Novel French jdanovien

The novel jdanovien is all at the same time an evolution and a resumption in ideological hand of the socialist Réalisme whose certain bases had been thrown since 1934 by Andreï Jdanov.

Origin

Indeed, after the war and in an already old tradition of setting under supervision of art, Jdanov, in 1946, undertakes recadrer the guilty literary question according to him on the occasion - he thinks particularly of two publications of Leningrad - to have denatured the revolutionary ideology. Some type-setters (Chostakovitch inter alia) will also make the expenses of its angers denouncing a whole a supposed middle-class ideology to penetrate in Soviet art. In 1947 is created with Moscow the Kominform which will essaimera in the whole world an inevitable toughening of positionings - the the United States being regarded quasi-officiellement as the principal enemy imperialist (Doctrine Jdanov). Consequently, the toughening will represent a considerable temptation for certain authors extremely close to the Communist party and the novel French jdanovien will reach its apogee between end of the year 40 and beginning of the year 50, paradoxically at a time when, in the USSR, Jdanov dies (for the greatest joy of a big number of enemies) and which is évincés the jdanoviens out of the wheels of the Party.

Aspects and characteristics

The characteristics stylistics of the novels jdanoviens of the post-war period are nourished for many of those of socialist realism. One indeed finds an esthetics of monumental such as it had been largely worked out under Stalin, who strikes still today the spirits by architectural gigantism and sculptor, but which for a long time deserted the literature: one hardly any more finds in the shelves the great edifying epopees which during nearly one decade were a real success near authors and readers often already won over to the revolutionary cause (Louis Aragon, the Communists ). The more so as very largely remained, in heritage of socialist realism, the concept of social order: it was necessary to write until the workman waited while marking out his choices considerably.

In addition, it is undeniable that the authors often had recourse to effects that some, whose Alain Brossat (see bibliography), qualified “thick-skinned dramatization” (Pierre Daix, Classe 42 , Jean Laffitte, Rose France ): to strike the spirits and to create models of behavior belonged to the imposed tasks, the authors never not losing sight of the fact the principle of a literature lived like a method of the Revolution to come (to France and more generally in the noncommunist countries) or a permanent celebration from its heroes (in the USSR and in the socialist block). This explains why some of these novels, populated positive heroes (more in the Soviet literature - often translated than in the French literature) had a considerable success near the French teenagers of the Fifties than allured also a Soviet species of exoticism.

With each country its revisited myths: if the USSR inlassablement revived on the literary level the revolution of 17 and the civil war which followed, France it, deeply marked by the drama which had been just played on its ground, did not cease questioning and rewriting Resistance and the deportation, which was the occasion of frightening historical simplifications sometimes. By more or less discrete analogies, one associated readily cruelty, capitalism and imperialism (German imperialism hitlérien and American imperialism), opposing to them a supposed and a little naive purity of the USSR in general and local Communist parties, compared in particular to Civilization and true Freedom. Another characteristic of this literature is the rejection of the cosmopolitanism, incompatible indeed with the doctrinary rigor - the nations imperialists were to be fought - and which led sometimes to disturbing slips towards the anti-semitism with the appearance of a recurring character: the caricatural immensely rich businessman American… and Jew (Rene Jouglet, Gold and the Bread ).

Evolution

The novel jdanovien seems to have ended up wearying the authors themselves: many found thereafter the occasion to disavow their production (Louis Aragon did not cease altering the Communists , André Stil tried to be justified…) such an amount of these works suffered from a kind of permanent puffiness, as well stylistic (superabundance of allegories, hyperboles and metaphors) that ideological.

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