by Jean Giono
Bellion told me there was something on English radio about Gide. Apparently he started a review or weekly journal and published a very beautiful message on freedom. Has he been duped again? Is it Marty who brings us freedom? Isn’t this just another version of Hitler? Where is freedom in the U.S.S.R.? How old is Gide now? I am always very amorously aroused by Gide’s profound honesty. From this perspective, he has no equal. At the same time, I’m afraid that he is duped by his intelligence and his fear, and by his age. However, age would push him more toward conservatism. But now, isn’t being conservative being English? I think that if the English win, it’ll only be the first round. And how will they reunify this country, with the resistance, the L.V.F., the black markets, the prisoners, and all those who don’t care?
February 13
Gaston came to see us today. And to see his son who’s staying with us since Marseille is in the process of being evacuated. I spoke with him a bit this morning. I sense such distress, especially moral, that I no longer know what to do to help him. I try my best to help him with his material needs. He doesn’t dare accept. He is good, discreet, sensitive. He would prefer to suffer silently. I insist. He finally accepts, but with such concern about repaying me!
I’m going to begin that short study on Froissart that La Nouvelle Revue Française asked me for. I would like to write clearly and make something valuable. I don’t consider anything I’ve done to be valuable. Possibly Colline and Pour saluer Melville, but just barely if at all, and my long novels are failures. Even Le Chant du monde. Especially Le Chant du monde, which I can no longer feel, and Que ma joie demeure, which is spineless. I am forever my own harshest critic.
This evening, going with Gaston to the station, wonderful emerald greens in the fields where the wheat is coming up. Above, the gilded arabesques of the great bare plane trees. Imagined how fine it would be to be a painter and to go there every evening until I had managed to convey the sweet emotion those colors and forms produce.
Maybe by simply writing these daily notes, I’ll come to impose upon myself the discipline of style without excess. I’ve been too captivated by the word and the sound it makes. I’ve written too easily for ten years. Those ten years I’ve lost. I only have the Froisssart piece to write before rewriting Deux cavaliers. Time to find it.
February 17
I realize that what I wrote on Virgil was a little too specialized for Corrêa. I have to remember that it must serve as an introduction for the Bucolics, Georgics, and Aeneid. It’s good to have not wanted to copy or imitate, still that would have done nicely. And this will not do. I’m adding a short preamble of ten pages, a kind of fictionalized life of Virgil. For information I’m just drawing inspiration from the study at the beginning of the texts published by Les Belles Lettres. So what I’m writing is a little better and recaptures the tone of Pour saluer Melville. If I had any luck, and thus time and freedom, it would be best to start all over again. As with everything I’ve written, except Colline and Pour saluer Melville, and maybe Jean le Bleu. That’s ridiculous. I don’t need to start all over. Only to make it better.
Isn’t being a conservative now like being a Hitlerite or a Communist? And a patriot!
Suddenly this morning I’m grappling with the idea of writing a very great and sordid poem with Fragments d’un paradis, a great sea voyage, ship’s log, and specific episodes, adventures. A catalogue full of richness and bitterness. The human condition but with the artistic forms of the Renaissance. I’m expressing very poorly all the wonder I feel about what this subject could hold. Not Bernardin de Saint-Pierre but Lautréamont; Rimbaud, Cook, Dumont d’Urville; Edgar Poe, Faulkner, the Melville of Moby Dick; and the incapacity for pleasure. The impotency of men. The vanity of all their means of power, of all their will for power. This has to be a great poem. The way to write this book would be to write it at the same time as Les Grand Chemins. Nothing lies in my way now but Deux cavaliers and the Froissart piece. It might be good if I started Fragments at the same time as Deux cavaliers. Yes, that’s it, that will be a help to me. So, get to work immediately on the Froissart and finish it up quickly, from now until the end of the month.
