Sous Verdun

A young student at the École normale supérieure, Maurice Genevoix joined the 106th infantry regiment in September 1914 and went to fight in the Argonne, notably at the Tranchée de Calonne, where he was seriously wounded six months later, on 25 April 1915, by three bullets — two in the arm and one in the chest. After seven months of treatment, he returned to Paris, to the rue d’Ulm, and, encouraged by Paul Dupuy, secretary-general of the École normale supérieure, with whom he had corresponded extensively during those six months of hardship, he agreed to recount his experience of the front and published Sous Verdun in April 1916. It was followed by Nuits de guerre in May 1917, Au seuil des guitounes in September 1918, La Boue in February 1921, and finally Les Éparges in September 1923: a body of work at once historical and literary, among the most striking ever produced on the First World War.

Where other major works by war writers (Roland Dorgelès’s Les Croix de bois, Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, Georges Duhamel’s Civilisation, to name the principal ones) could be criticized for excessive lyricism or for individual rather than collective accounts, Genevoix’s narratives describe with rarely matched authenticity the camaraderie of the trenches and, above all, the horror, madness and cruelty of war, as well as the paradoxes and sometimes aberrant decisions of the high command. So much so that Sous Verdun and Au seuil des guitounes were cut by censorship upon publication.

Genevoix drew on an eight-month campaign diary (from 25 August 1914 to 25 April 1915) to reconstruct his war experience; the first two volumes, Sous Verdun and Nuits de guerre, omit no day. “These five volumes are not five different works; they are, properly speaking, the five parts of a single work: the transcription and development of the author’s notebook (…) Among the writers of the war, Genevoix undoubtedly occupies first place. This is not a dogmatic opinion, nor the expression of individual taste. (…) It must be acknowledged, whatever the objections, that Genevoix has a genius for war narrative and that his work is incomparable”: these words are those of Jean Norton Cru, in his presentation of the author in his book Témoins, published in 1929, which discusses Genevoix’s five narratives. To compose his accounts, Genevoix also drew on letters sent to his family, his father, his brother René, and above all those sent to Paul Dupuy: “What I had to keep from my family,” he writes in Jeux de glaces (1960), “I confided freely in these letters, wishing to be truthful, to share without restraint.”

Sous Verdun was praised by critics: “It is Maupassant [to whom the writer had devoted a dissertation while at the École normale] from behind the trenches,” enthused Le Journal des débats. “One sees the war, in all its horror and truth, quivering with life.” The book was a critical success for Genevoix, approaching sales of 10,000 copies, and he was considered a contender for the Prix Goncourt, before the publication of Barbusse’s Le Feu changed the situation within a few weeks. In December, two Goncourt prizes were to be awarded: the one for 1914 (not yet awarded) and the one for 1916; “in two ballots, the decision was confirmed by clear majorities: the 1916 Prix Goncourt went to Barbusse by eight votes to two, and the 1914 prize to Adrien Bertrand by nine votes to one, the one dissenting vote going to Octave Mirbeau, who supported Genevoix. To justify this outcome, the young normalien was hypocritically criticized for having chosen a title [Sous Verdun] that suggested his book dealt with the great battle of 1916, whereas it actually recounted the fighting that took place in the Meuse from August to October 1914. April’s favorite had been overtaken by a shooting star and a dying man.” (In Jean-Yves Le Naour, La Gloire et l’Oubli. Maurice Genevoix et Henri Barbusse, témoins de la Grande Guerre, Michalon, “Histoire,” 2020).

A fine copy of the first printing, without edition statement and with the correct publisher’s announcement leaf at the front.