PARIS LETTER
505
war, and the camps, at every instant. Dut after such knowledge, I thought,
closing my eyes wearily, what forgiveness? The sanction Rousset keeps
seeking, for certain types of behavior, and
which
the Communists find
in
an indefinitely distant and treacherous future-is not the future the
last refuge of the scoundrel?-can only be found by perverting our
conception of man himself. That this conception
is
historically deter–
mined
is
interesting, but in the end
cela ne tire pas
a
consequence.
We
live
in
our hi >tory, not above
it,
and we finally choose between drink–
ing our armagnac or throwing it into someone's face.
I put out the light and longed for sleep. Literature and love and
scholarship and talk were indeed only games, but they were the games
that man was made to play. How else should we constantly raise these
questions, with what other sustenance relive the camps? The bullfight was
also a game. . . . And finally, I fell asleep, feeling abominably good.
At that hour, and after all those drinks, it was easy to believe,
in
the
words of Patrick's poem, that "we shall raise unsurmountable bar–
ricades around the places possessed by love."
H.
J.
KAPLAN
Los Dragones (Biarritz) July 29, 1947
