[lit-ideas] Re: ] On Sartre and the French Resistance
- From: David Ritchie <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 13:29:24 -0700
Lawrence has laid out his sources and
Adriano Palma wrote:
>
> it is well known that sarter did f***k all for the resistance, being himself
> a short little clown, with an enormous reservoir of cowardice - he himself in
> two distinct documentaries
>
>
Hero and coward don't describe many of the folk I interviewed. They were all
people who faced very difficult choices. It was one thing to decide to avoid
the STO (Service de Travail Obligatoire) by running off to the woods and then
agreeing to pick up a gun, practice as ammunition availability allowed, go
somewhere to try to damage something. At some point such folk had to come to
terms with the fact that the Germans shot hostages, gathered at random in town
squares, in retaliation for Resistance activities, but the young guy in the
woods had a totally different set of problems from people who lived at fixed
addresses in the cities. Leaving aside Sartre for a moment, let us consider
the macho man who had painted the most famous anti-fascist image extant in the
world at the outbreak of WW2, Picasso. Here's what Steven Nash says,
"Picasso's activities in occupied Paris, and his conduct vis-a-vis the
Occupation regime, have been the subject of much conjecture, supporters at one
end of the spectrum trying to make of him a Resistance hero and critics at the
other attempting to tar his reputation with accusations of collaboration.
Neither extreme is accurate." I find this kind of even-handed assessment
convincing; Jean Moulin was a hero, those who made war on children were
cowards. The rest? Some thought that sitting behind Italian mountain troops
in the cinema and cutting feathers from their caps was an act of resistance.
Others were far more daring.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
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