Notes and articles

September 26, 1941
This delicious gift he has of lightening the life around him […]. How he helped me live in this prison.
Journal of the Black Years, Gallimard, (1947), Folio 2014.

February 2, 1963
I can hardly think of French writers more concerned than Paulhan by the problem of writing and who take it to a higher level.
The literary Figaro.

May 30, 1969
He liked to test people, to measure everything they could be, up or down. We saw this during the Occupation. […]
I don't think, for me, that I have known a single [being] more diverse, more unexpected, who has so continually surprised me and thus more often made me feel the charm of life. You can hardly have a greater debt. Our true masters are those who know and love to live.
« Un esprit insaisissable », Le Figaro.

June 26, 1973
If the Nouvelle Revue Française was such a great thing in the thirties and forties, it is of course due to the presence in this review of men like Gide, Claudel, Valéry, of course, but it is also due to this wonderfully intelligent, and so wonderfully curious direction that was that of Paulhan. […] I don’t think I had many common ideas, either literary or political, with Jean Paulhan. We were even more friends. […] Paulhan was, like Gide, more interested in differences and I more in similarities. He liked Dostoyevsky better than Tolstoy, and I liked… and I like Tolstoy better than Dostoyevsky. It sets tastes, families of spirit. […] What was admirable in Paulhan was precisely a deep, profound humanity, an admirable taste for talent in men, for truth, for authenticity. […]
“The adventurer of wisdom: Jean Paulhan”, ORTF.