The New York Review Abroad by Robert B. Silvers Read Free Book Online Page B

afraid. The performance itself—the debates for which there are no subjects set—can be chaotic, and I am often sorry for the student chairmen who stand in the aisle yelling “
Silence! N’interrompez pas! Un peu de l’ordre! Discipline!
”

    Everyone calls everyone “comrade” and most of us here are in the world where the revolution has already happened, although there are also intruding misbelievers, generously admitted, howled at, but nevertheless, despite many interruptions, intermittently, fragmentarily, listened to, because whatever might happen later (and I have these fears), the students are most noble in their attempt to be open to all points of view—even that of Gaullists and of the Fascist members of the “
Occident
.”
    On a particular occasion I was suddenly struck with a thought—or a hysterical seizure—that I ought to communicate to the Sorbonnestudents the fact that when I spoke with the students at Columbia some of them had asked me whether the students at the Sorbonne had any thoughts about them. I was no emissary, I had not been told to say anything, and yet I felt I should transmit this. So comforting myself that with my white hair I would not be listened to anyway, I touched the arm of the particularly vigorous young man who was conducting the audience and, gradually acquiring some of the mannerism of Leonard Bernstein, I mentioned, humbly, that I would like to say a word. There was only one disapprobating yell (which was silenced by the young chairman with a severe “
On a écouté même Jean-Louis Barrault
”) and I started to speak my poor French to what seemed an electric silence. To my amazement they listened and then started asking questions. Could I compare the situation of students in American Universities with that in France? One student even offered the opinion that the American students were far more advanced than “ours.” Then someone asked whether it was true that all American students were always under the influence of drugs. I struggled to answer these questions and then, at the first opportunity, left the theater and walked to a bar. I was followed there by three students. Then one of them came up to me very shyly and said: “
Monsieur
 … 
Monsieur
 … 
Est ce que c’est vrai que vous êtes M. Marcuse?
”
    When the discussions at the Odéon happened to light on a “subject” they could be serious and very sympathetic. One night a young man got up in the gallery (people spoke from whatever part of the theater they happened to be sitting in) and (with his head, seen by me from below, seeming to butt against André Masson’s multi-colored ceiling) he stated very simply that he had taken into his care some adolescent delinquents and that he felt he was having little success in helping them, and he would like to hear the views of the audience about delinquency. At this person after person got up and discussed the problem, seriously, sensibly, though without saying anything new.
    It was surprising how many people there turned out to be social workers. The conditions in prisons and slums that they reported were deplorable. The discussion continued on a level of concern and without silliness for over an hour. After which I got up to leave, but was stopped at the exit by a Tunisian student who said to me: “They all talk about the harm prison does people—but to me it did good. I was sent to prison in Tunis, I cried, I cursed, I kicked them and I was beaten, and I prayed all day, but at the end of two years I started writing poems and stories, and for that reason here I am—thanks to prison—at the Sorbonne.” “Go and tell them that,” I said and followed him back into the theater where, a few minutes later, he made his speech, which, in the telling, turned out to be mostly an attack on President Bourguiba. Still he made his point and ended dramatically: “From prison, I learned that in order to achieve anything in this life you have to suffer.…” A