SARTRE Jean-Paul (1905-1980) écrivain - Lot 972

Lot n° 972
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Estimation :
4000 - 5000 EUR
SARTRE Jean-Paul (1905-1980) écrivain - Lot 972
SARTRE Jean-Paul (1905-1980) écrivain Autograph MANUSCRIPT, [Spring 1949]; 16 in-4 pages with erasures and corrections (one page cut out for printing; slight discolouration on first page; printer's pencil marks). Vigorous condemnation of the Indochina War. [This text was written shortly after March 8, 1949 and the signing of an agreement between President Vincent Auriol and Emperor Bao Daï recognizing Vietnam's independence]. The timing of the agreement is well chosen: "With Vychinsky having replaced Molotov, the whole world has gone to the fortunetellers. By dint of terrorizing us with the third "World", we have ended up being made to believe that we are living in peace and we are left to dream of future war, while the government continues a colonial war in the distance, this war that does not dare to say its name" . A few members have noticed this... Sartre sheds light on the wrongs of the president's government Vincent AURIOL: "This war is costly: already 20,000 dead, according to the most moderate estimates; each month, about a thousand men. A thousand young Frenchmen among the bravest and healthiest, who die in anger and hatred, without knowing why, heroes and victims at the same time, heroes for nothing. ... This war is dirty": it is fought against a democratic constitution and an enlightened government. "The truth is that we are fighting against a country that is awakening and that claims to be more a part of the French Revolution than of the Russian Revolution; it is that we are fighting against ourselves and that French democracy has sacrificed thirty thousand of its sons in order to wrest its own democratic ideology from Indochina. This war is unpopular. The French don't like to talk about it among themselves, it gives them a bad conscience" . However, foreigners talk about it: Sartre quotes an article by Walter Lippmann which undoubtedly testifies to the attitude of the American State Department Finally war is ineffective. "It is for HO CHI MINH that time works"..
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