Spencer Trent Rachel LaMance French 111 Section 003 December 3, 2013 Before the Diaspora: The Lost

Generation in Paris Paris has, for centuries, been the cultural and progressive hub not only of France, but of the world. From Louis XIVs palace at Versailles that exhibited some of the finest and most elegant architecture in Europe to Coco Chanels revolutionary re-imagination of the fashion world, France has undoubtedly left its mark on Western culture. One of the citys most bustling moments occurred in the 1920s, during the age when the Lost Generation- a term coined to refer to the young adults who came of age amidst the carnage and desolation of the First World Warroamed its streets. Their world views and faith in humanity shaken by the most violent war the world had ever seen, these young men and women lost themselves in the allure of the city streets. Paris invited intellectuals from across the globe to abandon everything they had once known and believed to gather together to try to make sense of a world that no longer resembled their own. The Lost Generation is, in fact, made up almost exclusively of expatriates. Writers like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and E. E. Cummings all left their native land, the United States, in favor of Paris. After the war, many cultural figures were appalled at U.S. President Warren G. Hardings back to normalcy policy since they had just witnessed firsthand an event so horrendous as to destroy any concept of normalcy. Fleeing the cold denial of a nation which could not look reality in the face, these writers sought solace in the Parisian cultural tradition and also felt a bond with the French themselves, many of whom had been more intimately affected

by the war than most Americans. Paris, then, offered a hopeful escape as the American Dream wheezed its last breaths with Fitzgeralds infamous Gatsby. Once they had entered the city, the expatriates shaped it to their needs. They formed their own communities, living mostly on the Left Bank of the Seine with the center of gravity [in] Montparnasse, and filled cafs like the Dme, the Select, and the Rotonde with the chatter of a literary powder keg poised to go off (Literary Expatriates in Paris 4). They developed their own English language literary movement in the context of Paris, keeping in business a number of English language book stores, publishers and magazines in the process. All of these great literary minds coming together and living together in one of the most culturally significant cities in the world allowed some of the most influential works of the 20th century to be written and helped to define the movement that would later be dubbed modernism. Paris served not only as the backdrop for all of this activity, but was, in fact, intimately involved in it. The world would not have masterpieces like Hemingways The Sun Also Rises or Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby were it not for the Lost Generations mass exodus to Paris. Moreover, these anxious works on the death of mans understanding of life paved the way for such prominent French existentialists as Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre who went on to further explore the sense of foreboding ennuyeux that hung over the Western world with the death of innocence that the First World War truly was. Without the Lost Generation, it remains unclear whether or not the world would have ever been able to come to terms with itself after so nearly destroying itself.

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Works Cited "Literary Expatriates in Paris." Geniuses Together. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2003. Web. 02 Dec. 2013. Lost Generation. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 01 Dec. 2013. "The Lost Generation: American Writers of the 1920's." The Lost Generation. Montgomery College, n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2013.