When I Was Old

by Georges Simenon

  Another title: ‘Isolated territories.’

  ‘Why have certain animal forms ceased to evolve in certain territories that have suddenly (or progressively) been isolated from others?

  ‘The Galápagos, for example. There one finds species that are no longer found elsewhere except in fossil form. This can be explained. But why did evolution stop at a certain stage?

  ‘Idem for New Zealand (kiwi – moa – tuatara).

  ‘Idem in part for Australia (kangaroo, etc.).

  ‘Did certain animals cease to evolve because they had no enemies that forced them to?

  ‘Why, when, with the appearance of man, such enemies appeared, none of the earlier species began to evolve?

  ‘In other places one finds only a certain percentage, more or less high, of extinct species.

  ‘Here, they all seem to die out, save domestic exceptions like the ostrich.

  ‘Is there a moment when evolution becomes impossible?

  ‘In the Galápagos, up to recently, no apparent struggle between the species.

  ‘The struggle seems to begin with the arrival of domestic animals which return to the wild state in very little time (another tendentious word!).

  ‘Aren’t the human races that are called primitive (Pygmies, Hottentots, Guineans) on the contrary degenerate branches, returned to their wild state like the asses, cattle and pigs of the Galápagos?

  ‘Instead of a rise with plateaus haven’t there rather been rises and descents, with only certain races representing the rises?

  ‘Why, for example, in Africa, are one, two, or three generations, sometimes only one, enough for an evolution which, without contact with the white race, would never have taken place or would have taken centuries to produce?

  ‘Personal experience: in one month one can teach an illiterate black who has never seen whites before to drive a car.

  ‘Facility in absorbing mechanical concepts for the first time.

  ‘But in four centuries, in Martinique, it has been impossible to teach blacks philosophical concepts. The Bible and the Gospels were transformed into the Voodoo cult.

  ‘For an African or an Asiatic the bases of nuclear physics are easier to digest than elementary philosophical concepts (ours, of course!).

  ‘Ethics is more strongly incorporated into man and more difficult to replace by a foreign ethic.

  ‘The exact sciences, on the other hand, do not take the place occupied by something else.

  ‘Vacuum propitious to exact sciences?

  ‘In the United States, statistics indicate that mathematics is more easily accessible to less philosophically developed classes, and it is the middle classes (and below) from which future students of the great schools like MIT are recruited and cadres of engineers are formed.

  ‘In France, blacks had been studying at the Polytechnic for a long time, while there were still cannibals in their native lands.

  ‘Does this only indicate a certain laziness, a resistance to certain disciplines, on the part of the children of rich or advantaged classes? Are the sciences of interpretation or of synthesis more attractive?’

  ‘Apathy, and, in some respects, resigned and sad refusal of evolution by the large primates like the gorilla. They make no effort to slow or avoid extinction.

  ‘Antithesis of the rat, which adapts to all conditions and all climates.

  ‘Doesn’t adaptation go with the philosophical mind?

  ‘Are there, in fact, resigned races and aggressive races?’

  ‘In man: aggression in primitives – non-aggression in the evolved?

  ‘Does evolution regularly stop at a certain stage?

  ‘Would this explain why each people, in turn, arrives at a certain degree of civilization, stops, gives up, and leaves to others the exertion of going first?

  ‘Idem for families of individuals?

  ‘Idem for moulds?

  ‘Will there be an age of aggression and an age of philosophic resignation?’

  ‘Possibility of a relationship of zoology and anthropology to psychology.’

  ‘Everything seems to me to have been born out of the sea. So one finds the first man at the seashore. First food shellfish, then fish, then small mammals.

  ‘The weakest races, thereby more or less doomed, are always hunted further inland by stronger races, into the forests, then into the mountains. Higher and higher as the competition becomes more intense.

  ‘So the doomed species, the last examples of the doomed species, would be found in the high mountains.

