Maurice Bars

Biography

Maurice Barrès studied with the college of Nancy. He follows then studies to the Faculty of Law of Nancy (its certificate of inscription is posted besides in the room of the professors of Faculty).

The author

It is Paul Le Bourget who it first, in 1888, in an article with the newspaper " Débats" , the attention on the author, still unknown attracted, of " Under the eye of Barbares".

Crowned “Prince of Youth”, exciting, in three volumes of the Worship of ego (1888 - 1891), individualism, the research of the experiments and the satisfaction of the directions, Maurice Barrès in the beginning especially is appreciated on the left, and more particularly by Leon Blum.

With the publication of the Call to the soldier (1897) and Uprooted (1897), which remains with the Worship of ego its major works, it evolved, little by little, to the French Nationalisme republican and traditionalism with the attachment with the roots, the family, the army and the native soil. Maurice Barrès is also the great writer of the Revanche against victorious Germany in 1871 with Colette Baudoche , With the service of Germany .

Maurice Barrès recalls his personal evolution in the text on November 2nd in Lorraine . He evokes there “the ground and deaths”, “the large cemeteries where breath the spirit”, finishes some with the exaggerated individualism of its youth, develops the idea that our “Me” is only “the transitory one produced company”, and comes to the conclusion which “our reason obliges us to place our steps on the steps of our predecessors”. The evolution of its thought is not without relationship with the death of his/her father and especially of his mother.

He was elected in 1906 with the French Academy.

It is known that he liked, in a platonic way, the poetess Anna de Noailles, and that this love inspired to him a Garden on Oronte .

Bars travelled much, in particular in Greece from April at May 1900, a tour which it recalls in its account of voyage Voyage in Sparte (appeared in 1906). It went up the the Nile in December 1907 - January 1908. Of this voyage, one knows only some notes in his Cahiers . Bars turns over in the East in May - June 1914: Alexandria, Beirut, Damas, Alep, Antioche, etc Its account of voyage an Investigation with the country of Raising appeared only in November 1923.

Political commitment

Parallel to its career of writer, Barrès had an important political activity. Elected official appointed boulangist of Nancy at 27 years, it wanted to be also socialist and sat at the extreme-left. He founded the transitory nationalist review the Rosette ; he then adhered to the Ligue patriots of Paul Déroulède, and was antidreyfusard. Whereas the young person Leon Blum had come to visit him while hoping to rejoin it with the combat for the rehabilitation of Dreyfus, he refused and wrote a certain number of articles Antisémites, affirming in particular: “That Dreyfus betrayed, I concluded it from his race. ”

Near to Charles Maurras, his junior but who exerted on him a real fascination, Barrès however refused to adhere to the ideas monarchists while marking, until its death, its sympathy to the intellectual adventure of the French Action. Majority of the thinkers of the new royalist school (Jacques Bainville, Henri Vaugeois, Leon Daudet, Henri Massis, Jacques Maritain, Georges Bernanos, Thierry Maulnier…) besides recognized their debt with respect to Barrès, which was the inspirer of several generations of writers (among which Montherlant, Malraux, Mauriac, Aragon).

He is elected appointed of the Seine in 1906 and the remainder until his death (He then sits within the democratic republican Entente).

In 1908, a sharp oratorical duel still opposed it to Jean Jaurès at the Parliament, Barrès refusing the pantheonisation Emile Zola defended by Jaurès.

Friend and political adversary of Jaurès and pacifist the day before the Great War, Barrès came one from the first to be inclined with respect, the 1914, in front of the body of Jaurès, assassinated the day before by the nationalist Raoul Villain.

During the Great War, Barrès was an important actor of the propaganda of war and “Bourrage of cranium”. It exalta the combat in progress and gained near pacifist the nickname of “nightingale of carnages”. Pacifism had certainly become a very minority opinion, and the fight against imperial Germany pangermanist, “the war of the right”, had carried adhesion even majority of the Socialists and anarchists. Its notebooks show however that it was not easily deceived optimism of order which it posted in its own articles: they reveal pushes of pessimism and frequent désabusement, sometimes with the limit of the defeatism.

Returning partly from his errors, Maurice Barrès also paid during the Great War a vibrating homage to the French Jews in “the spiritual families of France” where it places them at the side of the traditionalists, the Protestants and the Socialists like one of the four elements of the national genius (being thus opposed to Maurras which gives of them the “four confederated As report” on Anti-France). It immortalisa the figure of the Bloch rabbi, struck with died at the time when he tightened a crucifix with a dying soldier.

With a certain number of nationalist chiefs and soldiers such Ferdinand Foch, it pled for a new surer border on left bank of the Rhine. The June 24th 1920, the House of Commons adopted his project aiming at instituting a national festival of Jeanne d' Arc.

The posterity

Maurice Barrès encouraged the literary beginnings of François Mauriac and Louis Aragon, and had good relationships with the young person Leon Blum. During the second world war, his/her son, the writer Philippe Bars, put his feather at the service of Charles de Gaulle and the free France.

