Which scenes deserve to be passed on for posterity?

1 Waiting in queues at dawn.

2 The arrival of the Germans.

3 The killings and shooting of hostages much less than the profound indifference of the people.

4 If I want to create something striking, it is not misery I will show but the prosperity that contrasts with it.

5 When Hubert escapes from the prison where the poor wretches have been taken, instead of describing the death of the hostages, it's the party at the Opera House I must show, and then simply people sticking posters up on the walls: so and so was shot at dawn. The same after the war and without dwelling on Corbin. Yes! It must be done by showing contrasts: one word for misery, ten for egotism, cowardice, closing ranks, crime. Won't it be wonderful! But it's true that it's this very atmosphere I'm breathing. It is easy to imagine it: the obsession with food.

6 Think also about the Mass on Rue de la Source, early morning while it's still completely dark. Contrasts! Yes, there's something to that, something that can be very powerful and very new. Why have I used it so little in Dolce? Yet, rather than dwelling on Madeleine-for example, perhaps the whole Madeleine-Lucile chapter can be left out, reduced to a few lines of explanation, which can go into the Mme Angellier-Lucile chapter. On the other hand, describe in minute detail the preparations for the German celebration. It is perhaps an impression of ironic contrast, to receive the force of the contrast. The reader has only to see and hear.[4]

[4] These words appear in English in the notebook.

Characters in order of appearance (as far as I can remember):

The Péricands-the Cortes-the Michauds-the landowners-Lucile-the louts?-the farmers etc.-the Germans-the aristocrats.

Good, need to include in the beginning: Hubert, Corte, Jules Blanc, but that would destroy my unified tone for Dolce. Definitely I think I have to leave Dolce as is and on the other hand reintroduce all the characters from Storm, but in such a way that they have a momentous affect on Lucile, Jean-Marie and the others (and France).

I think that (for practical reasons) Dolce should be short. In fact, in comparison with the eighty pages of Storm, Dolce will probably have about sixty or so, no more. Captivity, on the other hand, should make a hundred. Let's say then:

STORM… 80 pages

DOLCE… 60 "

CAPTIVITY… 100 "

The two others… 50 "

390,[5] let's say 400 pages, multiplied by four. Lord! That makes 1,600 typed pages! Well, well, if I live in it![6] In the end, if the people who have promised to come arrive on 14 July, then that will have certain consequences, including at least one, maybe two sections less.

[5] The mistake in addition comes from the manuscript. (Editor)

[6] These words appear in English in the notebook.

In fact, it's like music when you sometimes hear the whole orchestra, sometimes just the violin. At least it should be like that. Combine [two words in Russian] and individual emotions. What interests me here is the history of the world.

Beware: forget the reworking of characters. Obviously, the time-span is short. The first three parts, in any case, will only cover a period of three years. As for the last two, well that's God's secret and what I wouldn't give to know it. But because of the intensity, the gravity of the experiences, the people to whom things happen must change (…)

My idea is for it to unravel like a film, but at times the temptation is great, and I've given in with brief descriptions or in the episode that follows the meeting at the school by giving my own point of view. Should I mercilessly pursue this?

Think about as well: the famous "impersonality" of Flaubert and his kind lies only in the greater fact with which they express their feelings-dramatising them, embodying them in living form, instead of stating them directly?

Such[7]… there are other times when no one must know what Lucile feels in her heart, rather show her through other people's eyes.

[7] The reference to Flaubert and this word appear in English in the notebook.

1942

The French grew tired of the Republic as if she were an old wife. For them, the dictatorship was a brief affair, adultery. But they intended to cheat on their wife, not to kill her. Now they realise she's dead, their Republic, their freedom. They're mourning her.

For years, everything done in France within a certain social class has had only one motive: fear. This social class caused the war, the defeat and the current peace. The Frenchmen of this caste hate no one; they feel neither jealousy nor disappointed ambition, nor any real desire for revenge. They're scared. Who will harm them the least (not in the future, not in the abstract, but right now and in the form of kicks in the arse or slaps in the face)? The Germans? The English? The Russians? The Germans won but the beating has been forgotten and the Germans can protect them. That's why they're "for the Germans." At school, the weakest student would rather be bullied than be free; the tyrant bullies him but won't allow anyone else to steal his marbles, beat him up. If he runs away from the bully, he is alone, abandoned in the free-for-all.

There is a huge gulf between this caste, which is the caste of our current leaders, and the rest of the nation. The rest of the French, because they own less, are less afraid. If cowardice stops stifling the positive feelings in our souls (patriotism, love of freedom etc.), then they can rise up. Of course, many people have recently built fortunes, but they are fortunes in depreciated currency that are impossible to transform into concrete goods, land, jewellery, gold etc. Our butcher, who won five hundred thousand francs in a currency whose exchange rate abroad he knows (exactly zero), cares less about money than a Péricand, a Corbin[8] cares about their property, their banks etc. More and more, the world is becoming divided into the haves and the have nots. The first don't want to give anything up and the second want to take everything. Who will win out?

[8] Characters from Storm in June. (Editor)

The most hated men in France in 1942: Philippe Henriot[9] and Pierre Laval. The first as the Tiger, the second as the Hyena: around Henriot you can smell fresh blood, and around Laval the stench of rotting flesh.

[9] Catholic delegate for the Gironde region, Philippe Henriot (1889-1944) was one of the Vichy government's most efficient and influential propagandists. A member of the Milice-the infamous French political parapolice force that recruited some 45,000 pro-Nazis to crush the Resistance-from its creation in 1943, he entered into the government of Deputy Prime Minister (Vice-Président du Conseil) Pierre Laval at the beginning of 1944 and preached total collaboration. Henriot was killed by the Resistance in June 1944. Laval was tried and subsequently shot after the Liberation of Paris in 1945. See Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France, p. 298.

Mers-el-Kébir… painful stupor

Syria… indifference

Madagascar… even greater indifference

All in all, it's only the initial shock that counts. People get used to everything, everything that happens in the occupied zone: massacres, persecution, organised pillaging, are like arrows shot into mire!… the mire of our hearts.

They're trying to make us believe we live in the age of the "community," when the individual must perish so that society may live, and we don't want to see that it is society that is dying so the tyrants can live.

This age that believes itself to be the age of the "community" is more individualistic than the Renaissance or the era of the great feudal lords. Everything is happening as if there were a fixed amount of freedom and power in the world that is sometimes divided between millions of people and sometimes between one single person and the other millions. "Have my leftovers," the dictators say. So please don't talk to me about the spirit of the community. I'm prepared to die but as a French citizen and I insist there be a valid reason for my death, and I, Jean-Marie Michaud,[10] I am dying for P. Henriot and P. Laval and other lords, just as a chicken has its throat slit to be served to these traitors for dinner. And I maintain, yes, I do, that the chicken is worth more than the people who will eat it. I know that I am more intelligent, superior, more valuable where goodness is concerned than those men. They are strong but their strength is temporary and an illusion. It will be drained from them by time, defeat, the hand of fate, illness (as was the case with Napoleon). And everyone will be dumbfounded. "But how?" people will say. "They were the ones we were afraid of!" I will truly have a communal spirit if I defend my share and everyone else's share against their greed. The individual only has worth if he is sensitive to others, that goes without saying. But just so long as it is "all other men" and not "one man." Dictatorship is built around this confusion. Napoleon said he only desired the greatness of France, but he proclaimed to Metternich,[11] "I don't give a damn if millions of men live or die."