Constant Malva

Constant Malva of its true name Alphonse Bourlard (1903 - 1969), minor and proletarian writer Belgian.

Biography

He was born with Quaregnon in the Borinage in Wallonia (Belgium) in 1903.

In 1911, its family seeks work in the north of the France.

In 1914, it will be the exodus in several French cities. Malva will never have its diploma of elementary school, but a teacher makes him gift of a grammar that it will keep until his death.

After the armistice, in 1919, whereas it was fifteen years old, he became underground worker like his father with the coal mining of Rieu of the Heart with Quaregnon

Trotskist

In 1923, its convictions encourage it to adhere to the Party Communiste, which it decides to leave in 1928 following the exclusion of the trotskystes, of which Charles Plisnier. It adheres then to the Revolutionary Socialist party, of tendency trotskyste, without really militating, for finally declaring itself revolutionary independent in 1936.

After having written in the Red Flag , its true literary beginnings take place in 1931.

In 1932, starting from the memories of his/her mother, it writes Histoire of my mother and my uncle Fernand . It forms then part of the group Rupture which gathers the surrealist Hainaut.

It will be occupied in various coal mining of the area of the Borinage. But in 1940, disgusted by the work conditions and persuaded that it must leave to survive, it voluntarily leaves the mine.

It is necessary absolutely that I save myself mine (...) question of life or death. The silicosis makes terrible devastation in our rows (letter with R. Bonnet) A few years later, he will write in " A minor you parle": I do not know what the fate will hold for me tomorrow, but unless one forces me the revolver in the nape of the neck there, I will not go down any more in the mine.

Misery and collaboration

Malva knows misery then: to survive and nourish its family (it has two children then), it exerts various small trades of which that of caretaker and odd-job man with Mons in the buildings of a collaborator trade union. He writes tales and accounts on the mine published in various reviews controlled by collaboration, which enables him to avoid the deportation in Germany, but will be worth to him to be worried with the Libération.

The collaboration of Malva is not explained only by the need as Jean Puissant shows it: The need does not explain only this advance, even if one sees badly Malva côtoyer with the Union of the worker manuals and intellectual (UTMI) of the representatives of the trade-union bureaucracy that he hated pre-war period and who had answered the call of DeMan. Condemned by the history, condemned by the company, Malva paid hard for gestures, words, altogether minor. It however remains to retain a route who has value of example for these men who, resulting from the working world or of the left, terrible illusions, even fugitive nourished, on the mode Nazi and on its behavior in occupied territory.

After the Second world war, which was balanced for him by a legal judgment, undermined by the disease and disappointed by the political evolution of the working class, Malva is diverted of its activity of militant and is plunged in the reflection and the writing.

The writer

In its novels in autobiographical matter, strongly marked by the mine, he denounces the painful living conditions of the minors (whom he called the “heroes of the basement”) and described the shock between the companies middle-class woman and worker. The majority of its works are testimonys on the working condition of the time.

The literature will lead it to attend the surrealist medium. It comes into contact with Achille Chavée, André Breton, Albert Ayguesparse.

He dies in 1969 of the continuations of the Silicose to Saint-Jose-ten-Noode.

Works

  • 1932 : History of my mother and my uncle Fernand
  • 1935: a propr' with nothing
  • 1937: Borins
  • 1940 : a workman who is bored
  • 1942: One of the mine
  • 1943: My man of cut
  • 1948: a minor speaks to you
  • 1952: Jambot (only novel)
  • 1954: My night from day to day

See too

External bond

  • Biography

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