Henotheism

Biography

Wire of a teacher and a primary school inspector, Régis Messac attends successively the schools of Léoville, Castellane and Luçon; continues its secondary studies with the college of Châtellerault then to the Lycée Shakes with Versailles. In 1914, it is in Khâgne with Paris, the Lycée Condorcet, fails by twice the entrance examination the National university. The war of 1914 puts an end to its useless efforts.

First World War

Mobilized in August, Messac is wounded with the head the 8 December 1914, is trepanned and poured, in February 1916, with Caen, in the auxiliary service where he exerts the most singular trades, in particular those of coltinor, cook, stable boy, assistance-carter, plasterer, carder of mattress, railroad worker. Everywhere, it deploys an equal incompetence and makes a point of remaining soldier of second class for ideological reasons on which it will be explained lengthily. In 1918, docker in the port of Dunkirk, it learns English with the Tommies . Demobilized on April 15th 1919, to translate its nausea and its dislike of the war, it then writes two autobiographical novels, the Voyage of Néania and Ordre of transport , a play, Phobie of blue , a lampoon, the Tip of blood , and warlike Poèmes in which it shows the little of case that the States make of the life of the soldiers.

Career

Meanwhile, benefitting from a dearly paid convalescence, it obtains, in July 1915, its license be-letters. In 1922, it is received with the aggregation in the order of grammar. It is then named professor with the college of Auch (1922 - 1923), reader at the university of Glasgow (1923 - 1924), professor with the Université McGill of Montreal (1924 - 1929), supports, with Paris, on December 7th 1929, its thesis, the “Detective Novell” and the influence of the scientific thought , and, a little later, its complementary thesis, Influences Frenchwoman in the work of Edgar Poe . At the end of a bitter and often very hard reflection on the professorial condition (Smith Conundrum), it returns to France, the same year, after having lost an infant; it is named professor of 6th with the college of Montpellier. Doctor be-letters, with the very honourable mention, unanimously, congratulations, double inscription on the short list for higher education, it will however never have access to the university. He tells this period at the same time fertile and difficult of its life in another novel autobiography, the Man besieged , leaves Montpellier in 1936 to join another episcopal city, Coutances, where he is titular pulpit of 4th and ensures, in 1940, a course in special class of Mathématiques.

Literary activity and journalistic

Because he wrote some novels and news of science fiction, one generally presents Régis Messac like an author of the kind, even “a precursor of the French science fiction”. However, Messac produced a work much vaster and infinitely more varied. Théo Varlet, which described it “as historian of the scientific literature of imagination”, was not mistaken there. The anthologist Marc Madouraud either, who notes in connection with Régis Messac that “its work of pioneer of the study of the science fiction is historically more important”. But actually this work goes well beyond the study of the science fiction.

As of the end of the war of 1914, Messac sharpens its feather lampoonist. Of 1919 with 1922, it gives articles to the reviews the Rocket and the French and foreign Activity , with the newspaper the Freedom of thought , these two last publications being directed by Jacques Bonzon, lawyer of the poor and the anarchists. Messac develops its topics of predilection to with it: corruption, the collusion of the financial powers and the political power, the antimilitarism, its hostility with the religion, with the middle-class and the traditional family, the cranium stuffing to which delivers the school and the media, problems of the women. Thus can it write in the French and foreign Activity of November 26th, 1919: “The middle-class men do not have ideas and they are afraid to have some. France is a nation small tradesmen lost by a spirit of narrow lucre, of which all science is of grappiller on the wages of the worker. ”

Messac publishes many articles in the columns of the Quotidien and of the civic Progrès , gives of it to literary or scientific reviews like the Great Review , the Belgian Review , the Review of literary history of France , the Review of comparative literature , Science , illustrated Science (probably Modern science ), with libertarian publications like human Patrie and Barrage , of the trade-union reviews: the émancipée School , the School liberator , red Ink , the trade-union Platform , the new University , but also, as from January 1930, it writes in the review the Primary educations of which he becomes editor association of January 1932 at March 1940, although the ultimate number, that gone back to January in March 1940, remained with the state of test. Under its name and various pseudonyms, Messac holds of the headings, publishes its own literary and scientific studies, its chronicles, news, translations, writing of the polemical, satirical articles and an incredible number of reports of works in scientific or philosophical matter.

