Jefrey Mehlman. Emigre New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-44. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. 209 pp. $38.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8018-6286-1.
Reviewed by Jerrold Seigel
Published on H-Urban (September, 2000)
Hypocrisy, Honor, and the Dilemmas of Emi‐ but concise and well-focused chapters, all based gration on things they wrote and did while living in New Jefrey Mehlman calls Emigre New York a York, but he places these activities in the larger "speculative memoir:" it is an attempt to confront context of each person's career, as well as inside a past that both is and is not his own. The past is a the mesh of issues and debates that linked and di‐ revealing moment in the history of the French in‐ vided the French exiles from each other. One of tellectual and literary culture whose charms and the book's strengths is the unusual interest of lures have inspired much of Mehlman's career (by many of the texts and arguments Mehlman choos‐ now long and distinguished) as a critic. During es to focus on, and it is magnifed by his percep‐ World War II, a stellar cast of French fgures (ac‐ tiveness and intelligence as a reader. There is companied by many more lesser-known folk) much to learn from this book, and much to be lived, worked, plotted, and argued in Manhattan, grateful for in it, even if one ends up not wholly leaving traces that could still be discerned in the satisfed with the kind of closure-or lack of it-the New York where Mehlman grew up after the War. author gives to his material. The notable French fgures on whose lives and Another way to describe Emigre New York writing he concentrates include Denis de Rouge‐ would be as a critical meditation on the moral mont, Simone Weil, George Steiner (born in Vien‐ ambiguities engendered by war and defeat, on the na, but living in Paris with his family until the alternatives between resistance and collabora‐ outbreak of the War, and a student at the Lycee tion, commitment and hesitation, conviction and Francais in New York), Louis Rougier, Antoine de self-questioning. French emigres faced these is‐ Saint-Exupery, Saint-John Perse (Alexis Leger), sues in the context created by the armistice of and Claude Levi-Strauss. Others, such as Andre 1940, the creation of the Vichy regime, and the op‐ Breton, make smaller appearances. Mehlman position to it organized and led by Charles de deals with each of his major subjects in separate Gaulle. But they approached them by way of an H-Net Reviews intellectual heritage that pre-dated the war, a her‐ fort to get the allies to lift the blockade took the itage that was rich in materials for moral and po‐ form of an attempt to conclude a secret "gentle‐ litical refection, but also in some ways poorly men's agreement" with Churchill in London, ac‐ constituted, or even perversely unft, to confront cording to which Petain would promise not to the nature of Nazism and its horrors. These two cede either France's still undefeated feet or her coordinates provide the book with its implicit colonial bases to the Germans, in preparation for lines of organization, linking the individual dis‐ an eventual participation in action against Hitler, cussions (or at least the best of them) to each oth‐ in return for which the British would relax the er. blockade and cease their BBC attacks on Petain. Like most people today, the majority of Just what transpired in Rougier's meeting with French emigres during the 1940s hardly hesitated Churchill became a matter for much contention to give their loyalty to de Gaulle and the free after the war, but Mehlman ofers evidence that France for which he stood, rejecting the Vichy his account was accurate, treats him sympatheti‐ government as defeatist or traitorous. However cally (pointing out that while he maintained good morally obvious such a stance seems to us now, relations with Petain he was always at odds with there were political and diplomatic grounds for Laval), and describes him as "the lonely French questioning it at the time. The United States main‐ voice of what I am inclined to call principled tained relations with Vichy, for reasons close to Petainism in wartime New York" (132). those put forward by the philosopher Jean Wahl Lest it seem that some greater sympathy for at a Mount Holyoke colloquium in 1942. Although Vichy or its policies lurks behind this judgment, it Wahl was himself anti-Vichy, he refused to brand is worthwhile citing the general reckoning Petain as a traitor, arguing that it was far from Mehlman gives for what he calls "the Rougier- unreasonable to think, as the Marshall had, that Petain model." That model entailed an extraordi‐ England was about to succumb to the Germans in nary ethical dilemma: in the strictest sense, the summer of 1940 and that attempting to set up French national honor could be maintained only an independent French government in North insofar as French hypocrisy (the feint of collabo‐ Africa might have led the Germans to follow and ration) could be afrmed. In short, the French, in overpower it there, liquidating the last shred of the postwar world, could be viewed as honorable French independence and making impossible the only to the extent that they could be viewed as Mediterranean strategy on which the allies would hypocritical. Such was the thesis of Petain's dou‐ later rely. The person who developed these argu‐ ble jeu. It was a staggering burden, from beneath ments with most determination in the 1940s was which the French are still