Jean Guéhenno & Jean Paulhan, 1926-1968
Jean GuéhennoJean PaulhanCorrespondence Jean Paulhan & Jean Guéhenno, 1919-1968
Paulhan considers himself "completely ordinary", and ranks himself in "the party of people who are interested, who are amazed at every moment". Guéhenno is convinced that he belongs to “a common species of humanity”, that of “these serial men”, who are distraught by events. Coquetry of intellectuals and writers who know too well that they will not be taken at their word, that their works say quite the opposite?
Their letters encourage us not to respond too quickly. Alongside the Great War, the Popular Front and the Occupation, there is a lot of talk about various small events, which we too quickly call "news stories".
One, “an elusive mind”, is wary of teachers, whom he criticizes “for having their seat made, their system”. The other blames the “players” and sometimes suspected his friend "of loving ideas, for pleasure, at all risks, and the world had to collapse."
Why, under these conditions, did their friendship never experience these “holidays”? which separate minds that are better suited to understanding and esteeming each other? Because they share a conviction: “We are not the center of the world, we are only worth, we are in the truth on condition that we neglect ourselves for something else”. That other thing might be politics, metaphysics, or resistance to oppression. In all cases, it comes through this love of literature which, alone, can explain the world and give meaning to the news stories discussed in this forty-year-old interview.
Extract from the column of Le Monde de Livres of January 23, 2003
JOURNAL OF THE BLACK YEARS, 1940-1944 by Jean Guéhenno. Gallimard, “Folio”, 442 p., €5.90. CORRESPONDENCE, 1926-1968 by Jean Guéhenno and Jean Paulhan. Edition established, annotated and presented by Jean-Kely Paulhan, Gallimard, “Cahiers de la NRF”, 488 p., €25.
On September 27, 1944, Paulhan invited Guéhenno to give him the manuscript of the diary he had kept for four years: "Say yes, and I'll come straight away to get it." Although he considered his text "thin", Guéhenno ended up accepting. The book appeared in May 1947. Reissued in 1974, the work, now available again, will satisfy fans and detractors alike of a genre which can give such pride of place to advantageous posing and mannered rewriting relating to small facts, pitfalls which Guéhenno superbly guards against. “This is only a journal of our common miseries,” he warned in his preface.
In fact, we glean, throughout the pages, a host of notations which help to paint this very unique era. The daily deprivations of course, but above all the absence of horizon. Thus, on December 23, 1940, when dismay said unvarnished: “How to keep a diary of emptiness?” But there is more to this column. Starting with a refusal that was both visceral and reasoned, attested on June 17, 1940: "There it is, it's over. An old man who no longer even has the voice of a man, but speaks like an old woman, told us at 12:30 that last night he had asked for peace." General de Gaulle's appeal gave him the joy of hearing, "in this ignoble disaster, a somewhat proud voice". Reporting on the Journal in 1948 in Les Annales, Lucien Febvre noted: "It must be said that these notations do not reflect the feelings of a single man. But of a group, which was unaware of itself as a group. Of those that we can call, if not the resistance fighters (let's not create confusion of times), at least the refusals from the start."
Cautious, Guéhenno says nothing about what he knows about the clandestine activity. Only a few episodes of "invisible carnage" surfaced, such as the execution of the men from the Museum of Man group on February 23, 1942. Prudence did not, however, prevent him from reacting strongly, for example during the publication of the status of the Jews on October 18, 1940: "I feel full of shame." The Journal also resonates with the readings of the khâgne professor who, doing “enormous readings to kill time”, dissects Montaigne, Pascal, Chateaubriand, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Renan, Thomas Mann. The teacher does not give up any of his freedom of tone despite persistent rumors of a dismissal. Demoted in 1943 to the rank of junior professor, he showed great loftiness: “These little persecutions are miserable and I would be ashamed to suffer from them.” These were, to tell the truth, minor annoyances for this collaborator of Lettres françaises clandestines and Editions de Minuit.
Publisher : Gallimard