Occupation Journal

by Jean Giono

  Copyright © Editions Gallimard, 1995

  English language translation © Jody Gladding, 2020

  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2020

  First published as Journal de l’Occupation by Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1995

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior written permission of the publisher.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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  Ebook ISBN 9781939810571

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  Cover art: Poplars by Georges Seurat

  This book was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

  This work received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States through their publishing assistance program.

  Funding for the translation of this book was provided by a grant from the Carl Lesnor Family Foundation.

  Archipelago Books also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the National Endowment for the Arts, Lannan Foundation, the Nimick Forbesway Foundation, the Centre National du Livre, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

  v5.4

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  1943

  1944

  1943

  September 20

  There is such confusion in people’s minds that, even among the best of my acquaintances, no one knows how to conduct himself according to the simple rules of nobility and grandeur anymore. In the fellowship of the Contadour, R.B. was a comrade who seemed to me capable of understanding and applying those rules on all occasions. He was clear-sighted and bright, and if it worried me knowing that he regularly spent time with reserve officers, I imagined that his social position demanded it (teaching at the teachers’ college). His convictions, if he was expressing them honestly, were pacifist and humane. He could not retain his integrity in the tangle of propaganda. It’s hard for me to imagine that this is the same man now mixed up in arms drops, who runs off and distributes machine guns to young men hidden in his county. I know – if I take into account the terrible worries eating at his heart – (his love for M., his crazy son) there are certainly excuses for his desire to escape at any cost his life’s inconceivable misery. All the same, I was hoping he would escape in the direction of nobility.

  In our modern mechanical world, it’s clearly very tempting to embrace the cause of a religious war. It must give one the impression, despite everything, that he is a thinking being. And, after the fate dealt to man in 1930–1940, it must suddenly be so invigorating that it’s difficult to resist. But the quest for the Grail made the knights-errant gallop in a straight line. Even Don Quixote walks straight. Today it seems as though the Grail has shattered and they are chasing all the scattered bits of it in every direction. They charge blindly, noses in the air, radios behind them in the saddle, newspaper helmets fastened securely on their skulls. Those who have donned secret papers, clandestine publications, think they are wearing the most magical helmets of all. Not a single head remains bare. For my part, I consider it important above all not to be duped. That’s what I peacefully strive for. I know the deep wretchedness of our generation and the ones that follow, and I have tried, with what means I have, to provide a small cure. I recognize that I can do nothing. Lacking either enough intelligence for problems that are too great or enough simplicity for problems that are so hugely simple they defy mathematics, I would nevertheless reserve the right to laugh and comfort myself with scorn, precisely applied. English generosity; American civilization.

  Last week, there was an assassination attempt here against the head of the militia. He was returning from the cinema with his family when an armed stranger shot at him. Ch. shot back and killed his assailant. At which point a sort of impromptu legend started. The assailant, who had come from Marseille to kill Ch. (it seems he confessed before dying), was a miner from the north of France, his children had been killed in a bombardment, and his wife, I don’t know what, something terrible, I dare say, no doubt raped by the Uhlans. He became the hero. Almost everyone attended his funeral, Dr. G. and his wife prominently at the head of the line. Dr. G. is a perfect and pure careerist, an opportunist, an ambitious man who dreams of a seat on the district council. That’s clear to everyone here. But he was much admired behind the hearse. Of course Dr. G. is not a Communist, he made two or three million in a few years (he arrived here very poor), and is an admirable specimen of the ordinary materialist. He’s only trying to position himself for the next wave of “honors.” That’s nothing. It’s only that no one thought to explain this in a simple way. The man from Marseille was really only a paid assassin. Because why – even as martyr and hero – especially as hero – why come to assassinate Ch.? The back wheel of the wagon. Ch. is not exactly anyone important. At present, it’s simply personal accounts being settled. And personal business being conducted (Dr. G.). All that is fine, I’m not asking Dr. G. or the assassin or Ch. to be Lancelot of the Lake or Percival, I only ask that no one tries to make me believe they are.

  Wonderful weather, exhilarating wind coming from the sheep plateaus. Cool and crisp, and those earth tones and bruised sky that announce autumn. The sound of the bell that rings at noon undulates in the wind like a cracked whip. The air is delicious to breathe. I am going to start writing again. These days. I need a serious discipline for mind and body.

  Plans for Fragments d’un Paradis. Never forgetting that after Don Quixote (I must begin the discussion with myself on this book. In Doré’s illustrations, Don Quixote resembles my beloved father, but embittered. My father was good and gentle, clearly readable in his entire body), never forgetting that Cervantes finished his life writing the The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda. I am anxious for Jacinto G. to send me this book in Spanish; I’m going to try to learn enough Spanish to read it.

  Fragments must be an adieu to the poetic (as Don Quixote is an adieu to grandeur – and not a satire on chivalry. What pettiness! Imagine Cervantes wanting to mock chivalry! And he would finish his life writing (with the most careful attention to the form and spirit of it) a novel of Chivalry! No, he wanted to say a melancholy farewell (hence Don Quixote’s madness) to grandeur). Fragments must say farewell to the poetic, to lyricism, to the “lie” without which there is no art, by which I mean the subjective. Goodbye to romanticism, on the threshold of 1616, when truth, exactitude, the slice of life will be extolled (you’ll see) (but Maupassant was lying (was interpreting), but Gide lies (happily), but Eugène Dabit suffered and died for not knowing how to lie, that is, for not having the strength (first of all, the physical strength) to stomach “spectacles” in order to express them in the end as Van Gogh expresses a wheat field and a cypress. Because they know and he knew what it is that interests me, which is not the cypress or the wheat field. It is the cypress + Van Gogh and the wheat field + Van Gogh. The mark. To leave his mark). Because how could he have been in step with Communist times?

  Finishing the third act of Voyage without proving anything. Having wanted to demonstrate a slowing of the action in the second part of Act 1, an act I am not at all happy with.

  Writing the text for Virgil that Corrêa wants and immediately afterwards (before the end of the year if possible), I hope to begin Fragments. Because if I wrote Le Voyage
for the theater, it’s so that I might finally have a little peace financially (I must speak a little about my legend one of these days, and in particular about my “wealth” (in 1940, living on 20,000 for the whole year, nine people, and actually giving the figures) because what Vlaminck says about me he says relying on legend alone, journalistic and cinematographic legend). (I am not suspicious enough of visitors. Too nice.) Tino Rossi aside, of course. Because he’s not completely wrong. There is a little of that. But I believe (I may be wrong. I don’t dispute it) I believe that’s all there is. Writing Fragments for my own pleasure, as I like, at my own pace (which is slow), taking the most pleasure possible in the writing.

  Yesterday evening, Uncle did not return. Believed it to be the usual fit of drunkenness and expected to hear the doorbell during the night. This morning I realized that he had still not come home. It was Charles I heard having coffee. I wondered if Uncle might be dead in the pavilion, a stroke or from hanging himself. Suicide is a possibility with this hideous, horrible, arrogant, worthless but sensitive man who has turned everyone against him. Has made everyone detest him, even his own daughters, and yet, sometimes, a burst of grandeur, I thought to myself…this morning I went to see, to have a look in the pavilion with its door left open. I looked in the linden tree. Charles had the same thought. My mother, too. Charles went to look out the windows. He was not there, he told me. Then, later, while I was writing, I heard him coughing and clearing his throat below in the garden. He’d only gone on his usual binge. Too often (always) I judge others according to myself. I believe that’s what happened over the twenty years with Lucien Jacques as well.

  September 21

  Jean B., who spent two days here with his wife and his son M., visibly bristled or didn’t respond when I openly expressed all my contempt for the small thinkers of the era who have earned their degrees listening to the radio. He remained very good and fine, an excellent gentleman (which he is) but I recognized some reproach, not in his eyes, nor in the creases of his mouth, but in the fixed lines of his face. They said clearly that he did not dare contradict me but that he did not agree with me. Marthe watched him from the corner of her eye. His daughter Jacqueline has a marvelous a mind, she has chosen a wonderful occupation. She’s passionate about pottery and at the moment lives with potters outside Bourges, in the manner of great artists of the Renaissance. And I believe with all my heart that she possesses the wonderful truth that, if understood by a greater number, could itself alone create a Renaissance – for everything, for art as well as for life. She lives a magnificent life, making her passion her occupation, tracking down the artisans’ secrets, the mystery of the glaze, the good – or bad – fortunes of the kiln (she already understands why it must be wood-fired instead of electric). And this is exactly the opposite of Industry and the Commune. It belongs to Art and to Individuality. And Jean B. understands and admires the mind and the work of his daughter. Hence this confusion. Because what I’m defending, precisely, is Jacqueline, my dear old Jean. I said that to him. I’m sure he did not understand. He encourages his daughter to construct a world that he himself destroys. That makes him like the pacifist Robert B., machine gun dealer and certified promoter of the war of 1960. With this category of the damned, the only relationships possible anymore are those of Dante.

  We are in a religious war. After defeat, the French ought to have thought their way through to building a future and paths to a future by which the victor would disappear or else serve the vanquished. We ought to have responded to material victory by rising above our victors spiritually, and above what we ourselves had been, instead of wanting to be victor in turn (the chain of wars). That ought to have been the moment of great visions. But there were no fertile minds. No one is capable anymore of seeing the great beasts that rise from the fields, trees, and oceans. Among those preparing future woes, there are some of good faith who imagine they are saving the world and cooking up happiness. But they put all their trust in the material. As if the material will win the war. From every side the material kills the heroic. And if I rejoice in the death of military heroism (it survives only in aviation – dive bombing – just flying bombers is no longer heroic enough anymore. Which explains youth’s infatuation with flying. The last chance for the knight. They feel a connection with the last romanticism there, a final place for the individual. So very instructive is repugnance for community), I regret the death of heroism pure and simple. It was the highest poetry man could attain. And modern man is going to die from a poetry hemorrhage. (Poetry is what Jacqueline B. desperately seeks. It is why her father’s heart exalts when he considers what she does. But he defeats it and renders it impossible by his thoughts and actions. Thinking corrupted by parties, by the passion of parties.) They think they inhabit a world in which everything is reduced to the material. They don’t realize that material itself, the most dense material, is more insubstantial and porous than a sponge, and like a sponge at the very depths of the sea, it is bathed, permeated, swollen, enlivened by the spirit and by salty mysteries that, from one moment to the next, can seethe with unpredictable typhoons. They are not yet far enough beyond their depths to notice that a train wheel or a blast furnace does not float (try to create something that floats. From there: Fragments).

  September 22

  The art of war. In the course of an otherwise heated conversation with Auguste M., he said to me, “What thrills me is to see Australian shepherds on the battlefield defeating the most scientific army and the generals of the most artistic school of war of all times.” It is true and thrills me as well. There is no art of war. But I’m afraid that this absence of art, this ease, makes it all the more tempting. If everyone can make war with some chance of success, if it’s within everyone’s reach, I’m afraid the desire for it will become irresistible. Everything points to its lack of grandeur: its ease, its use of lies, treachery, contempt for the given word, “the end justifies the means,” the death of heroism; there is not even national interest, no one is defending his country any longer. This is expressed and explained every day loud and clear, but there are none so deaf as those who will not hear. No one hates the war. They hate the enemy, they hate those who may threaten their wealth, but they do not hate the war. And no horror will make them hate it. Neither the reduction of Hamburg to embers nor the destruction of Coventry troubles anyone’s sleep. If London or Berlin were destroyed tomorrow, no one’s digestive system would stop. It is only a matter of brief news items; you cannot make an omelet without breaking the eggs, and everyone’s self-interest is protected by that omelet. But when it happens to your own eggs, then you roar, then you curse the heavens, and you are so surprised.

  Everyone rejoiced yesterday over the battles of Corsica. The war is now no more than a hundred kilometers away.

  Autumn arrived early this year. It’s here. The mellow sound of the fountain in the silent fog. Peace! And the first shiver that makes the warmth of wool sweaters and the inside of houses seem magnificent. It’s getting dark earlier.

  September 23

  Just received a letter from Z. A very beautiful letter, completely calm, because it concerns his native country with its incomparable beauty and peace. It includes excerpts from a letter from his sister on the Paris bombardment: “The whole city witnessed the air strike, the D.C.A. firing as ever. As for me, I saw three planes descend in flames and only three parachutes opened and the whole descent had an appalling slowness about it against a beautiful blue sky, a magnificent sun. Squadrons continued to pass regularly through the fire and we thought that, apart from the bombs dropped from planes nearby, Paris would not be targeted. Then a deluge of bombs on Paris unleashed panic and half the city disappeared in an opaque black cloud, impenetrable because it was full of blinding shards of metal. You could not see ten meters. A.’s hotel was completely reduced to rubble.”

  Further on in Z.’s letter and concerning his own country: “The country is all abuzz with conspiracies, Gaullist and non-Gaullist meeti
ngs. The bawlers bawl, the moaners moan, they kill each other over a yes or a no, they stoke the hell fires while losing nothing of their petit bourgeois air (the emphasis mine). No one is surprised anymore, it is nothing that in the last month a militia leader and another landowner were KILLED (the emphasis Z.’s) here. They are buried and it’s on to the next one.

  “That sums up the current times, as much in Paris as in N. It is very much the Middle Ages of the Fall of Constantinople, foreseen in 1939. So when ‘will the white gathering swell’?”

  September 24

  It’s impossible for me not to be disturbed by the idea that others form of me through the journalists’ legend. If I make a show of indifference, that’s just what I do. Nevertheless, as it would be useless to contradict it – and how could I anyway – I imagine what counts is the work. I know perfectly well that this is small consolation, and how the work itself can be distorted, but if it makes the time pass, it will make the rest pass as well. And if I projected the exact image of what I am, would there be the least gain, I mean, in the beauty of living? Aside from a taste of being appreciated, or not, according to my true value, I don’t see how that would benefit me. That men like Joset (and I name him so this proper noun can serve as common noun for others like him) are no longer my friends neither provides or costs me anything. I even have the feeling that Henri Fluchère’s shortcomings, for example, shed some light on the rather “gentleman-like” situation that was established between us in the guise of friendship. We had not been friends in school, as I was older than he was, and then he left for Cambridge. He only courted me after I emerged from bank employment, after Colline and what they called fame (created by the newspapers). Basically, I think he held it against me for succeeding instead of him. I would truly like to be wrong because I loved him. I entrusted him with the translation of Le Chant du monde at a critical moment in his life when he needed to believe in his own worth. Not to mention, I gave him more than his due in the Heubsch contract since it involved us both. I gave him an equal share (this mania for always rejecting the higher position when it’s mine, how can anyone believe in me after that?). From that alone, he has now earned a tidy sum in dollars from Viking Press. Faithfully supported him in the Denise Clairouin attack, remaining faithfully at his side. I have real affection for him. What are his shortcomings? In addition to what I just said, his lack of critical judgment in the face of rumors.