Holy Week (Louis Aragon)
The Holy Week (French original title: La Semaine Sainte ) is a 1958 historical novel by the French writer Louis Aragon . The French first edition was published by Gallimard . A German edition in the translation by Hans Mayer appeared in 1961 in the (East) Berlin publishing house Volk und Welt and at the same time in Munich. In 1961 the first English edition was published by Hamish Hamilton in London under the title The Holy Week .
content
The novel is about the escape of Louis XVIII. , his supporters and the troops loyal to the king from Paris before Napoleon returned from Elba in Holy Week from March 19 to 26, 1815. Although the novel is based on a detailed study of facts, Aragon states in a preliminary remark: “This is not a historical novel ... the author declines responsibility for it [namely for the similarities with historical persons] in the name of inalienable rights of the imagination ”.
The author of the chaotic conditions of Holy Week, Napoleon, is not himself present in the novel, only the effect of his return on those who flee is described: a large number of historical figures, all of whom are treated in the novel in about the same detail and on an equal footing with numerous unnamed characters from all classes become. Théodore Géricault is the only figure with a stronger presence , who has given up his painting career in favor of a military career and - without being entirely clear about his reasons - accompanies the fleeing king as a mounted musketeer to the Belgian border. There he doubts his own loyalty.
At the beginning of the novel, there is general guesswork as to whether the king, who suffers from gout , is determined to flee - and if so, where he would turn in that case. Troops are sent back and forth seemingly haphazardly; Many officers hesitate whether they should oppose Napoleon, in whom many still see the emperor under whom they made their careers, or go over to him, accompany the king into exile, or simply leave the service. Rumors run wild: where is Napoleon? Will he make it to Paris? Troops are sent out against Napoleon to stop him, run over to him and again attach the blue-white-red cockade of the revolution. Some of the famous former marshals of Napoleon, who were raised by him to dukes and princes and now Louis XVIII. serve, but are eyed with suspicion by the old hereditary nobility, hesitating as to which side to take, especially after Marshal Ney , Duke of Elchingen , "the bravest of the brave", defected to Napoleon. Eventually they take the side of the king, but pursue very individual plans or go into hiding again. Generals look in vain for their staff. The king's military escort is dwindling from station to station. Many citizens in the villages and towns through which the king passes assure him of their allegiance, but suffer from the billeting of his entourage. Horse owners haggle over the price of replacement horses for the cavalry weakened by violent kicks. Weary child laborers who worked 12 to 14 hours a day in the spinning mills look on blankly at the troop trains.
In many recourse, reference is made to the careers of the actors (or better: those affected - Aragon calls them the "extras of this tragic comedy") during the revolution and under the empire. They are all faced with decisions, the consequences of which they must carefully weigh up, given their often divided loyalty and lack of precise information. The workers in particular fear the threat of mass levies when Napoleon returns .
For the officers, the name of the former emperor stands for military fame, but also for endless campaigns across Europe. The king may be able to grant them a quiet life; perhaps the representatives of the feudal opposition will have to follow him into exile. But nobody knows where Ludwig will turn. For the king's younger brother, the ultra-royalist Count von Artois and later Charles X , who had lived in exile in England like his brother after the French Revolution , a repetition of exile in the liberal country would be unbearable. For many republican-minded bourgeois officers, however, an exile in the aristocratic country would be difficult to imagine. Republican officers who defected to Napoleon wish that he should proclaim the republic, but fear that he will be crowned emperor again. Bourgeois who had served themselves high under Napoleon expect Napoleon's return to be able to fill positions in which the nobility had moved after the restoration of the kingdom. At the same time, the refugees on both sides have to take care of their families, their property or their loved ones. There is also general fear of an invasion of the anti-Napoleonic coalition, i.e. the English, Prussians, Austrians, Russians, who, like before, would requisition the farmers' supplies. Spies and informers try to settle old personal accounts with the help of their knowledge. The author lets Géricault observe a conspiratorial night-time gathering of artisans, workers and patriotic citizens who argue whether, in the event of a successful abolition of the ban on coalition , which was enshrined in the repressive Code Pénal of 1810 under Napoleon , one should go to professional or, better, to popular assemblies should organize. However, they do not reach an agreement.