The importance of Maurice Barrès for a whole generation was recalled by the historian Michel Winock in his book the Century of the Intellectuals (Threshold, 1995): the first part of the work has as a title “the Barrès years”, which follow “the years Gide” and “the years Sartre”.

The homage which the young person Leon Blum paid to him, in " The review blanche" remained famous: " I know well that Mr Zola is a great writer; I like his work which is powerful and beautiful. But one can remove it of his time by an effort of thought; and its time will be the same one. If Mr Barrès had not lived, if he had not written, its time would be different and we would be different. I do not see in France of alive man who exerted, by the literature, an equal action or comparable." '

Maurice Bars and the occultist Stanislas de Guaita was friendly as of the year 1878, with the College of Nancy; their ways will be different in 1882, at the time of their arrival in Paris. Not believing, Maurice Barrès was attracted by Asia, the Soufisme and the Chiisme. He returned however, in his last years, with the catholic faith and engaged in the Echo of Paris a campaign for the restoration of the churches of France, strongly degraded since the laws of separation of 1905.

The fictitious lawsuit of Maurice Bars

In spring 1921, the dadaïstes organize the lawsuit of Maurice Barrès, accused for “attack with safety of the spirit”. This demonstration, at the conclusion which Barrès is condemned to twenty years of forced labors, is also the date of dislocation of the movement dadaïste, the founders of the movement (Tristan Tzara at the head) refusing any form of justice, even organized by Dada.

Principal works

Novels

the Worship of ego (autobiographical romantic trilogy)

Under the eye of the barbarians . - Paris: Lemerre, 1888 electronic Document
a free man . - Paris: Perrin, 1889 electronic Document
the Garden of Bérénice . - Paris: Perrin, 1891 electronic Document

the Enemy of the Laws . - Paris: Perrin, 1893 electronic Document
the Novel of national energy (romantic trilogy)

Uprooted the . - Paris: Fasquelle, 1897
the Call to the soldier . - Paris: Fasquelle, 1897
Their figures . - Paris: Juven, 1902

Bastions of the East (romantic trilogy)

With the service of Germany . - Paris: A. Beech, 1905
Colette Baudoche . - Paris: Juven, 1909
Genius of the Rhine . - Paris: Plon, 1921

the Hill inspired . - Paris: Emile Paul, 1913
a garden on Oronte . - Paris: Plon, 1922 electronic Document
'' Eight days at Mr. Renan '' (1888).

Theater

One day parliamentary , comedy of manners in 3 acts. - Paris: Carpenter and Fasquelle, 1894

Impressions of voyages

Of blood, pleasure, the dead one: An amateur of hearts. Travel to Spain, Voyage to Italy, etc . - Paris: Carpenter and Fasquelle, 1894 electronic Document
Amori and Dolori sacrum. The death of Venice . - Paris: Juven, 1903
the Voyage of Sparte . - Paris: Juven, 1906 electronic Document
Gréco or the Secrecy of Tolède . - Paris: Emile-Paul, 1911 electronic Document
an investigation with the country of Raising . - Paris: Plon, 1923.

Political writings

Study for the protection of the French workmen . - Paris: Large impr. Parisian, 1893 electronic Document
Scenes and Doctrines of nationalism - Paris: Juven, 1902
French Friendships . - Paris: Juven, 1903
the Great Pity of the churches of France . - Paris: Emile-Paul, 1914
a visit with the English army . - Paris: Shepherd-Levrault, 1915 electronic Document
Various spiritual Families of France . - Paris: Emile-Paul, 1917 electronic Document
the French Heart and the War (chronicles) . - Paris: Emile-Paul, 1915-1920
should the congregations be authorized? Brothers of the Christian schools . - Paris: Plon-nourishes, 1923 electronic Document
Souvenirs of an officer of the Large army, by Barrès; published by Maurice Bars, his grandson. - Paris: Plon-nourishes, 1923 electronic Document
the Republic or the King , Correspondance Bars-Maurras, Plon 1965.

Anthology

Some rates . - Paris: Sansot, 1904 electronic Document

Quotations

“ What do I like in the past? Its sadness, its silence and especially its fixity. What moves obstructs me. ” (quoted by Andre Gide, Newspaper I ). " All to have for all to scorn "

Documentation

Albert Thibaudet: life of Maurice Bars . - Paris: New French Review, 1924
François Mauriac: the meeting with Bars . - Paris, 1945 (Neuauflage: The Roundtable, 1993; ISBN 2710306093)
Jean-Marie Domenach: Bars by itself . - Paris: Editions of the Threshold, * Zeev Sternhell: Maurice Bars and French nationalism . - Brussels: Editions Complexes, 1985
Emmanuel Godo: Ego scriptor: Maurice Bars and the writing of oneself . - Paris: Kimé editions, 1998; ISBN 2841740994
Sarah Vajda: Maurice Bars . - Paris: Flammarion, 2000; ISBN 2080677705

Appendices

See too

Jeanne d' Arc: birth of a myth (for the role of Maurice Bars in 1920 in the bill creating a national festival in the honor of Jeanne d' Arc).

External bond

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