by Jean Giono
March 4
Just now suddenly someone knocked on my door and in came Lucien, smiling as if he had never left. We embraced – with such deep joy on my part – and it’s over, and there was never anything wrong between us, and everything is cleared up, and I am very happy.
March 11
One of these days I’ll talk about my trip to Marseille from which I returned yesterday. The last evening, an alert, and violent reaction by the D.C.A. I got up and went down into the hotel lobby. I realized that all shelters are illusory, of course. During the previous day I saw a roundup on the square behind the Stock Exchange, where the tobacco black market openly takes place. But the presence of so many armed police everywhere is unbearable. In the evening, after dinner with Gaston P. and H., altercation with two policemen out of uniform, completely drunk, who wanted to take our taxi. In the end they humbly apologized in front of H. So much so that I was disgusted by them. At first they showed unparalleled insolence and arrogance. A sudden reversal; they were so eager to shake our hands. They were trying to win a kind of approval. They apologized, blaming the difficulty of their work. Gaston P. wasn’t disdainful enough of them, but H., how haughty he was, and what pleasure it gave me.
Sunday, March 12
A sentence in Barbey d’Aurevilly reminds me that I’ve had the misfortune of not keeping my father’s tools. I remember his old hammer where he left the mark of his hands. There were two spiral hollows in the handle. There were his awls and leather knives as well. All that was stupidly sold. I remember that I thought about it at the time. But I hardly guessed how precious those tools would seem to me now, and what a comfort it would be to fill those dear hollows with my own hands. I must have been very young and thoughtless to have sold such rare tools. They must have gone for ten or fifteen francs in those days. I know that my mother could never again look at “Veilladou,” his work bench, low and marked at the corners where he put the wax, pitch, glue, the boar bristles for his cord, and that she sold the table with his hammer, leather knives, and awls, all the painful reminders of her tall dark husband with the white beard; “Père Jean” as he was called.
I learn from a note in La Gerbe that Gide gave a speech on Algerian radio. I’m sorry not to have heard it. It’s one of two things: either he’s a Russian prisoner and he’s refuting that he’s returned to Russia under duress, or else the propaganda created on this side about the Bolshevik bogeyman is false and exaggerates the Communist threat. I would be tempted to believe the second of these possibilities. For me, it’s not a question of doubting Gide’s honesty. Algiers might thus be true freedom. That’s something to think about. Something else to think about, too, are those violent, thoughtless, drunk police who revealed their dangerous inhumanity in Marseille the other night. How does A. Gide intend to settle things with Aragon who terrified him physically? After so much intelligent preparation, is A. Gide going to ruin his own death? But up until now, everything has been so magnificently constructed that I have a hard time believing that. That he would see through to the end so much preparation and then compromise the result in the final moments? That doesn’t seem like him. So much so that his taking a stand reassures me. What’s happening could simply be a bad ending and not the bloody dawn of a new era. Or perhaps universal suffrage, parties, all talk, the N.R.F and commerce and the A.E.A.R. and the journal Vendredi and Jean Guéhenno and André Chamson, editor with Geneviève Tabouis and articles by Andrée Viollis and a good joke on the organized, conscious proletariat. A kind of “we take them and start again.” When I say reassured, what I’m really saying, what I mean, is that I find confirmation here of my resolution to scorn henceforth all that bears the name of man. And that basically I’m not mistaken when I claim that all of this is just a dark comedy.
Yesterday I dictated nine pages of the Captain’s journal for Fragments and did three pages of Deux cavaliers. In Fragments, I’ve reached a point where I must now begin to give it tone.
