Le role et l'oeuvre d'henri barbusse
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Abstract EN:
Henri barbusse's work and influence cannot be separated : the writer's realistic exactness led him to a political commitment and his work was transformed thereby. In his novels, short stories and poetry written before 1914 he expresses how unsatisfied he is with the world, how he is longing for another human reality and expecting a high personal destiny. Hence his rush into the war as other people rush into prieshood. His realistic epic the fire, is the unquestionable sign he is joining the social struggle. Henceforward he will conduct on parallel lines action and literature. As the first famous french writer to adhere to communism he shows a great activity to propagate this ideology among intellectuals and present the first socialist state to the french public. He defends human rights. His name gets associated with the fight against war and fascism. He recommends a union of left wing forces, as well as of intellectual and manual workers. He participates in the international revolutionary movement whose sectarianism he will undergo for some time. As such, he is greatly involved in debates about proletarian literature and the beginning of socialistic realism, but if he defends social and political commitment, he does not mean to close it up within formal rules. In his essays and novels he experiments on various forms of critical and social realism. He questions fiction in literature. He starts the creation of a collective hero. He tries to reveal the ideology out of written works or to make it the main ingredient of a text. He will remain in history as a writer who established great convergences between the political and the aesthetic fields.
Abstract FR:
On ne peut separer le role et l'oeuvre d'henri barbusse (1873-1935) : l'exigence realiste de l'ecrivain l'a conduit a l'engagement politique, et son oeuvre en a ete transformee. Ses vers, ses romans, ses nouvelles d'avant 1914 proclament tout a la fois son insatisfaction du monde, son aspiration a une autre realite humaine et son attente d'une haute destinee personnelle a venir. Il va donc se jeter dans la guerre comme d'autres entrent en sacerdoce. Son epopee realiste, le feu, marque son insertion definitive dans le combat social. Desormais il menera de pair action et litterature. Premier ecrivain francais connu a adherer au communisme, il deploie une grande activite pour en faire connaitre les idees chez les intellectuels ainsi que pour presenter le premier etat du socialisme au public francais. Il defend les droits de l'homme. Il attache son nom a la lutte contre la guerre et le fascisme. Il prone l'union de la gauche ainsi que le rassemblement des intellectuels et des manuels. Il participe au mouvement litteraire revolutionnaire international dont il subit, un temps, le sectarisme. A ce titre, il est mele de pres aux debats sur la litterature proletarienne et sur les debuts du realisme socialiste mais, s'il defend les idees d'une litterature engagee, il n'entend pas l'enfermer dans des normes formelles. Dans ses essais, ses nouvelles, ses romans, il experimente diverses formes d'un realisme "critique" et "social". Il met en question la fiction. Il entreprend d'introduire le heros collectif. Il essaie de devoiler l'ideologie dans l'ecriture ou d'en faire au contraire l'element fondateur du texte. Il restera dans l'histoire comme un ecrivain qui a pousse tres loin les convergences entre politique et esthetique.