Charles Maurras

Biography

See also: the French Action

Maurras is born in a family from the middle-class of Provence. It makes its studies with the catholic college, with Aix-en-Provence, street Lacépède, but loses the faith quickly. After having passed its baccalaureat in 1885, it leaves for Paris and becomes literary journalist. It binds friendship with Anatole France, which reinforces its Agnosticisme and is subject to the influence of the Positivisme of Auguste Count.

Maurras evolves/moves as from 1895-1896. It meets the Nationaliste Maurice Barrès, collaborates in the Rosette , and returns changed of its voyage into Greece, where it covers the first Olympic Games modern for the Gazette of France . It lines up in the camps of the Antidreyfusard S, converts with the monarchical idea . Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald inspires his political ideas, Play and the Tower of the Pine, its ideas economic S and Social be.

It is the leading one and the principal founder of the daily newspaper Royaliste the French Action (initially entitled Revue French Action , founded by Maurice Pujo and Henri Vaugeois in 1899). It deployed, with his principal collaborators, a great virulence, going - during the years 1920 - until the death threat, in particular against Abraham Schrameck, Minister of Interior Department, in 1925 (“It would be without hatred and fear which I would give the order to spread your blood of dog if you misuse the public authority to spread widespread French blood under the balls and the knives of the gangsters of Moscow which you like”), or against Leon Blum, president of the Council ('“It is as a Jew that it is necessary to see, conceive, hear, fight and cut down Blum. This last verb will appear a little strong of coffee: I hasten to add that one will have to cut down physically Blum only the day when its policy will have brought us the impious war which it dreams against our Italian comrades in arms. This day admittedly it will not have to be missed. ”).
The anti-semitism of Maurras, undeniable, however occupies a modest place in its work; Besides Leon Poliakov evokes the “good Jews” which Maurras by their engagement in the Great War had distinguished, like Pierre David (1886-1918). Its literary talent gave to its theoretical works a great influence in the cultivated and preserving mediums of France, and its qualities of Polémiste ensured a real audience in others to him, like the French Academy.

In 1905 it founds the Ligue of French Action for raising funds in favor of the French Action , become the press agency of the movement.

See also: Maurrassisme

The Marquis de Montealegre de Aulestia, large thinker Peruvian reactionary, met it in 1913, admiring its monarchical doctrines. Maurras also had important ascending ideological on Salazar and the intellectuals of the mode salazarist. It supported the general Franco and, until spring 1939, Mussolini, underlining the relationship between good number of its ideas and those of Fascism. He appreciated symbiosis between his Italian epigones and the fascistic national Party.

In March 1936, he will write in the French Action in connection with the Nazism: “the racist company is certainly a pure madness and without exit”. Maurras will require a not expurgée translation of Mein Kampf , of which certain passages enabling to foresee the ambitions hitlériennes had been censured in the French version.

He was elected with the French Academy the June 9th 1938, with the armchair 16, succeeding Henri Robert. Its official reception took place the June 8th 1939.

At the summer 1940, in spite of the councils of Pierre Gaxotte, Maurras made reappear the French Action , supporting the Régime of Vichy. In September 1940, when the Pétain Marshal asks him for his design of the national Révolution, he answers “a good body of officers and a good clergy”, a position which he called: “to defend the heritage in the absence of heir”. For him, the accession with the capacity of Pétain is a surprised “divine” . Inspirer of the policy of the mode of Vichy, it was made the apologist of the government of the Pétain Marshal. He continued with " to denounce the juifs" while being pleased for example with the abolition of the Decree Crémieux.

During the occupation, the members and the close relations of the French Action were divided into three opposite groups: that of the orthodoxe maurrassiens supporting the Vichy government led by the Pétain marshal, that of the collaborationnists germanophiles such Robert Brasillach or Joseph Darnand and that of those which entered in resistance against the Nazis such Honore d' Estienne d' Orves, Gilbert Renault, Pierre Bénouville or Jacques Renouvin.

Following its life sentence for “intelligence with the enemy”, the Academy, passing in addition to the letter of the ordinance of November 21st, 1944, did not proceed to the radiation of Charles Maurras, as it would also do it a few months later for the marshal Pétain: it was satisfied, in its meeting of the 1945, to note the vacancy of the armchair and to decide to proceed to the election of the substitute only after the death of the holder. This replacement took place in 1953, with the election of Antoine de Lévis-Mirepoix.

Maurras commented on its judgment by a famous exclamation: “It is the revenge of Dreyfus! ”. In March 1951, it profits from a medical grace thanks to the assistance of the writer Henry Bordeaux who claimed many times this one in Vincent Auriol by various mails. Charles Maurras is then transferred to the Saint-Gregoire private clinic from Tours (Saint-Symphorien district) where he dies. Although weakened, he collaborated under pseudonym in Aspects of France , newspaper founded by maurrassiens in 1947, following the prohibition of the French Action .

Its last years, with the prison of Clairvaux, were the occasion of an introspection and a reconversion to Catholicism.

Works

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