Portrait of Louis Aragon byMan Ray, half-tone print.
Louis Aragon was born in Paris. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandmother, believing them to be his sister and foster mother, respectively. His biological father,Louis Andrieux, a former senator forForcalquier, was married and thirty years older than Aragon's mother, whom he seduced when she was seventeen. Aragon's mother passed Andrieux off to her son as hisgodfather.[5][6] Aragon was only told the truth at the age of 19, as he was leaving to serve in theFirst World War, from which neither he nor his parents believed he would return. Andrieux's refusal or inability to recognize his son would influence Aragon's poetry later on.[citation needed]
Having been involved inDadaism from 1919 to 1924, he became a founding member ofSurrealism in 1924,[7] withAndré Breton andPhilippe Soupault, under the pen-name "Aragon".[8] In 1923, during the trial ofGermaine Berton, Aragon released a 29 portrait piece inLa Révolution surréaliste in support of her, stating Berton "use[d] terrorist means, in particular murder, to safeguard, at the risk of losing everything, what seems to her — rightly or wrongly — precious beyond anything in the world".[9]
The French surrealists had long claimedLewis Carroll as one of their own, and Aragon published his translation ofThe Hunting of the Snark[11] in 1929, "shortly before he completed his transition from Snarxism to Marxism", asMartin Gardner puts it.[12] Witness the key stanza of the poem in Aragon's translation:
Ils le traquèrent avec des gobelets ils le traquèrent avec soin
Ils le poursuivirent avec des fourches et de l'espoir Ils menacèrent sa vie avec une action de chemin de fer
Gardner, who calls the translation "pedestrian" and deems the rest of Aragon's writings on Carroll's nonsense poetry full of factual errors, says that there is no evidence that Aragon intended any of it as a joke.[citation needed]
Apart from working as a journalist forL'Humanité, Louis Aragon also became, along withPaul Nizan, editor secretary of the journalCommune, published by theAssociation des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires (Association of Revolutionary Writers and Artists), which aimed at gathering intellectuals and artists in a common frontagainst fascism.[14] Aragon became a member of the directing committee of theCommune journal in January 1937, along withAndré Gide,Romain Rolland andPaul Vaillant-Couturier. The journal then took the name of "French literary review for the defence of culture" (« revue littéraire française pour la défense de la culture »).
With Gide's withdrawal in August 1937, Vaillant-Couturier's death in the autumn of 1937 and Romain Rolland's old age, Aragon became its effective director. In December 1938, he called aschief editor the young writerJacques Decour. TheCommune journal was strongly involved in the mobilization of French intellectuals in favour of theSpanish Republic.[citation needed]
In March 1937, Aragon was called on by the PCF to head the new evening dailyCe soir, which he was charged with launching, along with the writerJean-Richard Bloch.Ce soir attempted to compete withParis-soir. Outlawed in August 1939,Ce soir was re-opened after the Liberation, and Aragon again became its lead, first with Bloch then alone after Bloch's death in 1947. The newspaper, which countedÉmile Danoën among its collaborators, closed in March 1953.
In 1939, he married Russian-born authorElsa Triolet, the sister ofLilya Brik, a mistress and then partner of Russian poetVladimir Mayakovsky.[15] He had met her in 1928, and she became hismuse starting in the 1940s. Aragon and Triolet collaborated in theleft-wing French media before and during World War II, going underground for most of theGerman occupation.[5]
Otto Abetz was the German governor, and produced a series of "black lists" of authors forbidden to be read, circulated or sold in Nazi Occupied France. These included anything written by a Jew, a communist, an Anglo-Saxon or anyone else who was anti-Germanic or anti-fascist. Aragon andAndré Malraux were both on these "Otto Lists" of forbidden authors.[16]
He participated with his wife in the setting up of the National Front of Writers in the southern zone. This activism led him to break his friendly relationship withPierre Drieu La Rochelle, who had chosencollaborationism.
The theme of the poem was theRed Poster affair, mainly the last letter thatMissak Manouchian, an Armenian-French poet and Resistant, wrote to his wifeMélinée before his execution on 21 February 1944.[18] This poem was then set to music byLéo Ferré.
Sponsored by Thorez, Aragon was elected, in 1950, to the central committee of the PCF. His post, however, did not protect him from all forms of criticism. Thus, when his journalLes Lettres françaises published a drawing byPablo Picasso on the occasion of Stalin's death in March 1953, Aragon was forced to make excuses to his critics, who judged the drawing iconoclastic. Through the years, he had been kept informed ofStalinist repression by his Russian-born wife, and so his political line evolved.[citation needed]
In the days following the disappearance ofCe soir, in March 1953, Aragon became the director ofL'Humanité's literary supplement,Les Lettres françaises. After Khrushchev's "Secret Speech" about Stalin delivered in 1956, Aragon suffered a deep personal crisis, but it was not until the 1960s when he started openly criticizing the Soviet regime.[19][20] In 1956, Aragon didn't support theHungarian Revolution,[21][22] provoking the dissolution of theComité national des écrivains, whichVercors quit, and was granted theLenin Peace Prize, but later he condemned Soviet totalitarianism and authoritarianism, opened his magazines to dissidents, and condemnedshow trials against intellectuals (in particular the 1966Sinyavsky–Daniel trial).
Assisted byPierre Daix, Aragon started in the 1960s a struggle against Soviet policies and its consequences in Eastern Europe. He published the writings of dissidents such asAleksandr Solzhenitsyn orMilan Kundera. He strongly supported the student movement ofMay 68, although the PCF was sceptical about it. The crushing of thePrague Spring in 1968 led him to a critical preface published in a translation of one ofMilan Kundera's books (La Plaisanterie).[23] In 1970, he supported the Nobel Prize awarded to Solzhenitsyn.[24] Despite his criticisms, Aragon remained an official member of the PCF's central committee until his death.[25] The monetary loss caused byLes Lettres françaises led to its ceasing publication in 1972. It was later re-founded.
Free from both his marital and editorial responsibilities (having ended publication ofLes Lettres Françaises –L'Humanité's literary supplement – in 1972), Aragon was free to return to his surrealist roots. During the last ten years of his life, he published at least two further novels:Henri Matisse Roman andLes Adieux.
^The Annotated Snark, edited by Martin Gardner, Penguin Books, 1974
^Translating, "They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;/They pursued it with forks and hope;/They threatened its life with a railway-share;/They charmed it with smiles and soap." —The Hunting of the Snark, Fit the Fifth, ll. 1-4.
