let’s let the old mother sleep a little longer. And since you conclude your letter with another story about your father, I will tell you a story about mine, though I admit mine is a little more ambiguous.
Let’s be clear: my father was too young to be part of the “French Resistance.” There were of course exceptional cases; I think there may even have been fifteen-year-olds who were executed; let’s say that he could just about have been involved, but he did nothing about it. To tell the truth, even if he had, he wouldn’t have boasted about it; but I would certainly have known about it from his sisters, so proud of him, so quick to cut an article out of a newspaper if there was some mention of one of his Himalayan expeditions. If there were any heroic feats, I would have heard about them, but as far as heroic feats go, there were none.
Nor on the other hand did he collaborate with or get involved in the acts of violence perpetrated by the Milice; I don’t think he was even involved in the Chantiers de Jeunesse, * or at least he never talked about it. Actually, I believe (and it’s disturbing when you think about it) I never heard my father mention General de Gaulle or Marshal Pétain. From which I am forced to conclude that he spent the war years pursuing purely personal projects (of the sort, I imagine, that every teenager does).
Once, only once, he told me a story that reminded me that he had lived through the war. It was about two young French Resistance fighters who had killed a German officer in the metro. (Had my father had some sort of contact, whether close or distant, with these young men? I have no idea, but thinking back on the way he told the story, that’s what I believe.) And what did he, personally, think about this act of resistance? He had concluded that it was “not very interesting.”
I can still picture him as he said those words and I regret the fact that I did not question him further. That “not very interesting” is as frustrating in its laconism as a Zen koan. Did he mean to show his contempt for an act of resistance that would immediately have triggered the execution of a dozen French hostages in reprisal? Was he trying to tell me that the idea of
Free France
was not, in itself, a subject likely to fascinate him? Or was he, more profoundly, trying to let me know that it seemed to him “not very interesting” to assassinate someone in the metro regardless of the motive? I don’t know, I still don’t know; but doubtless, in my case too, the mark of my father still carries weight.
*
Khâgne
is the preparatory course for the arts section of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.
* Jules Régis Debray (born 1941) is a French intellectual and journalist most noted for introducing the discipline of “mediology” in his book
Transmitting Culture
.
* Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse Française was a French paramilitary organization during World War II known by the occupying German forces as Französische Arbeitsdienst.
March 21, 2008
I don’t know which of us will get first prize as the better “recorder.”
But I have to say, dear Michel, that you are surpassing yourself when it comes to enormous, provocative confessions that will give the blabbermouths something to talk about.
Let’s go over all this slowly, calmly, without being contentious and particularly without getting annoyed. (It’s quite possible that in our little exchange you’ve already won over the mockers, the sniggerers, those with a sense of humor, whereas I’m known not to have one, so I’m not going to add to that …)
The problem with your last letter is, of course, not your civic abstention, your nonallegiance, your attitude of “just pretend I’m not there, actually I’m not there anymore, I go from bubble to bubble, from one private home to another, I don’t identify with any community, I feel less and less of a citizen, more and more depoliticized and free, a literary Bartleby with his
Let’s be clear: my father was too young to be part of the “French Resistance.” There were of course exceptional cases; I think there may even have been fifteen-year-olds who were executed; let’s say that he could just about have been involved, but he did nothing about it. To tell the truth, even if he had, he wouldn’t have boasted about it; but I would certainly have known about it from his sisters, so proud of him, so quick to cut an article out of a newspaper if there was some mention of one of his Himalayan expeditions. If there were any heroic feats, I would have heard about them, but as far as heroic feats go, there were none.
Nor on the other hand did he collaborate with or get involved in the acts of violence perpetrated by the Milice; I don’t think he was even involved in the Chantiers de Jeunesse, * or at least he never talked about it. Actually, I believe (and it’s disturbing when you think about it) I never heard my father mention General de Gaulle or Marshal Pétain. From which I am forced to conclude that he spent the war years pursuing purely personal projects (of the sort, I imagine, that every teenager does).
Once, only once, he told me a story that reminded me that he had lived through the war. It was about two young French Resistance fighters who had killed a German officer in the metro. (Had my father had some sort of contact, whether close or distant, with these young men? I have no idea, but thinking back on the way he told the story, that’s what I believe.) And what did he, personally, think about this act of resistance? He had concluded that it was “not very interesting.”
I can still picture him as he said those words and I regret the fact that I did not question him further. That “not very interesting” is as frustrating in its laconism as a Zen koan. Did he mean to show his contempt for an act of resistance that would immediately have triggered the execution of a dozen French hostages in reprisal? Was he trying to tell me that the idea of
Free France
was not, in itself, a subject likely to fascinate him? Or was he, more profoundly, trying to let me know that it seemed to him “not very interesting” to assassinate someone in the metro regardless of the motive? I don’t know, I still don’t know; but doubtless, in my case too, the mark of my father still carries weight.
*
Khâgne
is the preparatory course for the arts section of the prestigious École Normale Supérieure.
* Jules Régis Debray (born 1941) is a French intellectual and journalist most noted for introducing the discipline of “mediology” in his book
Transmitting Culture
.
* Les Chantiers de la Jeunesse Française was a French paramilitary organization during World War II known by the occupying German forces as Französische Arbeitsdienst.
March 21, 2008
I don’t know which of us will get first prize as the better “recorder.”
But I have to say, dear Michel, that you are surpassing yourself when it comes to enormous, provocative confessions that will give the blabbermouths something to talk about.
Let’s go over all this slowly, calmly, without being contentious and particularly without getting annoyed. (It’s quite possible that in our little exchange you’ve already won over the mockers, the sniggerers, those with a sense of humor, whereas I’m known not to have one, so I’m not going to add to that …)
The problem with your last letter is, of course, not your civic abstention, your nonallegiance, your attitude of “just pretend I’m not there, actually I’m not there anymore, I go from bubble to bubble, from one private home to another, I don’t identify with any community, I feel less and less of a citizen, more and more depoliticized and free, a literary Bartleby with his
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