Paul Morand, itinerary of a cosmopolitan anti-Semite

Those who believe in Morand's black legend remember only his anti-Semitism, while those who are attached to his golden legend salute above all his cosmopolitanism. However, ignoring either of these two dimensions of his personality proves futile.

At the end of his life, Paul Morand wrote above all for posterity. Thus, at the end of Venises, a work in which the French author speaks as much of himself as of the city of which he paints a fragmentary but brilliant portrait, he evokes the place where he has decided to rest for eternity. This former literary glory of the 1920s, who fell from grace because of his closeness to the Vichy regime, evokes the moment when he will be buried on Trieste's Hill of the Dead. He wonders «what will be the fate of souls in these various cemeteries that divide the dead, just as religions have divided the living».

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