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Robert Brasillach

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Robert Brasillach (31 March 1909 – 6 February 1945) was a French author and journalist. He was executed for advocating collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Perpignan, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure and then became a novelist and literary critic for the Action Française of Charles Maurras. After the 6 February 1934 crisis in the Place de la Concorde, Brasillach openly supported fascism. His politics are shared by several of his protagonists, notably the two male main characters in The Seven Colours (see below).

Brasillach was fascinated by the cinema and co-wrote a detailed critical history of the media in 1935 (re-edited in 1943) with his brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche. Unlike several other period authors and critics, Brasillach did not approach cinema through a political lense, although the 1943 re-edition of his work did contain certain anti-Semitic comments not included in the original. He frequented Henri Langlois' Cercle du cinéma (Cinema Circle). His personal tastes are detailed in his major work on cinema and in numerous period articles. These tastes ranged from Russian cinema (Battleship Potemkin) to classics such as Charlie Chaplin, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, René Clair and Jean Renoir and to certain Hollywood films, such as those of John Ford, Frank Borzage and King Vidor. Brasillach was drawn to originality and explored foreign cinema, and was the first major critic in France to address Japanese cinema, namely Yasujiro Ozu, Kenji Mizoguchi and Heinosuke Gosho. While in prison, he worked on a third edition of his work on Cinema and started to adapt a work on Falstaff which he hoped to film with Raimu.

He became an editor of Je suis partout, an fascist paper founded by dissidents from the Action française and led by Pierre Gaxotte. A soldier in 1940, he was captured by the Germans and held prisoner for several months after the fall of France. He was freed in early 1941 and returned to his editorial duties at Je suis partout. He wrote in favor of the collaboration and Nazi policies. In November 1942, he supported the German militarization of the unoccupied zone under the Vichy government, because it "reunited France". He called for the death of left-wing politicians and in the summer of 1944 signed the call for the summary execution of all members of the French Resistance. He considered himself a "moderate" anti-Semite and was replaced as editor of Je suis partout in 1943 by the even more extreme Pierre-Antoine Cousteau. After the liberation of Paris Brasillach hid in an attic, joking in his diary: "Jews have been living in cupboards for four years, why not imitate them?". He gave himself up on September 14 when he heard that his mother had been arrested. He spent the next five months in prison.

Brasillach went to trial in Paris on 19 January 1945. Ironically, his judge had served under Vichy. The prosecutor re-iterated Brasillach's vehement anti-semitism, linked his praise of Germany and denunciation of the Resistance to SS massacres in France and played upon homophobic sentiments by drawing the jurors' attention to the author's homosexuality, noting that he had slept with the enemy. In so doing the prosecution was making hay with Brasillach's own words, as he had suggested, as Liberation approached, that France had slept with Germany and would remember the experience fondly. Brasillach was sentenced to death. Brasillach responded to the outrage of some of his supporters then in attendance by saying "It's an honour!".

The sentence caused an uproar in French literary circles and even some of Brasillach's political opponents protested against it. Resistance member and author François Mauriac, whom Brasillach had savaged in the press, circulated a petition to Charles De Gaulle to commute the sentence. This petition was signed by many of the leading lights of the French literary world, including Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Arthur Honegger, Jean Anouilh and Thierry Maulnier.[1] De Gaulle did not comply and Brasillach was executed by firing squad in Montrouge. It has been argued that De Gaulle's refused to spared Brasillach because the author had on numerous occasions called for Georges Mandel's execution. De Gaulle admired Mandel, a prominent conservative politician (who happened to be Jewish), and who was murdered by the Milice during the closing days of the Occupation.[2] He called out "Long live France anyway!" ("Vive la France quand même!") immediately before his execution. He was buried in the cimetière de Charonne in the 20th Arrondissement of Paris. His brother-in-law, Maurice Bardèche, was later buried next to it. His biographer Alice Kaplan noted that his death made him the "James Dean of French fascism" and a martyr to the extreme right.

[edit] References for Biography Section

  1. ^ Jean Lacouture, La raison de l'autre, Montesquieu, Mauriac, Confluences, 2002.
  2. ^ Jean-Luc Barré, « Brasillach, Robert (1909-1945) », Dictionnaire de Gaulle, Paris, Éditions Robert Laffont, coll. Bouquins, 2006, p. 147.

3. The Collaborator : The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach by Alice Kaplan ISBN 0-226-42415-4

[edit] Novels

  • 1932 Le Voleur d'étincelles (The Spark Thief/The Stealer of Sparks)
  • 1934 L'Enfant de la nuit (Child of the Night)
  • 1936 Le Marchand d'oiseaux (The Bird Merchant)
  • 1937 Comme le temps passe (How The Time Passes By), nominated for Prix Femina 1937
  • 1939 Les Sept Couleurs (The Seven Colors), nominated for Prix Goncourt 1939.

The book begins with the courtship of Patrice and Catherine, two students, in Paris in the 1920s. At one point the young couple meet two children, who are also called Patrice and Catherine and who claim to be a couple. His studies completed, Patrice leaves to work in Italy, where he becomes enamoured with Italian fascism. Catherine, desiring a more stable relationship, eventually marries a Communist she has met at the office where she works, Francois. Patrice leaves Italy and serves a five stint in the Foreign Legion, where he befriends a young Nazi. After his time in the Legion, Patrice goes to work in Nazi Germany, where he finds Nazi ritual (e.g. Nuremburg rallies, the banners and marches) very engaging. Patrice learns from a friend from his Paris days that Francois has become a fascist, having turned from both Communism and the Third Republic following the 6 February 1934 crisis in which the extreme right rioted against government "corruption" and perhaps planned to overthrow the state. Ten years after he last saw Catherine, Patrice returns to Paris to visit Catherine and she agrees to go away with him but asks for a few days to collect her thoughts. She decides to stay with Francois instead, but Francois misunderstands and believes she has left him. Francois leaves France without a word and joins the Nationalist cause in the Spanish Civil War, where he has a brief encounter with the Nazi Patrice met in the Foreign Legion. Catherine stays faithful to Francois, although she meets a young Frenchman who fought for the Republicans in Spain and who turns out to be the young Patrice she had met while he was a child in the 1920s. Meanwhile, the elder Patrice marries a young German woman. The book ends with Catherine on her way to visit Francois in hospital in Spain after learning that he has been seriously wounded at the front.

