FRANCE: Trauma

In defeat and under Nazi occupation, France had undergone deeper shocks than the world at first realized. Last week two symptoms of France's neurosis appeared in the form of literary awards.

Reverend Anarchist. The 100,000 franc ($830) Pléiade Prize went to a 33-year-old Catholic priest, Jean Natal Grosjean for his metaphysical poem Terre du Temps. Father Grosjean sings: "Anarchy is order between persons. All the rest is merely commerce." He scorns the church's philosophic mainstays, Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, and dislikes Catholic poets Charles Péguy and Paul Claudel. Instead, anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and pagan poet Arthur Rimbaud are Father...

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