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intellectual scrutiny, even in France. Not only were Jean-Paul Sartre and
Simone de Beauvoir openly criticized for their timeless and outspoken
efforts to back communism, but their claims of having supported the
Resistance were torn to shreds. According to Gilbert Joseph, in
Une si
douce occupation:
"those many in France who were imprisoned with Sartre
all agree that he showed absolutely no spirit of resistance against the Nazis
and that the word 'resistance' never even crossed his lips." As historical
monuments fall in France, English-speaking authors like New York
University's Tony Judt are also getting even with postwar French intel–
lectuals, paying them back for their anti-American sentiments, which had
in fact verged on the pathological
(Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals 1944-
1956).
But are historical monuments really falling? One has to wonder,
for while French intellectual heroes are attacked by foreigners, there
reigns in France a general feeling of solidarity, despite political differences.
How can anti-Americanism seriously damage Sartre's posthumous fame in
France? Only a few years ago, Jack Lang, then French Minister of
Culture, devotedly visited Fidel Castro in Havana, then moved on
to
Mexico to condemn American cultural imperialism.
In France, unlike Germany, there is more to intellectual collaboration
than the moral integrity of individual authors: the myth of the French
language is itself at stake. Pierre Hebry, a lawyer in Paris, devoted an
impressive book to the subject of literary collaboration (LA
Nouvelle Revue
Fran(aise des Annees Sombres, 1940-1941).
The dark years of the famous
Nouvelle Revue Fran(aise
were those of the German occupation. In order
to save his business, Gaston Gallimard, then publisher, hired the fascist
Drieu La Rochelle as editor. When Hebry was invited as the honored
guest on Bernard Pivot's popular television show,
Bouillon de culture,
neither he nor the other French guests were able to hide their surprise
over the fact that authors belonging to the golden age of modern French
literature had accepted the editorship of a declared fascist and had written
under his direction. It was obviously difficult for these guests to realize
that their heroes of the pen were not superhuman, that most, like so
many of their compatriots, had quietly collaborated with the arch enemy
(an exception is Franr;:ois Mauriac) .
In this debate , so strange yet fascinating for Germans, there were also
clear signs of undisputed sympathy for these literary collaborators. When
Emmanuel Bed was accused of writing speeches for Field Marshal Petain,
he countered unmoved that he did not see how the welfare of France
could be promoted if good style were abandoned. Writing nothing of
consequence, to paraphrase Goethe, is for the French always better than
writing nothing at all. And he who writes well in the land of readers is
forgiven almost everything. Thus it is that the myth of the French lan-
