Still I had perfectly legitimate reasons for being here. Arthur Koestler ribbed me one day when he met me in the street with my 5-year-old son. He said: ”Ah? You’re married? You have a kid? And you’ve come to Paris?” To be Modern, you see, meant to be detached from tradition, traditional sentiments, from national politics and, of course, from the family. But it was not in order to be Modern that I was living on the Rue de Verneuil. My aim was to be free from measures devised and applied by others. I could not agree to begin with any definition. I would be ready for definition when I was ready for an obituary. I had already decided not to let American business society make my life for me, and it was easy for me to shrug off Mr. Koestler’s joke. Besides, Paris was not my dwelling place, it was only a stopover. There was no dwelling place.
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