312
PARTISAN REVIEW
found a small Russian printer for the 5th number. For the first time, the
review was printed on decent paper with good type. The first numbers
were abominably printed on the cheapest paper and so full of typographi·
cal errors that it was painful to read them. Had I not been foolish enough
to sign a contract with the publisher Fourcade, I could have had a well
printed review and enough money to have continued it for several more
issues.
A few months before the death of
Echanges,
a person from the Quai
d'Orsay informed me that if I would advocate a policy of Franco·British
Alliance, money for my review would be forthcoming. I was at that time
occupied with the idea of a United States of Europe, and would not hear
of propaganda advocating military alliances, which I felt convinced only
led to further wars. I may have been mistaken as events turned out;
however, I did not accept this offer.
The Comtesse de Fels asked M. Chastinet, the editor of the
Temps,
if
they would not think it a good idea to finance a review of this kind. After
consulting with his colleagues, M. Chastinet shook his head when Marthe
de Fels dragged me up to him and said, "Tell her what you have decided."
A few weeks later, the
Temps
was bought up by the armament ring; it is
now the chief collaborationist organ. I had a lucky escape.
The first number of
Echanges
appeared in December 1929. It con·
tained, among other things, Andre Gide's translation of
Hamlet;
Virginia
Woolf's
Slater's Pins Have No Points,
one of the most exquisite things that
great artist has written; an essay on poetry by D. H. Lawrence, called
Chaos in Poetry;
T. S. Eliot's
Introduction to the Metlwd of Paul Valery;
Gertrude Stein's
Portrait of Picasso,
translated by George Hugnet and
Virgil Thompson. There was a long poem by Edith Sitwell; poems
by
W. H. Davies, Peter Quennell, Tristan Tzara and Eric de Haulville;
translations of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, Emily Bronte; an essay on
D. H. Lawrence by Bonamy Dobree; an essay on
Wuthering Heig/us
by
Valentine Dobree; and a fragment of a novel by the Spanish writer
Azorin. The following numbers contained, among others, essays by
E.
M.
Forster, Stuart Gilbert on
Ulysees,
a fragment from an unpublished novel
by Jean Giono, a story by Stephen Hudson,
L'Inconnue de la Seine
by
Jules Superviell e, and some excellent translations of Donne by Auguste
Morel, the translator of
Ulysses.
John Donne was so little known
in
France that Leon Paul Fargue said to me, "I've just read the wonderful
poems by Donne, who is this young man? I should like to meet him.
I
have always wanted to write a poem about a flea that sucked the blood of
two lovers." (I had a similar experience with the English poet Brian
Howard who, when I mentioned the name of Julien Sorel the hero of
Lt
Rouge et Le Noir,
said, "Oh yes, I've heard of that young man, what is
he like?")
•
I wrote to Andre Gide asking him for a contribution. In answer,
I
received a note asking me to come and see him at nine o'clock in the
morning at his apartment in the rue de Vaneau. I trembled with fear as
I
