Jules Romains

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Portrait of Romains' (1936) by Carl van Vechten

Jules Romains (civil Louis Henri Farigoule ; born August 26, 1885 in La Chapuze, today Saint-Julien-Chapteuil , † August 14, 1972 in Paris ) was a French writer . After first drawing attention to himself with poetry in the spirit of the philosophy of life and satirical dramas, around 1930 he tackled the large-scale novel cycle The good wills are reflecting his epoch . Insightful “chosen ones” should redeem humanity from war and injustice.

life and work

The son of a teacher from Auvergne (central France) studies philosophy and biology at the Sorbonne in Paris. From 1909 he teaches at schools in Brest , Laon , Nice and Paris. After he had already experienced "the idea of vie unanime (unanimity)" as a philosophy student (1903) in a kind of awakening , he joined the Abbaye de Créteil group, founded in 1906 by Charles Vildrac , Georges Duhamel , René Arcos , the painter Albert Gleizes , the musician Albert Doyen and others. Romains' volume of poems La vie unanime from 1908 becomes the manifesto of the literary movement of the same name, “which saw itself as a departure from naturalism and the psychological novel: it is not the individual with his or her inner tensions and problems that is the focus of consideration, rather unanimism tries to embrace reality as a whole of human beings and the world. ”The“ all-soul unity ”is established in the collective. Here, however, the danger of mass psychosis lurks, which Romain's sly Doctor Knock (1923 drama) exploits.

In other words, Romain's worldview shimmers between traditional Christian revolutionary brotherhood and the rising parade of totalitarian regimes. In 1927 he and many other well-known critical intellectuals (including Alain and the young Sartre ) signed the petition published on April 15 in Europa magazine against the law governing the general organization of the nation in times of war . In 1929 he was already successful enough as a novelist to be able to afford a 16th century country house including a vineyard in Saint-Avertin . In 1936 he was appointed chairman of the international PEN Club, which, however, met with divided applause because of his contacts with an organization close to the Nazi regime. In fact, he was voted out of office again at the 1941 PEN Congress in London, especially after attacks made by Robert Neumann .

CFA and exile

As early as 1935, Romains was one of the founders of the Comité-France-Allemagne (CFA) , a propaganda organization initiated by the Nazis - see Otto Abetz and Fernand de Brinon - which knew how to promote France's fascization under the guise of international understanding. Romains said he had come back from the First World War with an oath to try everything in the future to prevent another war. He apparently saw his collaboration in the CFA along this line. Contemporary observers such as TIME therefore attested him to the simplicity of the most unsuccessful peace-maker in Europe, paired with Tom Sawyer's joy in conspiracies. The US weekly newspaper cheekily combines this simplicity with Romain's habit of periodically throwing a new volume of his monumental cycle of novels, People of Good Will, out of the window of his ivory tower. It is possible that Romain's high-profile peacemaking attempts were not entirely devoid of vanity.

In view of the occupation of France by Nazi Germany, Romains preferred to emigrate to America. He settled first in New York, then in Mexico, where he helped found a French institute with other emigrants. He can occasionally be heard on US radio stations. In 1943 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . Returned to France in 1946, he was appointed to the illustrious Académie française . He expressed himself increasingly conservative, so in his columns (1953-1971) for the weekly newspaper L'Aurore directed by Robert Lazurick . He rejects De Gaulle's 1962 referendum, which brought Algeria independence.

People of good will

In Romain's "enormous production" as a writer there are also essays on aesthetic, moral, political and even medical questions. The lion's share, however, is made up of the novel cycle Die gute Willens sind , which appeared in 27 volumes between 1932 and 1946. In it Romains describes the social conditions and developments in France and Europe in the period from October 6, 1908 to October 7, 1933. Here, too, he is more concerned with group than with individual fates. Two main characters who are friends with each other, a writer and a teacher who promotes himself to be a politician, serve as orientation. You repeatedly comment. You will meet numerous prominent contemporaries of Romain, such as Picasso and Valéry . In addition to the dialogue, frequent changes of location (of the author) are characteristic of the novels in this series. Strangely enough, Kindler's New Literature Lexicon does not comment on their linguistic quality. When Engler speaks of Romain's “inclination to wrap the banal in Odent tones”, it is merely referring to his poetry.

The monumental cycle of novels ends (1933) similar to its creator after the war: resigned. The main novelists withdraw into the private sphere. It has shaken the wickedness of the world in vain. “Error or influence of evil?” Asks the novelist. "I do not dislike that my work ends with this question mark."

Currently (2011) several French schools are named after the writer, for example in Paris, Saint-Avertin and Lyon . In his hometown of Saint-Julien-Chapteuil, a small Musée Jules Romains was set up, which shows the writer's personal belongings. There are also reconstructions of his Paris study and his Manoir de Grandcour estate in Saint-Avertin .

Works (selection)

  • La Vie unanime , poems, 1908
  • Mort de quelqu'un , novel, 1911
  • Les Copains , novel, 1913
  • La Vision extra-rétinienne et le sens paroptique , essay, 1920
  • Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine , Drama 1923; Reclam ( RUB 9154), Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-15-009154-3
  • Knock or the triumph of medicine . Comedy in three acts. Reclam (RUB 9662), Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-15-009662-6
  • Petit traité de versification , essay, 1923 (with G. Chennevière)
  • Monsieur le Trouhadec saisi par la débauche , novel, 1923
  • Psyché , novel trilogy (Lucienne - Le Dieu des corps - Quand le navire ...), 1922–29
  • Le Dictateur , drama, 1926
  • Le couple France-Allemagne , essay, 1934
  • Les Hommes de bonne volonté , 28-volume novel cycle, 1932–46
  • Une femme singulière , Roman, 1957
  • Mémoires de Madame Chauverel , Roman, 1959
  • Cahiers , Diaries (from the estate), 1976ff
  • Volpone , edited version of the adaptation by Stefan Zweig , 1928

Filmography

Literary template
script

literature

  • André Cuisenier: Jules Romains et l'unanimisme , two volumes, Paris 1935 and 1942
  • Walter Ehrenfels: The unanimistic consciousness in the work of Jules Romain , Berlin 1940
  • A. Figuéras: Romains , 1951
  • M. Berry: Romains, sa vie, son ouvre , 1953
  • PJ Norrish: Drama of the group. A study of unanimism in the plays of Romains , New York 1958
  • Yves Gandon: Romains ou le style unanime. In: Ders .: Le Démon du style , Paris 1960, pp. 89–106
  • Madeleine Korol: Le théatre de Romains , Columbia University, 1960
  • Werner Widdem: World affirmation and flight from the world in Romain's factory , Geneva 1960
  • André Bourin: Connaissance de Romains discutée par Romains , Paris 1961
  • Leo Spitzer : Romain's unanimism as reflected in his language. A preliminary study on the language of French expressionism. In: Ders .: Stilstudien , Volume 2. Munich 1961, pages 208-300
  • EH Walker: Romains and Unanimism. The Distant Crowd , Duke University, 1972
  • D. Boak: Jules Romains , New York 1974
  • André Bourin (ed.): Actes du Colloque Jules Romains from February 1978, Paris 1979
  • Helmtraud Krischel-Heinzer: comical hero and tragic leader figure. A study on totalitarian attitudes and their ambivalent expressions in the theater work of Romains , Frankfurt / Main 1988
  • Olivier Rony: Jules Romains, ou l'appel au monde , Robert Laffont, 1992
  • Dominique Viart: Jules Romains et les écritures de la simultanéité , Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1996
  • Jean-Louis Loubet del Bayle: L'illusion politique au XXe siècle. Des écrivains témoins de leur temps , Economica, 1999
  • Mauthner, Martin: Otto Abetz and His Paris Acolytes - French Writers Who Flirted with Fascism, 1930–1945. Sussex Academic Press, 2016, ( ISBN 978-1-84519-784-1 )

Web links

Commons : Jules Romains  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Kindler's New Literature Lexicon , Munich 1988 edition
  2. ^ A b c Winfried Engler : Lexicon of French Literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 388). 2nd, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-520-38802-2 .
  3. ↑ The small town in central France near Tours made Romains an honorary citizen in 1964
  4. ^ Roman Roček, Vienna 2000 , accessed on June 4, 2011
  5. ^ TIME October 14, 1940 , accessed June 4, 2011
  6. ^ Honorary Members: Jules Romains. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 19, 2019 .
  7. ↑ Fiche du site de l'Académie française ( Memento of the original dated February 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 4, 2011  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.academie-francaise.fr
  8. ↑ Auvergne ( Memento of the original from June 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 4, 2011  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.auvergne-paysdumeygal.com
  9. ^ All individual titles in French Wikipedia , accessed on June 4, 2011
  10. ↑ detailed review in Spiegel April 15, 1959 , accessed on June 4, 2011
  11. ↑ IMDb
personal data
SURNAME Romains, Jules
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Farigoule, Louis Henri (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French novelist and polygraph
DATE OF BIRTH August 26, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Saint-Julien-Chapteuil
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1972
Place of death Paris