February 19
Since last Sunday, I’ve been worried about Uncle’s health. He went on another binge and headed out in frigid wind squalls last Friday to get drunk on wine and liquor. He returned at about two in the morning, hardly able to stand up. He knocked timidly on the kitchen door, so quietly that although I was on the alert, I didn’t hear him. It was my mother who got up and let him in. I didn’t think that he’d come home. My mother has a passionate love for this brother of hers. That’s the right word for it. Since yesterday, a prostate attack, I’m guessing, because he refuses to see the doctor and fusses over himself like a recluse. But at the same time, he’s afraid of dying, moans and complains, gets scared by a sideways fart. He came to see me in a sorry state, doubled over his painful belly and full bladder. I treated him as best I could for prostate. After two or three days, he began to piss again, but ever since, he gets up two or three times a night, goes down to the kitchen and heats up herbal tea for himself. Every morning he comes to update me on his health and to ask for advice. I think he may recover this time. As always, he’s bored, he sets traps, and he’s caught four thrushes, over twenty birds: tits, robins, chaffinches, and an extraordinary royal blue bird, tiny and splendid as a jewel.
A discussion at noon with Charles and André on Communism. How limited these narrow-minded beings are appalls me. No, it irritates me, and it’s my fault, don’t discuss things with them. In Goethe’s time, one could still speak freely with a circle of friends. Friends don’t exist anymore. I’m always very caustic in these discussions, and each time I feel ashamed for letting myself get carried away by intellectual passion. Only the passion of love exists. I scorn the rest.
February 20
In the evening after dinner, André, Charles, and I read. Geneva gave a wonderful performance of Beethoven’s triple concerto for violin, cello, piano, and orchestra. It’s wonderful. One can breathe; the world is set free. André covered his ears with his hands and read a book by Cami (!). And I realized that suddenly there before my eyes was the image of the people. Nothing could ever make them be otherwise. The dictatorship of André! It would be magnificent! And nevertheless, André is intelligent, sometimes sensitive, good, generous, and he has a certain hunger for culture. In the camp he studied Spanish and mathematics (there are mathematics professors in particular that astound him, especially Lobry with his Inaudi-like wizardry.) But when he’s offered freedom, he covers his ears – the terrible thing is that maybe he’s right. Unless I’m more right than he is to agree to be duped, then swindled, in return for the payment of pleasures that Beethoven’s powers give me.
February 21
I’ve come across something absolutely remarkable. Oh, that goes without saying. It’s the complete works of Barbey d’Aurevilly in the Bernouard edition. I had it bought for me at a public sale in Marseille. It comes from the library of Gabriel Archinard whose books contain bookplates. I’m starting with L’Ensorcelée. The notes are fascinating, from the beginning. I haven’t read anything yet. I only know Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les Diaboliques, which I read over thirty years ago. We shall see.
February 22
A man is always quite beautiful when he doesn’t frighten his horse.
I’ve decided not to wait any longer to begin the long Fragments d’un Paradis project. I’ll start it at the same time as my rewrite of Deux cavaliers, as soon as I return from Marseille where I’m going tomorrow. Returning Friday morning. First I must accept the notion of length for this idea. Get used to anticipating a few years of work. The hardest thing in this case is the beginning. As soon as one has done enough so that the work has taken shape and one has the desire to perfect and complete it, length is no longer an issue. One then has – or at least I have – the necessary patience. I only need to get started. And, as enco
uragement to get started, there’s the certainty that undertaking important work will bring me calm and equilibrium, and the self-esteem that I’m gradually losing. The mental vicissitudes that all the contradictory passions of the present moment make us go through destroy any equilibrium. I’m afraid of falling into a kind of violent, unjust, wholesale scorn and thus losing my joy and capacity for enjoyment. Nothing is more reassuring that knowing you’re in the midst of a great enterprise. From a practical perspective, it’s only a matter of dividing my days into two work periods spaced fairly far apart. That’s easy enough. I’ll need to get up at seven. We’re heading into longer days. Lounging about, coffee, a pipe, splitting wood until eight. From eight until noon, work on Deux cavaliers and afterwards on Grand Chemins. From noon until four o’clock, lunch, walk or work on Fragments. After dinner, read. That seems good. I’m writing this down so I can reproach myself with it if necessary. But I know myself; if I decide to do it, I will. Now to see if I have talent and resources enough to fill those seven hours. At the moment and still flush with enthusiasm, I believe I have enough of everything. But I know that there will be dark and desperate days. Heaven help me find beauty in one work as consolation for ugliness in the other. Well, why not! In fact once again, that seems good. There’s every chance that the two enterprises will sustain one another and keep hope alive. In any case, waiting any longer will only serve to weaken and wear me out.
