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The death of intellectualism - An evening in Paris

Iqbal Latif - 12/12/2006

Paris has its own charm as far as intellectualisation goes. One does not need any props, it just appears unsurprisingly. Brasserie Lipp, the Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots have been frequented by celebrities, artists and writers, from Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir. Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots have been here since the nineteenth century. In the good old days, when the bourgeois swaggering leftist intellectuals populated the side-streets and cafes of post-war Paris in their droves, Cafe de Flore was labelled as the meagre leftist haunt and the Deux Magots, its neighbour, aristocratic and a little snobbish. One could slip from one terrace to the other and sip various drinks and enjoy two different set of leftists.

This old quarter on the Left Bank is also known for its beautiful church as well as for its narrow streets, antique shops, restaurants, cafes and cellars. Church of St-Germain des Pres, the oldest abbey in Paris, sits immediately opposite the most famous cafe s in the city. The church, the oldest in Paris, and the abbatial palace are all that remain of the famous Be nedictine abbey. In the nearby vicinity, a stone throw away, is Visitors also known as Saint-Sulpice for its architecture, music, and the St-Sulpice organ is world-known, patroned from Victor Hugo to Catherine Deneuve and home to mystical artefacts and artworks. Picass o's mistress and model Dora Maar attended Saint-Sulpice until her final days. The artworks in the church include three murals by the guiding light of romantic art, Eugene Delacroix, and among these is his "Jacob Wrestling the Angel.

"Sometimes I like to sit at one of these cafes at the end of the day for tea or a glass of Moet. Over a period of time I savour Escargots de Bourgogne - Burgundy snails, Huitres -raw oysters, Foie gras - Goose liver pate, Soupe de poisson avec la rouille - Fish soup with rust sauce, Terrine de saumon - Salmon terrine, Moules marinieres - Steamed mussels in white wine sauce. Setting my gastronomique inklings aside, my real reasons to idyll about is often to get a sneak at French rituals of intellect and love of culture.

Transitory time in these cafes with nothing but vague ideas that need a lot of crystallisation is the most profitable way to kill time. One thing that impresses me the most is the intellect of a human being; here in Paris since 1978, my best memories are moments spent in these cafes where so much of French intellect and talent got underway. These cafes proudly beat with the heart of the Parisian bourgeoisie, but are also popular with the Gauche Caviar, or leftist caviar crowd. One should not forget the blazer and Burberry outfit if one wants to remain unnoticed. The quarter of St.-Germain-des-Pres may be the most visited and written about of all Parisian neighbourhoods. Along the Seine to these cafes, there is a kind of respect for ideas that has allowed a thinker to be integrated into French society. Art and culture is a very long tradition of this quartier.

These cafes are nestlings in which French intellectualism have thrived. My moments of solitude in Paris from a very young age were passed at these cafes where Jean-Paul Sartre penned his best known early works. These establishments are representative of the Rive Gauche intelligentsia. Would-be writers, students, almost famous, and people who have nothing better to do than write their garbled thoughts in personal diaries like to stop by for coffee. I do take some time here to ponder about the state of the globe, mankind, and where I am going to eat next. The Paris cafe society is fuming with the silly threat of dying French intellectualism and invasion from 'Starbucks.' Everybody mourns the death of the espresso shots being replaced by Starbucks takeaway caffe lattes. Perhaps one can argue that the world may not have been sanctified with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Sartre, had they been fuelled by Starbucks caffe lattes rather than shots of strong espresso in these exalted Left Bank cafes.

The "golden age" of St.-Germain-des-Pres was the era from the forties through the sixties, famous for jazz and existentialism. The music was jazz, often American jazz and often played by American musicians. Those were not easy decades. France was liberated but dented, bitter, and meagre, yet it seems to have been a time of merriment, solidarity, creative accomplishment, erotic free will, and political transformation. These were the haunts of so many of the talented, gorgeous, vigorous people whose names have come to be associated with it now Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir to be sure, but also the writers Boris Vian, Albert Camus. They gave dream and new existence to a very unexciting post-war Paris.France prides itself on its intellectuals.

The term "intellectual" once denoted a shared vision whose communal sense originated in the France of the Dreyfus Affair. In 1898, mile Zola published his famous "Lettre au President de la Republique" (the article that became known as "J'accuse"), and the next day the first of the affirmation of the intellectuals appeared, calling for a retrial for Dreyfus.
Those consisted of lists of names followed by professions, degrees, and prestigious associations, and established the spirit of solidarity and collective social conscience of the French intelligentsia. Knowledge requires audacity and valour to articulate. Minds with inhibitions rarely break the chains they are attached to. These cafes were the theatre of congregation of great minds and their selection of champagnes and alcohols helped free minds from self-consciousness.

Like its celebrated rival Les Deux Magots, Cafe de Flore can claim to have been the heart of the Existentialist Movement during the early part of this century with Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Camus and others regularly meeting here. The ghosts of Sartre and de Beauvoir and Hemingway are surely tired of being invoked. It was in one of these these cafes that Simone de Beauvoir said "Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay." Jean-Paul Sartre, the 'Sartrean man' probably was conceived here. The Sartrean man realizes that there is more to existence than merely existing, and that there is more to life than merely living. Confronted with the ambiguity, meaninglessness, and absurdit y of his existence, he then sets forth in a journey towards the rediscovery of his real self. He attempts to surpass himself, and imbedded in that transcendence is the meaning he has been looking for in his life.

