La France au coeur Chroniques de la servitude et de la libération

Name: La France au coeur Chroniques de la servitude et de la libération
SKU: 28986
Author: Max‑Pol Fouchet

Alger, Charlot, 1944.

1 vol. (120 x 190 mm) of 153 p. and [1] f.

First edition of this collection of texts published in French periodicals, in Algeria and in metropolitan France, between June 1940 and June 1943. Fouchet evokes in particular “the face of a Paul Éluard, the pure face of a man inhabited by poetry, yet suffering the ills of his people” (p. 35), referring to their meetings in Paris in the spring of 1942, which led to the publication of “Liberté” under the title “Une seule pensée” (cf. nos. 8 and 12).

Presentation inscription “à M. le général de Gaulle, en souvenir de ce soir du 11 novembre 1943, où il me parla de Fontaine de telle façon que je me sentis récompensé de tous les combats qu’il avait fallu mener pour l’honneur de l’esprit français.”

On that day, General de Gaulle was indeed in Algiers, a year after its liberation, for the commemorations of the 1918 armistice, and it was on this occasion that he met Max-Pol Fouchet, who recalled: “I was invited to dinner at the Villa des Oliviers, his residence, on the evening of 11 November 1943. […] Bad luck! […] I arrived more than half an hour late. The General greeted me with the air of a judge. Flustered, I stammered out excuses and explained myself. The judge looked me up and down. There was a silence, and then these words fell from on high: ‘Let us leave that, monsieur; the review Fontaine, I am told, has replaced La Nouvelle Revue française, it has defended honor. […]’” (Un jour, je m’en souviens…, pp. 150–151). It may be because of this chilling memory that Fouchet never dared send the general this inscribed copy, and instead kept it among his own papers.

#28986

Back