When I Was Old (11 page)

The same discomfort I feel when I am obliged to reread a passage from a novel only a year or two old. Or when I think of such and such a year in my life. Or when I see old photos again.

It always seems so incomplete to me! (
It
means me.) Tomorrow it will be the same for the present. Isn't this true of man in general? 1900 seems ridiculous to us, childish. Yesterday's science makes us smile. Today's will make us smile in its turn. At what moment will I be satisfied with myself ? I'd rather not answer.

Nevertheless I am copying, without conviction, like a lesson, knowing that it all is leading nowhere and probably will diminish me in the eyes of those who read me.

Another caption: ‘
The rat.
'

‘At what period did the rat appear? Before or after man or the hominoid? Was it a sort of parasite of man from the beginning? Before that was it the parasite of another
animal? Has it always lived on the “remains” or the offal of another creature?

‘(The word “creature” leads to nothing or rather to too precise a meaning. All words, basically, are tendentious.)'

Another title: ‘
Isolated territories.
'

‘Why have certain animal forms ceased to evolve in certain territories that have suddenly (or progressively) been isolated from others?

‘The Galápagos, for example. There one finds species that are no longer found elsewhere except in fossil form. This can be explained. But why did evolution stop at a certain stage?

‘
Idem
for New Zealand (kiwi – moa – tuatara).

‘
Idem
in part for Australia (kangaroo, etc.).

‘Did certain animals cease to evolve because they had no enemies that forced them to?

‘Why, when, with the appearance of man, such enemies appeared, none of the earlier species began to evolve?

‘In other places one finds only a certain percentage, more or less high, of extinct species.

‘Here, they
all
seem to die out, save domestic exceptions like the ostrich.

‘Is there a moment when evolution becomes impossible?

‘In the Galápagos, up to recently, no apparent struggle between the species.

‘The struggle seems to begin with the arrival of domestic animals which return to the wild state in very little time (another tendentious word!).

‘Aren't the human races that are called primitive
(Pygmies, Hottentots, Guineans) on the contrary degenerate branches, returned to their wild state like the asses, cattle and pigs of the Galápagos?

‘Instead of a rise with plateaus haven't there rather been rises and descents, with only certain races representing the rises?

‘Why, for example, in Africa, are one, two, or three generations, sometimes only one, enough for an evolution which, without contact with the white race, would never have taken place or would have taken centuries to produce?

‘Personal experience: in one month one can teach an illiterate black who has never seen whites before to drive a car.

‘Facility in absorbing mechanical concepts for the first time.

‘But in four centuries, in Martinique, it has been impossible to teach blacks philosophical concepts. The Bible and the Gospels were transformed into the Voodoo cult.

‘For an African or an Asiatic the bases of nuclear physics are easier to digest than elementary philosophical concepts (ours, of course!).

‘Ethics is more strongly incorporated into man and more difficult to replace by a foreign ethic.

‘The exact sciences, on the other hand, do not take the place occupied by something else.

‘Vacuum propitious to exact sciences?

‘In the United States, statistics indicate that mathematics
is more easily accessible to less philosophically developed classes, and it is the middle classes (and below) from which future students of the great schools like MIT are recruited and cadres of engineers are formed.

‘In France, blacks had been studying at the Polytechnic for a long time, while there were still cannibals in their native lands.

‘Does this only indicate a certain laziness, a resistance to certain disciplines, on the part of the children of rich or advantaged classes? Are the sciences of interpretation or of synthesis more attractive?'

‘Apathy, and, in some respects, resigned and
sad
refusal of evolution by the large primates like the gorilla. They make no effort to slow or avoid extinction.

‘Antithesis of the rat, which adapts to all conditions and all climates.

‘Doesn't adaptation go with the philosophical mind?

‘Are there, in fact, resigned races and aggressive races?'

‘In man: aggression in primitives – non-aggression in the evolved?

‘Does evolution regularly stop at a certain stage?

‘Would this explain why each people, in turn, arrives at a certain degree of civilization, stops, gives up, and leaves to others the exertion of going first?

‘
Idem
for families of individuals?

‘
Idem
for moulds?

‘Will there be an age of aggression and an age of philosophic resignation?'

‘Possibility of a relationship of zoology and anthropology to psychology.'

‘Everything seems to me to have been born out of the sea. So one finds the first man at the seashore. First food shellfish, then fish, then small mammals.

‘The weakest races, thereby more or less doomed, are always hunted further inland by stronger races, into the forests, then into the mountains. Higher and higher as the competition becomes more intense.

‘So the doomed species, the last examples of the doomed species, would be found in the high mountains.

‘
Idem
for men? (Examples of the Indies, of Borneo, the Andes, etc.)

‘In seashore civilizations, then on the plains, one finds a certain exuberance, a certain gaiety.

‘The higher one climbs … (Muteness and sadness of the people in the high mountains.)

‘Comparison or parallel between animals and species that are too weak and retreat before disappearing.

‘It would be interesting to compare religions, legends, traditions, songs, dances, etc., of the seaside peoples, then those of the plains, the hills, and finally those of the mountains from this point of view.

‘Aggressiveness of races which have a future and passivity of the races which no longer have one?

‘(This could be applied to human types and even to professions that are disappearing.)'

‘Few animals in large flocks on the peaks, even among birds. Life becomes more and more individual. Solitary and hunted down, in contrast with the socialized life of the seashore (recalling the swarming of schools of fish).'

‘A geography of aggressiveness and resignation could be established.

‘Doomed races which climb into the mountains like the old men who climb coconut palms?'

