Notice on Spectator articles

Jean Paulhan's collaboration with  Spectateur (1909-1914) by René Martin-Guelliot is the most solid moment, the most creative too, of his intellectual archeology. Initiated before leaving for Madagascar - Paulhan was part of the editorial committee from the first issue - this collaboration undoubtedly began, as far as it was signed, in 1911, and ended in 1913. In the last year, Paulhan's name no longer appeared on the editorial committee: no doubt he had already turned, under the influence of Apollinaire, towards more resolutely literary journals. The journal's schedule was initially intended to be bi-monthly, but was never achieved, due to the health of its director, and especially the smallness of the team: Olry Collet is a polytechnician like the director; Henri Gervaiseau, who had been a notary's clerk in Sarthe, then in Argenteuil and Paris, was for Martin-Guelliot a sort of ideal collaborator. Certain contributors, like Marcel Pareau, being called to other activities, or being more versed, like Vincent Muselli, in poetry than in the administration of a periodical, we can consider that the review was made possible by two people, its director and Jean Paulhan  ("superiora inferioribus determinantur", exclaims Martin-Guelliot, his nerves a little tired, addressed to Paulhan). The reproaches follow one another at a steady pace: “Realize” (in the English sense) that it is I who must fill the holes and that without this the number would not appear. [...] It seems to me that you have a bit of the impression that the number is done by itself, just as children think that letters go by themselves in the post without the intervention of the employees." _A double issue of ninety pages is a test for the director. At the end of 1912, Martin-Guelliot even asked for a _   "truce" from Paulhan, who seemed to harass him with questions and projects, in an unusual manner. a little too juvenile for his taste A reorganization is then in progress, which includes, in addition to a summary of ideas from the present issue and a kaleidoscope of quotations, a sottisier des sottisiers. 1913, Paulhan takes care of the "Review of ideas" section. As for subscribers, Paulhan points out a possible reader in Madagascar and manages to register his friend Saurel, who continues his activities as a painter in Rome. He regularly provides the director of the review with the addresses of possible subscribers, a foreshadowing of one of his first roles at the NRF, _with Jacques Rivière. the editor of the magazine) are not easy The last issue for the year 1913 is double and presents a "recall of articles" _of the previous summaries (the director promises not to start again).
_All of Paulhan's texts published in  Le Spectateur _were not signed with his name. Paulhan is probably no stranger to the text that Vincent Muselli signed in 1909, "The Argument of the Extremes in Theoretical and Practical Discussions", and many of the texts published under the collective pseudonym of Jean Carré must have received his imprint. On February 2, 1913, Martin-Guelliot admitted having accidentally cut a signature "J.-P.". René Martin-Guelliot sometimes suspects Paulhan of protesting underground against a cut, by replacing his name with that of Carré alone - an eminently rationalist designation which prefigures the collective pseudonym of Jean Guérin, in the NRF. In anticipation of Paulhan's stay in Algiers, Martin-Guelliot offered to publish it without author's name under the heading _  Correspondence or under the signature F.C., or in other ways, which he does not specify. Contributors to small journals know very well how to multiply themselves in several guises. In a letter to Camille Bryen, Paulhan acknowledges the authorship of a 1910 article signed "R.M.G.", on "Station Names in the Metropolitan". _In addition, it is not possible — as much as it is desirable — to give all the articles to which Jean Paulhan probably collaborated. Other texts, relating to literary criticism, painting and politics, will appear in their respective volumes [of the Complete Works of J.P.]. We have therefore stuck in this volume to the logical framework of the arguments and to the question of adages and proverbs.
The correspondence from René Martin-Guelliot to Jean Paulhan testifies to a requirement that has never been denied, and which accepts differences of appreciation. Regarding the argument studied by Paulhan,  "A penny is a penny", for example, René Martin-Guelliot ironically notes, on July 8, 1913: "If we did not reason 'false', we would hardly have any material. [...] I know very well that you show us that it is not false at all, like that looks like it, and that's very interesting, but that's precisely what people call fake." Similarly, René Martin-Guelliot was forced to defend himself in 1912: "I am in no way hostile to literati, 'as such', quite the contrary." Same type of reaction, much later, when he defends himself  "believing that we can escape the illusion of totality". It is difficult to affirm on the one hand that we cannot escape an illusion, and on the other that the work of the  Spectator can be useful.

Note by Bernard Baillaud, in Jean Paulhan, Complete Works, Volume 2 "The Art of Contradiction", with the kind authorization of the author.

© Bernard Baillaud