Fiction et engagement politique: la représentation du parti et du militant dans le roman et le théâtre du XXe siècle (review)

Twenty-three authors are discussed in the twenty contributions to this volume, offering an interesting dissection of the multiple figures and functions of the political activist in the twentieth-century novel and theatre, although the near total absence of women writers is strongly to be regretted. The point that allegiance to the Communist Party has dominated analysis of party commitment is well made, and the inclusion of an historical article on the origin and importance of political parties is useful, but overall the volume presents a much wider canvas than the study of the party activist alone, embracing commitment in its many guises as well as ‘l’imaginaire de la militance’ (p. 193). In his rather lapidary Introduction, Jeanyves Guérin asserts that commitment in literature is a critical field dominated by discussion of ‘le signifié’ et ‘des lectures pieuses’ (pp. 7, 8), with no interest in issues of writing or poetics, a notion that a very cursory glance at the extensive literature on the subject, and on the major authors themselves, would quickly dispel. The contributions are grouped under three headings, which appear chronological but are rather thematic in nature. ‘Les Belles Années’ concentrates on the canon — Romains, Nizan, Malraux, Aragon, and Sartre — with Clavel’s Les Paroissiens de Palente on the 1973 Lip strike placed here also, no doubt for its enthusiastic endorsement of the power and spiritual value of the workers. In fact, only Aragon and Clavel emerge from these readings with unequivocal endorsement of the militant. Elsewhere, the contradictions and hidden complexities of party engagement are to the fore, with analysis of the metaphysical underpinnings of L’Espoir’s political focus, or a classic anti-Sartrean (and anti-Sartre) reading of Les Mains sales (Hugo as hero of principle). ‘L’Âge des doutes’ covers more or less the same time frame and examines a wide range of critical or uncomfortable portrayals of party allegiance from Romains to Duras. The anti-commitment stance of Les Hussards is well known, but the sheer range and importance of their activist characters, deployed as vectors of mystification and narratological anger, is convincingly shown in two separate essays, as is the importance of the Occupation’s ‘Milicien’ as a figure of scandalous commitment. Across the volume, but particularly in this section, the aporia of militancy and commitment, the subject of Peter Cryle’s classic The Tower and the Plain (not referred to here), receives detailed attention, and these studies of the powerful clashes between libertines and Bolsheviks, intellectuals and militants, partisans and thinkers demonstrate what a fertile generator of plots and conflicts it is. In ‘Le Temps des nostalgies’ nostalgia seems a rather eccentric term for a set of texts (by Guilloux, Salacrou, Vinaver, Simon, Semprun, and Olivier Rolin) that are shown to be so many statements of failure, and at times very bitter ones. We are in the realm of betrayals, of lost illusions, of narratives that deploy tropes of repetition and a cyclical sense of history to underline the futility of commitment. Hardly a ‘premier bilan’, then, but nonetheless a frequently absorbing and valuable contribution.