***
In the chapter entitled “Political Modes of Writing” in Writing Degree Zero, Roland Barthes dwells at some length on the difference between spoken and written language. He argues that speech is nothing more than “a mobile series of approximations” which does not share the “rooted” nature of writing. He explains that all writing contains “the ambiguity of an object which is both language and coercion [and that] there exists fundamentally in writing a ‘circumstance’ foreign to language . . . the weight of a gaze conveying an intention which is no longer linguistic,” that is, communication. This attenuating “circumstance” “may well express a passion for language, as in literary modes of writing [but] it may also express the threat of retribution, as in political ones: writing is then meant to unite at a single stroke the reality of the acts and the ideality of the ends.”
Barthes notes that, “grandiloquent” and “inflated” though it may be, the political writing which characterized the French Revolution only reflected the importance of the real situation. He argues that, if it had not been fulfilled in the “extravagant pose” of revolutionary language, “the Revolution could not have been this mythical event which made History fruitful, along with all future ideas on revolution.” Similarly, Marxist revolution also attained final fulfilment in language. However, Barthes insists, Marxist writing shares nothing of the rhetorical amplification of French revolutionary writing. He speaks instead of a “lexicon as specialized and as functional as a technical vocabulary; even metaphors are here severely codified. [And whereas] French revolutionary writing always proclaimed a right founded on bloodshed or moral justification,” Marxist writing is presented as “the language of knowledge . . . meant to maintain the cohesion of a Nature.”
Barthes feels that, despite having written in a generally pedagogical manner, Marx nevertheless opened the way to the “language expressing value-judgements [which came to] pervade writing completely in the era of triumphant Stalinism.” In the Marxist context, each word becomes “a narrow reference to the set of principles which tacitly underlie it . . . an algebraical sign representing a whole bracketed set of previous postulates.” Once elevated to the level of a system, it is “a stability in its explanations and a permanence in its method” of the Marxist lexicon that actually makes the so-called permanent revolution possible. Stalin was able to exploit this system right down to its roots and to engender a language which transformed the consciousness of his people. In this coded universe, “definition, that is to say the separation of Good and Evil, becomes the sole content of all language [. . . and] no longer aims at founding a Marxist version of the facts . . . but at presenting reality in a prejudged form.” Humanity still has much thinking to do about the phenomenon of language transforming man while man transforms language. It concerns the very essence of reality: always shifting, always in the process of being defined. This continuum is such that we never know exactly where to situate the boundary, if such a boundary exists. The young Stalin, dipping his pen in the inkwell of Truth — that is, of Pravda — probably did not imagine that he would publish, near the end of his life, a theoretical text entitled Marxism and Linguistics. History shows that he was always acutely conscious of language, for his regime persecuted not only men of science, but also philosophers, linguists, and poets.
***
Of course, like Nurse Vautour, Baby M.’s mother had not read Writing Degree Zero. And although Professor Hong Lew’s testimony seemed honest enough, it came from too far away for the two women to get an absolutely true picture of life behind the iron curtain. The potentially determining testimony came several months later. An Acadian from Lewisville — a Maillet from Bouctouche Bay — had seen the Reds in the flesh: at last, someone who could be believed. A corporal in the American army, he had been wounded by shrapnel from a mortar and held prisoner for twenty-six months by the Communists in Korea. Friends and relatives — Cormiers, Maillets, Goguens, Richards, and Bastaraches — welcomed his return with joyful enthusiasm. L‘Évangéline was there, as well.
In the article covering the reunion, the reporter noted that the corporal declared himself very happy to be back among his own. And yet, “he only replied after serious reflection, like a man used to watching his words.” The ex-prisoner admitted that conditions behind the barbed wire were not as terrible as people had been led to believe. Nevertheless, when he was asked if he had had enough to eat, “our soldier clearly had to fight back a wave of emotions that only those who have shared such an experience could truly understand. He chewed a moment on his lip and answered more or less clearly: ‘Some moments were better than others,’ and he forced a smile.” When asked if the Communists had tried to indoctrinate him, the corporal “looked the reporter in the eye, and weighing his words, confided: ‘They tried hard enough,’ ” which meant that they had tried, and failed.
The reporter, who had not read Writing Degree Zero either, had clearly nut imagined that he would be up against, in this interview, the superimposition of two systems of understatement: Marxist and Acadian. The remainder of the interview was no more generous in terms of details. Decoding the corporal’s laconic answers and waves of emotion provided nothing of substance. In the end, the soldier explained that he could say nothing, that bad press could provoke the Communists and push them to take revenge on the remaining prisoners. The journalist took note, and the atmosphere of the reunion turned cheerful once again. In the spirit of the celebration, he nevertheless risked asking the corporal if he intended to marry during his furlough: “at which point the corporal shook off his emotions and produced a radiant smile nothing short of extraordinary,” before replying: “ ‘I haven’t yet made up my mind.’ ”
In spite of her numerous occupations and concerns (four small children and a fifth on the way), Baby M.’s mother took the time to reread the article. Unfortunately, the second reading provided no further information than she had gleaned from the first. Unsatisfied but feeling guilty for neglecting her housework, she concluded, to speed things along, that the poor soldier had probably not seen much of the Communist world outside his prison camp. Nurse Vautour, who had also read and reread the report, took a more critical stance. She decided to be wary of a man who could produce an extraordinary smile at the mention of marriage, while maintaining the possibility that he might not get his feet wet.