The title of the book stems from the seven styles in which it is written: a narrative of Patrice and Catherine's time together in the 1920s; letters exchanged between Patrice and Catherine while Patrice is in Italy; Patrice's journal entries while he is in Germany; a series of reflections or maxims, mainly on the process of aging and turning 30; dialogue, in the form of a play, between Francois and Catherine and Catherine and Patrice in the mid-1930s; a series of "documents" Francois has put together in a scrap book about the Spanish Civil War; and finally a "speech" ("discours"), in which Catherine describes her thoughts as she travels to meet Francois in hospital.

The book is very sympathetic to fascism as an regenerating ideology. However, given his future as a collaborator, readers may be surprised that Communism and socialism are not attacked outright and that the "Patrice" character mentions several times that Nazism may not be as enduring as fascism and that Frenchmen may have to fight the Germans in the future. Also, it is of note that Catherine, who calls herself a "petite bourgeoise" and who exemplifies French rationalism (and perhaps represents France herself) as noted in the dialogue section, chooses Francois, the French/native fascist and turns away from Patrice, who has emersed himself in Italian and German ideology.

  • 1941 Notre avant-guerre (Our pre-war)
  • 1943 La Conquérante (The Conqueror; gender suggests a female conqueror)
  • 1944 Poèmes (Poems)
  • 1944 Les Quatre Jeudis (The Four Thursdays)
  • 1944 Poemes

[edit] Non-Fiction

  • 1931 Présence de Virgile (The Presence of Virgil)
  • 1932 Le Procès de Jeanne d'Arc (edited and introduced by Robert Brasillach) (The Trial of Joan of Arc)
  • 1935 Portraits. Barrès, Proust, Maurras, Colette, Giraudoux, Morand, Cocteau, Malraux, etc., (Portraits)
  • 1935 completed in 1943 Histoire du Cinéma, two volumes (with Maurice Bardèche, see French Wikipedia)
  • 1936, Animateurs de théâtre (Theater Directors/Organizers)
  • 1936 Les Cadets de l'Alcazar (with Henri Massis, see French Wikipedia) (The Cadets of the Alcazar); later renamed the Defenders of the Alcazar

This short work chronicles the siege of the Alcazar in Toledo by Republican forces in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War. While it lionises the defenders, Brasillach does not shy from mentioning the execution of the Republican prisoners in Toldeo's hospitals after the relief of the city and the Alcazar. The author also discounts certain elements of Nationalist propaganda concerning La Pasionaria, Communist Dolores Ibárruri. The work remains heavily pro-Nationalist, with Phalangist and Carlist songs reprinted in its pages.

  • 1938 Pierre Corneille, a biography of the famous dramatist
  • 1939 Histoire de la guerre d’Espagne (with Maurice Bardèche) (History of the Spanish Civil War)

[edit] Posthumous works

  • 1945 Poèmes de Fresnes
  • 1946 Lettre à un soldat de la classe 60 (Letter to a Soldier of the Class of 1960)
  • 1947 Chénier, La Pensée française (Chénier: French Thought)
  • 1952 Lettres écrites en prison (Letters Written in Prison)
  • 1953 Six heures à perdre (Six Hours to Kill)
  • 1954 Bérénice (Berenice) (play, first run - 1957)
  • 1955 Journal d'un homme occupé (Journal of an (Pre)Occupied Man)
  • 1961 Poètes oubliés (Forgotten Poets)
  • 1961 Dom Rémy
  • 1962 Commentaire sur La Varende (Commentary on La Varende)
  • 1963 En marge de Daphnis et Chloé (On the Edge of Daphnis and Chloé)
  • 1963 Nouvelle prière sur l'Acropole (New Prayer on the Acropolis)
  • 1967 Écrit à Fresnes (Written at Fresnes)
  • 1968 Une génération dans l'orage (A Generation in the Storm)
  • 1970 Vingt lettres de Robert Brasillach (Twenty Letters)
  • 1971 Abel Bonnard biography
  • 1974 Les Captifs incomplete novel
  • 1984 Le Paris de Balzac (Balzac's Paris)
  • 1985 Hugo et le snobisme révolutionnaire (Hugo and Revolutionary Snobbism)
  • 1985 Montherlant entre les hommes et les femmes (Montherlant between Men and Women)
  • 1992 Fulgur novel, complilation
  • 1999 La Question juive, articles de Brasillach et Cousteau (The Jewish Question: Articles by Brasillach and Cousteau)
  • 2002 Relectures Robert Brasillach (Re-reading Robert Brasillach)

[edit] Cultural References

  • The Jean-Luc Godard film Eloge de l’amour features the recitation of Brasillach's "Testament", written before his execution.
  • French singer Jann Halexander (born in 1982 in Libreville, Gabon) attacked the author's legacy and celebrated his execution in a song entitled "Brasillach 1945".

[edit] General References

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Brasillach"
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