Marc Bernard & Jean Paulhan Correspondence 1928-1968
Marc BernardJean Paulhan“If men agreed perfectly on things, there would be no writers.”
In 1928, a 28-year-old autodidact sent the NRF the manuscript of a novel, Zig-Zag. The author, abandoned by his father, ran the streets of a very old town in the South to spy on life and love, lost his mother at 12 and had to do all kinds of small jobs to survive. He also went through trade unionism, the Communist Party and has just entered Monde, a left-wing weekly directed by Henri Barbusse... “Consider yourself welcomed at the nrf,” Jean Paulhan immediately responds.
It is true that Jean Paulhan and Marc Bernard were born in Nîmes sixteen years apart: 1884 and 1900. The first, at the age of 12, was taken to Paris by his father, a librarian and philosopher, and only finds the Gard of his childhood here and there. The second is almost a prisoner of his hometown, to which material difficulties, the constraints of History, but also the taste for the simple life always bring him back: even after his Interallié prizes in 1934 (Anny), Goncourt in 1942 (Pareils à des enfants), Marc Bernard keeps the people of Nîmes in his sights, whose ambitions and illusions he observes (Les Exilés, 1939; La Cendre, 1949; A Simple Day, 1950).
To Paulhan who admits to him “I would give dearly for there to be many revolutionaries like you”, he hardly hides certain radical conversions: “I believe that we must put an end to this sentimental blackmail on Russia. All they have to do is accumulate all the rubbish possible and imaginable and then say: if you publish the slightest line against us, you are attacking the revolution.” Romain Rolland, Louis Aragon, Henri Calet, Jean Blanzat, Jacques Chardonne, Gaston Gallimard… Then came Madrid and Barcelona in the 1930s, then the Second World War, during which Bernard's mistakes were patiently reasoned out by Paulhan. With his “beloved” Else, an Austrian Jew, Marc Bernard had to hide in Limousin, where he became friends with the photographer Izis: the portraits that the latter took in 1945 appear in this book (thanks to his son, Manuel Bidermanas).
“Mon petit Marc”, “Mon petit Jean”: this is how the two writers still address each other at the age of 84 and 68. The oldest has never given up being the literary advisor of the other, who, for his part, has always read it carefully: “It’s terrible, these big subjects,” wrote Jean Paulhan in January 1965. It seems to me that modest people (like us) should ask themselves, before launching themselves: “But for me, what can I bring that is different, that I am alone in say?” and don’t give up.”
Not all of their letters have been found, but the 461 presented here show the curve of their friendship: a different friendship, and that they were the only ones to say so.
Edition established, presented and annotated by Christian Liger (†), supplemented and completed by Guillaume Louet.
“Correspondences of Jean Paulhan” collection.
461 letters.
37 photographs and facsimiles in color and black & white. Index of People Cited. Index of Cited Titles.
Edition: 500 copies, on ivory Olin paper 90 gr., in Woodstock Blu intenso 225 gr. filled cover. (from Fedrigoni stationers).
Publication: November 29, 2013.
Size: 13 x 21.5 cm.
464 pages.
Public sale price: 45 euros.
ISBN: 978-2-912222-44-2
Resources
Jean Paulhan, Marc Bernard : le patron et l'ouvrier qui se disaient "tu"
Publisher : Claire Paulhan