Presentation copy inscribed by René Benjamin to Urbain Gohier: “À Urbain Gohier, dont Gaspard dirait avec admiration : ‘Ah ! celui-là, tu parles s'il sait moucher les fripouilles !’ Bien cordialement, René Benjamin.”
Winner of the Prix Goncourt in 1915, Gaspard is one of the earliest literary accounts of the Great War.
On 31 October 1914, the members of the Académie Goncourt met for the first time at the restaurant Drouant, place Gaillon. The outcome of the war remained highly uncertain, and under these circumstances the academicians decided not to award their prize, planning instead to award two the following year. The double award would not in fact take place until 1916, and in December 1915, “in order to allow young authors who had novels in press or under consideration at the outbreak of the war to take part in the competition,” a single prize was awarded.
For the first time since the Prix Goncourt was established in 1903, it was awarded unanimously, to Gaspard by René Benjamin. Mobilized at the beginning of the conflict, at the age of twenty-nine, Benjamin delivers here a chronicle of barracks and front-line life through the character of Gaspard, a boastful, witty and resourceful Parisian meant to embody the French poilu. Unlike other, darker publications, Gaspard stands out for its lively, satirical tone, exposing the absurdities of the military hierarchy.
Among the dozens of books published from 1915 onward on the theme of the still-new conflict, Gaspard was above all the first, and the only true, novel: it met with great success on publication and, boosted by the Prix Goncourt, quickly reached its hundredth edition. According to Norton Cru, Gaspard was the favorite book “of a public kept in ignorance of the military situation by the strict, uncompromising censorship of the early war. Published a year later, its success would have been doubtful; two years later, it would have gone unnoticed. On one point Gaspard is truer than Le Feu: the Parisian hero alone speaks slang, a legitimate slang, taken from life […]. This praise I give the author proves his talent for observing people’s speech.”
This episode opened a particular period for the Goncourt: in 1915, 1916, 1917 and 1918, the five prizes were all awarded to combatants and to their more or less fictionalized accounts of the front. This reflects both the appeal of war narratives and the determination of publishers — even when driven by commercial motives — to document these years of conflict through literature.
The crowning of Gaspard also established the reputation of Arthème Fayard, whose role as a popular publisher was well suited to the national mood. The book went through numerous printings, becoming a genuine wartime publishing phenomenon.
A valuable copy enriched with an inscription to Urbain Gohier, polemicist and socialist journalist, famous for his Dreyfusard positions and later his antimilitarist commitments. Céline cited his work among his earliest influences during these same war years.
In 1938, René Benjamin became the first Prix Goncourt laureate to join the jury.
Jean Norton Cru, Témoins, 567; Talvart, I, 355.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.