Régis Debray was sitting in his office in the Elysée looking
disdainful and extremely bored. I had arranged to meet him the day before he
was to leave the Elysée for another post which, as he had stated in the press,
had “no political significance.” This was quite true. Debray’s career has always
been a problem for his friend, President Mitterand, because of Debray’s
guerilla past in Bolivia and his continuing outspoken resentment of anything
American. But the French have the capacity to honor their rebels and eccentrics.
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| Regis Debray in 1968 |
“There are many fools who say that writers never have political
positions, and that by definition a writer is a pariah and a marginal, passive
type who lives in the catacombs of his attic. All that is pure myth.”
“The intellectuals have always had importance in France
since the eighteenth century. They have a power which they have never exercised
in any other country. In the States, an intellectual is considered and ‘egghead,’
which is a pejorative term. In England, too. In France, it’s completely
different.”
“Only a writer can imagine himself as another, and only a
writer can act of behalf of other people. Only a writer can act on behalf of humanity
with a big H.”
“A lot of people fee that poetry is a short cut to
philosophy, and that, I think, is a disaster. The idea that poetry must be intellectual,
that poetry must be understood and not felt. All that contributes to the drying
up of the literary scene in France.”
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