Introduction of NRf in Canada

We are told every day that before writing a poem or a novel — and even more so before founding a magazine which will contain poems and novels — we must take into account the major events of the time. In particular, completely new events, ones that no one had seen before. We add that the writer is in the mix, responsible for his time, with all the ordinary and extraordinary adventures that this supposes. This seems very fair to us. We have therefore patiently searched for the great events that have happened today in the field of literature and language. And we found one or two, which are in themselves quite serious and sensational.

It wouldn't be much. These events have another trait in common: precisely that they did not cause a sensation. They went like a letter in the mail. All the more striking, and indeed scandalous, in that they did not cause the slightest scandal. One is authored by a great minister, and the second, a great writer.

Here is for the minister: Mr. Goering, the well-known field marshal, one day inaugurated a courthouse in Munich. On this occasion, he delivered a speech which contained this sentence: “We do not yet know what exactly the word justice means. But let’s let events unfold, they will teach us in a few years.” On this point, events indeed proceeded, but they did not proceed in the direction that Mr. Goering wanted, so that we were not further advanced in that regard.
And here's to the writer. We can read on the second page of a major literary magazine, Les Temps Modernes, by Jean-Paul Sartre, a small notice: it is that “the magazine does not accept manuscripts from national unworthy people”. At first glance, this is a somewhat surprising opinion. I have no particular sympathy for the national unworthy. But anyway, I don't see at all why an unworthy national — especially if he has spent a little time in prison and had time to think — would not write an excellent poem or an admirable novel.
But Sartre explained precisely this. He declared, from the first issue of Modern Times, that he himself had formed rigorous conceptions about the progress of the world - and, as he wrote, totalitarian: no less totalitarian than the conceptions of Goering or Hitler. This was called existentialism.

He also said that he was determined to consider as valid, as truly literary, only those novels or poems and essays which would expose his personal conceptions. But he supposes that a national unworthy person cannot be an existentialist. This is frank. It is his right, and there is nothing to say against it.

There is nothing to say against it. Otherwise maybe this. This is because the word literature with Sartre, the word justice with Goering, has just changed meaning.
It is also — whatever the political events and the vicissitudes of history — that it is undoubtedly good, that it is even infinitely desirable, that there remains in the world a pure place, a privileged place where it is given to words to preserve their meaning. Where justice persists in wanting to honestly say justice. Where literature continues to mean without cheating what honest people have always understood by this word: not works of propaganda or popularization, not the literature of a totalitarian philosophy (in the sense in which we say: the literature of Urodonal or the literature of Abbé Chaupitre's medicines). No. But free works, and freely thought. Finally, literature, with what is revealing and free and unpredictable, and extremely joyful. The N.R.F. only asks for this privilege, but she demands it with force and we will make sure that she deserves it.

We were called Chinese, I don't remember where. Go for the Chinese. So I would like to cite a Chinese story. It is by Tseu Lou, in his Memoirs. It was a bad time, when the treason of the king, the embezzlement of the crown prince and the debauchery of the queen had put the kingdom of China on the verge of terror and dislocation. Confucius was consulted and asked what should be done to restore order. “It is very simple,” said Confucius. “It will be enough to pay attention to the words and the good understanding of the language. Because the confusion of words leads to the confusion of ideas; the confusion of ideas leads to lies and hypocrisy; hypocrisy leads to treachery and embezzlement.”
The N.R.F., which is modest, does not offer so much. But she would not be at all angry or surprised if by chance she contributed to introducing, into public affairs, a little more balance and intelligence - I mean to pull France out of the civil war, sometimes silent and sometimes declared, in which we have been struggling for quite a few years.