The search for meaning becomes an act of surpassing. Sartre believed that one is born superfluous unless one is brought into the world with a special purpose of fulfilling an expectation. Named after the two wooden statues (the two magots) which still dominate the room, Les Deux Magots is one the most famous cafes in Paris. At the Cafe de Flore, Sartre held forth, drinking and writing. He and de Beauvoir would stay there all day, especially in cold weather, and it is said they had their own telephone line. Those two, while appearing sociable, were working seriously on their philosophical writings establishing the prevailing philosophy, existentialism. The politics was communist this was the gauche caviar, as well-heeled leftists would come to be called in Mitterand's time. Surrealists also trace their origins to these cafes. "To Be or Not To Be Surrealist," Jose Pierre wrote that, "The Surrealists found it grotesque to die for any flag whatsoever, even if its colors were harmoniously composed." They were repulsed by the very idea of God, and procreation seemed an aberration for them. There was a time when Breton insulted pregnant women in the street, and Benjamin Poret publicly insulted priests and nuns. Only Liberty, Love and Poetry were looked upon favourably, and together these constituted the heart of the Surrealist platform. This great libertarian impulse paradoxically led them to Marxism. Such Intellectuals are a dying breed in today's Paris.

Once in their glory days, these intellectuals were the bedrock of French cultural institutions like the Sorbonne and the cole normale superieure. It was cafes like Les Deux Magots and Le Flore that served as equally important gathering places for academic dialogue. Today it is quite odd really, that a writer such as Simone de Beauvoir's stature is barely mentioned these days. Regis Debray, a comrade in arms of Che Guevara and ghostwriter for Mitterand book, titled French Intellectual: Continued and End, is a sort of funeral march for the French intellectual; according to Debray, a once-courageous fighter for truth and justice who has narcissistically sold out to the media for the gratification of his own ego.

It appears that the intellectual of France has suffered a certain loss of prestige since the 1970's by becoming increasingly "mediatique," intermittently on the Parisian literary panorama someone announces that the intellectual in France is dead. Philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard buried him in Tombeau de l'intellectuel. Last year, the historian and publisher Pierre Nora proclaimed, in an issue of Le Debat, that the intellectual as oracle had seen his day. Between 1980 and 1990, however, some 30-plus books published on the history of the French intellectual testified to France's enduring fascination with the intelligentsia. Since 1990, there have been over 80 more, with four recent biographies dedicated to the life of Jean-Paul Sartre alone. And the transfer in 1996 of Andre Malraux's ashes to the Pantheon seemed to crown the 20th-century intellectual's glory. French Intellectualism is not dying, it is finding new_expression. The intellectuals are seeking new voice after political failures and futility of the French left specifically, but their underlying principles remain the same, the right to dissent, to defend the weak and oppressed against the strong, and to reject an imposed conformity. Sartre marching with the students in '68 made enduring impact on French consciousness today; they continue to make their impressions. The search for meaning has become today's search for legitimacy. Intellectuals by pedigree are laissez-faire; they talk of down trodden and oppressed and take up their causes, but downtrodden and oppressed of 'Gulags' were hardly ever talked about. It was the political blunders of the 'politburo' and socialist economic failures' of the eastern Europe that romance of the leftist intellectuals with Marxism ended in a tragedy.

The 'mass misery of the east' and implosion of 'Marxist Russia' left Sartre to condemn the 'left' more than the right, the protests over Hungary or Czech invasion opened the dichotomy much further. The 'intellectual of today' is caught up in this dilemma, on one hand they condemn US intervention of Iraq on the other the free vote, end of mass grave regime and emergence of 200 newspaper and a first free press from Baghdad devoid their intellectual bickering from a 'moral grandstanding.'

It was the 'moral grandstanding' of a cause that brought a lot of sagacity to the intellectuals of the left, condemning Vietnam was one, but condemning Iraq and Afghanistan where oppressed after going to ballot boxes are being killed by right wing radiclas, leave these condemnations hollow. The real oppressed were the 'female' of Afghanistan who were denied education and freedom under Taliban. To condemn Afghan invasion by an imperialist power is dear to the 'left cause' but the freedom of Afghans from the shackles of tyranny is the contradiction that 'gauche caviar' could not answer. Acceptance of lesser evil in face of bigger evil could not make any reasonable grounds within intellectual pastures of Parisian gauche.

It is not the intellect that attracts popular support, it is the cause, catastrophic failures of Marxism and tyrants have failed the intellectuals. Che-Guevara revolution finally succeeded but Castro's Cuba is not an ideal democracy. History is the ultimate judge of intellectual actions. It callously discarded romantic alliance of minds with Marx, Che and Hochi Minh after the capitalists turnaround of Russia under Putin, a neo-capitalist Vietnam under the present rulers and a socialist Cuba as an impoverished state under a sustained tyranny where a free vote is a luxury. The natural constituency of the 'left' politically and economically just could not deliver.

Intellectuals 'cause' need to be redefined and continuous support of 'lost romantic causes' eliminated. Lost of legitimacy and meaning has resulted from romance rather than pragmatism. May be today's intellectual should have no posture to the right or the left, if a cause is taken up and real oppressed are supported, the art of 'pragmatic romance' with new revolutions might be re-established.