(Another parenthesis. Basically, I'm not sorry to have gone back to these notes from last winter. Not that they have any value. But they reassure me. If, at that time, I was asking myself so many questions about myself, at least rather personal questions, it is because first at Cannes, then here, journalists and those writing books about me made me submit to their questioning, uncovering many anxieties. In my normal state, it seems to me, if I ask myself questions, they're of a more general order, which does not mean they are any more pertinent. Good!) (The next page begins badly with a word underlined.)

‘
Need
for superiority. Does this explain the famous “age of anxiety”? The individual is doomed to be the centre of
his world. As a result he needs to feel he is an important part of this world.

‘Some kind of superiority is indispensable to him. In primitive society, in Africa or elsewhere, one finds the same thing: the best hunter of a certain animal, the best fisherman, jumper, runner, warrior, healer, singer, dancer, etc., etc. In short, each member of the tribe is the best something or other. And each is the bravest.

‘In Greece, the adolescent had to spend a year alone in the mountains, feeding himself by his own efforts, before he had the right to the title of man. In Africa one finds the same thing, among the American Indians or elsewhere similar tests (including the girl alone in the forest at the time of puberty).

‘The great schools today, Saint-Cyr, the Polytechnic, Cambridge, West Point, have their tests which the newcomer must undergo.

‘And each village in France or elsewhere has its best craftsman in this or that speciality, the best horseman, etc.

‘There is the woman who makes the best soups, the one who bakes the best cakes, the best dancer, and so on and so forth.'

‘Industrialization has almost levelled professional superiorities. Substitutes have been tried: in Russia Stakhanovism, in the USA the best salesman, beauty contests, the most beautiful legs, or the most beautiful hair. Miss Orange or Miss Whatever.

‘This is artificial and everyone knows it. Each one
seeks another superiority deep within himself, and finds it only rarely.

‘Curious parallel: the sons of Roman emperors of their own free will tested themselves to establish personal superiority; saying nothing to their fathers, they tested their strength against wild beasts in the arena.

‘Today, the children of important or rich people often race cars or aeroplanes, etc.'

‘In America doctors recommend that everyone have a “hobby”, an interest outside his profession, if it is only collecting matchbooks. It is less for relaxation than to establish a feeling of superiority in some easy little domain.'

‘Christian society itself speaks of the
most
pious, the
most
humble, the
most
charitable, the
most
worthy …'

‘It is more and more difficult for the masses. Superiority as a workman, as a bus driver? Nevertheless each year in France someone is chosen the
best
truck driver. And the oldest worker in France, the one who has worked longest in the same plant! Isn't this enough to explain why many people welcome a declaration of war with relief ? Don't some men discover their natural superiority in a catastrophe?

‘The American experiment is frightening. Superiority of money, of one's automobile, of one's club, of “status” miscarries. The man at the top pretends to believe in it and to be satisfied. But at bottom he is not convinced. The number of psychoanalysts proves it.'

‘At school, in the street, between kids, there is superiority too. The best marble player, the best runner, ball player …

‘At sixteen, the identical need!

‘And, at the summit of the hierarchy: the most powerful, the one who uses others best, who imposes his ideas, his products, or his will.

‘Always the
most.

‘The nostalgia of veterans, former non-coms, officers, generals, decorated with this or that, members of the Resistance who were nearly shot, who were prisoners, escapees … Creation of societies … Parades, flags, flowers …'

‘No matter at what price, one day each must have his superiority …'

‘Above all the man, the male. No matter how low he was on the social scale, once at home he became all-powerful. No one argued the superiority of the Head of the Family. (And the woman, the mother, also had her different superiority.)

‘Today, governments, schools, etc., have been substituted for the father; also propaganda, newspapers, radio, the movies, television.

‘He is no longer the one who knows best, the one who imposes his will. Coming home from the factory or office, where he is nothing, he finds a family where he still is nothing.

‘What is left between the two, on the way home, is the bar, where he can still have his little personal success –
the best drinker of pastis, or of red wine, the best pelota player … or the funniest …

‘But not the most gullible.

‘His power has been taken from him. He refuses the responsibility illogically expected of him.'

(Here I hesitate. I'm a little ashamed. However, I'm transcribing, out of honesty [the most honest?], a definition which defines nothing.)

‘
Education:
conscious or unconscious manipulation by one generation through material, intellectual, and moral pressure to model the following generation according to the rules and principles which, most often, the educators haven't themselves followed, and of which they have sometimes recognized the inanity, if not even the danger.'

(That's exactly the kind of sentence I hate. Too bad. I'll put it down without elaborating on it because I'm waiting for the surgeon who will tell me if I should have my appendix out or not. At fifty-seven, this would be my first operation and I admit that, having been raised in a period when the operating table still inspired awe by its very name, it's not without some anxiety that I'll lay myself down on one. I don't like the idea of being put to sleep.)

E-N-D, or nearly. Soon. Just a few words. Our adventure, my poor notebook, hasn't been a long one, and the eleven other brand-new notebooks will go to my children.

Last night we went out, D., Aitken, her secretary, and I. We drank a bottle of champagne in a cabaret. The only one in Lausanne. An enjoyable evening.

Then, at three o'clock in the morning, in our room, D. had the courage to tell me what I already sensed and which has occurred to me to write in these pages.

For example, that I have always said that I ought not to deal in abstract ideas, however simple.

That the novel is my only tool, my only medium.

That perhaps the trouble I had in writing the last one was caused by my preoccupations – the ones I've tried to get rid of here.

That … My God, that perhaps I was beginning to take myself seriously …

All that, I'd already thought it myself.

I'm stopping now.

‘You've got to the point of copying notes …'