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Pierre Drieu La Rochelle | |
|---|---|
 Drieu La Rochelle in 1930 | |
| Born | Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle (1893-01-03)3 January 1893 |
| Died | 15 March 1945(1945-03-15) (aged 52) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, short stories writer, political essays writer |
| Language | French |
| Notable works | |
| French andFrancophone literature |
|---|
| by category |
| History |
| Movements |
| Writers |
| Countries and regions |
| Portals |
Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle (French:[dʁjølaʁɔʃɛl]; 3 January 1893 – 15 March 1945) was a Frenchwriter of novels,short stories, and politicalessays. He was born, lived and died in Paris. Drieu La Rochelle became a proponent of Frenchfascism in the 1930s, and was a well-knowncollaborationist during theGerman occupation.[1][2] He is best known for his booksLe Feu Follet andGilles.
Drieu was born into amiddle class family fromNormandy, based in the17th arrondissement of Paris. His father was an unsuccessful lawyer[3] who relied on his wife's dowry[4] and ended up squandering it, being "responsible for a sharp decline in the family's social status" by the time of his son's adolescence.[5]
Although a brilliant student, Pierre failed his final exam at theÉcole Libre des Sciences Politiques. Wounded three times, his experience as a soldier duringWorld War I had a deep influence on him and marked him for the rest of his life.[6]
In 1917, Drieu married Colette Jéramec, the sister of aJewish friend.[7] They divorced in 1921. Sympathetic toDada and to theSurrealists and theCommunists, and a close friend ofLouis Aragon in the 1920s, he was also interested in theroyalistAction Française, but refused to adhere to any one of these political currents. He wroteMesure de la France ("Measure of France") in 1922, which gave him some small notoriety, and edited several novels.
In Drieu's political writings, he argued that theparliamentary system (thegouvernement d'assemblée of theFrench Third Republic) was responsible for what he saw as the "decadence" of France (economic crisis, decliningbirth rates, etc.). In his essays "Le Jeune Européen" ("European Youth", 1927) and "Genève ou Moscou" ("Geneva or Moscow", 1928), Drieu La Rochelle advocated a strong Europe and denounced the "decadentmaterialism" of democracy. He believed that afederal Europe could bolster a strong economic and political union isolated from theimperialist Russians and Americans; in 1939 he came to believe that onlyNazi Germany could deliver such anautarkian promise.[8]
His pro-European views expressed in 1928 were soon followed by closer contacts with employers' organizations, among themErnest Mercier'sRedressement Français, and then, at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, with some currents of theRadical Party.
As late as 1931, in his essayL'Europe contre les patries ("Europe Against the homelands"), Drieu was writing as an anti-Hitlerian, but by 1934, especially after the6 February 1934 riots organized byfar right leagues before thePalais Bourbon, and then a visit toNazi Germany in September 1935 (where he witnessed theReichsparteitag rally inNuremberg), he embracedNazism as an antidote to the "mediocrity" of liberal democracy. After the 6 February 1934 riots, he contributed to the reviewLa Lutte des Jeunes and reinvented himself as a fascist. The title of his October 1934 bookSocialisme Fasciste ("Fascist Socialism") was representative of his politics at the time. In it, he described his discontent withMarxism as an answer to France's problems. He wrote that he found inspiration inGeorges Sorel,Fernand Pelloutier, and the earlier French socialism ofSaint-Simon,Charles Fourier, andProudhon.
Drieu La Rochelle joinedJacques Doriot's fascistParti Populaire Français (PPF) in 1936, and became the editor of its review,L'Emancipation Nationale, until his break with the party beginning in 1939. In 1937, withAvec Doriot, he argued for a specifically French fascism. He continued writing his most famous novel,Gilles, during this time.[9]
He supportedcollaborationism and theNazis'occupation of northern France. During the occupation of Paris, Drieu succeededJean Paulhan (whom he saved twice from the hands of theGestapo) as director of theNouvelle Revue Française and thus became a leading figure of French cultural collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, who he hoped would become the leader of a "Fascist International". His friendship with the German ambassador in Paris,Otto Abetz, pre-dated the war. He was a member of the committee of theGroupe Collaboration.[10] Beginning in 1943, however, he became disillusioned by theNew Order, and turned to the study ofEastern spirituality.[11]
In a final, provocative act, he again embraced Jacques Doriot's PPF, simultaneously declaring in his secret diary his admiration forStalinism. Upon theliberation of Paris in 1944, Drieu had to go into hiding. Despite the protection of his friendAndré Malraux, and after a failed first attempt in July 1944, Drieu committedsuicide.[12]
The following list is not exhaustive.
Quotations related toPierre Drieu La Rochelle at Wikiquote
Preface to Gilles:The Rise and Fall of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle
