Occupation Journal

by Jean Giono

  Or maybe – and deep in my heart this is what I want – I’m the one who is the bastard and there’s nothing in what I say, and he’s not letting himself be taken for a ride by the Krivines and he’s my faithful friend and it’s really me who is ignoble and he no longer comes to see me simply because he no longer comes to see me, that’s all.

  I have never been so happy as now. Never have the books been so delicious. Never has love been so peaceful, so vivid, so fantastic. Never have the days been so wonderfully harmonious. Never have I worked so patiently. Never have I been so wonderfully intent on my riches. Could it be that the end is approaching?

  Extraordinary fall of the rebel angels, the fallen friends, even to the point that Lucien Jacques’s withdrawal sheds light on all the extraordinary generosity that has exhausted me. Maybe my peace comes from no longer having to provide for anyone.

  In Epting’s preface to the Anthology of German Poetry that I received, I read: “There are others (poets) who have been deliberately excluded even though the French literati may expect to find them here. It was a matter of applying the principles that have come to light in Germany over the course of the last ten years and that have illuminated the true German spiritual tradition. For a long time now, the way French literary circles represent that tradition has not corresponded to the way it is conceived in Germany…”

  I beg your pardon, Monsieur Epting. This is no longer the anthology of all German poetry but of a German poetry, and thus you’re the exact opposite of that good apostle you claim to be. How would you like us to approach this? I want to be able to hear Jewish songs and Communist songs if they are beautiful, and if they represent Germany as well. What can I do with this selection of poets? It is so politically determined that it ruins Hölderin and Novalis for me. And I keep wanting to say to myself, “But the most beautiful was forgotten” – worse: “the most beautiful was rejected.” That’s not true, but what a blunder to leave such an opening for suspicion and retort. But it’s our fine lack of generosity on display once again and what stupid things it makes us do. (Generosity again, as I wrote at the beginning of today’s note) If there are very good poets opposed to National-Socialism, well, Monsieur Epting, you need to include them. If there is very beautiful poetry opposing your true tradition, that’s because your true tradition is not entirely true. You cannot make truly beautiful poetry not exist, no matter where it comes from, and Boris Pilniak is a great Russian poet nevertheless. When it’s a matter of scorning poets, that’s easy, but really how frightened you are of them, and consequently you want to dictate.

  I’m not being fair. Lucien gave me so many things. Certainly more than I credit him for. He was the first to believe in me, and he was faithful to me for twenty years. And perhaps Henri Fluchère is also a wonderful friend.

  September 25

  Yet another example of misguided zeal. After all this, I admit it’s difficult to regard me as sane. From the beginning, I was against that film Régnier tried to make about me. Nothing offends me more and nothing is less like me than that representation; nevertheless it exists and it’s true that I finally did give in. But I gave in to Régnier’s insistence, his need for a leg up (and he’s done well with this film, which has brought in some capital). He must admit that I advised him several times not to have me appear. I reduced my presence to a minimum. I refused to speak (for which Meiffret reproaches me), as much as I could, I cut scenes in which he wanted me to act; I’m only seen walking and writing, which is how I practice my occupation. But I agree that it’s still too much and should not have appeared. That was my ardent wish. I asked nothing. My mistake was agreeing and I agreed only to help Régnier. If this film were seen clearly, only humility and not a bit of pride would be apparent there. I never considered that it would have to be protected from serving other people’s purposes. But of course the viewer is not obligated to look beyond the screen. And I’m the one in the wrong.

  Thunderstorms. A beautiful autumn. Sky inhabited by giant clouds. A very long southern wind. Extremely slow gestures from the storm, thunder like syrup that doesn’t clap but collapses. Élise, who is obsessed with the thought of the noise of battle, and the girls sometimes think it’s gunfire. Basically, what’s important is to live, not the idea that others form of our lives. One must try to write, to create, above the whole legend. If I can’t do that, too bad, I will have tried and that will have been interesting. The arrival of the storm’s great darkness is very sweet to my heart.

  An hour after having written that note, lightning suddenly flashed through my office at the top of the house. A small pink pinpoint of light and a crackling near the window. Dumbfounded I just had time to say Oh! before the thunder clapped. Élise, who was napping below, ran out of her room, hands over her ears. That was ten minutes ago and my back and head ache. As though there was a heavy iron crown around my head. Up to that moment, the rumbling was very far off, then suddenly, a huge thunderclap. That’s why I think the lightning came in through the window and escaped through the chimney. I was lying on my divan to read Hoffmann. Weakness in my elbows and knees now, and my head not exactly aching, but “funny.” As if it were wood. I am writing this by the window and at the least noise, instinctively (absolutely instinctively) I shrink away from it, recoiling as if I expected to be clawed.

  September 26

  I am still quite dumbfounded by yesterday afternoon’s lightning. It was really very tiny and the effect on the body very strange. So sudden that the mind did not have time to function; nevertheless, in that absolute silence, I understood everything. It was precisely, I believe, divine, that is, the knowledge of things before they happen. I was on the other side of the event, on the wooden side of the arrow. That lasted a quarter of a second, but I will never forget that quarter second, during which I was released from all dimensions and conscious to a degree that cannot be expressed. If that could last a few seconds or a minute, I believe that many mysteries would be clarified. Knowledge of a tangential world.

  This morning gunfire can be heard very distinctly from the south. Then calm, a cool wind, clear sky, bright sunshine, and it’s a beautiful Sunday.

  Music with Meyerowitz this afternoon. He wanted me to hear Offenbach’s La Grande-Duchess de Gerolstein, devilishly anti-militarist. More depth than Rossini but less brilliance. Then Prelude and Fugue in C sharp minor in which, in the fugue, the phrase sometimes occurs in reverse and extends the harmony. That suddenly produces a very deep recognition. Then Prelude and Fugue in G major (1st volume Well-tempered Klavier), Brahms’s Intermezzo in E flat minor op. 118, no. 6. Physical pain. Cancer. Tropic of Cancer.

  A shapeless sky this evening as after the mistral sometimes. It’s cold and the sky is particularly Apocalyptic. The coming night is truly like a lead weight. Just now some artillery fire again.

  September 29

  Difficulties in the third act of Voyage. Because I’m trying hard to express exactly what I imagine expressing. It’s very difficult. I know very well what must be done and I can’t do it.

  More artillery fire. Wind continually from the south, clouds building.

  September 30

  Sylvie has had a very high fever since yesterday. I think it’s simply a bad sore throat and quietly treat it as that. But with these polio epidemics I’m more anxious than usual. Aline is also sick, a boil, I believe, that requires a long, tiresome antibacterial cure, and I think, finally, the surgeon’s scalpel. The other night, Uncle, dead drunk, fell the whole way down the pavilion stairs. He landed on his shoulder and lay there knocked out for over an hour, he says, under the vines. Since then, he can’t undress himself or move his shoulder or his arm, which no one can look at because he keeps it hidden like a sacred object. As for me, my eyes ache and I have an annoying irritation in my left nostril. I’m stuck in the third scene of the third act. Nothing that I write satisfies me. I can see clearly what I want to do but I can’t do it, can’t create what I see and so powerfully ima
gine. What I want in this scene between Julio and Donna Fulvia is a very simple kind of pathos. The scene is very important, it’s the big confrontation between J. and D.F. She’s going to leave with the colonel and J. reproaches her for this coarseness. Given all she could have by herself, she has no need for the army or Napoleon. I want this to be in very simple, direct language and thus I’m aiming very high. I can see just what has to be done and can’t manage to do it. And that’s why I just forced myself to write this note, which is of no interest otherwise.

  October 1

  Sylvie is better, her fever has dropped. Aline continues with her cure. Uncle walks around with his arm hidden in a sling. He hasn’t undressed by himself for eight days. My eyes continue to torment me. I’m still tangled up in my third scene although (or perhaps because) I never stop thinking about it day or night. Autumn is very beautiful. I’ve proposed to Mme. Bonnefoy that we lease the Criquet farm. The time I spend thinking about this third scene is interrupted by flashes of the work I’d like to devote to Fragments and Grand Chemin.

  October 6

  Assuming that I eventually write a book, I couldn’t care less if, a hundred years from now, some enthusiastic young scholar falls in love with it in a deadly boring high school class. Or even, if it’s a masterpiece, if it contributes to the good of humanity, as it’s pretentiously called. What matters to me is the lightning of making it (the book) and that’s what I’d want the schoolboy to experience (or humanity for whom one must do good), so that he knows that one doesn’t live in historical reality. The only historian I can read is Froissart, because he writes in imaginary reality. That’s the reason to prefer Commines and really, leaping from one to the other, Lenin. What matters to me is writing the book, painting the fresco, composing The Well-Tempered Clavier, because I have my own “taste.” I enjoy myself. The rest is for those whose “tastes” tend toward wanting all the credit. The art of making works and events say what they never said. And those are the very same ones constantly spouting the words “truths” and “true.”

  “What do you think of the news?”

  “I don’t read the newspapers and I don’t listen to the radio.” (If they were clever, they’d respond, “all the more reason.”) Because what good does it do to tell them what I think.

  Went out this evening at six o’clock to take the air after these four days of good work. Worn out, I got no farther than the café terrace. R. told me all about K.D.’s private affairs, fights with his wife who’s sleeping with the doctor, and how he’s supporting young B. At which point K.D. showed up and asked for a little tobacco. R. shook his hand. For five minutes they were “thick as thieves.” No sooner had K.D. gone than R. says to me, in these very words, “I can’t stand him. He’s a liar, a fraud, it’s a disgrace.” In fact, K.D. is sleeping with young B., whom R. wants to sleep with. It’s funny, but at the end of the day, what good can come from it? Five minutes later young B. showed up, K.D. hanging all over her. All that over drinks and sleeping arrangements. R. complaining to the waiter that his glass wasn’t full enough: “If I were to claim my five centiliters.” I didn’t know one was entitled to five centiliters.

  October 7

  Today I went to the Margotte farm by bicycle. Left this morning, in the most gloriously fine weather, and returned at six o’clock at dusk through a very beautiful autumn shower that released all the season’s scents. Salomé took me to see the Dragon farm – he calls it the grange – which borders ours and is up for sale. I haven’t got a penny to buy it. But I agree that it would set us up nicely. Then I would own the beautiful moor with the tall oaks and the hill where I’ve dreamed of building a house. I can’t bear the Manosque landscape. I think I’d find peace there. I only own part of the moor with the oaks, enough to build on, but in a limited way. Of course it would be magnificent if I could buy the Dragon farm. I’m imagining a workroom for myself due north with a window to the east. A mistake in our country of strong north winds, but so what, the wind will blow right against my window. I like a little bitter cold on my hands in the winter to heighten the comfort of the fire. But of course I haven’t got the first penny for all that. Well, too bad, let’s take a look anyway, the view doesn’t cost anything. Or the dream. The Dragon farmer, his old wife, and his daughter (married, four children, four boys, she’s thirty years old) (her husband lives in Berre, a factory worker no doubt. She’s there to eat, she says; she says she has gained four kilos). These three characters plus a little boy of five, horribly dirty (enormous tears in the young woman’s eyes, and black streaks running down her bare calves and thighs, which you could see beneath her half-open skirt), were sitting on the stones in the yard, stripping millet stalks with their bare hands. We made a grand tour of the estate, Salomé, the Dragon farmer, and me. It would complete the picture, no doubt about it. The more I look at it, the more I feel that it must be bought. That without it the Margotte farm is nothing (which isn’t true). I can understand the desire to expand for someone whose whole game this is. It’s enthralling. The Dragon farmer has no teeth, a blond mustache, an old white hat, a good little belly. Tall. Walks slowly. Keeps his land like a pig. We have a friendly dispute over three hundred square meters of moor that I’ve always considered mine. Then he shakes hands with us and quietly returns home. It’s raining.

  October 10

  I believe that I’m deeply grateful for everything that forcefully cuts me off from the world. I’m coming to lose my friends with joy. Maybe I wouldn’t be losing them if they were my friends. I responded to two young Bordeaux students regarding the article by Maurice Wullens on Jeunes Forces. Those two young men had written a very fair letter. And I answered Hélène L. on the same topic. I must explain myself here regarding that article, since I don’t want to explain myself elsewhere.