***
In July 1953, a poll conducted among United Press editors placed Stalin’s death and Georgi Malenkov’s ascension to the head of the Soviet world at the top of the most-significant-events list for the first half of the year. It was the first time the press agency’s editors were polled in the middle of a year, which demonstrates how much busier than usual the semester had been. There followed, in order of importance: President Eisenhower’s inauguration in the United States; the negotiation of a cease-fire in Korea; riots in East Germany; the execution of the Rosenbergs; Elizabeth II’s coronation; the Tokyo air disaster; tornadoes in the United States; the conquest of Mount Everest; and the nuclear test in Nevada. Also on the list were the McCarthy investigations; a prisoner exchange in Korea; the transformation of Christine Jorgensen; Einstein’s unified-field theory; and the Braves’ move from Boston to Milwaukee.
Stalin’s death maintained its top ranking in the end-of-the-year poll. It was followed by the end of the Korean war and the freeing of prisoners of war; the making of a hydrogen bomb in Russia and Eisenhower’s plan for the peaceful use of atomic energy; the return to power of the Republicans in the United States; the Rosenbergs’s execution; the capital punishment of little Bobby Greenlease’s kidnappers; Elizabeth II’s coronation; the repercussions of McCarthyism on Harry Truman; the East German rebellion; and the drought in the American west along with its effect on agricultural prices. Although they did not all make the top ten list of the most important events of the year, most of the events selected in the July poll did receive some votes at the end of the year, except for Christine Jorgensen’s transformatio
n and Einstein’s unified field theory. In the opinion of the international press of the period, the latter events would not stand the test of time.
But could one believe everything the United Press said? A few days after Stalin’s death, the service had issued a dispatch claiming that Stalin had been assassinated and that he was already dead when the Kremlin announced his illness. The dispatch quoted an exclusive report from the Hartford Current which was based on letters received by a Russian immigrant living in that Connecticut city. The source insisted on remaining anonymous, fearing reprisals against his parents living in Moscow. According to this “reliable authority on the situation in Russia,” the murder of Stalin had been “kept secret because of the reaction it would cause among the Russian people and in the anti-Communist world.”
3
The Problem of Knowledge
Banquet for Einstein — Regularity and irregularity of time — A. monarchy on the brink of obsolescence — The two-edged sword of reality turns against the Duke of Windsor — Baby M.’s mother and the allegory of the crown — Definitely not a sinecure — The joy of a Connor Thermo washing machine — Journalists battle obscurantism — An honourable profession after all — The Trieste Affair: frontier city at the world’s centre — God and the species of novelists — The realm of the unconscious
A SPECIAL BANQUET to celebrate Einstein’s seventy-fourth birthday was held in the United States on Saturday, March 14, 1953, that is, in the middle of the twenty-day period that separated the deaths of Stalin and Queen Mary. According to the United Press release published by l’Évangéline, Einstein, “who rarely spoke in public,” lifted a corner of the veil that covered the origin of his scientific career. He recalled being fascinated by a compass at the age of five. The celebrated physicist with the tousled white hair explained that it was “the trembling needle drawn to the north by a force which he did not understand” that set him on the road to the “most profound mysteries of the universe.” He added that plane geometry, which he studied at the age of twelve, also greatly influenced his evolution, but he was careful to point out that “no one knows what causes a particular reaction in an individual,” and that, in truth, “man knows very little about what goes on deep within himself.”
It did not take the world very long to recognize Einstein’s genius: he was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921, at the age of forty-two. As well as initiating a kind of mutation in science, Einstein’s thinking had the primordial consequence of demonstrating that science is not immutable, that humanity must continuously restructure its knowledge according to that which it seeks to know. Einstein’s theories also had philosophical ramifications, modifying even the human conception of the universe. The theory of relativity, for example, cast a new light on our notions of time and space. The idea of relativity helped to renew thinking in general by demonstrating that the contextual universe is as important as the universal context. Thus, depending on the context, time might just as easily represent regularity as irregularity, to cite but one example.