I dream of a good old age with the excellent Élise. More and more her qualities touch me. She is and has always been my surest and most understanding companion. She helps me more than anyone, without fanfare or embarrassment. And that hasn’t always been very easy or very pleasant for her.
It’s been a long time since I’ve said anything about Meyerowitz. I hope that business is over. I was worried (as were all of those who helped him, the captain, the Jews in Mées, and all those he approached: Charles, the people in Vachères, etc.), so I was worried and I let him know that. Immediately, a total break, nothing, silence. There was talk of him last evening at dinner; Charles said to me, “I’ll be the death of M.” And since this declaration followed a long account of everything M. had done, it was greeted by everyone with joyous applause.
Sequel to another little story. Mme. Ernst came by this morning. I no longer mention everything I give. I no longer keep track – that’s frightening. But the amazing part is that a week ago she told me that after her operation (which I paid for) she was in danger of losing “her youth” (she’s my age, fifty, and at twenty, she must have been “only twenty” and maybe a bit of a “looker,” that’s it, period. So now that she’s no longer twenty or a looker…). Politely I lamented her plight. “Yes,” she said, “but there’s a series of injections that can fix that now.” I applauded. She simpered and, as though in passing, added very quickly, “Yes, but they’re very expensive.” I understood and said, “I won’t let it be said that I was the cause of the loss of your youth. Would one thousand francs be enough?” “Oh, yes,” she said and took the money. This morning she came asking for another thousand francs for the second series of injections! And with all of this, of course, I never have a penny! I have to write this down, or else I’ll have the unpleasant impression of being duped.
Henry hasn’t left yet (at this point Uncle calls me from his room. He’s suffocating, he tells me. I go up to him. He has all the symptoms of asthma, he’s chewing the air, he gasps and groans – all the terrifying gymnastics of those who are suffocating. I try to burn Legras powder in a saucer. It’s like putting a poultice on a wooden leg, but after a moment or two, it seems to calm him down, and I return here. He had a similar attack the other evening) Henry hasn’t left the hospital yet. The surgeon says he has gangrene. His foot continues to suppurate. Aunt Noémie continues to laugh and tell jokes, holding court in the midst of her stench. Old women come to pass the afternoons peacefully around her bed.
February 26
Returning from my trip to Marseille. I had a very good time there. I spent a long time in the Maupetit Bookstore warehouse on documents for Fragments d’un Paradis. I’ve decided to begin work Monday afternoon. I’ve had an idea for something I want to try. Each evening I want to dictate Fragments to Mlle. Alice. It won’t matter if she makes mistakes since the dictated pages will only be drafts that I’ll review carefully, and in this way the evening work will be clearly distinguished from the morning work. Furthermore, the act of dictating will check my taste for words, will make me think only about action and image. Eliminate the aesthetic pleasures of handwriting as I described them in Virgile. Economy of means for the sake of the value of the text. I’m sure this is a good idea. In any case, the experiment excites me.
Evening. More and more determined. I’ve had special desk pads made for Alice. I’ve spoken to her about this new project. She didn’t seem too upset. She didn’t turn red as a beet and take on that pursed look she gets when her inferiority complex takes hold of her liver and spleen. More and more convinced that this experiment can and must produce wonderful results. It can be continued wherever I happen to be, with either Alice or Élise. This evening I’m waiting for the books I bought in Marseille. I’ll start immediately with those that should help me develop the first chapter, launch myself right into the image and adventure, which may be very beautiful.
