Paris after the Liberation 1944-1949

been more fiercely defensive of Elsa than Aragon. When he was invited without her to an official lunch at the Quai d’Orsay, he rang Jacques Dumaine, the
chef de protocole,
in a state of high indignation. Dumaine explained that to invite men without their wives was the usual practice at midday. ‘Monsieur,’ retortedAragon, ‘I would have you know that Elsa Triolet is neither man nor woman, but a great French writer; as for myself, I have my own standards and do not wish to condone the practices of this government which calls itself provisional.’
    Aragon was perhaps particularly touchy on the subject of Elsa Triolet’s standing as a writer during that second half of 1945, because many people had voiced their suspicions about the way she had won the Prix Goncourt on 2 July for her novel
Le Premier Accroc coûte deux francs
. They pointed out that with three members of the Académie Goncourt under a cloud, including Sacha Guitry, the only way to win back public support for France’s most important literary prize was to vote for a book which would be solidly supported by the Communist Party. Critics pointed out that Dorgelès, the Goncourt chairman, had approached Aragon several months before the vote; and later Aragon had published an article of his in
Les Lettres françaises
. It smelled strongly of a‘
dédouanement
’ deal.
    Triolet and Aragon, ‘
le couple royal
’ of Communist letters, received guests in the palatial premises which the National Committee of Writers had taken over by the Élysée Palace, and entertained the most favoured to tea in their apartment amid the
objets d’art
they had collected. The novelist Marguerite Duras, on the other hand, cultivated a far more informal atmosphere. Her apartment on the rue Saint-Benoît rapidly became a semi-permanent rendezvous for Communist intellectuals, more like a private club than a salon. Her friends included the poet Francis Ponge, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Clara Malraux (who had separated from André during the war), the Spanish Communist writer Jorge Semprun, Jean-Toussaint Desanti and his wife, Dominique, and André Ulmann, the editor of
Tribune des nations
. The writer Claude Roy compared it to a meeting place of the Russian intelligentsia in the last century.
    The post-Liberation ferment, after the stuffiness of Vichy, was as much a clash of generations as of politics. One sociologist contrasted ‘the bourgeois theatre of our father’s generation with its stories about the stock exchange and finance, its calculations of income and dowries’ with the new theatre ‘where everyone proclaims their contempt for wealth, the impotence of finance, the boredom of middle-class life. Anouilh’s characters talk of “your filthy money”.’
    Saint-Germain-des-Prés was unlike anywhere else in post-war Europe. In London, Edmund Wilson found a sense of depression and anticlimax. Graham Greene told him that he even felt ‘a nostalgia for the hum of a robot bomb’. But in Paris, the Liberation had given the intelligentsia a powerful symbol of hope, even though the country was bankrupt. Rather as the Grandmaison doctrine in 1914 had represented the passionate belief that French
élan
would overcome German artillery, for intellectuals after the Liberation it was an article of faith that ideas would triumph over ‘filthy money’.

16
    After the Deluge
    During the most turbulent and difficult periods after the war, Parisians had deliberately kept life as normal as possible. The concierge would swab out the entrance hall in the same way at the same time; the grocer would chalk his prices, however astronomical, with the same circular precision on miniature blackboards; the waiter would produce a menu with his usual nonchalant flourish. Office workers and bureaucrats would greet each other each morning with the customary handshake, before any mention was made of outside events.
    Paris remained a city of striking social contrasts, despite the political and intellectual longing for egalitarianism. This time, however, there was a difference. Parisians were divided not only by traditional class structure. Within their own social circles, there were the
bien vus,
credited with a
jolie Résistance,
and the
mal vus,
who had encountered
quelques ennuis à la Libération
(a few problems at the Liberation).
    In September 1944, several days after his arrival, the British ambassador was invited to a lunch given in his honour by Charles de Polignac. Those with a good