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PARTISAN REVIEW
she had an exceptional knowledge of history, knew both Latin and Greek,
had politics and economics at her finger tips, played the accompaniment to
her children's violin lessons, wrote three very modern novels under the
pseudonym of Gilbert Mauge, she even painted. She did a portrait of
me which I lost. Paul Valery and Edmee de La Rochefoucauld were
always together, she had the greatest admiration for him, having Valery's
classical intelligence. She disliked romantic literature in any form.
(I
once went to her house after having dined at Marthe Bibesco's where I was
asked severely by Abbe Meunier (famous for his conversion of Huysmans)
whether I was a classicist or a romanticist in literature; on replying that
I liked what was good in either, the Abbe said,
"ici nous sommes sous le
signe de Chateaubriand."
My mentioning the
Memoirs d'Outre Tombe
at
the classicist's house was greeted with equal disapproval.)
Marthe de Fels' Salon was half literary and half political. There one
met Paul Reynaud, Jose Laval (Pierre Laval's daughter), Alexis Leger
who was also the distinguished poet St. Jean Perse. There I often met
Helene de Portes, Reynaud's mistress, and thought her an insignificant little
woman, very bourgeois and as little a femme fatal as could be imagined.
She was considered a climber and a bore by most people, but they were
afraid of her intrigues and
mauvaise langue,
so after she had pestered
them, ended by inviting her. Anna de Noailles often came to Marthe de
Fels. She looked like an animated black crow.
•
There was no conscious direction in
Echanges,
no plan other than that
of presenting good writing wherever it might be found. However, if one
looks for a tendency, it was in a certain quality of poetry that was to be
found in the stories, essays and poems published.
Echanges
died like most
literary reviews from lack of financial nourishment. Some praised it,
many lamented its death, none were willing to sacrifice a little of their
money in order that it might go on living.
Coming, next issue:
The World Historians, Turgot to Toynbee-by Karl Korsch
On the Nazi Society: major reviews of Neumann's "Behemoth" and
Sweezy's "Structure of the Nazi Economy"-by C. Wright Mills
and J. R. Stanwell
The Heiress of All the Ages: a Study of the Heroine in Henry James–
by Philip Rahv
