Sleeping with the Enemy: Jean Genet’s Erotic Reconfiguration of the Occupation

WHEN THINKING ABOUT THE PRACTICE OF SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY within the context of the German occupation, two texts spring to mind. Both offer a rather conventional representation of the transgression and its consequences. The first is by Paul Eluard. It belongs to a group of poems called Au rendez-vous Allemand (At the German rendez-vous), which Eluard wrote during and about the Liberation of Paris, by which time he had distanced himself from Surrealism. The poem in question is called “Comprenne qui voudra” (“Understand Who Will”) and is preceded by an ex planatory note: “At that time, in order not to punish the guilty, they mistreated women; they even went so far as to shave their heads.” The first  stanza reads:

Understand who will

For me my remorse was

The poor girl left lying

On the pavement

The reasonable victim

With a torn dress

With the look of a lost child

Uncrowned disfigured

Who resembles the dead

Who died for being loved

(Uninterrupted Poetry 113).