Sept. 5, 1940.

Castel Novel
Varetz
Correze

Dear Matty and darling Hannah,

I was slow in writing you after the fighting was over, because everything seemed to be very temporary. I was still in the army until August first, and I had no definite address. The fact that we couldn't go back to Paris made everything more difficult.

In a few words here is what happened: I found myself in the front line of the first French troops that entered Belgium, and I served through the whole campaign of Flanders under conditions that were extremely adventurous. They gave me the Croix de Guerre for that; can you imagine! Our army was one of those that were encircled, and it was only by a pretty improbable piece of luck that we were able to reach the sea and embark at Dunkerque. After less than two days in England, we returned to France by way of Brest, and we were in contact with the German army from the lower Seine until we had retreated south of Angoulême. I was taken prisoner in that city on the last day of the war, but I succeeded in escaping with thirty men and six trucks. It was a rapid and romantic war for me, but its consequences for the country are more terrible than you can even imagine.

My wife lost track of me twice, first in Flanders, where for three weeks we were cut off from the rest of the army, and then during the battle of France, from the moment when the enemy crossed the Seine. (Just think, we fought at Vernon, and at Giverny, where we used to live with Malcolm!) Elsa was in

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Paris and didn't want to leave, thinking that I might arrive in the suburbs with my regiment. Fortunately I was able to get a message to her at the very last minute, and she left at the moment when the roads were most crowded with refugees. She went to a village near Bordeaux, and was there still when the Germans occupied that region. Nevertheless, she succeeded in making her way into the unoccupied zone, and went up and down the roads looking for my division. She found it by a miracle. Since then we have never been separated; she stayed with me while I was still in the army; and when I became a civilian again, on August first, we spent three weeks with a friend in the country. But our vacation ended ten days ago, and we have to look life in the face. It is a life that is neither easy nor amusing.

...

In the occupied zone my books, like those of many other French writers, can no longer be sold, while in the free zone that question does not even arise, since all humans in the printed copies are in Paris, and are not allowed to be shipped across the line of demarcation. It seems quite impossible to earn a living, henceforth, as a writer. And there is even the question whether I can find any other sort of work. By being very careful with what remains from my army pay, I think we can live here in a small way until November first. After that who knows...

I am writing poems, and as long as the war lasted I was still able to publish them from time to time. I still write them but I keep them for myself. Elsa, whose books like mine have become unattainable, has just begun a long story, and I want her to finish it, because the beginning is marvellously vivid. But it takes a great

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deal of courage to write without knowing what will happen to what
one is writing. What a terrible road since the days we spent together
Note that the rest of this letter would be false to my meaning if
you concluded from it that I have become pessimistic. I believe on the
contrary that God moves in a mysterious way and that the gate is
strait it through which we must pass. In my country, even when it is
unfortunate, even when it is crushed, I have a confidence that there
is no way of expressing except by deeds; and there is nothing to
change in what I told you there in your country house, of which I
dream today as if it were some image of childhood or a scene from
a novel. .........

Your old friend (my hair is now completely white) who hasn't forgot-
ten you.

Louis

Gaylordsville, Conn.

December 8, 1940.

Dear, dear friends,

Having word from you, and knowing that you are
both alive, and as well as can be expected, has been like a sudden
ray of sunlight in this universal darkness. Your letters are read
and discussed by all the friends in the neighborhood, sent to New
York to other friends, translated where necessary, and kept by me
eventually to be read over and thought over. I am most happy that
the money sent by Duell Sloan and Pearce has reached you, because
I cannot think of anyone who has been more warm-hearted and puncti-
lious in all this business than Sam Sloan. I shall communicate the
contents of your letter of November 15 to him immediately, as I
know that he has been making inquiries at his bank to discover why
you did not receive the full sum.

We are all as proud of your military decorations
as if they had been won by a son or a brother, and we frequently
boast to our acquaintances of knowing "a mere literary man" who was
brave enough to do what others would have shrunk from. We are well
aware of the difficulty you must be having in working on your new
book, but I have the greatest confidence in your being able to turn
out a great novel whatever the circumstances of writing--witness your
travels when you were working on "Les Voyageurs." I want Elsa to
know that as soon as I have finished my present work I mean to get
going on her stories. I hope to be able to place them in a literary
journal somewhere, and although this may not mean any money for her,
still it will bring her name before the American public in a way that
will be useful to her. If her new novel tells anything of her re-
cent adventures, I am sure that it will be enormously interesting
to American readers.

I have already completed a first draft of "Les Voyageurs," and
am working on the revision with Matty's help. If it were not so im-
portant for you, and for all of us, in a way, for the book to ap-
pear as soon as possible, I should have liked to spend two or three
years over the translation, and have you settled nearby so that we
could worry over it together. Duell Sloan and Pearce have seen three
completed chapters, and I will quote you a message they sent me
this morning: "I'll stick by my evaluation of this as a great book,
all right. And it's a wholly remarkable translation."

