The Old man and the Sea

“Then the ocean opens and the fish appears: an enormous silver swordfish, seemingly endless as it emerges […]. The old man reckons it is two feet longer than the skiff. He has never seen a swordfish of such size. After his sorrow, he now feels respect for the fish: ‘Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.’”

As early as 1936, On the Blue Water recounted the struggle between an old fisherman and a gigantic fish, in some sense foreshadowing the novel to come. An avid fisherman who photographed his many catches of giant swordfish, Hemingway told the press that he had written the book after thirty years of practice. This masterpiece, built on the epic model of Moby-Dick, restores to the sea its most ancient and noble role: the true ascendancy it holds over man, an ascendancy so well described in its time by Baudelaire.

The novel first appeared in Life (September 1, 1952) before being published by Scribner’s Sons: a colossal success, with nearly five million copies sold within the following quarter. Hemingway was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and two years later the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This is Romain Gary’s own copy, at the time posted to New York at the United Nations. He read the proofs and was enthralled by the novel. He immediately shared his enthusiasm in an article for Les Nouvelles littéraires, published on the front page of the issue of September 11, 1952, under the title “Le retour du champion” — a first for Gary: “For nearly seven years now since I became a novelist, this is the first time I have expressed an opinion in a newspaper article. But I would like to say that all young French writers should look closely at The Old Man and the Sea. I do not advise them to learn it by heart: that would be impertinent. But they will find in this short story an answer that is not new, since it is true and therefore permanent, eternally present among us, like old walls and bread; an answer admirable in its artistic truth and its plain truth, to the great problem that torments them, and with which they torment others with such great talent: I mean, of course, the problem of Sisyphus. And I hasten to add that I am addressing not only others, but myself as well […] Reading this short story is one of those very rare moments of perfection that give you the impression of a personal triumph, a triumph of man over adversity. Hemingway, the old champion, chose the Olympic year to reclaim the title he had so often staked and sometimes lost, at least in the opinion of those who have eyes only for failure.”

Romain Gary and Lesley Blanch, whom he married in 1945, moved to New York after a posting as embassy secretary in Bern. For Gary, who served as a diplomat from 1945 to 1960 — having joined the Quai d’Orsay through the special track reserved for Resistance members and veterans of Free France holding higher-education degrees — this was probably the most delicate of his postings: spokesman for the Permanent Mission of France to the United Nations in New York from 1952 to 1954. Gary would later revisit this period in L’Homme à la colombe, published under the pseudonym Fosco Sinibaldi, as his official duties required discretion. He assisted Henri Hoppenot, France’s permanent representative on the UN Security Council, who had also been his ambassador in Bern.

“Gary’s mission was to defend French foreign policy. He spoke English and American English without an accent. He loved his work. It was the Cold War era, and Gary, who spoke fluent Russian, had the privilege of forming contacts with Soviet diplomats. Tireless, Romain Gary moved from public appearances to conferences of every kind, refining his understanding of American society and of France’s image across the Atlantic. A fierce opponent of colonialism and an ardent defender of European construction, he regularly had to defend, in the name of the French government, positions that were not his own. He was one of the few twentieth-century intellectuals to remain clear-sighted throughout about postwar communism, without succumbing to the fear of the “red menace” fueled by McCarthyism. At the UN, he completed his own European education, casting a sharp eye on this international comedy, which would give rise to L’Homme à la colombe in 1958, published under the pseudonym Fosco Sinibaldi, named after a comrade of Gary’s from the Lorraine squadron” (Librairie Koegui, Catalogue Romain Gary, sa vie, son œuvre, 2021).