Engagement and the French Nationalist Right: The Case of the Jeune Droite

European History Quarterly

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 207-232

  Mazgaj, Paul ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 57349155199     PISSN: 02656914     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0269142002032002499     Document Type: Article

References (38)

1. See, for example, the recent issue of Vingtième siecle (October-December 1998) examining intellectual engagement in the twentieth century.
2. Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli, Les Intellectuels en France, de l'affaire Dreyfus à nos jours (Paris 1986). The recent history of French intellectuals by Michel Winock, Le Siècle des intellectuels (Paris 1997), is a notable departure.
3. David Schalk, The Spectrum of Political Engagement: Mounier, Benda, Nizan, Brasillach, Sartre (Princeton 1979). This was a milieu first described by Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle in his Les Non-conformistes des années 30. Une tentative de renouvellement de la pensée politique française (Paris 1969).
4. Schalk includes a chapter on Brasillach, but it focuses on the Popular Front years. The best biographical treatment of Brasillach remains Robert Tucker's The Fascist Ego: A Political Biography of Robert Brasillach (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1975). Though several biographies of Brasillach appeared in France in the 1980s, sparking something of a ‘Brasillach revival’, they suffer, to varying degrees, from an attempt to separate Brasillach the writer and critic from Brasillach the fascist. Most egregious in this regard is Annie Brassié, Robert Brasillach ou encore un instant de bonheur (Monaco 1987). For an overview of Brasillach from an historiographical perspective, see Paul Mazgaj, ‘Ce mal du siècle: The “Romantic” Fascism of Robert Brasillach’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 23 (Winter 1997), 49-72.
5. Jérome Tharaud and Jean Tharaud, ‘Hommage à Charles Maurras pour son Jubilé litteraire’, La Revue universelle (1 January 1937), 141-2.
6. Published in the ‘supplément littéraire’, 19 July 1919.
7. On Massis's prewar generational campaign, see Robert Wohl, The Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, MA 1979), 3-41.
8. On this topic, see Martha Hanna's perceptive study The Mobilization of Intellect: French Scholars and Writers during the Great War (Cambridge, MA and London 1996).
9. On Massis's one-man cultural war with Gide and the NRF, see Paul Mazgaj, ‘Defending the West: The Cultural and Generational Politics of Henri Massis’, Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques, Vol. 17 (1991), 107-12, 116-17.
10. The series ran from August through October 1931.
11. Candide (17 September 1931).
12. ‘L'écrivain et l'action’, in Le Rajeunissement de la politique (Paris 1932), 115-33.
13. ‘Positions. Les Ecrivains et l'événement’, Revue française (25 June 1932), 89.
14. Pierre Milza has claimed that with the formation of Solidarité Française, one ‘entre de plain-pied dans le fascisme français’. Fascisme français. Passé et présent (Paris 1987), 146. Likewise, the Solidarité Frangaise is seen by Robert Soucy as an important expression of French fascism. French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933-1939 (New Haven and London 1995), 59-103. For a somewhat different view, see Gilles Labousse, ‘De la Solidarité française au Parti du faisceau français. Un exemple de radicalisation politique’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d'histoire, No. 58 (April-June 1998), 43-54; Labousse argues that the Solidarité Française was not fascist at its inception.
15. Robert Brasillach, Notre Avant-guerre (Paris 1981), 123-33.
16. 'Les Livres: Positions’, Revue du siècle (October 1933), 75-7.
17. Martyn Cornick, Intellectuals in History: The Nouvelle Revue Française under Jean Paulhan, 1925-1940 (Amsterdam and Atlanta 1995).
18. For a perceptive recent evaluation of Gide's politics in the 1930s, seen within the context of his literary career and his personal life, see Alan Sheridan, André Gide: A Life in the Present (Cambridge, MA 1999), 441-547.
19. Printed in the NRF (1 August 1932), 318-19.
20. Martyn Cornick, ‘Catalyst for Intellectual Engagement: The Serialization of Julien Benda's La Trahison des clercs in the Nouvelle Revue Française’, French Cultural Studies, Vol. 4 (1993), 47-49.
21. ‘Never’, Gide admitted, ‘have I looked toward the future with a more passionate curiosity. I applaud this gigantic and yet completely human enterprise with all my heart.’ This text, written in 1931, was published in the NRF of July 1932, one month before Rolland's text. Cited in Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 134; on the reaction to Gide's admission and his subsequent fellow-travelling activities, see Herbert R. Lottman, The Left Bank: Writers, Artists, and Politics from the Popular Front to the Cold War (Boston 1982), 25-6.
22. Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 135.
23. Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 140-1.
24. ‘Lettre ouverte à André Gide’, NRF (1 April 1934), 703-8; Fernandez's italics.
25. Etiemble wrote under the pen name Jean Louverné.
26. ‘Conversion?’, NRF (1 April 1934), 628-48; cited in Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 140-1.
27. Admittedly, Drieu la Rochelle was recording his growing fascination with fascism in the pages of the NRF through the spring of 1934, but his presence by this time, Cornick insists, was merely ‘token'. Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 84-5.
28. ‘Nouvelles taches de l'intelligence’, Revue universelle (15 November 1933), 500.
29. ‘Le Collectivisme humanitaire’, Revue universelle (15 April 1934), 245.
30. ‘Une Mésaventure de l'humanisme’, Action française (26 July 1934), 3.
31. ‘Emeutes en province’, 1934 (4 July 1934), 6.
32. ‘A propos du “bien commun". Necessité de s'engager’, Revue du XXe siècle No. 1 (November 1930), 38-40.
33. ‘Note sur la politique’, NRF (December 1934), 869; cited in Cornick, Intellectuals in History, 143.
34. ‘La Mobilisation de la littérature’, Revue universelle (15 December 1934), 752.
35. Massis's manifesto is reproduced in Jean-François Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises. Manifestes et pétitions au XXe siècle (Paris 1990), 92-4.
36. ‘Suicide de l'Europe?’, Revue universelle (1 October 1935), 103.
37. ‘La “Morale” contre la civilisation’, Revue universelle (1 November 1935), 374.
38. See Gide's Retour de l'URSS (published in 1936) and Maulnier's Au delà du nationalisme (published in 1938).