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 P?tain, head of state for the
collaborationist Vichy government. From 1941 to 1943, Stein
translated thirty-two of P?tain'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 Fa?, Stein's apparent Vichy protector. Fa? was
director of the Biblioth?que Nationale during the Vichy regime and
overseer of the repression of French freemasons. He convinced
P?tain to keep Stein undisturbed during the war and, in turn,
encouraged her to translate P?tain for American audiences. Yet
Fa?'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 Fa?'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.
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