A Life in Paris – March 21, 1942

But the sweet light has returned. And that is stronger than everything. This morning, toward 11, I took the longest way to walk back home, along the quays…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

But the sweet light has returned. And that is stronger than everything. This morning, toward 11, I took the longest way to walk back home, along the quays. The air was silvery over the Seine, the palaces, the city, so peaceful. The sun was inflaming the poplar trees and the windows of the Louvre. The streets were just about empty. What silence! Never, for centuries, had spring set up its quarters so tranquilly in Paris. The river was bubbling. The nymph of the Seine had come into the city….Should I have turned my back on this felicity?

Jean Guéhenno

Notes:
• From Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944
• Jean Guéhenno was a French writer and intellectual who kept a diary during the WWII German occupation of France.

A Life in Paris – February 14, 1942

Nothing can express the monotony and the resigned stupidity of life in Paris. It is very cold. Everyone is huddled in his house without a fire…

Photography print available at Found View Gallery.

Nothing can express the monotony and the resigned stupidity of life in Paris. It is very cold. Everyone is huddled in his house without a fire. The only ones who can eat are those who are lucky enough to have relatives in the provinces to send them provisions. It is scientifically designed scarcity. […] If I have written nothing in these notebooks, it’s because it is not very useful, no doubt, to note that it is snowing, that we are hungry, that we are cold, that the executions are continuing, two or three every day (they no longer even have the honor of being on the front page of the papers), that people no longer think about it[….]

Jean Guéhenno

Notes:
• From Diary of the Dark Years, 1940-1944
• Jean Guéhenno was a French writer and intellectual who kept a diary during the WWII German occupation of France.