366
PARTISAN REVIEW
Temps present, Temoignage Chretien
are essentially political, but not
only are their politics (like everything else in this country) extremely
literary, but they all devote a considerable amount of space to poetry,
fiction and the discussion of what is going on in theatres, concert-halls
and bookshops. The dramatic season, I gather from them, has not been
particularly brilliant; yet Mauriac has presented
L es Mal aimes,
Dullin
has done an unsuccessful
King Lear
(in oriental costume!) and Andre
Gide's translation of
Anthony and Cleopatra
has been "hailed," as they
say on Broadway, in very triumphant terms. (There's also been an
elaborate
A1idsummcr Night's Dream,
still running) . Jouvet has lectured
on his long South American trip and published an interesting piece
on Giraudoux and the theory of the actor, which he developed while
watching the author of
La Guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu
breathe with
his personnages, at the rehearsals. Valery has presented a reading of a
part of his
Faust,
at the
Comedie
Fran~aise,
and next week is to preside
over a lecture to be delivered by T. S. Eliot, on the social role of the
poet. But, since my arrival, at least, the event of the season has been
Jean-Paul Sartre's
Huis-clos,
at the Vieux-Colombier, and the polemic
on existentialism which has spread from the reviews to the literary press.
About two weeks ago, Helene Bokanowski, whom I had known in
Algiers, took me to the Cafe des Deux Magots and, as we sat drinking
ersatz coffee in an atmosphere of ersatz cigarettes, pointed out various
unknown personalities who were all in one way or another quite brilliant
and astonishing. "Of course," she said, "this is the anti-existentialist cafe.
The other crowd go across the street to the Cafe de Flore. No existen–
tialist with self-respect would take his ersatz aperitif here."
Or was it vice-versa?
In any case, the anti-existentialists claim that the question is, quite
literally, to be or not to be. Sartre, they say, with his theory of self–
determined and lonely being, and Camus, who posits the essential
absurdity of all values, are removing man from history and sapping
the basic impulsions of action. (Note that the two leading exponents
of this new quietism are both politically very active).
I haven't seen
Huis-clos.
Nor have I yet been able to procure Sar–
tre's
L'Etre et le Neant,
or Camus'
Le Mythe de Sisyphe,
or Simone de
Beauvoir's
Pyrrhus et Cineas
(there is a black market in books as in
everything else) . These are the basic texts of the discussion and I find
it repugnant to try to give you an account of it without having read
them. Pierre Emmanuel, the poet, has published a brilliant note on
Sartre's philosophy, but since he quotes sparingly-and then largely for
the purpose of making the existentialists say what they do not want to
say-you will forgive me for declining to rush in at the moment.
However, before leaving this, the liveliest literary movement in France,
until my next letter, it is worth remarking that any history of its origin
would be much concerned with the influence of the American novel and,
