The mandarins of Paris

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The Mandarins of Paris (French: Les Mandarins ) is a novel by Simone de Beauvoir from 1954. He was awarded the Prix ​​Goncourt in the same year . The Mandarins of Paris illuminates the life and work of some French left-wing intellectuals during the Second World War and in the period after 1945. It is considered a chronicle of existentialism .

content

The novel describes the power struggles between Jean-Paul Sartre (here called Robert Dubreuilh) on the one hand and Albert Camus (called Henri Perron) and Arthur Koestler (in the novel called Victor Scriassine) on the other hand , in a slightly veiled manner. He also tells the story of the psychologist Anne Dubreuilh, the wife of Robert Dubreuilh, who can be seen as the alter ego of the author de Beauvoir . Anne lost her Catholic faith at an early age , but still retains certain principles of her conservative upbringing. This education pushes them into the dichotomy between freedom and attachment. Her attempt at a solution from her previous life by the American Lewis Brogan (who stands for Nelson Algren , to whom the novel is also dedicated ) again ends in an existential conflict.

The book is full of questions; the main question posed by the characters is the conflict between thinking and acting. The question of whether one always has to tell the truth and the problem of the writers' political commitment also lead to conflicts of conscience. Specifically, the shared experience of the Resistance period and later the killing of collaborators is often reflected on. Dubreuilh and Perron are mandarins and are engaged in an argument about the power and impotence of literature . Long, existentialist dialogues and discussions interrupt Anne's representations from the first-person perspective . The author confronts the reader with Sartre's philosophy and the change from I to He. In the end, what remains is the perception of their isolation, their loneliness, but above all the realization that the tensions in which the mandarins live persist.

criticism

"Especially for the ideological confrontation between the free left and communism, between existentialism and Marxism in the period of the first post-war years, the novel is of great importance, and if read critically, it also has a certain documentary value."

- Knut Nievers

“Her novel The Mandarins of Paris won the Prix Goncourt in 1955, a fabulous novel that, like all of her works, revolves around her immediate environment: it's about women, it's about relationships and partnerships, and it takes place in Paris après la guerre in the intellectual-existentialist clique. "

- grass roots revolution

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Knut Nievers: Kindler literature encyclopedia.
  2. ↑ gudix: The "girl" with the "male" mind. In: grassroots revolution. 2003, accessed January 19, 2009 .

literature

  • Birgit Axtmann: The conflicts of post-war existentialism: Simone de Beauvoir: “Les Mandarins” (1954); Jean-Paul Sartre: “Les mains sales” (1949); Albert Camus: "Les Justes" (1949/50). Thesis. University of Applied Sciences / College for Library and Information Science, Weinheim, Stuttgart 1987.

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