Just saw Mlle. Alice. She seems delighted with this new project.
Sent Louis a telegram of 150 words to boost his morale regarding his summons to the S.T.O., and at the same time I’m doing everything I can to get him out of this mess. But the most urgent thing is that he knows he’s not alone or abandoned, and that people are working for him.
Despite Fragments, I must not abandon these daily (or almost) notes that are so useful to me.
February 27
The books I found in Marseille to begin Fragments didn’t arrive last evening. Now the bus won’t come again until Wednesday.
At first glance, Barbey d’Aurevilly is dazzling. After a while, only a few magnificent descriptions of women and women’s flesh hold up. All the rest is only glitter. The images are mostly naïve, childish, and terribly inflated. Nevertheless some unusual words, well placed, do retain my interest. Meandering parentheticals often make sentences incomprehensible. Comparing the life in Balzac’s Les Chouans and the poor use Barbey makes of his peasants and passions in L’Ensorcelée, one knows immediately what must be done and what must be avoided and why one of these two books is great. Barb. has no gift for life. Once in a while, in passing, a woman’s breasts are alive and her flesh is on fire, but that’s all, she has no soul, it’s a beautiful iridescent snail we hunger for and want to swallow. It doesn’t fill us with love as is the case with Sanseverina, about whose breasts and thighs we know nothing, moreover.
February 29
Last evening I dictated eight pages of Fragments. The first eight. The books arrived a little later. This morning I’ve written three pages of Deux cavaliers. It’s going to be hard work, but I’m continuing. What was dictated is only a first draft that I’ll have to do more work on. Each of these chapters must be continually reconsidered and developed afterwards. Nothing of what I dictate is definitive. For Deux cavaliers, after the first chapter: “The Story of the Jasons,” the second will be “Raphaël.” I took out the marriage of Ange (who becomes Raphaël) and I describe the youngest brother as I’m telling the story of the Jasons. Today I’m going to dictate the second chapter of Fragments, on the winds.
The business with Louis is completely straightened out.
March 1
Dictated ten pages of Fragments this evening. Obviously what I dictate isn’t beautiful. It’s even fairly ridiculous and most of the time affected. But I have a solid base there for constructing the work itself. The general mood will require me to find the right tone when I switch to writing. I think this is good. For Two cavaliers, I see forming an idea that would have me reapplying the method of Grands Chemins. In any case, I’m going to write th
e second chapter entitled “Raphaël” so as to establish the parallel between him and Marceau. I must follow the adventures of the two men. Third chapter “The Town of Lachau.”
For the second chapter of Fragments, an episode, full of swearwords, to enter into the life of the ship’s boy. His country, his mother, his sisters. How he lives. In such a way that the invention of the swearwords will be tremendous, and truly to invent the swearwords. (Yes, that’s difficult, but look again at Lautréamont – moreover this will give depths to the gulfs of the sea and the black of the drums, but now, to write it.)
March 1
This chapter is very important. Beginning with this story full of swearwords, one must see the gulfs themselves deepening, from which the fragments of Paradise will arise. This is where it must take shape. It’s imagined, but it isn’t written.
I’m pretty satisfied all in all; nothing is definitive but everything is taking shape and getting organized. Without question, the fact of dictating requires that I keep the action moving in a magnificent way. It keeps things clean.
March 2
Dictated fourteen pages of Fragments. This will provide good material in the end. Must continue. Saw this morning that Deux cavaliers can become a very beautiful book. Especially the chapters that I’m going to start work on, “Raphaël” and “The Town of Lachau.” There are very beautiful things in what I’ve already written. The order and logic of the work requires continuing to dictate undisturbed without trying to revise, until I’ve finished writing Deux cavaliers and Les Grands Chemins. Then I’ll find myself with almost 2,000 pages of incredibly rich material, ready to work with. And noting here each day or each time, the discoveries I need to work on. That way, my notes won’t be lost. I just have to glance through the notes since February 28 to find what I’ve decided or wanted to do.