March 13
In Algiers, A. Gide is associated, no, is allied with Maritain. Old accomplices at heart. There’s no need to wait for the revival of this band of intelligentsia that even includes the Julien Bendas. I imagine that in Paris Jean Paulhan must be preparing his game bag and at Gallimard they must be making the super-mock-up of the super-forthcoming N.R.F for the victory. A mix of N.R.F and Commune as in lark paté. One lark, one horse, half and half. I see the Guéhennos already seething at the half-pay and André Chamson polishing up his Legion of Honor medal. If a return to all that is the reason for having destroyed London, Berlin, and the rest of them, I say it’s a bad bargain. Well, as for me, I’m waiting for Aragon and Malraux to enter the fray. One of two possibilities here as well. Either they will enter persona grata together, rolling A. Gide slowly along in a wheelchair while Guéhenno plays ballads on the accordion and Chamson passes the hat among honorable society. Or else they’ll be bulls in the china shop. In the latter case, A. Gide will die, suddenly and badly, Guéhenno will go to Sainte-Hélène, and Chamson will set up an ass-kissing factory. I don’t really see what all that fanfare has to do with Art. If I succeed in living meanly in the midst of all that, it will remain my job to write books well here that will no longer be published. Of course Maritain will be the turkey for the first banquet. So let them be thrown out of government offices immediately, hell and damnation! Since that’s what they’ve set their sights on. That’s the only way they’ll stop being such pains to their writing desks. And let someone somewhere, I don’t know who, finally write Don Quixote and MacBeth.
In Redgauntlet by Walter Scott (who, let us not forget, wrote a satirical history of Napoleon) I read this: “It was not of late years that the English learned that their best chance of conquering their independent neighbours must be by introducing amongst them division and civil war” (it’s a Scots who’s speaking).
This evening I dictated seventeen pages of Fragments in which the Captain, M. Larréguy, and Mr. Jauréna emerge. Captain’s journal. I am dictating better. My sentences are clearer. It’s still a rough sketch of what I want the book to be, but there’s much more good work than in the earlier pages. This morning magnificent progress on Deux cavaliers. Now that I know where to highlight the two brothers’ love, this book is incomparably richer and cleaner than its earlier version. It’s good work. I can’t tell yet if the morning work helps the evening work, but the evening work certainly helps the morning work. Add taking these notes and my days are very full. Since March 1, I’ve dictated seventy spare pages for Fragments and written twenty-one full pages for Deux cavaliers (at least forty if dictated as above).
March 15
A young lieutenant commander who came to visit me and to whom I spoke about my plans for Fragments mentioned that it would help me to read Instructions nautiques. “It’s precise,” he told me, “and as though written by a kind of poet, so that I’ve often read it for pleasure while I’m on watch. Sailors,” he continued, “are always poets.” Immediately I saw what good use I could make of these Instructions nautiques. I telephoned Gaston to have him find them for me at the Librairie de la Marine in Marseille (33 Rue de la République). There he was told that I must first obtain a form from the head of the German Maritime Transportation Office in Marseille. I immediately requested that form. If I can’t get the manuals before the war ends, they’ll still be of use to me afterwards for finalizing the work. It’s information that shouldn’t be neglected. Moreover I think I’ll find deep poetic joy in simply reading these books. I want that very much.
This morning, three good pages of Deux cavaliers on Marceau’s love. This evening, dictated fourteen pages of mysterious conversations between the Captain and M. Larréguy in Fragments. Just noticed while I was resting on the divan that the two works are mutually beneficial, that when I exhaust the inspiration for Fragments, I go to Deux cavaliers with ease and joy. When I write Les Grands Chemins, it’s going to be magnificent, delightful.
March 17
F
inishing my pages this morning (three very good ones), I realized that one work is incredibly helpful to the other. When I leave Deux cavaliers (who truly are two Cavaliers now, and I love them, and this is going to be a beautiful book), I want to work on Fragments.
Attacks against me in Les Lettres françaises [clandestine Communist paper]. I have no talent and I attract a following of cowards: lecherous viper.
March 18
Impossible to read Une vieille maîtresse by Barbey d’Aurevilly. This makes five times I’ve had to put it down. Mme. de Mendoze, Hermangarde: I keep asking myself what Stendhal would have done with them. I couldn’t finish L’Ensorcelée. I read Le Chevalier Des Touches and Les Diaboliques. Une histoire sans nom disgusted me and I gave up a quarter of the way through. It sent me back to Walter Scott whose Redguantlet and The Pirate I found ravishing, and whose work I intend to keep reading.
