122
PARTISAN REVIEW
struck by Paul Morand in the same issue. He likens the Daladier·Reynaud
'war-mongers' to Don Juan: 'men without pity' who kept leading the
bourgeoisie to a fate worse than death, by way of currency devaluations
and things, until Hitler appeared as the Commandant and froze them in liis
fist of stone. "France has fallen victim to the warmonger she loved, and
in her death agonies she thinks to save the life of the husband who pois·
oned her. Don Juan and our hero of yesterday-two hypocrites!" (There
is some satisfaction in that this confirms what one had always felt about
Paul Morand.)
It is the old trouble of the rootless intellectual, which finds as many
'solutions' as there are sufferers: pacifism, mysticism, communism, fascism
embraced primarily as refuges from the torment of separateness, the curse
of Ishmael. The particular pathos of these French converts to fascism
lies in the way they cling to the concept of liberty. "I fear nothing," Drieu
said in 1934, "because I want nothing. Who will ever stop me from talk·
ing? My subtle pen will always elude constraint." Fabre-Luce's 'freedom
from materialism' really means release from the exacting communal needs
of a world whose politics--'election squabbles' as he contemptuously calls
them-reflect the complexity of its economic structure. The sense of
defeat, of helplessness before such a world then brings on a hankering
after the Strong Man. In Chardonne this reaches an extreme of irre–
sponsibility: he becomes aware of the barricades only after their breach,
and promptly scuttles to the safe side. In him the longing for social ·order
plus
individual liberty is a matter of animal faith, having little to do with
the pale cast of thought. So he can say, with a
simplisme
even Drieu
and
Fabre-Luce would be incapable of: "The spirit of France is in safe keep·
ing.... At first events seem dark and terrifying; much later they will
be
explained, they will seem natural and almost always favorable." This,
perhaps, is the consolatory process Cocteau has been going through. After
Munich he expressed his outraged feelings in a sombre poem,
Les
lncen–
dies,
which contains these words: "The evil chants from Nuremberg
entered this richly painted landscape.... And the poet, brought to his
feet by the wind of extraordinary catastrophes which makes the harp of
his nerves vibrate, swore to himself that death would not take him alive."
Now he is reported to be on excellent terms with the authorities in Paris;
and his activities include writing for a new magazine edited by Alphonse
de Chateaubriant, a novelist, fascist and country gentleman who never
missed a Nuremberg rally. The truth seems to be, not simply that these
welcomers of fascism are 'lrresponsibles', but that they are too fond of
their 'freedom' as individuals to shoulder
either
the responsibility of
active vigilance over the limited liberties accorded them by a limited
democracy
or
the responsibility of detachment and independence which
they bear as intellectuals. Hence their capitulation to a system which
will
grant them freedom from both these burdens. Hence their significance
for Americans exposed to analogous temptations which grow stronger
every day.
