Paul Morand

Paul Morand (13 March 1888 – 23 July 1976) was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was much admired by the upper echelons of society and the artistic avant-garde who made him a cult favorite. He has been categorized as an early Modernist and Imagist.

Morand was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies, preparing him for a diplomatic career, and also attended Oxford University.

A member of the upper class and married into wealth, he held various diplomatic posts and traveled widely. He was typical of those in his social group who enjoyed lives of privilege and entitlement, adhering to the inevitability and desirability of class distinction.

Morand espoused a reflexive adherence to several ideologies. His intellectual influences included the writing of Friedrich Nietzsche, Oswald Spengler, and Joseph Arthur de Gobineau. During World War II, he pledged allegiance to the French Vichy regime, and became a government functionary.

He was a patron and inspirational figure for the Hussards literary movement, which opposed existentialism.

Morand made four bids for admission to the prestigious Académie française and was finally accepted in 1968, over the protest of Charles de Gaulle.

Early years Source material indicates that Morand was born in Russia to French parents who subsequently moved to Paris. Morand's father, Eugène Morand was a playwright and painter. The elder Morand was a curator at the Louvre and served as director of the École des Arts Décoratifs. The Morand home was a gathering place for the social elite and those notable in the arts and literature. Jules Massenet, composer of popular operas of the era, sculptor Auguste Rodin and writer Oscar Wilde were guests. As a youth Morand was introduced to the actress Sarah Bernhardt, and poet Stéphane Mallarmé. The multi-faceted writer and diplomat Jean Giraudoux was his tutor and became a lifelong friend. His father allied himself with those who believed in the innocence of Alfred Dreyfus.

Morand, a man of fin de siècle sensibilities, believed in the credo of "art for art's sake". He was ingrained with a deep pessimism, influenced by his father's cautionary advice to "be always distrustful". He was an intellectual proponent of Friedrich Nietzsche, and Oswald Spengler, espousing the philosophers’ belief in the decadence and decline of civilization. For Morand, class distinctions spoke to the natural order of a civilized society and he subscribed to theories based on the superiority/inferiority of race. He was influenced by the writing of Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, an aristocrat who presented his case for the superiority of the white race in an essay written in 1853, "Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races".

Morand was sent to study at Oxford University. In 1913, he was appointed cultural attaché to the French Embassy in London. His sojourn in England brought him into acquaintance with the prominent members of British society and aristocracy.

World War I Morand served briefly in the military prior to the outbreak of World War I, but managed to avoid active service in the hostilities and was assigned to the reserve corps. An avid, active sportsman, he had failed his medical exam as unfit for service. Many attributed this exemption to the intervention and influence held by his mistress, Princess Elena Suțu (née Chrissoveloni, 5 February 1879 in Galați – 26 February 1975 in Paris), the wife of the Romanian general and military attaché Prince Dimitri Suțu (Greek: Soutzos, Romanian: Suțu or Sutzu). His wealth allowed Morand to travel and indulge his interests in fast cars, fine horses and women.

In 1925, Morand was posted in the French legation in Bangkok, Thailand. He used this posting as a jumping off point for extensive travel. He documented his perceptions, filtered through a mindset of the privileged European who lived to the fullest a life of entitlement. He disparaged the cultures of countries through which his travels took him. He had strong theories on race, decrying that the world was becoming a "foul age of the half-caste". He derided democracy, bemoaning that Europe had become impotent, in his eyes, "egotistical, democratic, divided."

Many were then fleeing Nazi Germany, with a proportion of those in the arts, many of them Jewish, taking refuge in France. Morand saw these exiles as unwanted interlopers. He penned a veiled, antisemitic, "xenophobic diatribe" titled "France la Doulce", replete with quaint, antique vocabulary. He demonized these emigrants (i.e., Jews) as "pirates" whether naturalized or not, called them "scum".

In 1930, Morand published his observations of the Manhattan scene in New York. Morand explains that he wrote strictly from the viewpoint of the foreign visitor for the foreign reader; he "followed no other method of telling about New York than to show what pleased me."

Reviewing the book, one critic noted that Morand "keeps on repeating the contemporary bromide that ‘the Jews own New York, the Irish run it, and the Negroes enjoy it...Italians hardly can be assimilated.’" Speakeasies, Morand had concluded: "I can not think of anything sadder." New York City's theatre/entertainment district, the Broadway thoroughfare and its central hub Times Square, suggested to Morand an apocalyptic future:

In 1945, Morand traveled to St. Moritz at the request of Coco Chanel who had enlisted him to write her memoirs. The result was The Allure of Chanel, a slim volume promoted as a conversation between the author and his subject.

Morand's post-World War II literary output concentrated on historical novellas. He devised exotic locales and historical events as metaphors for contemporary politics — "decoding the past as a link to the present." The plots, replete with counterrevolutionaries, nobility unjustly victimized, highlighted collaborationist heroes seeking redemption. In these works Morand was making a case for himself; his fictional characters serving as proxies for an apologist justification of his own wartime activity. "...Many of Morand's historical figures...[can be] likened to a comedian, accidentally thrust into the unfolding drama of history...a comedy of errors...[the characters] merely symbols." Parfait de Saligny appeared in 1946. Le Flagellant de Séville, 1946, draws parallels between the Napoleonic wars and the Nazi occupation of Europe. La Folle amoureuse, Montociel: le rajah aux grandes Indes, were published in 1947.

Not all critics were laudatory. While acknowledging his masterful use of language, they cited the lack of substance in his observations and tendency towards generalizations. It was said his characters were not fully realized portraits but presented to the reader as exaggerated personages, crafted for effect. Green Shoots (English translation by H. I. Woolf, 1924) Fancy Goods (English translation by Ezra Pound, 1984) Tender Shoots (English translation by Euan Cameron, 2011) Ouvert la nuit (1922) Open All Night (1923) (English translation by Ezra Pound, 1984) Fermé la nuit (1923) Lewis and Irene (Lewis et Irène) (1924) L'Europe galante (1925) Rien que la terre (1926) The Living Buddha (Bouddha vivant) (1927) 1900 (1931) Bucarest (1935) The Man in a Hurry (L'Homme pressé) (1941) Le Bazar de la Charité (1944) Fouquet ou Le Soleil offusqué (Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1961) Venices (Venises) (1971) Journal inutile (mémoires, en 2 volumes, 2002) Rien que la terre Black Magic (Magie noire) (1928) Paris-Tombouctou New York (1930) World Champions (Champions du monde) (1930) Papiers d'identité (1930) Air indien Londres Rococo La Route des Indes L'heure qu'il est, chroniques de cet infatigable voyageur Le Dernier Jour de l'Inquisition Le Flagellant de Séville Le Coucou et le Roitelet L'Eau sous les ponts Hecate and Her Dogs (Hécate et ses chiens) (1954) La Folle amoureuse Fin de siècle (1957) Nouvelles d'une vie Les Écarts amoureux (1974) The Allure of Chanel (L'Allure de Chanel) (1976)