Le Cosmopolitisme dans la littérature française: de Paul Bourget à Marguerite Yourcenar (review)

The title of Maurice Barrès's 1892 article 'La Querelle des nationalistes et des cosmopolites' gives the misleading impression of a dichotomous relationship beloved by certain editors and subeditors. Although Barrès questions the contemporary vogue for foreign writers and reaffirms the achievements of the French literary canon, he also acknowledges the value and novelty of other literatures. It is the desire to explore such nuanced views of cosmopolitanism that characterizes Nicolas Di Méo's impressive study of the concept's importance to French literature from the 1890s until the 1950s, a period when questions of identity and the need to rethink the world order became paramount. Drawing on Michel Winock's distinction between a 'nationalisme fermé' and a 'nationalisme ouvert' (p. 15), Di Méo shows how writers on both the left and the right attempted to combine different forms of 'open nationalism' with an interest in alterity. His analysis of the construction of identity, based partly on Edward Said's work in Orientalism, establishes afruitful approach to a wide variety of writers, texts, and themes. Although the title suggests a chronological set of case studies, the book is divided into three parts that discuss the concept thematically, introducing its examples as appropriate. The first part investigates the relationship between cosmopolitanism and decadence, demonstrating how for certain writers cosmopolitanism is conceived as a decadent symptom of modernity that threatens traditions and national stability. For Bourget and Morand, cosmopolitanism is a veneer disguising a determinist view of racial characteristics, based on a superiority that justifies both the 'mission civilisatrice' of colonialism and the concomitant fear of 'métissage'; for Segalen, the exoticism of the other may not be viewed in hierarchical terms, but is still based on 'différencialisme'. The second part, 'Le Cosmopolitisme au service du patriotisme', analyses how writers such as Gide, Giraudoux, and Larbaud offer compromises between openness to foreign influences and a belief in the primacy of French versions of universal traditions such as republicanism and classicism; this prudent and measured cosmopolitanism 'àla française' (p. 116) results in elitism, where cosmopolitanism is suitable for the intellectual elite but potentially dangerous for the masses. The final part, 'Cosmopolitisme, idéologies internationalistes et projets universalistes', examines how the Kantian ideal of universalism is manifested in a vast spectrum of ways, encompassing Drieu La Rochelle's commitment to fascism, Claudel's Catholic universalism, and Yourcenar's interest in Hadrian and in the idiosyncratic Renaissance humanism that she depicts in L'Œuvre au noir. The discussion also touches on Aragon, Benda, Cendrars, Malraux, Rolland, and Valéry, as well as lesser-known texts such as the 1906 Goncourt winner Dingley, l'illustre écrivain by the Tharaud brothers, set in the Boer War, or 'Sonnets torrides' by Henry Jean-Marie Levet (the reader is also rewarded by occasional comparisons with works such as Tintin au pays des Soviets and reflections on the global village). Although writers such as the Swiss Édouard Rod fall outside the author's remit, this accomplished book is highly recommended to scholars of the period(s) and to those interested in general questions of French and cosmopolitan identity.