extricating themselves. Louis Rougier, a Tocquevillian liberal philosopher (128) But the opposite, Gaullist model had its own and friend of Walter Lippmann. Rougier was moral and practical weaknesses, among them a moved by an additional consideration, one it was prideful overestimation of the degree and impor‐ difcult for the all-out opponents of Vichy to ad‐ tance of French independence, and a refusal to dress, namely the damaging efect of the allied recognize what had really happened to the food blockade on the French population. As French. These features of Gaullism were pithily Mehlman notes, "The issue was a thorny one: to highlighted by Antoine de Saint-Exupery when he send food to occupied France was arguably to fuel countered de Gaulle's famous declaration "We the Nazi war efort. But to contribute to the mass have lost a battle, we have not lost the war" with starvation or severe malnutrition of France, it the more honest "Tell the truth, general. We lost was countered, was ultimately to further the de‐ the war; our allies will win it" (147). Mehlman has mographic ends of Hitler's War" (3). Rougier's ef‐ these considerations in mind when he concludes
2 H-Net Reviews his defense of Rougier by remarking that "the vinity, in the present, an attitude he traced to the frontal, binary opposition between 'resistance' medieval Cathars and troubadours he had written and 'collaboration' was no more than the impo‐ about in Love in the Western World. Hitler found tent (because illusory) idealist misreading of a a more powerful form for this aspiration by set‐ confguration that unsettled the distinction be‐ ting Volk and Fuhrer as its objects, but the democ‐ tween the two." racies also evidenced it in their divinization of Rougier's diferences with most of his compa‐ private life. While in New York, Rougemont devel‐ triots about Petain and de Gaulle were compound‐ oped some contemporary implications of these ed by the support most exiles gave to the food ideas in The Devil's Share, published in 1942, a blockade (while many lived very comfortably in book that was at once a critique of fascism and of Manhattan), and he did not hesitate to describe its democratic opponents, in particular of his them contemptuously as "counterfeiter of patrio‐ American hosts. Like Reinhold Niebuhr and tism...the obesities of Fifth Avenue...parvenus of Jacques Maritain, Rougemont thought modern the defeat." He refused to join their organizations, democracy, particularly in its American form, and his stand against them led his application to morally superfcial and weak because it had no teach at the Ecole Libre (the French university-in- belief in evil and particularly no willingness to exile at the New School) to be rejected, the frst recognize evil inside itself. In this perspective, step in what turned out to be the end of a promis‐ Hitler appeared to him as a kind of emissary of ing academic career. He saw himself as subjected Satan, not because he was himself evil (to be sure, to punishment for a diference of opinion that he he was), but because he encouraged his enemies was willing to debate publicly but others refused to see him as the very incarnation of evil, and to discuss, and tellingly pointed to the limits the thus to deny the existence of evil in themselves, to "free" French set to freedom of thought and dis‐ repudiate the continuity between their moral an‐ cussion. It may be that there was more stubborn‐ archy and his debasement. The Devil's Share was ness and self-righteousness in this stance than thus an attack on liberal pieties, especially as they Mehlman wishes to see, but even if that is so, we were encouraged by the wartime situation. need to remember that Rougier was very far from Rougemont's critique of the moral complacen‐ being a fascist or a sympathizer, and the political cy of the democracies shared some ground with correctness demanded from him, although per‐ what was in many ways an opposite moral stance, haps understandable in a time of life-and-death Simone Weil's tortuous ethical absolutism, which confict, was hardly essential among the emigres. condemned every connection between spirit and Mehlman notes that the politicization of the Ecole power as a fall into total corruption. Weil was Libre would lead to much trouble there before the even less sympathetic to modern democracy than war ended. de Rougemont, but her reasons were ones that The moral ambiguities of wartime commit‐ made her celebrate rather than condemn spiritu‐ ments, like those evidenced in Rougier's case, alist stances like Catharism. The latter stood up were the subject of more general probing by other for the unconditional, Manichean distinction be‐ exiles. Among these was Denis de Rougemont, tween good and evil, an opposition that the Jews who condemned fascism, but simultaneously saw were the frst to confuse when they identifed God it as part of a complex of Western attitudes and with the worldly well-being of their own state and values in which democracy also took part. Rouge‐ people. It was this poisonous alloy of goodness mont traced many problems of modern life to the and worldly power that the Jews had passed onto Western aspiration to achieve perfection, even di‐ the Catholic Church, from which it had found its way into modern political ideologies. Not the least
