Michel Ragon

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Michel Ragon (2011)

Michel Ragon (born June 24, 1924 in Marseille ; † February 14, 2020 ) was a French writer and art critic . His main interests were in working class literature and the history of anarchism .

Life

Michel Ragon came from a farming family in the Vendée . His father died when Ragon was 8 years old. He spent his childhood in poor conditions in Fontenay-le-Comte and at the age of 14 came to Nantes , where he began to work as an errand boy . His mother's work as the caretaker of an apartment with a rich library enabled him to immerse himself in the world of literature. At the end of 1943 he wrote a tract against the German occupation , was then wanted by the Gestapo and went into hiding in the Vendée before returning to Nantes in 1944.

In 1945 he moved to Paris and worked in various precarious professions before running a bookstore on the banks of the Seine between 1954 and 1964. In addition to his employment, he published poems and novels. As an autodidact , he only had an elementary school diploma, but was appointed as a visiting professor at the University of Montreal in 1970 and later became a professor of literature at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs . In 1975 he received his doctorate at the Sorbonne at the age of 50 . His relationships with the art scene in Paris led to his development and importance as a critic of the modern art of his time. Ragon had contact with German artists and as the gallery 22 of Jean-Pierre Wilhelm in Dusseldorf.

Ragon remained connected to his region of origin and the anarchist attitude of his family. In 1962 he became friends with Louis Lecoin , later with Maurice Joyeux , André Breton , Félix Fénéon , Jean Dubuffet , Noam Chomsky , John Cage , Daniel Cohn-Bendit , Georges Brassens , Léo Ferré and Albert Camus .

Michel Ragon was already known as an art and architecture critic in France before he became known as a novelist in the early 1980s . As an art critic, he supported the avant-garde , but in the structured and easily accessible historical novels he tied in with the tradition of realistic-naturalistic storytelling. His literary texts were often provided with autobiographical references.

His most famous novel, The Red Cloths by Cholet, dealt with the mass murder of the insurgent population of the Vendée during the French Revolution. In The Memory of the Vanquished , Ragon recalled the struggles of forgotten and subjugated social movements in France.

He won various literary prizes and was honorary president of the Société Octave Mirbeau . The secondary school in Saint-Hilaire-de-Loulay was named after him. Michel Ragon died on February 14, 2020 at the age of 95.

Works (selection)

Fiction

  • The memory of the vanquished. Roman ( La mémoire de vaincus , 1990). Edition AV , Lich / Hessen 2006, ISBN 978-3-936049-66-4 .
  • Un amour de Jeanne. Novel. Albin Michel, Paris 2003, ISBN 2-226-13596-0 .
  • La ferme d'en-haut. Novel . Albin Michel, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-226-15966-5 .
  • Le roman de Rabelais. Novel. Albin Michel, Paris 1994, ISBN 2-226-06731-0 .
  • The red scarves from Cholet. Roman ( Les mouchoirs rouges de Cholet , 1987). dtv, Munich 1989, ISBN 3-423-11066-X .
  • The idler. ( Drôles de métiers , Paris 1953) Nannen, Hamburg 1962

Non-fiction

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michel Ragon, critique d'art et romancier, est mort , lemonde.fr, accessed on February 15, 2020
  2. ↑ Collège Michel Ragon , accessed February 15, 2020
personal data
SURNAME Ragon, Michel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French libertarian writer, art and literary critic
DATE OF BIRTH June 24, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Marseille
DATE OF DEATH February 14, 2020