First I must assure you that I have been paying a great deal
of attention to the differences in names which seemed to worry you.
I believe I have caught most of them already, and any which may have
escaped me will certainly be caught in the proofs. There are also
a few, a very few mistakes, like variations in Yvonne's family back-
ground between Volumes I and II, which have been corrected by me.
You know there are two great difficulties in making a translation
from another language--one, the altogether different temper of speech
in two languages, and two, the particular traits of style of a par-
ticular writer which want to be transmuted, not translated, into
another idiom than his own. I have always said of your writing, for
instance, that it is the closest to French speech that I have ever
read. It is man speaking, not man writing. Well, you can understand
what problems that would offer in English, since the habits of
English speech are so much less staccato, and in a way, so much
less poetic. Whether the habits of speech influence the habits of
mind, or vice versa, I cannot tell, but the important thing to me
has been to try to cast it all in a language frame that will never
offer a stumbling block to an English reader, without detracting
from the Frenchness of the running story. I mean that I do not

want your characters to think like Americans or Englishmen, but they
will have to talk that way. I am explaining all this to justify an
absence of literalness in the translation, which I hope will meet
with your approval.

As for the cuts, I beg that you will place yourself in our hands
on that score. If you had had the time, I know that you would have
cut considerably in the first volume yourself. But with all the dif-
ficulties of communication between here and France, I feel sure that
your suggestions would come too late for spring publication. I have
been most careful to cut nothing on which any other part of the story
depended. For example, although I have shortened the part on Law
I have not cut it out altogether, in order, as you say, that the le-
gend of Mercadier in Volume II may be more comprehensible. We are try-
ing to make this book a great success on the basis of what we know
of American reading habits. And then, who knows? there may very well
be a great clamor for you to come here and lecture on literary sub-
jects...

There is a great deal more that I would like to say, but there
is no time. We think of you, as I have said, constantly, and some-
what happily, I must confess, knowing that you are together. In these
days one wants to stand up and shout: "Hello! Are you there? " to all
one's friends across the sea. The children are well and gay; Matty
is working very, very hard, but keeps his health. The Cowleys have
been having trouble: Muriel was extremely ill. I read her your last
letter when she returned from the hospital and it seemed to do her
good. It would do us all good if we could see you and embrace you.

Yours as ever

Mar.7,1945

Dear Louis:

I am very grateful for the kindness you've shown to our poor soldier boy. He has written with great enjoyment of his two visits, and given us a graphic description of both sides of you in the flesh. It was as if you were staying in our house again.

We have thought of you all the time, and lately have even been looking after your interests. I suppose Sam Sloan has told you about the plans for your books, in which your American friends are helping. We have seen Peter Rhodes who has written a strong memoir on the Underground Writers in France. I think now you have more friends in the U.S. than you ever dreamed of.

I have had so much to tell you that--I never even made a beginning. Then communication seemed so awkward and slow that a reply would come from an entirely different stage of affairs. The construction of the peace (that may have come by the time you receive this) appears a very obscure and even cross-eyed performance. I understand and yet do not understand.

It was suggested to me that I come to France (also the Pacific, over which I flew in 1943) with an OWI delegation that left in February. But I have preferred to avoid any official connection with my government--I have refused to write for Roosevelt. I prefer to write about the politicos not to try to be a small one. (My deafness is now a problem for foreign travel--but perhaps one day, later.)

We are delighted at what we hear of Elsa's great literary successes. I enjoyed some of her nouvelles a good deal, and always knew she was a brilliant young woman. Hannah, with her boys, now man-sized, is active as a journalist and translator, and I joke about making her support me and turning it into a小说。

It was great news also that you have quit the editorship of CeSoir. We feared it would kill you. You have your best years as a poet and novelist before you, and you should preserve your strength for that--you have already shown what a courageous writer can do in a time of action. I just received a copy of AURELIAN and read the first 100 pages with great amusement--for some reason I read the epilogue first, which was very different affair. Also received DIANE which seems magnificent. As Philip Toynbee wrote, the French alone have written well during this war--and I say because they were in prison for four years. Do you remember Julien Sorel on the advantages and liberties to be found in prison.

2

There are many things wrong with this country, as doubtless with France. Roosevelt's politics will be directed for many months or years to winning over our reactionary majority(coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats) to support his peace program. But when I go to news films and see the idiotic destruction and Neanderthal folly of this war-- it is even more terrible in the Pacific and Asia--I am less afraid of Three Old Men and the Yalta Agreement and more afraid that stupid little people will forget.

The English are giving nothing away. They like their property and they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. Is De Gaulle also like that? I believed in him as a usable symbol, for unity and action--but now I consign him to the hands of the French people. Greece was an example of the Nazism right in our midst. But I too have faith that "Humpty-Dumpty" can never be put together again as he was before he fell off the wall and broke in pieces--you remember the old fable.

