One of the first of the team: Jean Paulhan

Text published in Writing under the Occupation, From non-consent to the Resistance, France-Belgium-Poland 1940-1945 published by Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

Jean Paulhan's journey through war combines all the elements of a formidable test: a man over fifty-five years old, determined but rich in harmonics, whose career is very advanced, but classically linked to the arts of peace, discreet and powerful, sees all his friendships put at risk. For generational reasons, his fate in 1940 could not be that of Rivière in 1914: prisoner. His refusal of active collaboration, from July 1940, and his absence of party spirit opened up possibilities for him without making his task easier. Although he underwent the interrogation that he recounts in "A Week in Secret", he did not experience very long captivity, except precisely the dramatic days of Thursday May 15 to Tuesday May 20, 1941. A red number of Measures pressed against a window then allowed Paulhan to warn his neighbor Jean Blanzat. Back home, rue des Arènes, Paulhan wrote to Pierre Drieu la Rochelle to thank him and to Doctor Le Savoureux, for information. But the one who has (almost) done everything so that literature does not have to recognize any authority other than his own, and to exclude the Church (Isabelle Rivière), the currents (André Breton), the parties (Charles Maurras) from the review, sees this strategy called into question by a pressure stronger than those he had to support previously (...)

(Text reproduced with the kind permission of the author)