PARIS LETTER
for them and have not succeeded in finding any other. Their rejection
of the limitations of American society has not set them free to function
in any other society, and their illusions, therefore, remain intact: they
have yet to be corrupted by the notion that society
is
never anything
less than a perfect labyrinth of limitations. They are charmed by the
reflection that Paris is more than two thousand years old, but it escapes
them that the Parisian has been in the making just about that long,
and that one does not, therefore, become Parisian by virtue of a Paris
address. This little band of bohemians, as grimly singleminded as any
evangelical sect, illustrate, by the very ferocity with which they disavow
American attitudes, one of the most American of attributes, the inability
to believe that time is real. It is this inability which makes them so
romantic about the nature of society, and it is this inability which has
led them into a total confusion about the nature of experience. Society,
it would seem, is a flimsy structure, beneath contempt, designed by and
for all the other people, and experience is nothing more than sensa–
tion-so many sensations, added up like arithmetic, give one the rich,
full life. They thus lose what it was they so bravely set out to find, their
own personalities, which, having been deprived of all nourishment, soon
cease, in effect, to exist; and they arrive, finally, at a dangerous dis–
respect for the personalities of others. Though they persist in believing
that their present shapelessness is freedom, it is observable that this
present freedom is unable to endure either silence, or privacy, and
demands, for its ultimate expression, a rootless wandering among the
cafes. Saint Germain des Pres, the heart of the American colony, so
far from having absorbed the American student, has been itself trans–
formed, on spring, summer, and fall nights, into a replica, very nearly,
of Times Square.
But if this were all one found in the American student colony, one
would hardly have the heart to discuss it.
If
the American found in
Europe only confusion, it would obviously be infinitely wiser for him
to remain at home. Hidden, however, in the heart of the confusion he
encounters here is that which he came so blindly seeking: the terms
on which he is related to his country, and to the world. This, which has
so grandiose and general a ring, is, in fact, most personal-the Amer–
ican confusion seeming to be based on the very nearly unconscious
assumption that it is possible to consider the person apart from all the
forces which have produced him. This assumption, however, is itself
based on nothing less than our history, which is the history of the total,
and willing, alienation of entire peoples from their forebears. What is
overwhelmingly clear, it seems, to everyone but ourselves is that this
history has created an entirely unprecedented people, with a unique
