Paris France
By . Scribners.
$2.50.
THIS is a peculiarly heartening book to read in this summer of 1940. France dead? Men of little faith who fear it may find here an affirmation of immortality, a reassurance that the currents, deep hidden, which have nourished France will continue forever their sustaining and creative flow. Here in these pages — written in part, it is true, in wartime but before the deluge — may be found fresh inspiration, courage, and the knowledge that, whatever may happen to her, France will survive, that nothing from outside can permanently affect her destiny: ‘So the most striking things about France is the family, and the terre, the soil of France. Revolutions come and go, fashions come and go, logic and civilization remain and with it the family and the soil of France.’
There is the motif of Miss Stein’s mémoire: tradition sustained and ever refreshed by the reality of earth; this the conqueror can never touch — by this indeed may the conqueror be conquered: ‘When there is no art that is natural to a nation, you know there is something wrong. Ever since Germany has been an empire there has been nothing anybody wanted to buy and after having bought wanted to leave to a museum, neither music nor pottery nor poetry, and so there is something wrong. The state of being an empire was not a healthy state.’
Miss Stein’s forty years in France have given her a love for the French people and a knowledge of them equally profound; and in this brilliant small book she has distilled the essence of her insight and affection. Here is France, here the men and women of France: the pattern of their minds, their relation one to another, their faith in Latin logic, their individualism and distrust of intimacy, their attitude towards money and work, art and letters and language, fashion and family, their cats and dogs, children, cooking, education, and all the other things that give the adjective ‘ French’ its blessed special meaning — illustrated by intimate personal stories tragic or gay, and sprinkled with passages shrewd and affectionate.
Gertrude Stein dwelt in France for forty years, and kept her intelligent eyes open as well as her heart: ‘The reason why all of us naturally began to live in France is because France has scientific methods, machines and electricity, but does not really believe that these things have anything to do with the real business of living. Life is tradition and human nature. . . . [We] needed the background of profound conviction that men and women and children do not change, that science is interesting but does not change anything, that democracy is real but that governments unless they tax you too much or get you defeated by the enemy are of no importance.’ Today every Frenchman feels that he has been betrayed by his own government; and his bitterness is as strong against his leaders as against his conqueror. The Third Republic is dead. France lives; and the new order, when the Germans are gone, will be a gathering up and a going back to the earth, the bed of civilization, not a capitulation to illusory ‘progress’: for ‘progress has really nothing to do with civilization, [and] France can be civilized without having progress on her mind, she believes in civilization in and for itself.’
It is a curiously feminine testament of love, written in a noble monotone which is never monotonous, and in which the unconventional punctuation has the effect of subtly sustaining rather than diffusing the attention. It leaves one with an impression crystal-clear: an affirmation of faith by one who knows the meaning of French civilization and loves France — as it was, is, and ever shall be, in war, in peace, and in the revolutionary periods between.
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