  October 11

  This evening an anxious Élise came into my office and admitted to me that she was frightened. I asked her why and she hesitated. Finally she confessed that she was afraid for me because of the assassination attempts. I asked her why anyone would kill me. She said, “I don’t know but the revolution has begun, I’m afraid for you. I would be less anxious if you hid. Go to our farms, go wherever you want. Don’t worry about us. Don’t stay here for us.” I tried to make her understand that there’s no reason for anyone to kill me.

  Finished the third scene of the last act. Two more scenes. I can’t wait to be done so I can start both Fragments and Les Grands Chemin at the same time. But maybe I will finish Deux Cavaliers first. But I’m in too much of a hurry finally to work on the big subject. I’ll work on everything at the same time. And so the work must take the place for me of whatever is my subject. Did not finish clarifying my ideas on the Wullens case.

  October 12

  I can easily see Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea as a film. Because they’re so vivid, Roquetin’s silent schemes. Roquetin about to throw the stone. Roquetin who can’t or doesn’t dare fetch the paper. R. in front of his mirror. Life’s dialogues and life’s uneventfulness. But who for an actor? Why The Three Musketeers? Because there’s action? There’s action here as well. It would have to be a very long film. But if it gave us Nausea, what a triumph! The Art of Cinema: this would be it. There’s as much superimposition as you could want in this project, and “parallel lives,” and dramatic reversals – these were timidly attempted elsewhere (Blanchar’s film – dream of the jealous wife) – and beautiful symphonies in black and white or in color; so, grays and blues with ethereal golds for Rollebon, and the poetry of The Threepenny Opera. I can really see it. But how to do the whole book: not to cut anything, and get both the speeded up and slow motion. You’re talking about one fantastic night!

  October 13

  This evening at six o’clock Aline came in to announce the visit of two gendarmes. I told her to show them in. They came to ask me for information on Lucien Jacques. It seems it’s primarily a matter of supplies. Supplies? What, the black market? What a joke! Gentlemen, if you cou
ld see L.J., in five minutes you’d understand what a joke this is. But they insisted, and I insisted, he’s poor, he doesn’t give a damn about money, he’s sick. He lives alone. He doesn’t need anything. So then they came to the point. It seems he’s supposed to be playing a major role in resupplying the resisters. Again, gentlemen, I laugh, that’s an even bigger joke. Lucien never does anything political. Nothing political, stays away from all that. (Meanwhile I’m anxious to point out that Lucien Jacques is a Gentleman. You can’t tell by what I’ve said that he’s a poet and a painter. Nor if you saw his house, because he’s poor. But he is a very important, very famous man. I have to keep insisting upon that, because being a poet, painter, poor – that’s no good to a gendarme. They sit up and take notice when I say that he’s very close to certain important figures.) Finally one of the gendarmes said to me, “And you, what do you do exactly?” “Well you see, I write, plays for the theater, for example, you know, right now, a play for the theater –” “Does it have anything to do with French?” “What???” “Yes,” he said, “with French.” (I thought maybe Le Français was a newspaper they imagined I contributed to and I was about to say no, and then I took a chance:) “You mean French composition?” (the gendarme lets out a sigh) “Yes, that’s it! French composition.” “Oh, well, yes,” I say, “that’s related to what I do, it’s a little like French compositions.” “Ah,” says the gendarme, “because that’s exactly what I have to do, a French composition.” (I must have made a strange face!) After a pause I ask, “And what is this French composition?” “One often lies to his bosses, sometimes to his peers, never to his subordinates.” (I am literally flabbergasted! I make him repeat it three times!!) I say to him, “Well that would certainly get me all muddled up.” Nevertheless I try to explain to him, for example, that one lies to his bosses to avoid a responsibility; to his peers to seem superior (!), and never to his subordinates because commanding them is sufficient! That he understands well enough. But then I say to him, “Really, aren’t those strange questions to be asked? Afterwards, won’t they say to you: so, you lie to your superiors?” He’s puzzled. I am too. “So you should begin,” I say, “by telling them that one must never lie, in any case whatsoever. Because in my opinion,” I say, “that whole thing is a trap.” He laughs quietly and says, “That wouldn’t surprise me.”