“Book review: 'And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris' by Alan Riding - Los Angeles Times” plus 1 more |
| Posted: 11 Dec 2010 03:56 PM PST And The Show Went On Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris Alan Riding Alfred A. Knopf: 400 pp., $28.95 A lot has been written about the political, social and moral aspects of France under German occupation in World War II. Alan Riding, the former longtime New York Times cultural correspondent in Europe, now provides an arresting and detailed account of the French arts scene at the time. "And The Show Went On" is a big story and insidiously troubling. Big because, in 1940, France was the world's art capital; unquestionably in painting, and to a large extent in film, music and literature. Troubling as a reflection of what was happening in the country as a whole. The German triumph was not just a defeat; it caused a collapse. Ever since the revolution, France had been torn, sometimes bloodily, between rival ideas of herself: right against left or, with more nuance, traditional versus progressive. Marshal Pétain, who surrendered the army to the Germans and took over as their increasingly controlled proxy, belonged to the anti-Republican right; so did his supporters. Pétain's initial acceptance by most of the French was a result of war weariness and the evidence that their politics as well as their army had miserably failed. More than anything, though, it was from the hope that Pétain and his Vichy establishment could put a French stamp on the German presence, acting in some sense as an intermediary; and that life, even humiliated, would go on (except for the Jews, that is). Increasingly, as the Resistance took hold, and the Germans waged savage reprisals and occupied the rest of France, the hope proved vain and the old marshal a malevolent dodderer. In the world of the arts, things were much the same. There were a small number of active collaborators along with a few right-wing fanatics: among them such writers as Céline, Pierre Drieu La Rochelle and Robert Brasillach. There were valiant holdouts: the conductor Paul Paray who quit his orchestra to protest the purging of Jewish players, and Josephine Baker who, almost alone among nightclub entertainers, stopped performing and eventually joined the Resistance (smuggling messages in her underwear). René Char not only stopped writing; he went south to lead a large Maquis (rural resistance) detachment. Most, though, occupied the life-must-go-on middle ground. Riding's most valuable achievement is in exploring this middle ground. He is rarely judgmental as he writes of the accommodations many made: What he does is shine a humane light upon the complexity of their choices. Music hall performers and classical musicians did not stop playing because German soldiers thronged the theaters; neither did actors at the Comédie-Française. Going to Germany, as Maurice Chevalier and Charles Trenet did was another matter, even though both did their performing for French POWs. Accustomed to being invited to brilliant society parties, many stars — actors, writers, musicians — kept on going even when the guests included high-ranking Germans. The film actress Arletty not only went to the parties; she took trips with her German officer lover. "My heart is French," she announced defiantly to a post-liberation trial, "but my ass is international." An additional complexity was that although Joseph Goebbels demanded that France's arts be subordinated to Germany's, many of the Germans in Paris as enforcers and censors were cultivated men who greatly admired French culture. The German ambassador to Vichy, Otto Abetz, would sometimes intervene to help artists in trouble with the authorities. When German officials banned the singing of "La Marseillaise" in one of his plays, Sacha Guitry appealed to a ranking German general. Not only did the general revoke the ban; he and his aides attended the performance and rose for the singing. German officers would visit Picasso's studio even though some of his paintings were being burned as decadent. A much-told story has one officer holding up a "Guernica" reproduction and asking: "Did you do this?" Picasso, polite but scrupulously aloof, replied: "No, you did." Riding, with his journalist's background, can sometimes cram in a fact too many, but his weighing of the complexities of the time is splendidly shrewd. And the sections dealing with writers are a triumph (granted, they provide better quotes). The post-liberation writers' purge committee, sniffing out evidence of collaboration, rebuked some for publishing in the Vichy-controlled press. It was the only press around. André Gide and Paul Valéry, without a collaborationist bone in their bodies, briefly wrote for the Nouvelle Revue Française even after Gallimard turned it over to a pro-Vichy editor. Sartre and Camus both published. The brilliantly waspish columnist Jean Galtier-Boissière denounced the holier-than-thou attitude of the purgers (some of whom had also