Evening star., 1947-04-27
French Author
Reminds Us of
TheOId Paris

TheOId Paris |
AuREL1kN |
By Louis dragon. Translated
by Eithne wilkins. fDuell, Sloan
& Pearce, z Dols.;: s6.)
Reviewed by
CARTER BROOKE JONES.
When a distinguished French
writer who fought in both world
wars and finally in the under
ground, who has been, among other
things, Communist and surreal-
tst, can turn aside from the eco
nomic hopelessness and the dis
ordered apathy that surround
Frenchmen today, to write a two
volume novel about the frothy
mores of the Paris of 1922, it must
mean something. Or is it only a
wistful memory of a lost world?
If some author of an unbending
conservatism, who had continued to
live in the past, had written this
romance, it would not have been
surprising. But M. Aragon has
been identified with every passing
trend in French art and politics,
from Dadaism to Sovietism, and no
Frenchman has taken a more vigor-
Gus part in the tortured history of
the last eight years. He might have
. been expected to write bitterly of
today or about the years Of bond
age, when he won the title of Poet
of the French Resistance.
A Hopeful Sign.
It is to wonder. 1t could be con-
strued as a hopeful sign when such
q writer complies such a monu-
ment of words about the old Paris
and a theme always dear to French
novelists, lamour, which in their
hands may mean something more
or something less than our word
love.
Despite the fearful loss of life
which France suffered in the first
World War, Paris, the fountainhead
of French life, was essentially un-
changed by that war. I well re-
member the way Paris looked when
I was there on a mission for G-2I
during the darkest days of 1918.
The Germans were hardly 20 miles
away. Yet nothing stopped. The
boulevards seemed carefree. There
was even a Beethoven festival at the
Calonne-LamoureuX Symphony, as
if to show the contempt in which
the French held these modern Ger
mans, and the nostalgia LA Bo-
heme" was at thee Opera House.
II took more than that war to
change Paris-it took occupation
and the slow disintegration of 1940-
As. Thus the Paris of 1922 which
inspired "Aurelien" was, in spirit,
much like the city was in 1912 or
1890.
bourgeois society.
M. Aragon has written his TOO
page opus about an upper bourgeois
Partisan society which included a
famous actress, a painter or two and'|
few literary figures, but consisted
mostly of business men and their
unstable wives. If the author still
believes in Communism, you'd never
know it from this book. Unlike our
own left-wing writers, he is able to
detach himself completely from
whatever doctrines he adheres to
and put himself in the place of his
characters.
Aurelien Leurtillois faces a pur-
poseless life after fighting through
World War I, on top of four years
Of peacetime military service, back
of which was adolescence. At 80,
he has never been in love, though
he has had his share of love affairs.
Then he finds himself desperately
in love with Berenice Morel, un-
happy wife of a chemist in the
provinces. She returns his feeling,
but will not yield to him. She has
no scruples. But she is a perfec-
zionist; she has a passion for the
absolute, which, as the narrator
explains, may be in love or in
dress or in power, and accordingly
you will have Don Juan, Beau
Brummel, Napoleon" And every
one with this sense of the absolute
inevitably renounces all chances of
happiness" Certainly Berenice
does, and with her Aurelien.
Sharp Drama.
The story is mercilessly long
drawn. M. Aragon is writing about
superficial people, but never super
ficially. He probes endlessly, trying
to discover what they are and why.
If you can get through the first
volume-a chore, indeed-you'n find
the second much more interesting.
There is sharp drama in the later
phases.
So complex are the relationships
OF the group depicted that it's often
hard to remember who is whose
mistress at the moment. But, as M.
Aragon stresses, such experiments
in affection are one thing, and love
is quite another, even to French
sophisticates. Marriage is still an
other thing.
There is an epilogue 18 years
after, when France is about to fall.
But this is only tragic denoue-
ment. Nearly all the story is in the
year 1922 and in that Paris which
M. Aragon describes in such loving
detail-the Paris which never is
dated, but lives in a continuity
which so often has inspired writers
and artists and musicians. 1t is
as much a mood. state of mind,
- rifU