In a letter to his former student Albert Camus, Jean Grenier is optimistic about the state of literature.
Sisteron, August 19 [1942]
Are you still in Aïn el-Turk? A rather bourgeois beach: you can see a restaurant on the beach with wooden bathing huts. The sunset side is more beautiful and you should be able to go to the Andalouses by following the coast. I have always liked the Andalouses very much.
Have you read Aragon’s Le Crève-Coeur? The beautiful pages inspired by the defeat.
You will be receiving the issue of Comoedia that has published Arland’s article. You are being “launched” by Gallimard and that’s all for the best, as the review had been reluctant until now. Why? The wind is shifting and there is wisdom in waiting for the right opportunity. A. Rousseaux judges all books from a moral and religious, if not patriotic, viewpoint. What he says is not wrong, but in the end his criteria seem to me infinitely too narrow. What would he have written about L’Immoraliste and so many others? He could not appreciate that mixture of despair and passion which is at the very core of L’Etranger’s cynicism.
Send me your article on Guitton. Parain is going to publish his big thesis on language—it’s most interesting—Louis Guilloux and Marc Bernard have published very successful childhood recollections. Like mushrooms after the rain, I see good books coming out everywhere. My colleague from Lille, Gandillac, is publishing Oeuvres de Nicolas de Cues, Blanzat an analytical novel, and Bachelard very amusing books about water and fire under the pretext of philosophy.
In Lille I have a colleague who is in very good health and travels from Lille to Paris every week with two pneumothoraxes. He leads a very normal life. For the moment you just need to take a lot of precautions. In Paris no opening at Gallimard for now, but that may change this winter.
I am not going to speak about life in Lille, there would be too much to say and I would not be able to say enough. But I endured it better than I would have thought, while two years ago, and even last year, I fell victim to an inexplicable depression that prevented me from working and resting. The circumstances I was in were much better, yet the “events,” as we modestly call them now, took their toll on me at that time. And I must say that the moral atmosphere of Paris and Lille is very oppressive this year (even for someone who is in good health).
Let me know how you are doing.
Yours.
J.G.
Jean Wahl was able to leave for America, so was Rachel Bespaloff.
FURTHER READING
Read a newly translated “mimodrame” by Albert Camus, published in the New Yorker here.