ANNIE
COHEN·SOLAL
215
material hardship soon dim as the new system of studies, relation–
ships, and readings, of networks, codes, and rituals is established,
creating the friendships and enmities of the four next years.
"Tu es un conquistador!" "Dis plutot un con qui t'adore!"
[You're a contender! You mean, a tender cunt!] Disguised as
Gustave Lanson - the principal of the Ecole Normale Super–
ieure-with white beard, pith helmet, and spats, Sartre was a hit
during his very first months at the Ecole. "On Saturday, March 28,
1925, the Theater of the Folies Normaliennes presents the spec–
tacular show: 'La Revue des Deux Mondes, ou Ie Desastre de Lan–
son'." The audience of parents, professors, and marriageable faculty
daughters is most amused by these jokes, puns, raillery: everything
is allowed to Normaliens.
Second Act: His eyes amorously glued on those of Daniel
Lagache, who-with a French twist, a flowered blouse, and a long
gypsy skirt-impersonates Dona Ferentes,6 Sartre sings a song
about' 'the streetwalkers in their boas,'
'7
with all its double entendres.
Together with Canguilhem and Lagache, they made the rounds of
all the secondhand stores, from the Marais to Plact Pigalle, to find
costumes and exotic accessories. Everything is designed to poke fun
at the new Normalien mania: the pursuit of careers in large interna–
tional organizations like the League of Nations, a vogue that the
scene, involving Lanson's seduction by Dona Ferentes, a wealthy,
plump, alluring Brazilian, is supposed, gently and metaphorically,
to mock. The music is professional, with Sartre at the piano-"The
Schweitzers are born musicians!": Charles Schweitzer - the
costumes are suggestive, the lines full of literary allusions and Gallic
license. The families of the professors laugh softly; now and then,
their daughters, in their Sunday best, delicately blush. Lagache, in
drag and outrageous makeup, is at least three heads taller than the
bearded Sartre, who is now flinching under the attack of the
Brazilian bombshell. The seduction scene is about over when the
door at the back of the room opens and their excellencies M.
Edouard Herriot, the prime minister, M. Paul Painleve, chairman
of the Chamber, and
Fran~ois
Albert, secretary of public education,
enter and take seats in the front row. All three are former students
6. Allusion to the lines in Virgil's
Aeneid:
"Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes" (Beware
of Greeks bringing gifts).
7. Allusion to Victor Hugo's collection of poems
Chansons des rues et des bois.
