Art during wartime
During the Nazi occupation in Paris from 1940 to 1944, the show went on. Even under the brutal reign of the Third Reich, the glow from the City of Lights never dimmed. Its cabarets and nightspots stayed open, filled with singers and entertainers. Artists, writers, and filmmakers continued to work along the banks of the Seine and beyond. Yet the decision of many to pursue life as normal and to continue embracing the city’s cultural life was not exactly sleeping with the enemy. It was full of complicated nuance and meaning — a subtlety that is at the heart of Alan Riding’s new book, “And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris.” Riding, the former European cultural correspondent for The New York Times, was at Harvard Monday (Oct. 25) for a panel discussion about his new work. Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities and director of the Humanities...