FRANCE: Intimatism

Ten couples met in a huge Left Bank apartment. They had foregathered to practice the latest Parisian intellectual pretension—intimatism. Present were the high priest of the movement, dynamic René Sébille, 34, and some of his ardent disciples. The men were journalists and writers. The girls were young and pretty.

Soon everybody was drinking the “intimatist cocktail”—a gin base with an equal dash of curaçao and of an apéritif. Then Sébille rose and spoke. He spoke of his philosophy and the manner in which life should be lived and rosebuds gathered. The intimatists wrapped themselves in bed sheets to resemble Roman togas. From then until well past dawn, intimatism became general.

A Philosophy Is Born. Some light is shed on the new philosophy by the way in which Sébille, anxious to clamber on to the lurching bandwagon of postwar Parisian culture, hit upon its name. One day Sébille met a charming girl in an existentialist bar. Said he: “After dinner I proposed to her that we get to know each other more intimately. She replied with a disarming smile: ‘Of course. I’m an intimatist.’ The name of my philosophy was found.”

René Sébille is one of those unusual men who can scratch his right ear with the middle ringer left hand held behind his back (see cut). In general, his life has been unusual. He has been an errand boy, a bellhop, an elevator operator, a metal worker, a mechanic, an artilleryman. In Venice and Brussels he was a gigolo. In Fezzan he trafficked in arms. During this time, Sébille escaped two attempts on his life and took part in three major riots. Hit by German shrapnel at Rethel in 1940, Sébille was taken prisoner. Later he was repatriated, became a journalist.

Anti-Existentialist. Like many other Frenchmen, Sébille was “profoundly disturbed” by the moral decay and physical degeneration of French youth. The present was empty and the future bleak. This state of mind was played upon by Existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre. Sébille, who is a jolly fellow beneath his solemn surface, reacted sharply against that philosophy of despair. What was “lost in the smoke of the past,” he reasoned, had to be “recouped in the fire of the present.”

A mixture of Emersonian transcendentalism, Indian mysticism and garden-variety lust, intimatism is concerned with the harmony of the individual. It holds that man alone cannot find harmony; he requires woman. Says Sébille: the only way for men & women to understand themselves better is “to love each other more.” “Two by two we will vanquish egotism, cowardice, jealousy and solitude.”

Sébille, a confirmed jitterbug, has written an intimatist novel, La Commandante, which sold 10,000 copies in less than three weeks, and an intimatist poem called The Bikini Yodel :

“Crac . . . pchcht . . . bong . . .

Bong . . . pchcht . . . crac . . .

The universe is oblong.”

Says Sébille: “This poem isn’t as stupid as it sounds.”

Last week Sébille was making a lecture tour of some Belgian resorts, where he preached intimatism to eager listeners. Said he: “Between speeches I found the time to become half of a couple. . . .”