John Flower

A continuing preoccupation with the Occupation

In addition to a number of commemorative and traditional events and a steady stream of new publications, references and allusions to the period of the Occupation appear to have increased over the last few years. One basic reason, sometimes supported by evidence, is that after seventy years there is a danger that those years and their traumatic events will gradually be forgotten or remembered incorrectly. It may also be, however, that they are being recalled to help assuage a collective sense of guilt, or in some cases used more consciously for political and socio-political purposes with the result that they feed deep-rooted and sometimes unrealised prejudices with direct consequences for contemporary society. After rapidly rehearsing the ways in which the Occupation has hitherto been assessed, the article focuses precisely on some of this apparent modern development.1

Wherefore the Intellectuals

discussion which carefully eschews particular issues or anyone who might dare challenge and raise questions on the basis of mere ideas or theories is not entirely acceptable. Such a person is seen either as an interferer or as someone who speaks without knowing the real facts and hence irrelevantly; * Address for correspondence: Prof. J. E. Flower, Department of French, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QJ. 1 This article is a slightly modified version of a paper given as the inaugural address at the AULLA Conference at the University of Western Australia, Perth, 4 February 1991. 2 Op. cit. Edited with an introduction by Anne Henry Ehrenpreis, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972), 58. 3 From an interview in two Channel Four programmes devoted to a comparison of intellectual life in Britain and France: ’Tunnel Vision’ (14 November 1990) and ’Regards croisés’ (18 November 1990).

Serge Romoff – témoin inconnu

En mai 1921 et à Paris depuis une quinzaine d’années, Serge Romoff est appelé comme témoin au procès fictif de Maurice Barrès monté par les Dadaïstes et les Surréalistes. Bien qu’il soit presque certain qu’il connaissait plusieurs membres des deux groupes, il n’y a aucune trace de sa participation au cours des années précédentes ni à leurs activités ni à leurs publications. Qui donc était Serge Romoff ? La documentation manque, mais il semble qu’à partir de 1920 il joue un rôle de plus en plus important dans le monde culturel et surtout dans celui des artistes émigrés russes dans le quartier de Montparnasse. Il travaille dans l’imprimerie, fait quelques traductions, collabore à plusieurs revues culturelles, organise des expositions et écrit des articles de presse, notamment pour L’Humanité. En 1928 il retourne à Moscou où il continue à faire des conférences, probablement sur la littérature française et l’art. Il est mort en février 1939, une des victimes peut-être des purges staliniennes.

The American Dream — or Nightmare: Views from the French Left, 1945—1965

The number of Americans in France — notably on former military bases and in areas of industrial investment and development — increased dramatically after 1945, and their values and influence gradually permeated all aspects of French life. Reactions from writers and intellectuals were varied. Some were positive; others, especially those clearly on or sympathetic to the Left, were not. But if America and things American were viewed by many with suspicion, disapproval and even distaste, there developed a growing acknowledgement that they had come to stay. This paper charts some of these reactions as they were expressed in essays, newspaper articles and imaginative writing during the two decades following the Liberation.

Essay Review : 'Novelist for the Millennium? Patrick Modiano and Des inconnues'

* This article is based on a talk given at the University of Glasgow, 26 November 1999. I would like to thank those whose questions and observations resulted in important modifications. I would also like to thank the Editions Gallimard for having made available the dossiers de presse on Des inconnues. Address for correspondence: School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NR. Patrick Modiano. Des inconnues. Paris: Gallimard, 1999.

Essay Review : The other Bordelais

Few provincial French towns can claim the kind of literary heritage that is enjoyed by Bordeaux. In Montaigne and Montesquieu are two figures whose contributions to the intellectual, cultural and political climate of France, and indeed of Europe, continue to be analysed and debated centuries after their deaths. More recently in Frangois Mauriac, veteran of the Acad6mie Fran~aise and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952, is a writer whose work (especially the novels and journalism) has left an indelible mark on the twentieth century. And this is not to ignore in the modern period as well a number of others, some admittedly minor, who have enjoyed degrees of influence and success and whose origins at least are in Bordeaux or its

Review Essay : The latest on the Occupation

On 22 June 1940 the armistice between France and Germany was signed. The war, such as it had been, was over, and under the government of the 84year-old P6tain, installed at Vichy, the French looked forward to some form of recovery. Historians are generally agreed that over 85% of the population gave P6tain their support; many, despite hardships of all kinds, would remain committed, some would be reasonably loyal to the P6tainist idea of a National Revolution, some would go beyond this and see in collaboration with the Nazis the only way forward for a new France, while others, of course, would find their way into Resistance of various kinds. Holidaymakers in France in the summer of 1989 were able to follow daily in Le Monde, events of 50 years before in ’1939-40, 1’Annee terrible’, a fascinating 35-part account written by Jean-Pierre Az6ma. This year, part of the rentree was a three-episode TV programme on Antenne 2, ’Le Chemin de la liberte’, devoted to P6tain and based on personal reminiscences and authentic documents. Clips of news-reel film reporting the Nurnberg Rallies, the invasion of Poland, the sinking of the French fleet by the British in July 1940 at Mers-el-Kebir, the activities of the Chantiers de jeunesse or of the Compagnons de la France for example, contribute to an impressive evocation of