1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910457778503321

Autore

Will Barbara

Titolo

Unlikely collaboration [[electronic resource] ] : Gertrude Stein, Bernard Faÿ, and the Vichy dilemma / / Barbara Will

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Columbia University Press, c2011

ISBN

1-283-30068-0

9786613300683

0-231-52641-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (297 p.)

Collana

Gender and culture

Disciplina

818/.5209

B

Soggetti

Politics and literature - France - History - 20th century

Electronic books.

France Intellectual life 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Abbreviations -- List of Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- PART I: STEIN, FAŸ, AND THE MAKING OF A FRIENDSHIP -- 1. ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS (1918-1930) -- 2. TRANSATLANTIC CROSSINGS, TRANSLATIONAL POLITICS (1930-1935) -- 3. MOVING RIGHTWARD (1935-1940) -- PART II: THE VICHY DILEMMA -- 4. STEIN'S WAR: "HAVING FAITH" IN PÉTAIN (1940-1944) -- 5. FAŸ'S WAR: WINNERS AND LOSERS (1940-1946) -- EPILOGUE -- 6. VICHY-SUR-LÉMAN -- NOTES -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

In 1941, the Jewish American writer and avant-garde icon Gertrude Stein embarked on one of the strangest intellectual projects of her life: translating for an American audience the speeches of Marshal Philippe Pétain, head of state for the collaborationist Vichy government. From 1941 to 1943, Stein translated thirty-two of Pétain's speeches, in which he outlined the Vichy policy barring Jews and other "foreign elements" from the public sphere while calling for France to reconcile with Nazi occupiers.Unlikely Collaboration pursues troubling questions: Why and under what circumstances would Stein undertake this project? The answers lie in Stein's link to the man at the core of this controversy:



Bernard Faÿ, Stein's apparent Vichy protector. Faÿ was director of the Bibliothèque Nationale during the Vichy regime and overseer of the repression of French freemasons. He convinced Pétain to keep Stein undisturbed during the war and, in turn, encouraged her to translate Pétain for American audiences. Yet Faÿ's protection was not coercive. Stein described the thinker as her chief intellectual companion during her final years. Barbara Will outlines the formative powers of this relationship, noting possible affinities between Stein and Faÿ's political and aesthetic ideals, especially their reflection in Stein's writing from the late 1920s to the 1940s. Will treats their interaction as a case study of intellectual life during wartime France and an indication of America's place in the Vichy imagination. Her book forces a reconsideration of modernism and fascism, asking what led so many within the avant-garde toward fascist and collaborationist thought. Touching off a potential powder keg of critical dispute, Will replays a collaboration that proves essential to understanding fascism and the remaking of modern Europe.