  ‘Idem for men? (Examples of the Indies, of Borneo, the Andes, etc.)

  ‘In seashore civilizations, then on the plains, one finds a certain exuberance, a certain gaiety.

  ‘The higher one climbs … (Muteness and sadness of the people in the high mountains.)

  ‘Comparison or parallel between animals and species that are too weak and retreat before disappearing.

  ‘It would be interesting to compare religions, legends, traditions, songs, dances, etc., of the seaside peoples, then those of the plains, the hills, and finally those of the mountains from this point of view.

  ‘Aggressiveness of races which have a future and passivity of the races which no longer have one?

  ‘(This could be applied to human types and even to professions that are disappearing.)’

  ‘Few animals in large flocks on the peaks, even among birds. Life becomes more and more individual. Solitary and hunted down, in contrast with the socialized life of the seashore (recalling the swarming of schools of fish).’

  ‘A geography of aggressiveness and resignation could be established.

  ‘Doomed races which climb into the mountains like the old men who climb coconut palms?’

  (Another parenthesis. Basically, I’m not sorry to have gone back to these notes from last winter. Not that they have any value. But they reassure me. If, at that time, I was asking myself so many questions about myself, at least rather personal questions, it is because first at Cannes, then here, journalists and those writing books about me made me submit to their questioning, uncovering many anxieties. In my normal state, it seems to me, if I ask myself questions, they’re of a more general order, which does not mean they are any more pertinent. Good!) (The next page begins badly with a word underlined.)

  ‘Need for superiority. Does this explain the famous “age of anxiety”? The individual is doomed to be the centre of his world. As a result he needs to feel he is an important part of this world.

  ‘Some kind of superiority is indispensable to him. In primitive society, in Africa or elsewhere, one finds the same thing: the best hunter of a certain animal, the best fisherman, jumper, runner, warrior, healer, singer, dancer, etc., etc. In short, each member of the tribe is the best something or other. And each is the bravest.

  ‘In Greece, the adolescent had to spend a year alone in the mountains, feeding himself by his own efforts, before he had the right to the title of man. In Africa one finds the same thing, among the American Indians or elsewhere similar tests (including the girl alone in the forest at the time of puberty).

  ‘The great schools today, Saint-Cyr, the Polytechnic, Cambridge, West Point, have their tests which the newcomer must undergo.

  ‘And each village in France or elsewhere has its best craftsman in this or that speciality, the best horseman, etc.

  ‘There is the woman who makes the best soups, the one who bakes the best cakes, the best dancer, and so on and so forth.’

  ‘Industrialization has almost levelled professional superiorities. Substitutes have been tried: in Russia Stakhanovism, in the USA the best salesman, beauty contests, the most beautiful legs, or the most beautiful hair. Miss Orange or Miss Whatever.

  ‘This is artificial and everyone knows it. Each one seeks another superiority deep within himself, and finds it only rarely.

  ‘Curious parallel: the sons of Roman emperors of their own free will tested themselves to establish personal superiority; saying nothing to their father
s, they tested their strength against wild beasts in the arena.

  ‘Today, the children of important or rich people often race cars or aeroplanes, etc.’

  ‘In America doctors recommend that everyone have a “hobby”, an interest outside his profession, if it is only collecting matchbooks. It is less for relaxation than to establish a feeling of superiority in some easy little domain.’

  ‘Christian society itself speaks of the most pious, the most humble, the most charitable, the most worthy …’

  ‘It is more and more difficult for the masses. Superiority as a workman, as a bus driver? Nevertheless each year in France someone is chosen the best truck driver. And the oldest worker in France, the one who has worked longest in the same plant! Isn’t this enough to explain why many people welcome a declaration of war with relief ? Don’t some men discover their natural superiority in a catastrophe?

  ‘The American experiment is frightening. Superiority of money, of one’s automobile, of one’s club, of “status” miscarries. The man at the top pretends to believe in it and to be satisfied. But at bottom he is not convinced. The number of psychoanalysts proves it.’

