DRIEU LA ROCHELLE (Pierre). - Lot 136

Lot n° 136
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1500 - 2000 EUR
DRIEU LA ROCHELLE (Pierre). - Lot 136
DRIEU LA ROCHELLE (Pierre). Born in Paris. 1893-1945. French writer. L.A.S. "Drieu" to Gérard Bauër. S.l., January 16 [19]40. 6 pp. numbered, in-4. Joint: L.A.S. "Drieu" to the same. S.l.n.d. - 2 pages in-4. Drieu responds to journalist Gérard Bauër's polemical remarks about Barrès, and GILLES [a book by Drieu published in 1939 that caused controversy].He adds a more intimate letter as a preamble to the first. ...My article did come out of our conversation at the Relais, but through a pileup of daydreams. I don't remember you regretting the absence of a Barrès (...). Otherwise, I would have shrunk from the indecency of slyly attacking a Figaro contributor in Le Figaro. My "Monsieur" was mythical... I believe that what you say in defense of Barrès was implicit in the very cautious terms in which I expressed my judgment. "Exquisitely inadequate". He did all he could to shock no one while helping the greatest number, but despite all his care he could not reach a certain reality of experience. So much so, that suddenly all his effort seemed useless and no longer useful. Jen had seen men wounded at the front, even though they were his staunchest literary admirers and even our political supporters... As for Napoleon, won't you agree with me on two points? Firstly, the military legend has been reduced by a new military reality. After 14, some Hugolesque creations of cavalry charges cannot be seen in the same light. Secondly, a certain fury of ambition à la Sorel [Stendhalian hero Julien Sorel] or à la Rastignac [Balzacian character from La Comédie humaine, embodying lambition] is no longer part of young people's sensibilities. I didn't find it in any of the "ambitious" people I approached: Raymond Lefèvre (a young Communist party leader who died in the White Sea in 1920), Aragon, Bergery, Malraux, a certain Arnaud Petitjean... According to Bauër, Gilles is just a novel about ...failed transition... Drieu protests energetically before explaining: ...Oh no, I've insisted everywhere that Gilles is not ambitious. He is a contemplative who is haunted by the ambition of others only for a moment, and then moves into a perfectly defined relationship of "respectful distance" from the ambition of others, of "reciprocal service". This is the exact opposite of 19th-century lambition, which confuses action with dreams. Gilles is the ongoing distinction between these two forces. I'm extremely disappointed and astonished by such an interpretation, coming from an attentive reader. What's the point of writing, then? I made my literary debut in 1917 with a collection of poems entitled "Interrogation", which was banned by the censors. It included a poem entitled "A vous Allemands" ("To you Germans"), which praised the enemy on a historical and philosophical level that had little to do with the intellectual battles of the time. I have no desire to revive this poem, as I did in an article against Bernard Shaw. But I still have no desire to join in the huge personal diatribe against Hitler, which seems to me to mislead the public, just as the diatribe against Wilhelm or Bismarck misled the public. There's the German, and then there's everything. And that's the way it is, and we have to fight it as such, without any vain hope of changing it behind its leaders. I have always upheld this thesis in all my political essays and in my articles in Emancipation, to which you make an ill-informed or malicious allusion [...] I have no intention whatsoever of renouncing a certain consideration of German genius through all its avatars, which still really applied in a private correspondence to Maurras and which can just as easily apply to any passionate negation of this genius coming from any other quarter. When it comes to enthusiasm, ask Montherlant, Malraux, Green and Bernanos for an account as I would! They're much more tight-lipped than I am... He ends with a handshake ...not without a frown... Enclosed: Letter (preamble) ...There was never any friendship between us, but on the rare occasions we met (...) I enjoyed that free, impalpable interplay of feelings which is like the infinitely prolonged prelude to friendship (...). I don't much like personal quarrels, I have enough of them on my aging back. I'm sending you this letter that I first wrote and then threw into a corner. It's more expressive than the other one. I can assure you that people who didn't know anything about it found your articles very unpleasant for me. He adds a p.s.: ...(I'll go on and on!). What disturbs me most in your articles is the reflex of our time that appears in them: in France, we don't have the right to "talk" about anything.
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