PARIS LETTER
the people don't want him in their lives. Neither does the Parisian
exhibit the faintest personal interest, or curiosity, concerning the life,
or habits, of any stranger. So long as he keeps within the law, which,
after all, most people have sufficient ingenuity to do, he may stand on
his
head, for all the Parisian cares. It is this arrogant indifference on
the part of the Parisian, with its unpredictable effects on the traveler,
which makes so splendid the Paris air, to say nothing whatever of the
exhilarating effect it has on the Paris scene.
The American student lives here, then, in a kind of social limbo.
He is allowed, and he gratefully embraces irresponsibility; and, at the
same time, since he is an American, he is invested with power, whether
or not he likes it, however he may choose to confirm or deny it. Though
the students of any nation, in Paris, are allowed irresponsibility, few
seem to need it as desperately as Americans seem to need it; and none,
naturally, move in the same aura of power, which sets up in the general
breast a perceptible anxiety, and wonder, and a perceptible resentment.
This is the 'catch,' for the American, in the Paris freedom: that he be–
comes here a kind of revenant to Europe, the future of which con–
tinent, it may be, is in his hands. The problems proceeding from the
distinction he thus finds thrust upon him might not, for a sensibility
less definitively lonely, frame so painful a dilemma: but the American
wishes to be liked
as a person,
an implied distinction which makes per–
fect sense to him, and none whatever to the European. What the
American means is that he does not want to be confused with the
Marshall Plan, Hollywood, the Yankee dollar, television, or Senator Mc–
Carthy. What the European, in a thoroughly exasperating innocence,
assumes is that the American cannot, of course, be divorced from the
so diverse phenomena which make up his country, and that he is
willing, and able, to clarify the American conundrum.
If
the American
cannot do this, his despairing aspect seems to say, who, under heaven,
can? This moment, which instinctive ingenuity delays as long as pos–
sible, nevertheless arrives, and punctuates the Paris honeymoon. It is
the moment, so to speak, when one leaves the Paris of legend and finds
oneself in the real, and difficult Paris of the present. At this moment
Paris ceases to be a city dedicated to
la vie boheme,
and becomes one
of the cities of Europe. At this point, too, it may be suggested, the
legend of Paris has done its deadly work, which is, perhaps, so to stun
the traveler with freedom that he begins to long for the prison of
home-home then becoming the place where questions are not asked.
It is at this point, precisely, that many and many a student packs
his bags for home. The transformation which can
be
effected, in less
than
a year, in the attitude and aspirations of the youth who has di-