  ‘At school, in the street, between kids, there is superiority too. The best marble player, the best runner, ball player …

  ‘At sixteen, the identical need!

  ‘And, at the summit of the hierarchy: the most powerful, the one who uses others best, who imposes his ideas, his products, or his will.

  ‘Always the most.

  ‘The nostalgia of veterans, former non-coms, officers, generals, decorated with this or that, members of the Resistance who were nearly shot, who were prisoners, escapees … Creation of societies … Parades, flags, flowers …’

  ‘No matter at what price, one day each must have his superiority …’

  ‘Above all the man, the male. No matter how low he was on the social scale, once at home he became all-powerful. No one argued the superiority of the Head of the Family. (And the woman, the mother, also had her different superiority.)

  ‘Today, governments, schools, etc., have been substituted for the father; also propaganda, newspapers, radio, the movies, television.

  ‘He is no longer the one who knows best, the one who imposes his will. Coming home from the factory or office, where he is nothing, he finds a family where he still is nothing.

  ‘What is left between the two, on the way home, is the bar, where he can still have his little personal success – the best drinker of pastis, or of red wine, the best pelota player … or the funniest …

  ‘But not the most gullible.

  ‘His power has been taken from him. He refuses the responsibility illogically expected of him.’

  (Here I hesitate. I’m a little ashamed. However, I’m transcribing, out of honesty [the most honest?], a definition which defines nothing.)

  ‘Education: conscious or unconscious manipulation by one generation through material, intellectual, and moral pressure to model the following generation according to the rules and principles which, most often, the educators haven’t themselves followed, and of which they have sometimes recognized the inanity, if not even the danger.’

  (That’s exactly the kind of sentence I hate. Too bad. I’ll put it down without elaborating on it because I’m waiting for the surgeon who will tell me if I should have my appendix out or not. At fifty-seven, this would be my first operation and I admit that, having been raised in a period when the operating table still inspired awe by its very name, it’s not without some anxiety that I’ll lay myself down on one. I don’t like the idea of being put to sleep.)

  Thursday, 11 August

  E-N-D, or nearly. Soon. Just a few words. Our adventure, my poor notebook, hasn’t been a long one, and the eleven other brand-new notebooks will go to my children.

  Last night we went out, D., Aitken, her secretary, and I. We drank a bottle of champagne in a cabaret. The only one in Lausanne. An enjoyable evening.

  Then, at three o’clock in the morning, in our room, D. had the courage to tell me what I already sensed and which has occurred to me to write in these pages.

  For example, that I have always said that I ought not to deal in abstract ideas, however simple.

  That the novel is my only tool, my only medium.

  That perhaps the trouble I had in writing the last one was caused by my preoccupations – the ones I’ve tried to get rid of here.

  That … My God, that perhaps I was beginning to take myself seriously …

  All that, I’d already thought it myself.

  I’m stopping now.

  ‘You’ve got to the point of copying notes …’

  True!

  But since there are a few pages left, I’m not copying them, only collecting them here in order that this monument to naïveté and pretension (even the word ‘monument’!) will to some extent be complete.

  D. will read them.

  ‘A man’s ambition for his children.

  ‘Need to make them climb a ladder …

  ‘Most of the time, however, it isn’t in terms of money. Rarely the ambition to make a merchant, a financier, etc., of them (unless that is already the family profession – and even then!).

  ‘Nor ambition for power. A peasant will rarely say:

  ‘ “He will be a deputy, or a minister …”

  ‘Deeper. Unconsciously an ambition for usefulness, for greatness.’

  ‘The reproach critics most often make is that I choose my characters from people who are not civilized, and, as a result, they seem to say, incapable of resisting their instinct and passions. Aren’t these critics the ones who think of themselves as civilized because they have digested a few historical dates, won some diplomas, also the ones who take our fleeting civilization for definitive and our youthful morals for humanism?