Do you need anything we can send you? Clothes? I hear there are absolutely no clothes in Europe. I have grown broad and solid--but Sam is skinny and long like you. And food?

We had a fine report from Prof. Gershoy of the OWI, on his visit with you.

I imagine your prospects as a writer in France and Europe are splendid. They are improving also in the U.S. It is a great thing to have as a publisher so warm a friend as Sam, and you should by all means continue to publish through him. His house is quite successful--in fact everybody is rich here, that is one of the sad paradoxes of the war, which should explain the apparent political backwardness of the U.S. I was going to suggest that in addition to having a good publisher you should find it practical to use a literary agent here, paying him a percentage commonly 10%. I say this in your interest. I leave all my business dealings to one of the long-established and trustworthy agents who handles films, international rights, etc. You can easily inquire and have one sent for you.

After "Aurelian" I am going to plunge into Mme. Triolet's literature. --Maybe we need a little imprisonment to make us write better here? But then it would not be like America.

Love and kisses

PAUL ELEK PUBLISHERS LTD

38 Hatton Garden, London, E.C.1 Telephone Holborn 1087-1088
Telegrams Inland-Elekboox Smith London. Telegrams Overseas-Elekboox London

Your ref. CAA/MG
Our ref.

July 18th 1949.

Monsieur Louis Aragon,
Réacteur,
"Ce Soir",
Paris.

Dear Monsieur Aragon,

I understand that Mr. Elek endeavoured
to contact you when in Paris, to discuss the possibility of
publishing in England your latest novel and the new collec-
tion of your poems, but that you were too busy to see him
before he left.

Knowing that Jack Lindsay, a very close
friend of mine, is well known to you, I consulted him and he
suggested I write to you direct.

We should be very interested in publishing
your work here if it is available, and I understand that Jack
Lindsay would be pleased to translate the poems if you were
agreeable.

We shall be pleased to hear from you.

Directors: P. Elek (Managing, British formerly Hungarian)

All manuscripts and other documents submitted to the firm, whether at the request of the firm or otherwise, are submitted entirely at the author's risk; and, while every possible care is taken, in the event of loss of or damage to manuscripts, etc., the company cannot hold itself in any way responsible.

Sept.11,1961

My dear old friend:

How are you doing these days? It is a pity that we both tend to rare correspondence with our old friends. (In my case it means no diminution of feeling, and I believe this holds true of you as well.)

I was very happy to see that your Semaine Sainte is almost at the book stalls. I believe there is much advance interest and I have heard in the publishing trade that Putnam is doing a good job of "promotion." The chief editor is a good man I once met, but the boss, Minton, Hannah did not like, as in fact nobody else does. He is the money man there. Nevertheless we hope for good results. Anyway you have a real public that in America that has not ceased to remember you.

My book of reminiscences is now in press, to appear in January 1962. I enjoyed myself writing of it. Despite the disarming or misleading title it is mostly about the early 1920's and the Dadaists, as well as about New York, etc. The early readers of the manuscript, including my young editor at Holt, liked what they read.

I am checking the facts. I have one question for you: When did you and Elsa first meet--what year I mean. I put it down as 1929 tentatively. (After I left France again in 1928)

1) We have been trying to make a little collection of photos. I need very much a glossy photograph of you in the 1920's, preferably toward 1922 or 1923. Do you have one you can send me by air-mail. Naturally I speak of you a great deal, and with strong sympathy.

2) I need badly one of those group-pictures of the Paris branch of the mouvement Dada. I cannot find a good print in new York, and may have to order a reproduction from a book or magazine, which would be somewhat unclear. And of the Surrealiste in reunion at Centrale Surrealiste, 1924.

If you have someone to help you do it, perhaps you could have a few photos sent me by air-mail at the earliest moment, and I would be careful to return them. It would be a great service to me. (The good pictures of you I have available, at Harcourt, Brace, etc. show you at 40 years.)

There is a charming "medallion-photo" of you and Breton in profile, together, in an old magazine, looking like a pair of young lovers (!) dating from 1922. If I don't hear from you, I threaten that I may have this reproduced and retouched for engraving by an expert photographer. If this be chantage make the most of it!

3) If you have an early photo of that beautiful Russian blonde Elsa please send that also, and of the period.

My spies tell me you are terribly busy with a work of modern history. I hope you can manage to do these services for me without great trouble.

I have spent about eighteen months mostly writing the little book above mentioned. As I had long felt myself a frustrated humorist, it gave me pleasure to write. There is virtually no scandal in it, certainly no unpublished scandal, although the tone is scarcely respectable. Probably no one will agree with me, and some will try to have me killed. But I am used to that.

Hannah and I have been very busy in the country as well as in the city. I worry about your cutting grass with a scythe, and wonder if you have been able to buy a motor-sickle bar, the kind you walk behind. I am developing more back trouble and find it difficult to run my power-mower over the lawns here, but still active and keep my weight down.

Our love to Elsa and you.

As ever,