118
PARTISAN REVIEW
political colors as literary friends. Under his guidance the journal began
surprisingly well, hut it soon took the inevitable course, and Gide, who
published sections of his 1940 journal in the December and February
issues, severed his connection with it. (He has since written a pamphlet
entitled
Retour de la N.R.F.,
which doubtless means both 'return of and
'return
from'-the
latter on the analogy of his
Return from
the
U.S.S.R.)
The subsequent tone of the N.R.F. is probably typified by a pronounce·
ment of the greybeard philo·fascist and Academy immortal, Abel Bonnard,
in
its March 1941 issue: "France has been delivered from the ideas of the
revolution of 1789, an outburst of every false value." For what this jour–
nal once meant one must look to a quarterly founded by a former asso–
ciate last July in Buenos Aires:
Lettres Fraru;aises,
edited by Roger
Caillois.
Through all this gloom, one can discern in the magazines continuing
in France a busy interaction of critical views and political allegiances, in
which the
debacle
brings out into harsh light what might once have hidden
behind the easy courtesies of literary intercourse. This is true at least of
the few issues of the N.R.F. (Dec. 1940; Jan., Feb. 1941) and
Esprit
(Jan.,
Feb. 1941) which have reached this country. Not only acceptance of the
New Order, hut aloofness from it and even rebellion against it are repre–
sented in the comments made in them by writers known abroad. Even their
expressions of acceptance are extremely guarded and usually leave a door
or two ajar for the winds of independence. Not one of them comes out in
open support of the Petain regime. But the extent of their fascist poten–
tialities can he gauged in some cases by their political past rather than
their literary present, and in others by the force with which they now give
vent to their feelings about the 'guilt' of pre-war France. Some of them–
Jacques Chardonne, Drieu la Rochelle, Alfred Fahre-Luce--are so obsessed
by these feelings that they regard the New Order not only as a punishment
richly deserved by the sins of the democrats, hut as a lesser menace to the
'true spirit of France' than was the Third Republic.
Plfltot Hitler que Blum
is still their slogan. In others-Morand, Claudel, Henri Massis-the note
is primarily one of anger with the old order: no statements or even impli–
cations about the new. Then there are the writers who make it pretty
clear, with whatever caution, that they resent the national humiliation
and see in 'colfabotation' little chance of any improvement on the old
France, for all its acknowledged defects. Of this group, Duhamel and
Mauriac content themselves with a vigorous refusal to cry
Peccavimus,
while Gide and Montherlant indicate profound disquiet as to the condition
of France, without, however, pointing the finger at any specific aspect of
it. The one rebel in the picture, one who does so point, is Armand Petit–
jean, whose moving comments on his war experiences-reprinted, in small
type, at the very end of the December 1940
Nouvelle Revue Fraru;aise,
from
the
Journal des Compagnons de
France-conclude with an outcry against