  ‘Don’t biologists, for the most part, begin with the simplest forms for their study of life? And, today when the doctor and the psychologist have new ways of looking at man, don’t they too study the most limited forms?

  ‘I have observed, besides knowing it by my own experience, that intellectuals, civilized or cultivated men, react to deep instincts and passions in the same way that others do. The only difference is that they feel it necessary to justify their attitudes.

  ‘Little difference between the behaviour of a Napoleon and any ambitious small-town man. A matter of scale, of proportion. The fundamental elements are the same. Balzac behaved as naïvely in private life as the simplest, the most elementary of his characters.

  ‘Rages, resentments, ridiculous petty intrigues in a Hugo, even a Pasteur. I have seen the greatest doctors plotting shabbily to win a medal, a decoration, a chair at the Academy of Medicine.

  ‘No difference between basic behaviour, reactions to passions, among primitive and cultivated man except that the mechanism is complicated by more or less specious reasonings, by rationalizations (Memorial at Saint Helena) and by so-called problems of conscience.

  ‘Maurice acts exactly like his concierge or his wine merchant, with the single difference that he gets a book or an article out of what he considers his unworthiness. Idem for Graham Greene and the others. Freud in his private life is the prototype of those he describes. Same for Dostoevsky.

  ‘The Greek tragedians, Shakespeare, and all the other playwrights have done nothing but take passions in their natural state – the passions of the man in the street – and for the purpose of highlighting, dramatizing, and amplifying them have attributed them to kings, emperors and other great personages.

  ‘If I have chosen the limited man (not always. See Le Président, Le Fils, and other novels) it is just to avoid theatrical explanations, artificial reactions created by education or culture.

  ‘Behaviour is less falsified, more visible, purer, in the simple.

  ‘Persistence in using words that no longer correspond to concepts or scientific theories of the moment – or to the beliefs of those who use them.

  ‘In particular, words borrowed fr
om the religions – including the most ancient and the most foreign.

  ‘Haven’t we kept mainly the words that express a curse, guilt, a prohibition, a punishment, etc.?

  ‘A whole heritage of terrors, from the most distant times, maintained by a hundred religions, which we preserve, which we transmit through words, to our children at the same time that – ironically – we try to give them the most rational and scientific idea of the world.

  ‘So we extend thousands of years of terror!’

  There! I’ve finished my collage. Without rereading it. That’s wiser.

  D. is a courageous woman. Operation with slight anaesthesia: a bottle of champagne.

  I don’t want to end at the bottom of the page.

  ‘Have you nothing to add?’

  What’s the use?

  ‘No, Your Honour.’

  All that’s left is to open the window.

  Adios, notebook!

  SECOND NOTEBOOK

  1960

  * * *

  Sunday, 28 August 1960

  I promised myself there wouldn’t be a second notebook. This morning writing in this one, without writing any number on the cover, I tell myself again that there won’t be another perhaps, but perhaps I’m not entirely sincere.

  To tell the truth, I missed it. And yet I’ve passed a part of the time since Venice first in a clinic for a simple operation for appendicitis, then in bed after I got home (a few hours later, when I thought I had recovered) because of some virus.

  Then Bernard de Fallois, who has been working on his book on me, without asking me stupid questions.

  But once back in my study, I missed writing. The study seemed more empty to me. This need to write here, no matter what, may only come during those hours of the day when I’m waiting for D. to finish working so that we can go out, or simply waiting to be with her. Will this be better next month when she will have two secretaries instead of one? Man is not made to live alone.

  Anyway, I promise not to put down the slightest abstract idea. What I shall write – if I continue – I don’t know at all. No abstract ideas, anyway. Otherwise, in the long run I would have to think before I write, which goes against my principles. (Have I principles? They are attributed to me. People remind me of pronouncements I made twenty or thirty years ago.)