ANNIE COHEN·SOLAL
221
romantiCism of Nizan nor the realistic reflections of Aron . Spon–
taneously anarchic, Sartre feels no interest either in institutional
political parties or in parliamentary debates. He does not participate
in demonstrations or read the papers, does not get all fired up by
causes, and can lose no illusions, having none to start with . Among
his pacifist friends, he finds a verbal violence and an ·ironic distance
that well suit his character. He takes advantage of these four years at
the Ecole Normale-which he will later remember as "four years of
happiness" - by engaging in a long self-analytical exploration.
While, in
1926,
Jean-Paul Sartre, disguised as Lanson, uses
revues, songs, and pranks to get back at authority, active pedagogy,
his grandfather's generation, the French army, and a few other
private betes noires, and while, excited by his reading of Cocteau,
the dadaists, and the surrealists, he starts inventing a higher form of
esthetic violence, Paul Nizan leaves for a long trip: England , Egypt,
Ethiopia, and, finally, Aden, where he finds work as a tutor in a
French family.
It
will be a cathartic journey, a rupture: On his
return , he is different. On Bastille Day,
1926,
after an evening with
his friends, Nizan writes to a girlfriend:
"It
was our national holiday:
my friends have dragged me along through the streets - Sartre,
Peron , Larroutis, Cattan, and
I.
But the era of this group is over. It
was no longer five friends walking together but rather Sartre and
Peron and Nizan, each being with the others only for lack of
anything better to do. By midnight, Larroutis and Sartre were
drunk, and so was Cattan. Peron and I did not find it funny . We left
and went back home."15 Nizan is twenty-one. Soon he will get mar–
ried , have children, join the Communist Party, and, pursue his
career as a journalist and a writer. But first, he violently repudiates
the years spent at the Ecole Normale, the systems of an Ecole
"presumed normal and so-called superior," its professors, its stu–
dents, its premises.
"If
anyone wants to know why I remained
there,it was out of laziness, uncertainty, and ignorance of any
trade,and because the state fed me, housed me, lent me free books,
and gave me an allowance of a hundred francs a month."16
In
1924,
when they chose to stay together in the "hole" they
shared with a few others, they were still Nitre and Sarzan . Just as
they were still Nitre and Sarzan in the pranks they played on the rest
15. Henriette Nizan's archives.
16. Aden Arabie,
p.
60.