3 H-Net Reviews of these was Nazism, whose "false mystique" was seems troubled that Trilling's resistance to Rouge‐ rooted in the example of the very people Hitler mont rested partly on his seeing "the dandyish was seeking to exterminate-Weil's own people. Baudelaire [as]...the tutelary presence hovering Her complex passion to distance herself from her over Rougemont's book" (83). I do not think I can own origins nurtured many features of her char‐ be accused of an insufcient regard for Baude‐ acter, including the heroic but self-destructive laire, but I fail to see why Trilling's critique of identifcation with the malnourished French that Rougemont should be less well received than led to her death by starvation in England follow‐ Shapiro's. Perhaps the struggle against Nazism ing her departure from New York, and the cele‐ nurtured a certain self-satisfaction and moral bration of the Dionysian "Hamites," whom she re‐ complacency in the countries that stood against garded as the victims of Semitic persecution and Hitler, but recognizing those faults does not re‐ whose modern incarnation she saw in the black quire exaggerating the commonalities between evangelicals of Harlem, visiting their churches democracy and fascism on behalf of an overly and celebrating their joyful goodness against Jew‐ metaphysical and aestheticized politics. The po‐ ish corruption in a way that makes Mehlman ask tential for falling into tyranny is not unique to whether she was not "New York's frst Afrocentric democracy, and allowing an imaginative but anti-Semite." doubtful metaphysics of evil to shape the under‐ Mehlman's chapters on Rougemont and Weil standing of how political regimes relate to each contain some of the best and most interesting ma‐ other opens the way to many questionable judg‐ terial in his book. He fully earns his claim that the ments. It is hard to know where Mehlman stands latter's New York doings show "the devastating on such issues, because he never directly address‐ meshing of what is best and worst in her thought" es or develops the connections between the politi‐ (100). I admit, however, that I end up puzzled cal questions raised by a case like Rougier's, and about just what he thinks of Rougemont's critique the philosophical meditations of de Rougement of democracy. At one point, he quotes with ap‐ and Weil. proval Meyer Shapiro's review of a book by Instead of a conclusion, Emigre New York Rougemont's old friend and colleague from the ends with a kind of allegory, the story of the ocean College de Sociologie, Roger Caillois, and suggests liner Normandie, commandeered for use as a that Shapiro's critique of the one might be applied troop ship after the American entry into the war, to the other, in that both of them give too much but severely damaged by a mysterious fre while weight to "the psychological, the mythical, the ves‐ tied up on Manhattan's west side, and eventually tigial, and metaphoric" in history, in line with a scuttled in New Jersey. The story is afecting cultural elitism that makes them both overly will‐ enough, but it seems to me a less satisfying con‐ ing to portray democracy as "the seed of fascism" clusion than some attempt to sum up and eluci‐ (72-73). Later, however, Mehlman rejects Lionel date the issues the book raises would have been. I Trilling's protestation that Rougemont "is one of am not sure whether Mehlman's choice of this those whom the word tragedy charms too much," ending stems from an impulse similar to the ones a person with a sense for the drama of the moral that feed a few other unsatisfying features of the life but not for its pain, who loses track of the book. One of these is the (to be sure imaginative moral issues at stake in real life because he sees and thought-provoking) treatment of Levi-Strauss. them too much in aesthetic terms. Mehlman calls I fnd persuasive neither the idea that the anthro‐ Trilling's critique "perfdious," which may mean pologist's campaign for preserving the distinctive‐ only that it turns Rougemont's own terms against ness of cultures was tied up with fghts within the him, but I suspect it means more, since Mehlman Ecole Libre about the separateness of French cul‐
4 H-Net Reviews ture from the American milieu where it had tem‐ porarily found a home, nor the notion that the universalist side of structuralism drew from what Levi-Strauss shared with the surrealists, while its particularist (and in Mehlman's questionable view, racist) side derived somehow from the theo‐ rization of diacritical distinctiveness found in Ro‐ man Jakobson's linguistics. Similarly, the analogy he proposes between the 1940s emigres and those of the 1790s, both presented as "'aristocrats,' the privileged subjects or citizens of an ancien regime, in sudden fight from a catastrophic 'revo‐ lution'" (3) is far more confusing than enlighten‐ ing. Fortunately, this notion is not much devel‐ oped (but then why include it?). I could add one or two more hesitations, mostly having to do with Mehlman's occasional Lacanianism, but it seems more appropriate to conclude by stating again that this is an admirable and original book from which there is much to learn. Copyright (c) 2000 by H-Net, all rights re‐ served. This work may be copied for non-proft educational use if proper credit is given to the au‐ thor and the list. For other permission, please con‐ tact [email protected].
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at https://networks.h-net.org/h-urban
Citation: Jerrold Seigel. Review of Mehlman, Jefrey. Emigre New York: French Intellectuals in Wartime Manhattan, 1940-44. H-Urban, H-Net Reviews. September, 2000.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=4497
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
5