***
If the Duke of Windsor, alias Edward VIII, had hoped that time would heal the wound he had inflicted on his noble family in 1936, he was disappointed, first in 1952, on the occasion of his brother George VI’s premature death, again in 1953, with the demise of his mother, Queen Mary, and once more at his niece Elizabeth II’s coronation. Back among his family after a fifteen-year exile (during which he never abandoned hope of being recalled to his nation to serve his people), the deposed king discovered, beneath a polite and friendly surface, a hard crust covering nothing but granite. To her dying day, his mother never forgave her eldest and reputed favourite son for having put his personal interests — that is, his love for Mrs. Wallis Simpson — ahead of those of the nation, which had sacrificed so much during the war. So hurt was Queen Mary by Edward VIII’s decision that she never consented to meet the woman he loved and without whom he claimed he was not a whole man. The dowager never forgave Mrs. Simpson for having literally robbed England of a most promising king, and forcing the coronation of his badly prepared brother, whose health and temperament were far less suitable to the duties of a monarch. George VI, the brother in a sense condemned to rule, also adopted Queen Mary’s coolness towards Edward VIII, who was demoted to the rank of duke. This fraternal contempt lasted until George VI’s death, a death about which the royal family did not personally inform the Duke of Windsor. The latter was profoundly humiliated to learn of his brother’s death from a mob of New York reporters waiting at the door of his hotel for his comments.
The royal family’s enmity had many other unfortunate consequences for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Among them, the duke had to wage a struggle to maintain his royal pension. He also ran into a wall of refusal every time he expressed his desire to return to live in England. By 1953, this intransigence had finally convinced him to abandon any demands for a royal title for his beloved Wallis, but he maintained the hope of attending his niece Elizabeth’s coronation with the duchess on his arm. The duke imagined the coronation as the occasion for a great family reconciliation before the whole world. It turned out to be probably his last great disappointment. He was informed that, according to protocol, he had the right to attend the ceremony, but without his wife. The real hope was that he would publicly announce his intention not to attend, thereby sparing the royal family and himself any embarrassment. The duke had no choice but to accept the situation. He was granted only one concession: that no other deposed monarch would attend the ceremony. In the end, he watched the June 2, 1953, coronation on television, from a Paris salon, whence he wrote a report commissioned by the United Press.
For years, prior to Elizabeth II’s ascension to the throne, Baby M.’s mother and Nurse Vautour had been following the ups and downs of the House of Windsor. The royal family was omnipresent in the lives of the two women, thanks to the strongly loyalist anglophone majority of their surroundings. Although their family and close friends were entirely of Acadian and Catholic stock, there was always a loose link — be it by blood or mere acquaintance — with British heritage. If the dignified stance of George V and his wife Queen Mary had fully justified this interest, the abdication of their energetic and charming son for the love of a twice-divorced American had the effect of a knife thrust deep into the heart of the royal portrait. Because it should be remembered that, for some time, the entire institution of the monarchy had been teetering, like some gigantic precious stone, on the verge of obsolescence.
The charming Edward VIII’s dramatic and romantic gesture spread like a rent in the Empire and awakened discord over the issues of duty, honour, and love. Even Winston Churchill exhausted his skills at negotiation and reconciliation. After the initial shock, large numbers of people expressed their sympathy for the lovers. In spirit, Baby M.’s mother and Nurse Vautour took the duke and duchess’s side. Which is why they remained, in a sense, obsessed by the image of the duke crying hot tears for his dead mother, Queen Mary. The situation was perplexing: a mother (not to mention a queen full of rectitude) repudiating a son who, like herself, had simply refused to compromise. Because, in fact, there were those who had encouraged the young king to rule while maintaining a secret liaison with Mrs. Simpson. The fact that Edward VIII refused such a compromise really demonstrates that he inherited his mother’s rectitude. Yet, as reward for this filial loyalty, he was expelled from the clan. All things considered, it was this judgement-without-appeal which led Baby M.’s mother and Nurse Vautour to conclude that Queen Mary must really and truly have had a preference for this son who later betrayed, in spite of himself, and so profoundly, the impenetrable English esprit de corps.
***
The expression “monarch’s duty” is not too strong to describe the task that falls to the heirs of the British crown. Elizabeth II’s coronation was the opportunity (for those who had never before thought about it) to realize the seriousness of this reign. L’Évangéline did its part to instruct i
ts readers on the rights and duties of British royalty. In so doing, the Acadian newspaper was merely following the lead of a world-wide information campaign, which began in January 1953 with the announcement of the date of the coronation of Elizabeth II, who would have been named Victoria had anyone entertained the slightest possibility that she would one day sit on the throne (a highly unlikely possibility until her uncle abdicated). This information on the rights and duties of the British royalty was disseminated in the midst of a celebratory frenzy, which gradually gained momentum as the time of the ceremony, scheduled for June in Westminster Abbey, grew closer. In spite of strict instructions forbidding any commercial exploitation of the event and its symbols, the frenzy, which was mounting daily, inevitably led to a kind of merchandising mania. There were coronation ties, and hairdos for women “not born to nobility” who were going to attend the ceremony. One could have one’s moustache trimmed like those that would be sported by the military, or purchase a photograph of the Benedictine monk who would oversee production of the silk required for the queen’s dress. The monk Dom Edmund had allowed himself to be photographed examining one of the numerous webs produced by silk worms fed on mulberry leaves at the Farnborough Abbey. The frenzy was also nourished by a daily emergence of details about the balls, evenings, receptions, and tea and champagne parties that marked the event. Even the province of Québec declared a holiday. Among other things, every Canadian child born on June 2 would receive a silver spoon from Governor General Vincent Massey, as “a personal gift in solemn memory.”
1953 Page 4