Roger Martin du Gard et le biographique (review)

This collection, inspired by the publication of the last two volumes of Roger Martin du Gard's Correspondance générale in 2007, fifty years after his death, examines the author's complex and ambivalent relationship with biography. The first section, 'Lignes de vie', focusing on letters and journal entries, opens with an examination by Martine Boyer-Weinmann of the tensions in Martin du Gard's writing between his desire to eradicate the autobiographical from his fiction and the authoritarian control over his writing project expressed by the diarist and the correspondent. Drawing on the Correspondance, Boyer-Weinmann traces the author's lifelong friendship with Gide, contrasting Martin du Gard's objectivity and avoidance of the personal with Gide's propensity for self-revelation, and finally addresses both authors' dealings with the media on being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, Martin du Gard in 1937 and Gide in 1947. In the second essay, Marie-Odile André examines the period of silence and withdrawal between 1951, the year of Gide's death, and 1958, that of Martin du Gard. Hélène Baty-Delalande turns her attention to Martin du Gard's diary, concluding, in her astute analysis, that he succumbed to the temptation of the novel by assigning the drama of destiny to what Jacques Copeau has described as 'les vérités beaucoup plus fines, délicates, ombrageuses et souvent contradictoires que la vie et le caractère produisent d'eux-mêmes' (p. 63). The second part, 'Formes de la fiction', concentrating on Martin du Gard's novels, begins with an analysis of 'La Sorellina', a short story in the novel of the same name. Julien Plat's meticulous stylistic analysis reveals a generational style in the piece, which situates it in the modern, lyrical prose of 1927 as opposed to 1912, the fictional date of composition. This style leads to an effect of autobiographical reading, laying bare the essential subjectivity of the writing. In the following essay, Jean-François Massol traces the characteristics of hagiography running through Jean Barois, In Memoriam, Notes sur André Gide, and Les Thibault, in the author's fascination with the exemplary individual, indicating how his idealism alters over time in favour of a humanist and progressive portrayal in Antoine's death. Aude Leblond, in the third essay of this section, investigates the biographical structures of Les Thibault and the writing of the self, interpreting Jacques and Antoine not only as the two psychological selves of the author, but as two ethical poles of existence. Next, Dominique Massonnaud situates Les Thibault in its time and argues that Martin du Gard brings together the naturalist and the Gidean novel; the single narrative voice collapses in favour of the polyphonic and the absence of agency in the last volumes. A lucid final essay by Charlotte Andrieux traces biographical transpositions and, in so doing, follows Martin du Gard's creative method by comparing the fiction with authorial commentary, showing how the writing turns out to be 'une sorte d'autobiographie mi-réelle, mi-imaginaire, constituée à partir des vies possibles que le romancier aurait pu avoir' (pp. 150-51). Some inevitable repetition of concepts does not detract from the quality of the contributions, making this volume, with its useful bibliography, an invaluable addition to research on Roger Martin du Gard.