Palais de la Mutualité
Sunday afternoon, June 23. Dexter Jones walked out the front entrance of the apartment building on rue de Bac where he lived in the middle of Paris’s Left Bank. He walked towards the river taking enjoyment in the afternoon sunlight of the warm June day. Reaching the River Seine, he turned right and walked in the shade of tall trees bordering the river towards the Latin Quarter. He passed the majestic edifice of the Institute de France. Looking beyond the walled parapet separating the walkway from the languidly flowing waters of the river below, he saw the Île de la Cité, the castle-like island dominated by the twin bell towers of Cathédrale Notre Dame. Walking further, he passed the little park in front of the Church of Saint-Julien le Pauvre. Then he turned into the warren of small Latin Quarter streets towards Place Maubert and the Palais de la Mutualité just beyond, the largest public meeting place on the Left Bank.
Inside the grand salle of the steamy Palais, he found the place packed to the roof with more than three thousand boisterous people attending the International Writers Congress for the Defense of Culture. The event was a major response by the European intellectual Left to the rise of Nazism in Germany. The Congress had been organized by the two Andrés: André Gide, the grand old man of French literature, and André Malraux, the charismatic young lion of revolutionary literature, the embodiment of the young committed intellectual, trés engagé in the slanging banter of the sidewalk cafés. Walking down an aisle, absently listening to the speaker at the podium drone on like a Moscow party functionary, Dexter saw two women walking up the aisle. Recognizing them, he smiled and said, “Madame Beach, Madame Monnier, how nice to see you here today.”
Madame Beach held out her hand and said in mock disapproval, “Monsieur Jones, it is always Sylvia Beach to you. You are one of the great patrons of my bookshop,” and her smile brightened into a welcoming grin.
Dexter turned to the other woman. “Madame Monnier.”
Madame Monnier replied, “Adrienne.” She held out her hand, adding, “Dexter, you are always so gallant.”
Dexter made a small bow of his head.
Sylvia asked, “Dexter, why don’t you join us out on the sidewalk for a breath of fresh air?”
Dexter replied, “Of course.”
Out on the sidewalk, an ever-increasing throng of people, escaping from the heat and ritualistic Marxist incantations of the speaker inside, milled about. Dexter asked, “Sylvia, what do you think?”
Sylvia looked thoughtful. “Overall, the meeting is strongly Communistic,” then she brightened, “but it is truly international.”
Adrienne added, “That is a crucial issue that Malraux has raised: to be anti-Nazi, does one need also to be a Communist, or is the issue to be simply anti-Fascist?”
Sylvia nodded, adding, “That question vexes the Left Bank.”
Dexter asked, “I got here late. What about today’s speakers?”
Sylvia took on a playful tone. “Oh, I think Waldo Frank’s bright orange shirt is quite in contrast to the dreamy attitude of his speech,” as she described the speech of the previous speaker, a militant intellectual from New York representing the League of American Writers, a Communist front group. After outlining Frank’s points, she tartly noted with an amused smile, “He of course expressed his commitment to the working class.”
Dexter laughed at Sylvia’s playful comment.
Adrienne shook her head in disappointment and said, “Gustav Regler took up that very point. In his address to the convention he argued that the ineptitude of Communist propaganda is the problem; the Communists in Berlin prattled on about the working class rather than engaging the feelings of the masses. The Nazis just swept to popular victory on an emotional wave. The Nazis outclass the Left at propaganda—completely.”
Dexter nodded in agreement at Adrienne’s insight, a finding he would share back at the embassy.
Sylvia nudged the conversation in a new direction. “Unfortunately, several important woman writers were ill and could not attend.” Looking at Adrienne, she added, “And Adrienne declined to speak. So it was all quite dominated by men.”
Sylvia glanced in towards the auditorium and said with great amusement, eyes twinkling, “So the men, these lions of the Left, are inside roaring away.”
Dexter laughed and then said to Sylvia, “Many think, including me, that your bookstore is the geographic center of modern literature. What is the impact of all of this talk on literature?”
Sylvia smiled. “We see that new winds are blowing. For example, American literature has turned left. The leading writers—Dos Passos, Farrell, and Steinback—are portraying the struggles of the masses caught up in economic chaos, which is now an almost universal condition. Books are now judged by their commitment to social concern.”
Dexter replied, “So literature is becoming part of politics.”
