Nouvelle Revue Française

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Nouvelle Revue française ( NRF ) is a French literary magazine that has been published since February 1, 1909, with interruptions during the two World Wars and after the Second World War until today. It is published by the Gallimard publishing house .

History of the NRF

Founding and publishing

Out of an elitist spirit - after a first unsuccessful attempt in 1908 - the NRF was founded in 1909 by writers friends André Gide , Jean Schlumberger , Michelle Arnauld ( Marcel Drouin ), André Ruyters , Henri Ghéon and Jacques Copeau . Jacques Rivière was in charge from 1910 to 1914 and 1919 to 1925 .

1911 with Les Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF) by Gaston Gallimard founded a publishing from which the publishing house Gallimard emerged, which the NRF used logo to this day.

Early years

In the early days of the magazine, André Gide was able to win numerous new authors as its Spiritus Rector, which established the status of the NRF as a leading literary magazine.

But the history of literature also went down in the NRF's rejection of the publication of the first volume of Marcel Proust's novel of the century In Search of Lost Time , which Gide later described as the greatest mistake of his life.

Interwar period

The other volumes of Proust's novel were published shortly after the end of the war by the NRF publishing house after intensive efforts were made to find the author . For the second volume, Proust received the Prix ​​Goncourt in 1919 .

The magazine's most glorious period lay between the First and Second World Wars . Regular contributions by literary critics such as Albert Thibaudet , Benjamin Crémieux and Valéry Larbaud and the publications of a wide variety of writers such as Henri Barbusse , Roger Martin du Gard , Louis Aragon , Pierre Drieu la Rochelle and André Malraux established the renown and influence of the NRF , which despite the political Radicalization ( communism , fascism ) of the interwar period and fierce disputes around the new, controversial currents of contemporary art ( cubism , Dadaism , surrealism ) presented and openly discussed the most opposing viewpoints independently.

Many later famous authors published their first literary or literary critical works in the NRF , such as B. Jean-Paul Sartre .

The last NRF before the German occupation of parts of France in World War II appeared in June 1940.

Occupation and collaboration

From December 1940, following negotiations with the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz , and Gaston Gallimard, who with this concession ensured the independent existence of his publishing house , the magazine was reissued to the exclusion of all Jewish and communist authors. The course of the magazine was coordinated with Gerhard Heller , who was responsible for the literary policy of the German occupying power and, with the means available to him (e.g. paper allocation), took on the task of persuading the French publishers to self-censure and collaborate . The German occupiers, however, avoided directly influencing the editorial team of the NRF in order to win over the conservative circles among French intellectuals in the fight against Americanism and communism .

The post of editor-in-chief was given to Pierre Drieu La Rochelle , himself a long-time author of the NRF , who became a supporter of fascism in the 1930s and had been friends with Otto Abetz since that time. Drieu La Rochelle headed the magazine from December 1940 to July 1943. In the background, however, his predecessor Jean Paulhan remained active in the publishing house, trying to keep the literary level of the NRF in a difficult balance , manuscripts that could not be published by Gallimard, elsewhere to enable publication and was also a member of one of the first Paris resistance groups. When he threatened to be blown up, Drieu La Rochelle was able to use his contacts with the Germans to prevent the persecution of Paulhan by the occupying forces. In his "secret diaries", Drieu La Rochelle again distanced himself from fascism towards the end of the war and in fact left the editorial management of the NRF to Paulhan.

Prohibition and start-up

After the liberation of France in 1944, the NRF was banned on the initiative of the communist members ( Louis Aragon and others) of the National Committee of Writers ( Comité national des écrivains - CNE), which was founded in the underground, because of its collaboration with the German occupation forces and could not appear between 1944 and 1953 . Drieu La Rochelle committed suicide because of the threat of arrest in 1945.

From 1953 onwards, the NRF was re-established under the title Nouvelle NRF and, with the editors-in-chief Jean Paulhan and Marcel Arland, built on the time before 1940. Even under a new name, it soon had a great influence on French intellectual life. Since 1959 it has been published again under the name Nouvelle Revue française .

Editors-in-chief

literature

History of the NRF:

  • Alban Cerisier, Une histoire de la NRF , Gallimard, 2009.
  • Jean Lacouture, Une adolescence du siècle: Jacques Rivière et la NRF , Gallimard 1997.
  • Yaël Dagan, La Nouvelle Revue française entre guerre et paix. 1914-1925 , Tallandier, 2008.
  • Gilbert-Lucien Salmon (eds.): Jean Schlumberger et la Nouvelle Revue française: actes du colloque de Guebwiller et Mulhouse of 25 and 26 December 1999. Avec des inédits de Jean Schlumberger recueillis et prés. by Pascal Mercier. Paris: L'Harmattan 2005. ISBN 2-7475-6917-9 .
  • Petra Gekeler: The critical distance of the intellectual: Roger Martin du Gard in the context of the Nouvelle Revue française (NRF). Frankfurt am Main [u. a.]: Lang 2001. (Saarbrücker works on Romance studies; Vol. 11) ISBN 3-631-38494-7 .

Crew and collaboration:

  • Paul Dreyfus, Resistance. History of the French Resistance , Heyne, 1979.
  • Henry Rousso, Vichy: France under German occupation 1940-1944 , CH Beck, 2009.
  • Marc Olivier Baruch, The Vichy Regime. France 1940-1944 , Reclam, 2000.
  • Jean-Paul Sartre, Paris under the occupation. Articles and reports 1944-1945 , rororo 1980.
  • Robert O. Paxton, Stanley Hoffmann, Claude Bertrand, La France de Vichy , 1940–1944, Ed. Seuil, 1999.
  • Robert O. Paxton, Olivier Corpet, Claire Paulhan, Archives de la vie littéraire sous l'occupation: A travers le désastre , Tallandier, 2011.
  • Jean Paulhan, Lettre aux membres du CNE , 1940.
  • Jean Paulhan, Lettre aux directeurs de la Résistance , 1952.

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