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Escape from Marseille: An American Story? Writing Victor Serge's, Laurette Séjourné's, Dwight and Nancy Macdonald's Balzacian Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Clive Bush
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Extract

Occupying part of a single paragraph in the published autobiography, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, the Polish-Belgian novelist, journalist, and revolutionary, Victor Serge, almost casually speaks of his escape in 1941 to Mexico from Marseille in Vichy France:

Some of us whose lives were in danger eventually made our exit. The Battle of the Visas which their friends have had to wage for their sake would stand some description: a single escape would provide material for a book of Balzacian proportions, packed with unexpected incidents and dark happenings behind the scenes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 28 , October 2004 , pp. 311 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2004

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References

NOTES

Permission to cite Dwight Macdonald letters in the Dwight Macdonald Papers. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, has been granted by Yale University Library. Permission to cite letters from Nancy Macdonald in the Dwight Macdonald Papers has been given by Nicholas Macdonald. Permission to cite the letters of Victor Serge and Laurette Séjourné in the Dwight Macdonald Papers has been given by Vladimir Kibalchich and Laurette Séjourné, respectively. I am very much indebted to the kindnesses of Santiago Vidal Kibalchich, Michael Wreszin, Susan Weissman, and Lacy Rumsey in facilitating the search for the required permissions.

1. Mexico, after the revolution, under Cárdenas was welcoming to radical political refugees, especially from Franco's Spain. On August 24, 1940, the Mexican minister to Germany, Azcárate, offered to relieve Vichy of the economic burden of ten to fifteen thousand Spanish political refugees. The Germans at first insisted on selecting the refugees but then in November rescinded the unsatisfactory agreement and began deporting Spanish refugees to concentration camps in Germany (see Schuler, Friedrich E., Mexico Between Hitler and Roosevelt: Mexican Foreign Relations in the Age of Lázaro Cárdenas [Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998], 193–95Google Scholar).

2. Serge, Victor, Memoirs of a Revolutionary, trans. Sedgwick, Peter (1951; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), 365Google Scholar. Further references follow in the text. This is the only English edition and is cut by an eighth. The best and most recent edition is Mémoires d'un Révolutionnaire et autres écrits politiques, ed. Rière, Jean and Silberstein, Jil (Paris: Robert Lafont, 2001)Google Scholar.

3. Anderson, Linda, Autobiography (London: Routledge, 2001), 2Google Scholar.

4. Serge, , Memoires, 360Google Scholar.

5. A comprehensive account of the genesis of the Memoires is given in the Rière and Silberstein edition (497–500).

6. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, January 21, 1939. This letter and all subsequent ones are to be found in the Dwight Macdonald Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. All translations are my own.

7. Bill Marshall argues correctly that Serge went into Bolshevism “with this eyes open,” and that from very early on Trotsky and Serge, if not on a collision course, had significantly different interests and ideals (see Marshall, , Victor Serge: The Uses of Dissent [New York: Berg, 1992], 9, 19f.Google Scholar).

8. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, January 16, 1940.

9. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 22, 1940.

10. Dwight Macdonald to Freda Kirchway, September 12, 1940.

11. Freda Kirchway to Dwight Macdonald, September [?], 1940.

12. Mildred Adams to Dwight Macdonald, September 24, 1940. The Alien Registration Act had been passed by Congress on June 29, 1940.

13. Martin, Jay, “Dewey and the Trotsky Trials,” Partisan Review, 12 19, 2001, 519–35Google Scholar.

14. George Warren was on the President's Advisory Committee on Political Refugees.

15. Dwight Macdonald to A. M. Warren, September 30, 1940.

16. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, October 4, 1940.

17. John F. Finerty to Francis Biddle, October 8, 1940.

18. Henry Hart to John F. Finerty, October 10, 1940.

19. John F. Finerty to Henry M. Hart, October 16, 1940.

20. John F. Finerty to Dwight Macdonald, telegram, December 28, 1940.

21. Ebel, Miriam Davenport, An Unsentimental Education: A Memoir by Miriam Davenport Ebel (1999)Google Scholar. Posted on the Web at www.chambon.org by permission of Dr. Charles Ebel.

22. Ebel, , Unsentimental Education, 20Google Scholar; see also Fry, Varian, Surrender on Demand (New York: Random House, 1945), 97fGoogle Scholar.

23. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, January 16, 1941.

24. Dwight Macdonald to the Honorable Ambassador of Chile to Mexico, January 23, 1941.

25. Dwight Macdonald to Jean Renoir, February 2, 1941.

26. Nancy Macdonald to Laurette Wood Roper, February 16, 1941.

27. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge February 18, 1941.

28. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, February 24, 1941.

