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FRENCH LITERATURE - Part 6
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"The need to express oneself in writing
springs from a malajustment to life, or from an inner
conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot
resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as
breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real,
to rise above, and describe it. . . . I do not mean that it
is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but
writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict,
provided they have the necessary talent."
André Maurois (1885-1967), French author, critic.
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THE 20TH CENTURY
The 20th century in
France has been characterized by a tremendous expansion in literary
output and the ever-faster pace of experimentation with new means of
expression. Both Marxism and Freudianism have left a deep imprint on
literature, as on all the arts. Two world wars have tried France
sorely, while the technological revolution confronts the current
generation with an altogether new world. The result of such profound
socioeconomic and political change has been a continuous questioning
of all moral, intellectual, and artistic traditions.
In poetry, symbolism
continued to serve as an inspiration without stifling new departures.
Paul Claudel, notable as both dramatist and poet, injected a
mystical Catholicism into his masterpiece, Five Great Odes (1904-10;
Eng. trans., 1967). Paul Valéry became famous for
delicate poems that were at once meditative, musical, and rich in
imagery. Guillaume Apollinaire deliberately aimed for
modernity in his poetry, which was full of whimsical surprises. He
not only coined the term surrealist but in The Breasts of Tiresias
(1918; Eng. trans., 1961) produced the first surrealist play. Under
the leadership of André Breton, the movement's
theorist, SURREALISM aimed for a complete revolution in poetry and
the visual arts to be achieved through an exploration of the
subconscious, considered as poetry's deepest source. A rejuvenator of
poetic imagination, surrealism launched, among others, the poet and
novelist Louis Aragon, although Aragon after 1930 found
inspiration in his Marxist beliefs.
The novel thrived
especially during the first half of the century. Anatole
France kept the tradition of political satire alive with his
allegorical spoof, Penguin Island (1908; Eng. trans., 1909). Romain
Rolland, with his 10-volume Jean-Christophe (1904-12; Eng.
trans., 1910-13), followed later by Jules Romains with his
even larger Men of Good Will series (27 vols., 1932-47; Eng. trans.
in 14 vols., 1933-46), demonstrated the continuing popularity of the
roman-fleuve, or cyclical novel, in France. Andre GIDE, from The
Immoralist (1902; Eng. trans., 1930) through The Counterfeiters
(1926; Eng. trans., 1927), novels that are still compelling,
championed the individual at war with conventional morality. France's
greatest 20th-century novelist, however, was Marcel Proust,
the extent of whose contributions to the genre can be compared only
with those of James Joyce. In the multivolume, multilevel Remembrance
of Things Past (1913-27; Eng. trans., 1922-31), Proust sought to
recapture the essence of lost time, for him a spiritual reality,
through reconstructing the external shape or sensations of the past;
the whole was narrated chiefly by means of an interior monologue.
Working on a smaller
canvas, Colette produced short novels that shrewdly analyzed
the complexities of intimate relations, while François
Mauriac took as his special preserve, in a series of novels
influenced by his Catholicism, the eternal battle between spirit and
flesh. Two of the freshest voices in the decade before World War II
belonged to Louis Ferdinand Céline, whose cynical,
often scurrilous Journey to the End of Night (1932; Eng. trans.,
1934) and Death on the Installment Plan (1936; Eng. trans., 1938)
spoke for the fascism to come, and to the then politically radical
adventurer-writer André Malraux in Man's Fate (1933;
Eng. trans., 1934) and Man's Hope (1937; Eng. trans., 1938).
Philosophical
EXISTENTIALISM dominated literature in postwar France, spilling over
into the novel as onto the stage. Jean Paul Sartre, leader of
the movement, had previously explained its tenets (namely, the human
freedom to choose and to forge one's own values) in the novel Nausea
(1938; Eng. trans., 1949), the play No Exit (1944; Eng. trans.,
1946), and a trilogy of novels dealing with World War II. Its themes
would be echoed by others, most notably by Albert Camus in The
Stranger (1942; Eng. trans., 1946) and The Plague (1947; Eng. trans.,
1948), in which the absurdity, or meaninglessness, of life is
stressed. Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre's lifelong friend and
disciple, also dealt with existentialist problems in her novels but
is probably best known for her massive treatise on the status of
women, The Second Sex (1949; Eng. trans., 1952), and a series of
distinguished memoirs.
From the 1950s, the
dominant trend was the NEW NOVEL, or antinovel, as represented by
Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, and Alain
Robbe-Grillet. Although these authors have no common doctrine,
all reject plot and verisimilitude as traditionally understood. Their
work, allied with new insights provided initially by the adherents of
STRUCTURALISM, has had a marked effect on literary expression,
analysis, and criticism (as for example, in the work of Roland
Barthes and Jacques Derrida.
The French theater,
perhaps more than any other form, illustrates the profound literary
revolution that has swept France since the days of Edmond
Rostand's flamboyant Cyrano de Bergerac (1897; Eng. trans.,
1937). The poetical plays of Jean Giradoux, especially the
astringent Madwoman of Chaillot (1945; Eng. trans., 1947), continued
to appeal to postwar audiences, as did the productions of Jean
Anouilh, some smiling, some ferocious. But with Eugène
Ionesco's The Bald Soprano (1950; Eng. trans., 1958), an
altogether new drama, called the THEATER OF THE ABSURD, came into
being, marking a sharp break with the past. Samuel Beckett
best exemplified both the strengths and limits of this theater in
Waiting for Godot (1953; Eng. trans., 1954) and Endgame (1957; Eng.
trans., 1958). In these two plays the sets, the characters, and
language itself disintegrate into an awesome void. The plays of Jean
Genet, such as The Balcony (1956; Eng. trans., 1958) and The
Blacks (1958; Eng. trans., 1960), also aim at destruction, but in a
fuller, more theatrical, sacramental way. Yet however baffling and
depressing these productions are, there can be no doubt that they
powerfully illuminate the underlying somber concerns of the present
era. Above all, they testify to the ever-present originality and
vitality of French literature and confirm its enviable avant-garde
role.
Jean Boorsch.
Source: The New Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, Release #8, ©1996.
Bibliography:
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Atkinson, Geoffrey, The Sentimental Revolution: French Writers of
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Absolute (1959 rev. ed. 1970); Becker, Lucille F., 20th Century
French Women Novelists (1989); Birkett, Jennifer, Sins of the
Fathers: Decadence in France, 1870-1914 (1987); Bree, Germaine, 20th
Century French Literature, 1920-70 (1983); Brereton, Geoffrey, A
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The Hidden Reader: Stendhal, Balzac, Hugo, Baudelaire, Flaubert
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of Enlightenment (1969); Crosland, Jesse, Medieval French Literature
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French Drama (1972); Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An
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rev. ed. 1969); Maurois, Andre, From Proust to Camus, trans. by Carl
Morse and Renaud Bruce (1968); Moore, W. G., French Achievement in
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Daniel, French Thought in the 18th Century, trans. by Lawrence M.
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French Novel (1965); Peyre, Henri, French Novelists of Today (1967)
and What is Romanticism? (1977); Picon, Gaetan, Contemporary French
Literature: 1945 and After (1974); Robinson, Christopher, French
Literature in the 20th Century (1980); Stone, Donald, France in the
16th Century (1969); Waelti-Walters, Jennifer, Feminist Novelists of
the Belle Epoque (1990).
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