Forward with Jean Monnet

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

François Fontaine

Published:

1991

Publisher:

Palgrave Macmillan US

For more than thirty years I lived a great experience that went beyond my limits. I lived close to a man who at one and the same time shaped things in detail and on a world scale. I was a little heedless, not always aware of my luck. Later I realized that my life would have no other meaning than to have been the witness of an historic achievement. I helped, to the utmost of my powers, its author to write the story of this achievement and to draw its lessons from it. It would have been wise to stop there. Jean Monnet said all he wanted to say. But reticence stopped him short of fully revealing himself and for that reason his Memoirs, written in the first person, are too discreet about the richness of his nature and the deep sources of his creative genius. Certainly there is no lack of testimonies to him, but they add little to the picture of him that is already becoming fixed. There is still time to enrich that image, to widen the somewhat narrow circle of repetitive stories. I have tried to do this, with the single aim of provoking all those who knew him to go further into their recollections, and to correct or complete this sketch.

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