One will note also a participation, of 1934 with 1939, with the “private revuette” Simplement . Starting from 1937, Messac writes the cultural page of Nouvel Age founded by Henry Poulaille, directed by Georges Valois; he collaborates in other reviews known as of proletarian Littérature: All and all , the proletarian Revolution , and Humble the of Maurice Wullens.

Political activity

In policy, according to the journalist François Fonvieille-Alquier, Messac defied “great organized parties of the left and preferred to them the anarchizing groupings, trotskysants, the trade-union minorities and other phantom formations subjected to conflicts of tendencies and periodic scissions. ” Follower of the Non-violence, theorist of peace, member, in the Years 1930, of the management committee of the international League of the combatants of peace, at the sides of Félicien Challaye and Robert Jospin, Messac asserts pacifist credit. He flatters himself never not to have used a weapon against the enemy and declares, on September 4th, 1943, at the time of his lawsuit in front of the German military tribunal, “never neither not to have professed nor preached hatred against the Germans”, to be “ready to tighten the hand of the German soldier who had wounded it of a shot at the beginning of the war of 1914 . ” The government decreed the to him Military Cross, on a purely posthumous basis. On a purely posthumous basis always, it was made second lieutenant, and knight in the order of the Légion of honor.

Second world war

During the Second world war, whereas, according to its expression, “the infernal round around the sphere had predicted in Quinzinzinzili is started, this time for good”, Régis Messac writes Pot-rotted Fantôme , a chronicle of the years of war and Occupation of 1939 with 1942. This lampoon against the mode of Vichy is greeted by the critic like “the best literary painting ever carried out over this period”, as an indictment “where the revolt of a free spirit thunders in front of the constraint”, a book which “belongs to the small number of the invaluable documents of the immediate history that the History conformist lets disappear when it did not contribute to their destruction. ”

At the same time, Régis Messac engages in the constitution of a fraction of the National front, a communist resistance movement of obedience, which developed in the Manche starting from 1941. Stopped with Coutances on Monday, May 10, 1943, it is held with the prison of Saint-Lo until October 7th, 1943. Condemned to one year of prison the previous on September 5th, it is off-set Nacht und Nebel to be rejugé in Germany by the Court of the people with Breslau. During its tour, he knows successively the prison of Fresnes (October 7th - November 11th, 1943), the concentration camp of Natzweiller- Struthof, in Alsace (November 12th, 1943 - July 10th, 1944), the penitentiary of Brieg, in Silesia (July 19th - October 13rd, 1944), the Concentration camp of Large-Rosen (starting from October 13rd, 1944). The last proven trace of its existence carries dated January 19th, 1945 to the camp of Large-Rosen. One can however think that it could be evacuated, in February, on the camp of Dora, (in which case it would have been constrained to take part in the Marches of dead the), even, in March, of the camp of Gilded on the camp of Bergen-Belsen.

Governed Messac which, since 1931, in its review of the the Primary educations , had been interested in the universe concentrationnaire, knew the mechanism of it. In its account of the horrors lived with the camp of the Struthof, François Kozlik describes the astonishment of the internees when arrive at the camp, en1943, the first NR Franzosen (French Nacht und Nebel ). “It was, says it, of the priests wearing the cassock, the senior officers, it were, as it later was known, of the doctors, the workmen, the peasants. Almost without exception of the French of the Resistance. ” Then, after having some time observed these prisoners of a new kind, Kozlik adds: “It is almost incredible to note which reserves of forces the human being has. Because the behavior of these French, the way in which they tightened the teeth, courage with which they took care of work impossible to carry out, the discipline with which they left by the gate, all in row, the rectified body, the broken up, by a paleness mortal, swollen and ensanglanté face, but holding right the head in a savage effort, even moved most hardened by the internees, who could not hide his admiration. ”

The testimony of the companions in misfortune of Messac, survivors of the German hell concentrationnaire, confirms the exemplary attitude of dignity of “this intellectual to the white hands, who had never handled the pickaxe”, which got busy to come to assistance of his/her comrades, to intervene in the conflicts the opponent with the Germans, to protect most vulnerable to the danger from its life.

Carried disappeared, the fictitious date of died of Governed Messac is fixed at May 15th, 1945 by judgment of the court of Coutances dated June 26th 1946.

“Separately a bad photography and a portrait, writing Francis Lacassin in the Express train of February 5th, 1973, it remains nothing him; except its work… That is better than a tomb stone for a man who, not without reason, saw in his contemporaries of the corpses in power. ”