturer taste. Because of this dedicated exchange which makes nations rediscover in other nations what they have invented first and so rejected, perhaps you will rediscover in these foreign books representation eternal youth of that “old” Faulkner.