Ramon Fernandez
On Saturday, I went to the library and collected five books for the week. One of these was "The End of the Pier" by Martha Grimes, a cheap & cheerful whodunnit. (I like a bit of light reading to balance out the heavy stuff.) On page 13, Maud is sitting out at the eponymous end of the pier, musing over "The Idea of Order at Key West" by Wallace Stevens:
Then there was her favourite line -- oh, what a line!
Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know...
So who is Ramon Fernandez and what was he to Wallace Stevens? Maud doesn't know either, and the book ends without any of us finding out.
Yesterday, I was reading "More Die of Heartbreak" by Saul Bellow. On page 114, Kenneth is describing his uncle's new wife:
Matilda had come to Paris to collect information about cultural activities under the Nazi occupation. She was especially interested in [...] Drieu La Rochelle, Brasillach and Ramon Fernandez (a pity that Fernandez, a gifted man, should have joined the literary fascists).
So I had to look him up.
Ramon Fernandez was amongst the most influential literary critics and biographers of the period after the First World War. His biography of Moliere is still respected and widely read (you can buy it online from the French publishers). Marcel Johandeau describes him thus (my translation from a German translation of the French original):
This ex-playboy, one of the most highly respected literary critics of the time, is also since the late thirties a fellow traveller on the extreme right-wing. Fernandez sits on the executive committee of the largest fascist party in France, the Parti Populaire Français (PPF) lead by Jacques Doriot (whom he interviewed before his departure for the Russian front in German uniform), and was also active in the "Cercles populaires français", the intellectual arm of the party. One saw him - regular critic of the NPF [a literary review published by the occupying German army] - parading in the blue uniform of the PPF. This former left-wing intellectual and admirer of force has, in his own words, "a preference for moving trains" [i.e. going with the flow]. It is only logical that he jumps on one of these.
A nasty piece of work, my grandmother would have said.
The Wallace Stevens connection is explained well by James Longenbach (scroll down), one of the few commentators on the poem who even mention this last stanza.
posted by Udge @ 13:45
6 Comments:
Well, I'm glad my friend Ramon has not been forgotten. He has served me well, as I wrote my doctoral dissertation on him, and this work propelled me into a stellar academic career, as they say.
You should note that he drank himself to death and died just a few weeks before the liberation. He was thus spared the "epuration," and all the other nastiness that would have engulfed him. As well as the work on Moliere he wrote works on Proust and Balzac and others, two well-received novels, and the seminal "Messages," a work of philosophical crticism that made his reputation. I'm glad he lives on in your world.
I never thought I'd see martha Grimes described as "light" (as thrillers go there's far more fluffier stuff) but then took a look at what you're reading. And then it made sense.
Thank you for clearing this nagging question up for me. I am in the process of rereading Stevens's poetry and came across the poem this evening, recalling that, when we read the poem in seminar as an undergraduate, nobody, even my "Tute", had the foggiest idea of who Fernandez might be or thought his identity might be of the least importance---all, that is, save me. Again, many thanks.
Fascinating thoughts right here. I appreciate you taking the time to share them with all of us.
Ramon Fernandez, a man of his time, one might say apologetically, swerved from left to right according to how big the crowds, and/or who held the guns...
may whatever powers that be bless us that we may not be accused of being men, or women, of our times.
Not exactly. In two personal letters, Stevens specifies that the name choice was not an actual person.
From "Letters of Wallace Stevens," he wrote to Bernard Heringman, sept 1, 1953: "Ramon Fernandez was not intended to be anyone at all. I chose two everyday Spanish names. I knew of Ramon Fernandez, the critic, and had read some of his criticisms but I did not have him in mind.”
Letter to Kimon Friar, sept 2, 1947: “. . . the name of Ramon Fernandez is arbitrary. I used two every day names. As I might have expected, they turned out to be an actual name.”
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