There are also anticipations of future events, such as the “ Bamberg Lintel” by Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier , Prince of Wagram , in June 1815 - an accident, suicide or murder? Alphonse de Lamartine , who serves the king, recites his first poems, which he will publish in 1820. The republican Frédéric Degeorge would later take part in the bourgeois July Revolution of 1830 , through which the Bourbons were finally overthrown and which preceded the first workers' revolt of the industrial age, the uprising of the silk weavers in Lyon . The author intervenes several times commenting on the course of the multifaceted plot and looks for traces of the future in the past. He reports on his experiences as a member of the French occupation forces in the Saar region in 1919 during a strike by German miners in Völklingen , which almost ended in bloodshed, during the German invasion of France in 1940 or during his stay in Bamberg. He connects the memory of the Völklingen strike with the scene of the novel in which the conspirators argue about which trades should unite in the splintered estates prohibited by Napoleon. Which is more important - the daily meal or the patriotic unity? This is where the author intervenes: “I dream all of this. [...] After all, all this is not Theodore's life, but my life, didn't you notice? But I beg you, none of this could have happened in 1815. [...] My life, it's about my life. [...] Do you still think of your enthusiasm on September 27, 1935 in the big meeting where union unity was decided? "
Elsewhere, Aragon describes the rape of a peasant girl by a royalist officer, but turns to the reader and explains why he does not reveal the name of this officer because he does not want to shame his living descendants.
The figure of Géricault, who at the end of the book, under the impression of the refusal of the war-weary French citizens who give up their role as extras, decides to return to Paris as unrecognized as possible and to become a painter again, serves to increase the depth of the scenarios. So Géricault imagines again and again how individual scenes would appear on the screen. He mentally developed the expressive form of representation of French Romanticism that emphasizes light and shadow and thus the physicality of the objects , which leaves the linear-static, heroic representation of the Empire painters like Jacques-Louis David behind and already prepares for realism . At the same time, his perspective on the world illuminates Aragon's own art theory of imaginative realism, as he characterized it in the preface by the “prerogative of the imagination”.
interpretation
The extremely complex novel does not paint in black and white, but in many shades of gray. For Aragon's figures, which in their contradiction in some traits are repulsive, but overall quite human, the upcoming decisions between the political and economic systems under Napoleon and Louis XVIII. not easy, and not only because of their often divided loyalty, but also because of their economic and career interests. Napoleon's liberal policy of promoting agriculture and industry was thwarted by the English continental blockade and his own wars, which largely stripped the country of the male working population and turned it into a police state with repressive labor and criminal law. Many veterans came back crippled, while civic officers enjoyed splendid careers. The return of the aristocrats under Louis XVIII was bitter. many peasants and republicans in 1814, but there was peace and stability. A return of Napoleon could also provoke a renewed intervention by Prussia, Austria, Russia and England - and this threatened the "white terror" of the royalists, which in 1815 was actually directed against Napoleon's supporters and other anti-royalists. This situation of historical uncertainty and, above all, acute individual pressure to make decisions under uncertainty is the focus of the novel, whereby the author does not have a fundamental knowledge advantage over his characters, but points out future events and trends. The topics discussed by the conspirators' meeting refer to the future tension between professional, trade union and general political movements, between immediate material interests and long-term political goals, which was never resolved during the 19th century. The scene looks like an anticipation of the heated debates about the correct organizational forms of the revolution that accompanied the three great revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries (1830, 1848, 1917) and in the 1920s also by the anarcho-syndicalists and in the early days were led bitterly by the Soviet Union . The surrealists around André Breton and Aragon had long hesitated in 1925/27 whether they should join the French Communist Party or the anarchist movement. Some saw themselves as poetic, the PCF saw itself in a similar way as a political avant-garde. A few years later, Aragon found himself again in an insoluble conflict between his sympathy for his surrealist companions and the condemnation of surrealism by the Soviet communists, which he dissolved in 1932 through his break with surrealism.
The uncertain hesitation of the actors in the novel between two political forces is characteristic of all transition periods. Géricault's unsteady attitude towards the events corresponds to Aragon's attitude towards political reality. Aragon, a former surrealist and at the time the novel was written and until his death a member of the Central Committee of the then Stalinist Communist Party of France , wrote Holy Week at a time when the reckoning with Stalinism in the Soviet Union had already passed its peak. The Congress of the PCF in 1956 explicitly opposed the continuation of de-Stalinization, but during Holy Week it was clear that Aragon's dwindling loyalty to the line was evident, which, like other critics, Pierre Daix , who worked for Aragon until 1972, registered. In the character of Napoleon, which is not really present in the novel, one can recognize the terrifying shadow of Stalin, whose supporters adapt to the new regime with some difficulty, while others have to end their steep careers abruptly. The new post-Stalinist Soviet regime embodied like that of Louis XVIII. the promise of peace and quiet, but also ensures a disillusioning return to pre-revolutionary conditions. The artist eventually pulls out of the conflict and follows his own visions.
Pierre Daix also suspects a connection between the genesis of the novel and the return of General Charles de Gaulle to French politics in 1958. This compelled the French communists, turning away from the Stalinist policy of denationalization, to place greater emphasis on the role of the nation in history, especially since they had partially cooperated with de Gaulle in the Resistance . So when he called on his compatriots to resist from his Algerian exile in 1940, he read a poem by Louis Aragon on the radio.
reception
The work caused a sensation in France and was seen as the author's return to the “bourgeois” French romantic tradition. The author has experienced monumental admiration (a monumentalization ) for his monumental work since 1958 : The magazine littéraire of September 1967 spoke of the "Century of Aragon" ( Le siècle d'Aragon ). The communist's reference to Holy Week in the title of the novel and to the Catholic liturgy irritated the critics. Aragon denied that the story-interpreting novel represented a rejection of socialist realism . The novel has been compared by the British writer and critic Raymond Mortimer with the recently published novel Doctor Schiwago by Boris Pasternak and even with War and Peace by Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , although the characters go less deep. The narrative technique and intellectual penetration of the topic are outstanding. Der Spiegel reported:
" For example, a member of the traditional Académie Française , Émile Henriot , explained in the newspaper Le Monde that he was" miraculously "cured by reading the latest work from Aragon -" which I have not said a word about for ten years " been: "Despite my flu and the mental numbness from the excessive use of preventive drugs, I suddenly perked up [...] It is undoubtedly an important work - the ideal case for a brilliant Prix Goncourt , if the author is not Aragon and would be a writer who no longer needs to be discovered. " The heroes Aragon refers to, said Henriot, "no longer belong to any party: they are also ours."
The literary critic Nouvelle Revue Française spoke of a “high school retreat” in French prose style, and even the conservative Catholic weekly Témoignage Chrétien judged: “A jungle of images, words, colors, monologues; Pages whose momentum, rhythm and style take your breath away; a book that you have to read and read again - in short, a masterpiece. "
literature
- (LS): Aragon: La Semaine Sainte. In: Kindlers Neues Literatur Lexikon , ed. by Walter Jens. Munich 1986, vol. 1, p. 589 f.
- Wolfgang Babilas : Études sur Louis Aragon , Münster 2002, pp. 797-832.
- Hans Mayer: Aragon's novel "Die Karwoche" , in: Ders .: Views , Hamburg 1962, pp. 115-169.
Individual evidence
- ↑ 2nd unaltered edition 1967, but without the afterword by Hans Mayer, who did not return to the GDR in 1963 from a visit to the Federal Republic. 3rd edition at Reclam Leipzig 1973.
- ↑ This episode is described in the Volk und Welt edition on p. 358 ff. See also literatuen rland-saar.de .
- ↑ Aragon, Volk und Welt -Ausgabe 1967, p. 369.
- ↑ José Pierre (Ed.): Surréalisme et Anarchie: Les "Billets surréalistes" du "Libertaire" (12 October 1951-8 January 1953). Plasma, Paris 1983.
- ↑ Guillaume Bridet: Tensions entre les avant-gardes: le surréalisme et le Parti communiste. In: Itinéraires 211, no. 4, pp. 23-45.
- ↑ Klaus Engelhardt, Volker Roloff: Data of the French literature. Munich 1979, Vol. 2, p. 280.
- ^ Pierre Daix: Ce que je sais du XX siècle. FeniXX 1985, ISBN 978-2-7062-0268-1 . In 1972 the Soviet Union canceled the subscription to Aragons Lettres françaises, from which the magazine did not recover economically.
- ^ Fritz J. Raddatz : Louis Aragon. Obituary in: Die Zeit , 01/1983, December 31, 1982.
- ↑ Kate Ashley et al. a .: Les Goncourt dans leur siècle: Un siècle de Goncourt. Presses Universitaires Septentrion 2005, p. 445.
- ↑ E.g. People and World Edition, pp. 540 ff.
- ↑ Raymond Mortimer: A Glorious Historical Novel , newspaper tear probably from The Sunday Times , 1961.
- ↑ Napoleon is coming , Der Spiegel, March 11, 1959
- ↑ Napoleon comes in: Der Spiegel , March 11, 1959.