Regis Messac

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Régis Gilbert Antoine Messac (born August 2, 1893 in Champagnac , Charente-Maritime department ; died 1945 in the Groß-Rosen or Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps ) was a French essayist , poet and novelist .

Life

Messac, who came from a family of teachers, grew up in Léoville , Castellane and Versailles and attended the Lycée Condorcet in Paris . In 1914 he was drafted into the military and suffered a head injury in the same year. In 1919 he was demobilized. His pacifist stance, reinforced by the experiences of war, is documented in two autobiographical novels Le Voyage de Néania (1926) and Ordre de transport (unpublished), the play Phobie du bleu (1931), the pamphlet Le Pourboire du sang (unpublished) and his as Poèmes guerrier's anti-war poetry published in 1929.

In 1922 he graduated from the Agrégation , then was a teacher in Auch , then French lecturer at the University of Glasgow and from 1924 at the University of Montreal . During his time in Montreal he wrote the satire Smith Conundrum, roman d'une université américaine , one of the first campus novels . In 1929 he returned to France, taught at the Lycée of Montpellier and received his doctorate with a thesis on the relationship between detective novel and science, followed in 1930 by another work on the influence of French literature on Edgar Allan Poe . He was one of the first to study popular literature academically, especially science fiction .

However, he did not stop at dealing theoretically with utopian literature, but with Quinzinzinzili (1935) became one of the pioneers of modern French science fiction. Quinzinzinzili is an early exponent of the post-apocalyptic novel, in which a war wiped out almost all of humanity and the few survivors in the underground are building a new society with old mistakes, including a cult around the deity Quinzinzinzili . In La Cité des asphyxiés (1937) there is a time traveler in a distant future, in which the air we breathe on the surface of the earth is no longer sufficient and is traded at exorbitant prices in the underground cities.

Messac married in 1920 and had three children at the beginning of World War II, which is why he escaped conscription. As a pacifist and socialist, author of the pamphlet Pot-pourri fantôme and the novel Smith Conendrum, which was crushed at the instigation of the German occupiers , Messac was politically conspicuous and offensive. He also joined the resistance and helped young people who wanted to evade forced labor . He was arrested on May 10, 1943, first in the Fresnes prison , then in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp in Alsace and then in Germany, where he was murdered in 1945 either in the Groß-Rosen or the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camps.

Posthumously, he was honored with the Croix de guerre , the Légion d'honneur and the rank of sub-lieutenant - the latter distinction in particular, unsuitable for a proven pacifist who tried to maximize his unsuitability during his military service.

bibliography

Novels and short stories
  • Le Voyage de Néania à travers la guerre et la paix (1926)
  • Quinzinzinzili (1935)
  • La Cité des asphyxiés (1937)
  • Valcrétin (1973)
  • Musique arachnéenne (1934)
  • Le Miroir flexible (1933)
  • Smith Conundrum, roman d'une université américaine (1942)
  • Pot-pourri fantôme (1942)
  • Roman policier, fragment d'histoire (2009)
  • La Crise, chronique éditoriale, 1930-1939 (2013)
Articles and essays
  • The "Detective Novel" et l'influence de la pensée scientifique (1929)
  • Influences française dans l'œuvre d'Edgar Poe (1929)
  • À bas le latin! (1933)
  • Micromégas (1936)
  • Brève histoire des hommes (1939)
  • Esquisse d'une chronobibliographie des utopies (1940)
  • La Révolution culturelle (1938)
  • Les Romans de l'homme-singe (1935)
  • Les Premières Utopies (Éditions ex nihilo, 2009)
Poetry
  • Poèmes guerriers (1929)
Letters
  • Lettres de prison (1943)

Translations

David H. Keller
  • Les Mains et la machine (Stenographer's Hands, 1928), 1932
  • La Nourrice automatique (The Psychophonic Nurse, 1928), 1936
  • La Guerre du lierre (The Ivy War, 1930), 1936
  • Pourquoi? (The Question), 1937
  • Le Fou du ciel (The Flying Fool), 1937
  • La Lune de miel perpétuelle (Life Everlasting), 1938
  • Le Duel sans fin (The Eternal Conflict), 1939
Fitz-James O'Brien
  • Animula (The Diamonds Lens), 1931
  • L'Histoire du dragon Fang , 1935
Max Nettlau
  • Esquisse d'histoire des Utopies (Esbozo de historia de las Utopias, 1934), 1936–1938
Jack London
  • Ce que la vie signifie pour moi (What Life Means to Me, 1905), 1939

literature

Web links
personal data
SURNAME Messac, Regis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Messac, Régis Gilbert Antoine (full name); Champagnac, Robert (pseudonym); Dolus, Maxime (pseudonym); Fabian, Jehan (pseudonym); Jéricho, Jérémie (pseudonym); Lécapère, Romain (pseudonym); Lenoir, Gontran (pseudonym); Llorente, Sancho (pseudonym); Le Mandarin (pseudonym); North, Columbus (pseudonym); L'ours mal léché (pseudonym); Risa, Margarita (pseudonym); Rothgemünde, Elsa (pseudonym); Scanlan, Esteban (pseudonym); Doctor Séraphicus (pseudonym); Zurbarran, Laurent (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH August 2, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Champagnac , Charente-Maritime department
DATE OF DEATH 1945
Place of death Groß-Rosen concentration camp or Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp