Ma part de vérité

Having managed to retain his parliamentary seat despite the Gaullist landslide of the 1968 snap legislative elections, Mitterrand, in this collection of interviews with Alain Duhamel, looks back on the influences and the path that led him to the Left — a Left that, in 1969, was about to unite into a “Nouveau Parti Socialiste” on the still-smoldering ashes of the S.F.I.O.

Mitterrand sets out here his conception of political life, as a “humble [way of] interpreting philosophy.” Although raised in a conservative Catholic milieu, Mitterrand gradually distanced himself from these values — not a break, but a withdrawal — in order to “break with the prevailing conformism of the Church,” which he felt was not on the side of suffering and hope.