La Rive Gauche: Arte, pasión y el renacer de París, 1940–1950

by Agnès Poirier
translated by Ignacio Villaro Gumpert

A rhubarb what? A rhubarb tart! A Jean-Paul who? A Jean-Paul Sartre! John Cleese, Rhubarb Tart Song (1968)

Один Жан-Поль Сартра лелеет в кармане И этим сознанием горд, Другой же играет порой на баяне Сантану и Weather Report. Аквариум, «Два тракториста» (1981)

I haven’t read anything by Jean-Paul Sartre yet. The two quotes above pretty much summarise the extent of my knowledge of him before reading this book; that is, practically nothing.

To my surprise, La Rive Gauche places Sartre and his lifelong friend Simone de Beauvoir in the very centre of French cultural life of the 1940s. And not just philosphising, as philosphers do: apparently, Sartre was selling his books by truckloads. So pretty famous then^*. Still, I feel he was given disproportionate space in the book. (Cf. meagre one page allotted to his neighbour on the book cover, one Miles Davis.) I have to say that both Sartre and the Beaver, together with the likes of Saul Bellow, Arthur Koestler and Pablo Picasso, come out as a thoroughly unpleasant bunch. Of course this is not the author’s fault although probably it wasn’t her intention either.

The book is carefully researched and lively written; also, well-translated. There is even a map to trace the characters’ perambulations around Paris.

Curiously enough, it was first published in English (not French, as I thought) and called Left Bank: Art, Passion and the Rebirth of Paris 1940–1950. “Left Bank”, what nonsense! Anyway, I read it in Spanish and the title sounds much better, n’est-ce pas? I found the Part One, Mi maestra fue la guerra: julio de 1938 – agosto de 1945 (“War Was My Master: July 1938 – August 1945” in the original), most fascinating. (Read the first chapter, La caída “The Fall”, here.) The story of Jacques Jaujard was a revelation for me — I wish the book focused more on true heroes like him rather than “the Family”.

*	In the film I just watched, L’Événement, the literature students of the early sixties compare Camus with Sartre; the discussion does not go in favour of the latter who they feel is too opaque. By the end of the decade, I suppose, “Jean-Paul who” became largely irrelevant.