JEAN-FRANCOIS SIRINELLI
Between Valhalla and the Valley of Hell
We
have no choice but to begin with a yellowed photograph, seventy-one
years old: the entering class of 1924 at the
Ecole /lormale s1Iperieure
poses for
posterity. In the front row, side by side, are two young men who have cho–
sen the Department of Philosophy, jean-Paul Sartre and Raymond Aron.
The former holds a pi pe and a wide-brimmed hat, which lend his appear–
ance a hint of the bohemian student. The latter, in contrast, sports a
kerchief and gaiters. Already two distinct styles, and contrasting relation–
ships to the institution they have just entered. At the same time, we must
be careful not
to
succumb to the pitfall of the easy cliche, since these two
normaliens
obviously cannot be summarized by such a facile contrast.
So we shall set the photograph aside and make our starting point an
oath that dates from the same period. On the Rue d'Ulm, Sartre and
Aron made a playful pact that whichever of them outlived the other
would write his obituary in the yearbook published for the Rue d'Ulm
alumni. Decades passed, and when the first of them died in April of
1980, the other, in an otherwise affectionate and mournful article, wrote
that "the deal is off." By his account, this decision was not so much the
resul t of sensi tivi ty or of offense received as it was an acknowledgement
of the chasm that History had placed between the two men. Indeed, one
must acknowledge that the generation of Sartre and Aron was dealt with
rather harshly in its relations with the history of its times. What is more,
the two best-known texts stemming from this age clearly imply the exis–
tence of this harshness in this generation's dealings wi th history. Paul
Nizan's
Aden Arabie
and Robert Brasillach's
Notre avant-guerre
showed
that the Ii terary preparatory schools of the twenties did not exist in an
insulated world-far from it. As described by Vara, they were the crucible
of diverse life stories that were soon to become tragic: the Communist
Nizan dies from a German bullet at the beginning of World War II;
Brasillach, a follower of Maurras, seduced in time by ideologies from
across the Rhine, falls to French fire at the end of the same conflict. It
would surely be a distortion to make this generation's
normaliens
into
Editor's Note: Adapted and translated from the introduction
to
Deux illtellectuels
dans Ie siecle: Same et Aron
by Jean-Franr;:ois Sirinelli . Copyright
©
1995 Librairie
Artheme Fayard.
