52 - MERMOZ, Jean

MERMOZ, Jean Signed autograph manuscript, French Composition. An Air Raid Alert, [1918]; 4 pages, small in-4. An account of an air raid alert, a French composition assignment for the “Seconde D” class. The teacher wrote the grade and his comment in red ink: “Good assignment—lively, alert. You will certainly do very well.” Mermoz recounts an air raid alert on a beautiful summer evening. He is awakened from his light sleep by the sirens: “The Gothas are approaching; it is indeed the song of the sirens—not the languid song of the fantastical characters from fairy tales, but rather the howls and whistles of the Furies described by Aeschylus in the Oresteia. These mournful howls send a chill down your spine. They bring to mind dogs howling at death.” The entire building heads down to take refuge in the basement. “As for me, I’m staying, not out of bravado, but because I’m a fatalist and, at the same time, very curious, like all young people my age.” Through his window, he looks up at the sky, dotted with barrage fire; the bombs are falling… “The red trail of an airplane cuts through the air, bursts, and illuminates the dark mass of houses. A bomb falls. An immense beam of light sweeps across the sky, followed by several others. They all cross and crisscross, traversing the sky in every direction. […] Up there, it is still the struggle, the blind struggle in the infinite”… The bells ringing to signal the end of the air raid alert remind him of Midnight Mass; he lies back down and falls asleep: “The Gothas have vanished from my thoughts just as they are disappearing from Paris. Tomorrow, I will inevitably think of them again to curse them when I learn of their crimes.” Source: - Jean Mermoz (1901–1936); - Gabrielle Gillet-Mermoz (1880–1955); - Then passed down within the family