There’s no book I want more than the Instructions nautiques. Dictated nine pages, but without pleasure, copied from the voyage of Dumont d’Urville. Not much creativity but it’s not without interest to me. It’s only a starting point, there’s work to be done. On the other hand, wrote three good pages of Deux cavaliers.
Sunday, March 19
“I don’t like man, I like what devours him – knowing to prefer to man the eagle that feeds on him. – Nothing easier than erecting temples from the already cut stones of old buildings; but to cut fresh the stone extracted directly from the earth, that is something that cannot be done without great effort and much trial and error.”
A. Gide
Letter to Montgommery Belgion
November 22, 1929
March 24
I’ve convinced the N.R.F to publish the translation of Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismonda by Cervantes. A book without which Cervantes’s whole message can’t be understood. Pilles will do and put his name on the translation. I’ve already translated Moby Dick with Lucien Jacques. Not to mention Joan Smith whose name is on the cover to grant her a third of the royalties. She only served as a living dictionary for us. And I have in a notebook the literal translation of Fielding’s Joseph Andrews that I had done by a freemason, the primary school inspector who was dismissed at a time when he was full of self-doubt. I gave him this project to help him regain confidence. Camoin, Aline’s English teacher, reviewed the text. So I will have succeeded in bringing into French culture the translations of three beautiful foreign works.
Work continues at the same rhythm. Fragments progresses by ten to fourteen dictated pages a day, that is five typed pages, and Deux cavaliers by three pages a day, which will easily fill seven typed pages.
Received authorization to buy Instructions nautiques, very easy. Now I need to find out if the Librairie de la Marine in Marseille can get it to me. I’ve asked them.
Sunday, March 26
At noon over lunch, short and sharp altercation with Aline who behaves more and more badly, never getting up, refusing to help with anything at all, never setting the table or going to answer the door. I shook her hard, she took off without finishing her meal. She still hasn’t come back. A proud, stubborn nature, selfish, basically mean, uncompromising, without tenderness or real affection. Princess, determined to get her way without giving in.
March 29
Coincidence: list of students receiving their law degrees in Aix: Jean Jerphanion.
This morning six hundred German troops arrived, roads blocked, machine guns set up in the streets and especially at the Saunerie crossroads. Papers checked, Curet arrested, I believe (not to be confused with “curé,” this is a lawyer named Curet). This was the morning that students from the high school left for Digne where they’re going to take their exams. They were stuck in Saunerie and the principal had to come back to straighten things out. Aline and Guy Pelous had also left for Digne but had taken the shortcut, so they weren’t stopped. At least that’s what I assume, since they haven’t returned. They must be in Digne by now. But I really wish that Élise had called at the hotel where they got out. The exam is tomorrow.
Remarkable clumsiness of the Germans.
Dictated fifteen pages of Fragments, but not happy with the very poor quality generally of this poetry, which must be quite rich to make the book what I want to make it. Of course all that must be written and not dictated. But I was expecting higher quality from the start.
Wrote three pages of Deux cavaliers which is very clean up to now. What follows is more difficult.
It seems they arrested and carried off two truckloads of men and women under dubious circumstances. I’ve been sheltering a terrified Mme. E. all morning, and Ch. never goes out of the house anymore.
March 30
To the Communists. – What you want to destroy are the best (aristocratic) forces. You will protect and use someone like Maurois because he’s useful despite being a bourgeois industrialist. You will destroy Poulaille, Lucien Jacques, Guilloux, and me because we aren’t useful despite coming from and remaining part of the working class. But from birth we have been adversaries of attempts to debase us. Revolutionaries in the true sense. My father would never have been a Communist. Tomorrow (not today but tomorrow) the Communists here (in Manosque) will be Martin-Bret, Curet, Auguste Michel. (This would be incomprehensible to a reader who doesn’t know these individuals but it’s perfectly clear to me).