published): "One forgets that some of them had only their pen with which to feed their family and wrote only anodyne pieces. Does one reproach the workers at Renault for making tanks for the Wehrmacht?" The essayist Jean Guéhenno, refusing to publish, was equally waspish in denouncing those who did: "The species of the man of letters is not one of the greatest of human species. Incapable of surviving for long in hiding, he would sell his soul to see his name in print. He can stand it no longer. He quarrels only about his importance, the size of the print in which his name appears, its ranking in the table of contents. It goes without saying that he is full of good reasons." Disputation is France's oxygen, and Riding breathes it exuberantly. Eder, a former Times book critic, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1987. 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| S. Koreans hunt for lost, looted cultural treasures - Seattle Times Posted: 11 Dec 2010 06:16 AM PST SEOUL, South Korea — Hwang Pyung-woo sometimes lies awake at night cataloging in his mind South Korea's missing national treasures — the historic texts and stolen artifacts displayed in a Tokyo museum, a home in Paris, a university library in California. "I can't sleep, I'm so outraged by this," said Hwang, 50, a historian and director of Korea Cultural Heritage Policy Research Institute and one of those at the forefront of a burgeoning movement here to recover historic items removed from the country during successive waves of foreign invasion and nearly half a century of Japanese colonial rule. Thanks in part to activists such as Hwang, Seoul is taking a new, aggressive policy toward recovering its cultural treasures. The government is creating a task force to negotiate the return of more than 76,000 items around the globe in 20 nations, including more than 34,000 in Japan and 18,000 in the United States, In recent weeks, South Korea has signed agreements with Japan and France to arrange for the return of historic texts. Japan will return 1,205 Korean royal books taken during Japan's colonial rule between 1910 and 1945. The collection includes the revered Uigwe, text and illustrations documenting royal customs during the Joseon Dynasty, which lasted for five centuries until 1897. A photograph in one South Korean newspaper captured the souring national mood: It showed Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan happily displaying a set of centuries-old Korean books to South Korea's President Lee Myung-bak during a recent meeting in Tokyo. Kan beams like some museum docent, but Lee is not smiling. His shoulders are slumped. A cartoon bubble over his head might read: "Just hand over the books." Hwang criticized Japan for what he called its superior attitude. "They're making a big deal about returning these artifacts, like it earns them some sort of 'get out of jail free' card with South Korea," he said. "Remember, they actually stole this stuff." Japanese officials say they understand South Korea's emotions. "In terms of feelings, I can empathize. That's one thing, but the government does not control everything," said Hiroshi Suzuki, director of the Institute for Public Affairs and Culture at Japan's embassy in Seoul. He suggested many items might now be in private hands. "There is a certain limit to the government's reach," Suzuki said. "But to the extent where we are able to deliver, we have done our best." South Korea has also negotiated with France to retrieve several hundred "Oegyujanggak" royal texts seized during an 1886 invasion after the killing of French missionaries here. For decades, the books have been kept in the French National Library. Officials claim them as the legitimate spoils of war and were defensive when South Korean historians visited Paris to view them. Now France has agreed to lease the books — many now bearing a French National seal — back to South Korea. Not everyone is pleased with the deal. "It's insulting," Hwang said. "Why lease what is ours? The French didn't even offer an apology." For now, Hwang continues his treasure hunt. He's conducted one-man pickets outside government offices in Tokyo and has traveled to Paris to view Korean artifacts — all without any financial support from the South Korean government. He knows that returning the items will take time. Still, he plans to eventually put pressure on all countries harboring artifacts, including the United States. For example, he says, the Jibong yuseol, the first Korean encyclopedia, published in 1614, is being kept at Stanford University in California. "Korea has lived without these items for the past hundred years, and I don't want to engage in any shrill nationalist campaign," he said. "It's all about diplomacy, going about the work in a calm and peaceful manner. But in the end, we want the items back." Ethan Kim in the Los Angeles Times' Seoul bureau contributed to this report. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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