Sylvia replied, “Here in France literature has always been more closely intertwined with politics than in America.” Then Sylvia nudged Adrienne and whispered, “See, I told you, Dexter speaks some of the best French in the American embassy.”
Dexter smiled and said, “Fluency is in reverse order of diplomatic rank in our embassy.”
Adrienne clapped her hands together like a little girl and exclaimed, “How truly American!”
The three of them laughed. Then Dexter said in an undertone to Adrienne, “It was not always so,” and then he broke into the French patois of the West African Equatorial colonies, speaking the lilting language of the native women in the morning marketplaces.
Truly surprised, Adrienne again clapped her hands together and said, “Truly authentic.”
Astonished at Dexter’s revelation, Sylvia asked, “Where did you learn to speak like that?”
Dexter replied with easy assurance, “At the wet markets in Dakar. In the morning on my way to the Consulate, I would detour through the native quarters of that beautiful coastal city.”
Adrienne said, “You must come speak at my library. You will be a sensation. You have the gift of the mimic. My patrons love language in all the splendor of its diversity. You will be a hit!”
“My pleasure,” and Dexter gave a small bow of acceptance.
Sylvia spoke to Dexter, “We better return to the auditorium. André Chamson is to speak next.”
Dexter asked, “Do you know Chamson?”
Sylvia replied, “Of course, he is one of the Friends of Shakespeare and Company, a distinguished circle of French and American writers and patrons supporting our bookstore. André Gide was one of the founders of Friends and he is one of the chairmen of the writers’ convention; so we are here in loyal attendance.”
Dexter asked, with a touch of concern, “Your financial troubles are not critical, are they?”
Sylvia replied, “One of my mainstays for many years was the earnings as publisher of James Joyce’s epic novel Ulysses. The book is now being published commercially in the United States. Those royalties are now in the past, and what with the Depression, my little enterprise has been struggling.”
Dexter, nodding his understanding, said, “I will come by and join. Your shop has been a light for me.”
Sylvia smiled and said, “You are always so welcome at both our bookshops. And increasingly there are political discussions you will find interesting.” She turned businesslike and said, “Dexter, undoubtedly you follow French politics for your embassy. Let me add that Chamson also serves as a political aide to Édouard Daladier when he is in ministerial office,” as she mentioned the name of the Radical Socialist political leader, former prime minister, and frequent minister of defense, one of the big political names in 1930s France. Sylvia continued, “The Radical Socialists fund the weekly newspaper Vendredi that is edited and published by Chamson and his friends. So what Chamson says has reach. And the Radical Socialists will come to power as part of the Popular Front in next May’s general election.”
Adrienne said, “Let’s go in,” and she turned and led the way into the auditorium.
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sp; Inside, walking down the aisle, Dexter held out his arm and said, “Here are some seats with a good view of the podium.” The three sidled down the row and took their seats.
Chamson approached the podium and Sylvia nudged Dexter and said, “I have not seen him like this; he is pale with anger. The last speaker must have been intolerably bad.”
Adrienne added, “But look at André’s determination.”
Chamson launched into the day’s theme, nationalism and culture, with a determined attack on nationalism. A gifted writer, his speech was in electrifying contrast to the doctrinaire drabness of the previous Communist speakers who, in Dexter’s opinion, spoke as if reciting production quotas from the appendix of a five-year plan.
Dexter whispered to Sylvia, “A great political performance.”
Sylvia smiled and nodded in agreement.
On the podium, Chamson, with a gathering voice, soared into a rousing conclusion “to warn our adversaries that I am their enemy because I have been French ever since France existed…Because I am linked to this soil by its cemeteries and its furrows. Because I have tried to sing them, the first of a long line of peasants who could speak only in low voices, following the rhythms and the splendor of my people.”
The audience jumped to its feet and gave a clapping, thundering round of applause as Chamson walked back to his seat on the platform. Sylvia turned to Dexter and said, “We better head for the exit while we can; Adrienne and I have to get back to our shops. Business is always good after these sessions.”
The next morning, in the American embassy, Dexter wrote a short report concluding that the Soviet Union’s skill at organizing the conference was excellent, but that Moscow’s unimaginative control of the speakers made the proceedings dull and bombastic. He stressed Adrienne’s point that Nazi propaganda was highly effective at capturing the imaginations of large segments of the broad public. In the future, the Nazis could be counted on to successfully splinter public opinion in those countries where it sought influence through its skillful use of simple sloganeering.