That debt was easy to acknowledge. But in Chile, as Debray sent off his letters of gratitude to the French ? Pompidou was among the recipients ? he was forced to reflect on the fine line between contradiction and hypocrisy. Flying out to Cuba at Castro?s behest in 1965, he had rejected France entirely, wished it to hell even ? ?my family, my background, respectability, the state? ? like a conspirator lighting a fuse and stealing away, confident that every obstacle to a glorious future would shortly go up in smoke. Within a few years he was utterly lost; the very people he?d imagined closest to the blast were unscathed; indeed they were now busy dragging him to safety. Debray was put on the spot, though his thank-you notes were impeccable, like so many small gentlemen bowing stiffly to grandees at a society ball. He later grew to feel ?ashamed?, as he says in Les Masques, ?of my shame at the time?, however bravely he managed to conceal it.
Of the four principals in Praised Be Our Lords ? Debray, Castro, Guevara and Mitterrand ? Debray is perhaps the most intriguing. He looks briefly at the shifts that his own position has undergone over the years, and faces the contradictions, notably in the 1970s, when more than one position was occupied at the same time: ?Where Europe was concerned I now took an openly reformist line, and although I made my self-criticism conscientiously, I continued to preach revolution in Latin America.? Moments of good humour, at his own expense, are frequent ? and beautifully turned. Uninflected statements of personal truth are rare. The most revealing is a passage about living with self-hatred but failing to deal with the hatred of others: even if this began with the beatings in Camiri, what he has in mind are the frequent polemical assaults by enemies in France and Latin America. Yet Debray has a courageous, martial temperament, despising May 68 for its ?absence of human sacrifice? and regretting the rise of brittle ?humanist values?, with their basis in ?predominantly feminine ?life-affirming? mentalities?. Non-Westerners, he feels, know better; they are closer to ?the laboratories of truth? where ?hunger, insecurity, conquering faith and war? can be studied daily and peace is recognised for what it is: an interlude between states of hostility.Posted by Dennis at February 3, 2008 8:44 PMThe greatest passages in the book are about the men of power. Allende would qualify, if Debray hadn?t liked him so unequivocally. He had a photo of Che on his desk inscribed ?To Salvador Allende, who is going to the same place by another route.? ?We thought this meant ?to the revolution?, not ?to suicide?,? Debray remembers, ?an interpretation that would have seemed outrageous at the time.? Yet Allende took his own life in extremis, while Che gave his away. Debray?s view of Che is severe to say the least. There are the usual remarks about his enthusiasm for the ?corrective labour camp? in Guanaha in 1960 and how he brought whole sectors of the Cuban economy to a standstill when he was minister of industry. But Debray is thinking of attitudes as well as deeds: ?Che was not an angel blasted by a stroke of fate. He did not snatch his death: he had been incubating it for ten years.? He was ?far harsher and less sympathetic than his power-seeking elder. Less demagogic than Fidel, and much less democratic. The fine photographs by Korda and Burri have left us a sensitive dreamer, when in reality gentleness and kindness were not among his salient characteristics.? He would think nothing of sending ?an unarmed recruit to the frontline with orders to get a weapon from the enemy, using a knife or his bare hands?. He showed ?bad character? by threatening to put ?some honourable old combatant? in front of a firing squad as a deserter ?just for stumbling during an ambush and losing his rifle?; he was guilty of lunatic ?rigour? in condemning a hungry man to three days without food for stealing a tin of condensed milk. ?What a fertile misunderstanding it was, in 1968, turning that believer in no-holds-barred authoritarianism into an emblem of anti-authoritarian revolt from Paris to Berkeley.?
As ?the last messenger between the two companions in arms?, Debray is much fonder of Castro, an energetic Caribbean, open, radiating a ?tropical cordiality? more attractive by far than the ?melancholy coldness? of Che, the ?armed hermit?. Debray?s Castro has something of Zorro and something of Don Quixote; he is steeped in oral tradition ? hour upon hour of speeches ? but passionate about books, though in later years he reads nothing but history....
A starry eyed caudillo is still a caudillo after all.Doing away with his Cuban mentor is something Debray regrets. It was, as he hints, one in a series of compulsive killings on his part: ?Disaffiliate, kill the Father, acquire another, reaffiliate, kill again.? ...
Mitterrand?s ?short-range lucidity?, Debray argues, was not a compensation for his lack of an idea, since close up, as he explains, ?a bad point seems as good as a good one.? As for Mitterrand?s ?anti-intellectualism?, it ?had seemed to me to indicate courageous freedom of mind, leavened with dandyism and guile: really it expressed an allergy to deductive exposition, and I am afraid to the very idea of truth.? The verdict is harsh but so was the consequence. As far as Debray could see, Mitterrand?s presidency coincided with the hollowing out of the left in France. It became a clannish assortment of managers and opinion-chasers, clinging skilfully to power for 14 years, at great cost in terms of the ?philosophy? of socialism and what he describes as its ?soul?. ?And now,? he reflects, ?we are all lighter, physically and morally.? He agrees that it was part of a larger story unfolding far beyond the borders of France and that it may not matter; or that maybe it matters too much to him. ?There are churches for people worried about the meaning of life. Each to his own catechism.?
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