DRIEU LA ROCHELLE (Pierre). - Lot 87

DRIEU LA ROCHELLE (Pierre). Born in Paris. 1893-1945. French writer. L.A.S. "Drieu" to Gérard Bauër. S.l., January 16 [19]40. 6 pp. numbered, in-4. Joint: L.A.S. "Drieu" to the same. S.l.n.d. - 2 pages in-4. Drieu responds to journalist Gérard Bauër's polemical remarks about Barrès, and GILLES [a book by Drieu published in 1939 that caused controversy].He adds a more intimate letter as a preamble to the first. ...My article did come out of our conversation at the Relais, but through a pileup of daydreams. I had no recollection that you regretted the absence of a Barrès (...). Otherwise, I would have shrunk from the indecency of slyly attacking a Figaro contributor in Le Figaro. My "Monsieur" was mythical...I think what you say in defense of Barrès was implicit in the very careful terms with which I wrapped my judgment. "Exquisitely inadequate". He was doing all he could to shock no one while helping the greatest number, but despite all his care he couldn't reach a certain reality of experience. So much so that suddenly all his effort seemed useless and more than useless. I had seen men wounded at the front, even though they were his staunchest literary admirers and even our political supporters... As for Napoleon, won't you agree with me on two points? Firstly, the military legend has been reduced by a new military reality. After 1414, some Hugolesque creations of cavalry charges cannot be seen in the same light. Secondly, a certain fury of ambition à la Sorel [Stendhalian hero Julien Sorel] or à la Rastignac [Balzacian character from La Comédie humaine, embodying ambition] is no longer part of young people's sensibility. I didn't find it in any of the "ambitious" people I approached: Raymond Lefèvre (a young Communist party leader who died in the White Sea in 1920), Aragon, Bergery, Malraux, a certain Arnaud Petitjean... According to Bauër, Gilles is nothing but a novel about...failed ambition... Drieu protests energetically before explaining: ...Oh no, I've insisted everywhere that Gilles is not ambitious. He's a contemplative who is haunted by the ambitions of others for only a moment, and then moves into a perfectly defined relationship of "respectful distance" from the ambitions of others, of "reciprocal service". This is the exact opposite of nineteenth-century ambition, which confuses action with dreams. Gilles is the ongoing distinction between these two forces. I'm extremely disappointed and astonished by such an interpretation, coming from an attentive reader. What's the point of writing, then? I began my literary life in 1917 with a collection of poems entitled "Interrogation", which was banned by the censors. It included a poem entitled "A vous Allemands" ("To you Germans"), which praised the enemy on a historical and philosophical level that had little to do with the intellectual battles of the time. I have no desire to revive this poem, as I marked it in an article against Bernard Shaw. But I still have no desire to join in the immense personal diatribe against Hitler, which seems to me to mislead opinion, just as the diatribe against Wilhelm or Bismarck misled it. There's German, and then there's everything. And that's the way it is, and we have to fight it as such, without any vain hope of changing it behind its leaders. I have always maintained this thesis in all my political essays and in my articles in Emancipation, to which you make an ill-informed or malicious allusion [...] I have no intention whatsoever of renouncing a certain consideration of German genius through all its avatars, which still really opposed me in private correspondence to Maurras and which can just as easily oppose me to any passionate negation of this genius coming from any other quarter. When it comes to enthusiasm, ask Montherlant, Malraux, Green and Bernanos for an account, as you would ask me! They are much more hermetically sealed than I am... He ends with a handshake ...not without a frown... Enclosed: Letter (preamble) ...There was never any friendship between us, but I tasted during our rare encounters (...) that free, impalpable interplay of feelings which is like the infinitely prolonged prelude to friendship (...). I don't much like personal quarrels, I have enough of them on my aging back. I'm sending you this letter that I first wrote and then threw into a corner. It's more expressive than the other one. I assure you that people who knew nothing about your articles found them very unpleasant for me. He adds a p.-s.: ...(I'll go on and on!). What bothers me most about your articles is the reflex of ourr