29. Victor Serge to the Dwight Macdonald, May 29, 1941.

30. Seghers, Ann, Transit, trans. Galston, James A. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), 48Google Scholar. This novel gives an incomparable account of the visa situation in Marseille, with some thinly disguised actual celebrated escapees and nonescapees. Its fictional closure is the sailing of the actual Capitaine Paul-Lemerle, the boat on which Serge himself was to escape.

31. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, March, 10, 1941; Edward F. Pritchard to Dwight Macdonald, March 15, 1941; Dwight Macdonald to Ralph T. Seward, March 19, 1941; and Lemuel B. Schofield to Dwight Macdonald, March 29, 1941. A. M. Warren had declared to Dwight Macdonald that Serge would not be admitted into the United States even on a transit visa (A. M. Warren to Dwight Macdonald March 14, 1941).

32. In a “Note sur le travail du secours américain,” sent to the Macdonalds on May 26, 1941, Serge has high praise for Varian Fry, saying he had formed a team of about twelve people and had given extraordinary proofs of courage and persistence while all the while being harassed by German officials.

33. Gold, Mary Jayne, Crossroads Marseille, 1940 (New York: Doubleday, 1980), xiiiGoogle Scholar.

34. See Varian Fry: mission américaine de sauvetage des intellectels anti-nazi, Marseille, 1940–1942 [exhibition catalog], Hotel du départment des Bouches-du-Rhone, Marseille, 03 18 to 06 30, 1999Google Scholar; and Fry, Surrender on Demand. There is further information in Noël, Bernard, Une liaison surréaliste / Marseille-New York: A Surrealist Liaison, trans. Arsham, Jeffry [in parallel text] (Paris: André Dimanche, 1985)Google Scholar. This book, lavishly produced with the aid of the French Culture Ministry, is a mine of information on the surrealists, Serge and his family, and the many political refugees in Marseille at this time. It gives a detailed chronology of events and has many photographs of people and places, including Air-Bel, the surrealist château; some of Serge; and also some of the Capitaine Paul-Lemerle, the ship on which many celebrated refugees escaped.

35. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, April 2, 1941; and Dwight Macdonald to Lemuel B. Schofield, April 2, 1941.

36. G. L. K. Morris had been a classmate of Macdonald and was an abstract expressionist and a financial backer for Partisan Review. Presumably, Macdonald had asked him for assistance in Laurette Séjourné's case (see A Moral Temper: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald, ed. Wreszin, Michael [Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001], 100Google Scholar).

37. Laurette Séjourné to Nancy and Dwight Macdonald, May 3, 1941.

38. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, July 7, 1941.

39. Ebel, , Unsentimental Education, 8Google Scholar.

40. Ebel, , Unsentimental Education, 21Google Scholar. See also Fry, , Surrender on Demand, 222fGoogle Scholar.

41. Maga, Timothy P., America, France and the Refugee Problem, 1933–1947 (New York: Garland, 1985), 205Google Scholar.

42. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, May 25, 1941 [1]; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, May 25, 1941 [2]; Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, May 25, 1941; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, May 26, 1941.

43. Dwight Macdonald to Coulter, May 28, 1941; and Dwight Macdonald to Edward F. Pritchard, May 28, 1941. On June 12, 1941, Pritchard finally wrote to Macdonald, declaring that there was no means by which the department could be compelled to take action if it was unwilling to follow the law. Just how dangerous the situation had become can be gauged by a letter from Serge to Macdonald (May 29, 1940) when he reports that the Social Democrat leaders Rudolf Breitscheid and Rudolf Hilferding “were arrested by French police under the pretext of hiding them from the Gestapo.” They were later taken away and murdered. Fry's frustration with inertia of these two can be read in Surrender on Demand (170f.). Similar accounts of the difficulties of explaining the danger to German intellectuals can be found in Fittko, Lisa's Escape Through the Pyrenees (trans. Koblick, David [1985; rept. Evanston, Ill.: North Western University Press, 1991], 153f.Google Scholar), which gives an account of the last weeks of Benjamin's life.

44. Fittko, , Escape, 147Google Scholar: “Martinique was a French département, hence no exit visa was needed to travel there. As Germany had no control over the island, anyone with an American visa could, without more ado, continue on from there to the U.S.A.” Serge's view was that Martinique was hardly free from German influence, given the dominance in this French département of Vichy sympathizers.

45. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, June 1, 1941; and Dwight Macdonald to Victor Serge, June [?] 1941.

46. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, June 5 1941; and Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, June 12, 1941.

47. Dwight Macdonald to Victor Serge June 15, 1941; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, June 18, 1941.

48. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, June 26, 1941.

49. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, June 26, 1941; and Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, June 26, 1941. A general historical account of American attitudes toward refugees can be found in Maga, Timothy P.'s America, France and the Refugee Problem, 1933–1947Google Scholar. Owing to isolationism, phenomena like Pelley, William D.'s “Silver Shirts” (Maga, America, 77f.Google Scholar), and fear of communism, quotas from 1931 to 1946 were seriously undersubscribed. Maga makes the important point that Fry's activities “remained a mystery to the representatives of the American government in France,” and “like the refugee problem itself, Fry was a troublesome annoyance and was dealt with accordingly” (203–5). The arbitrariness of American officials in granting visas is also confirmed. In addition, the 1940 Alien Registration Act, aimed principally at the American Communist Party, had made life very difficult for those attempting to assist refugees.

50. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, July 7, 1941.

51. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, July 23, 1941. This is Bel Air, a Second Empire building, rented for thirteen dollars a month, initial money advanced by Mary Jayne Gold, which formed a cooperative of writers and surrealists: the original inhabitants were Mary Jayne Gold; Theodora, Daniel, and Peeterkin Bénédite; Victor Serge; Laurette Séjourné; Vlady Serge; André Breton, his wife Jacqueline, and their daughter Aube; Jean Gemäling; and Miriam Davenport (Ebel, , Unsentimental Education, 22Google Scholar; see also Noël, Une liaison surréaliste).

52. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, July 23, 1941.

53. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, August 11, 1941. She adds, “Jim Farrell and Meyer Shapiro are the only two prominent intellectuals that I can think of who are firm and unswayed.”

54. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, July 26, 1941.

55. Gold, Crossroads.

56. Gold, , Crossroads, 306Google Scholar.

57. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, July 30, 1941; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 8, 1941.

58. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 15, 1941; Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, August 19, 1941; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 24, 1941; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 27, 1941. Serge later writes that the place of internment, the “Camp de Tiscornia” in Havana, Cuba, had nothing of the concentration camp about it (Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, August 21, 1941).

59. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, August 28, 1941; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, September 2, 1941; Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, September 3, 1941; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald September 4, 1941; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, September 6, 1941.

60. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, September 8, 1941.

61. Macdonald will organize publicity and support for Trotskyist refugees among prominent American intellectuals by making representations to Cárdenas, the sympathetic Mexican president, about Stalinist harassment. The American support proves effective in cooling down the situation (Dwight Macdonald to Victor Serge, February 10, 1942; Dwight Macdonald to Victor Serge, February 13, 1942; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, February 17, 1942; and Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, February 21, 1942).

62. Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, September 8, 1941; Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, September 20, 1941; and Victor Serge to the Macdonalds, September 24, 1941.

63. Victor Serge to Nancy Macdonald, November 25, 1941; and Laurette Séjourné, telegram to Nancy Macdonald, January 11, 1942.

64. Victor Serge, telegram to the Macdonalds, March 6, 1942; and Nancy Macdonald to Victor Serge, March 6, 1942.

65. Victor Serge to Dwight Macdonald, March 7, 1942.

66. Victor Serge to Nancy and Dwight Macdonald, November 2, 1941.

67. Serge, , Memoirs, 362Google Scholar. All further references to this work follow in the text.

68. Serge in fact attended Henri Bergson's lectures at the Collège de France in 1909–10 (Marshall, , Victor Serge, 36Google Scholar).

69. Bill Marshall is right to say that Serge's “lyrical interludes” are not isolated from the narrative. Neither are they Tolstoyan. However, the terms of the conjuncture are quite varied and complex and would repay some further study (Marshall, , Victor Serge, 162Google Scholar).

70. See Mottram, Eric, “Out of Sight But Never Out of Mind: Fears of Invasion in American Culture,” in Blood on the Nash Ambassador: Investigations in American Culture, ed. Carter, Dale (London: Hutchinson Radius, ca. 1989), 138–80Google Scholar.

71. Fry, , Surrender on Demand, 29Google Scholar.

72. Burroughs, William, Cities of the Red Night (1981; rept. London: Picador, 1982), 145Google Scholar.

73. Ricoeur, Paul, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. McLaughlin, Kathleen and Pellauer, David (Temps et Récit, 1983; rept. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 54Google Scholar.

74. Ricoeur, , Time and Narrative, 46Google Scholar.

75. Ricoeur, , Time and Narrative, 52Google Scholar.

76. Serge, , Memoirs, 263Google Scholar.

77. Ricoeur, , Time and Narrative, 79Google Scholar.

78. Job 1:16: “The fire of God is fallen from heaven, and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them; and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

79. Ricoeur, , Time and Narrative, 99Google Scholar.