March 31
Dictated 170 pages of Fragments since February 28 that I’m very unhappy with. I haven’t found the rhythm or the spirit. Everything is hodgepodge and drawn out. I have to make myself continue, my only hope is finding the way when I begin to write. Nevertheless, I think I must keep dictating to assemble as many pages as possible and try my best to enrich them without being surprised at not succeeding as well at this as through thoughtful writing. At the same time, wrote 56 pages of Deux cavaliers and those are good.
April 1
Rest today. I didn’t want to dictate, or to write, and I didn’t force myself. Going back over the 170-some pages I dictated, I realized that it was very bad. There’s nothing, no true poetry, no grandeur, and especially no composition, no style. For the moment, it’s very much below sub-Jules Verne. Nevertheless, I must keep dictating, even if it must remain of so little value. All the work will consist of carefully considering the form. When I’ve found the form – and I can find it – everything will take on body and soul. Corresponding to a new book must be a new style and construction. Finding that style, that construction. Making it (the construction) as new as the idea. Writing the dialogues. Bringing the characters to life (who aren’t alive) (but I am going to do that). Finding the construction that will be able to bear the weight of the whole poetic invention and most importantly, inventing (but that is not completely the role of the dictation – its role was to let the book emerge, to rough it out, and it has perfectly fulfilled that). So, continue and from now on work on the general construction and at certain points go deeper. But as soon as I’m seized by the truth of a style and original composition I’ll be swept along and everything will organize itself. So, starting Monday, back to work. On the other hand, what I’ve written of Deux cavaliers is very good.
I just saw Borrély again. A short conversation in which I found him to be just as he was and he found me to be just as I was, just as I am, without the legend. That is to say, sticking to my position, unchanged: a pacifist. Nothing more. He informed me that Martin was condemned to death by the Communists. So the wolves feed on one another. Nevertheless, from the simple perspective of the nation, if one must resist and fight, Martin acted nobly (disregarding the taint of his ambition). And so? So, remaining as I am, a foreigner to the Germans, English, Americans, and Russians. Not enemy, not friend, a foreigner, not getting mixed up with one side or the other. Borrély is the only one I’ve found intact. I was right to love him.
For Fragments. Maybe give the ocean a personality (thus redo the wind, chapter two, making it a living element of the world –
see lyrical process in Poids du ciel but reinvent it for this particular plan). A Dionysian book but written by Fielding!! Gradually discovering!
Romain Rolland who is not of the working class believes in the working class; but I am of it and I do not believe in it.
Ch. Péguy
(Remark reported by Julien Benda,
N.R.F., XLIX, 1937, 210.)
Sunday, April 2
For Fragments – Maybe use the present tense for the cosmic characters, wind, squid, monsters, etc. (list blue notebook). For the wind, for the ocean, that could be beautiful.
Enrich the vocabulary of “FOREIGN” words.
Bring the life of the ship to life. Render it tiny through the use of cosmic characters, but make it visible that way in all its detail and variegations, as though seen through a microscope. But I insist, very much alive. The human characters very much alive as well.
The greatest care for style in this tennis game where the words must play with the image. Short and very rich sentences. Never return the ball into the box where the reader is expecting it.
That is all too thought out, and consequently will be difficult to achieve. But continue trying until it takes off.
From now on, producing a passage, or one part (the wind, for example).
The detective novel. The literature of attitude that’s responsible for all the books written since Balzac (and that are bad Stendhal, Stendhal misunderstood) broke creation down into two parts: the tedious and a precipitate of the picturesque, the dishwater and the precipitate. The detective novel is a condensed version of the picturesque: a mysterious matter minus Balzac. All the other books are dishwater and most of the time they’re enough to make you sick. On the other hand, consider Fielding. Which proves that Stendhal’s message was not understood. Formula for Fragments: a cosmic detective novel.