La Ville dont le prince est un enfant
Presentation copy inscribed by the author to Maurice Genevoix: “À Maurice Genevoix, Voici, mon cher ami, un ‘climat’ bien différent sans doute de celui dans lequel vous avez été élevé, mais vous êtes psychologue et il devrait vous intéresser, car il est vrai. Amicalement, Henry de Montherlant.”
A major play in Montherlant’s theater, La Ville dont le prince est un enfant condenses, within the walls of a religious boarding school, the forces that run through his entire body of work: the fascination with childhood and beginnings, jealousy as a chiaroscuro of desire, spiritual domination and its pretenses. Around the head supervisor, the Abbé de Pradts, a closed world takes shape — a “climate,” as the author calls it in his inscription to Genevoix, though this is not a matter of setting but of truth: that of a regulated world in which morality serves as a screen for domination.
Written in a language of implacable clarity, the 1967 version — considered definitive — tightens still further the dramaturgy of a system that manufactures the very faults it punishes. This text would lead directly to the writing of Les Garçons (1969), one of the most important works on authority, innocence and the dark side of institutions.
A fine copy, in its dust jacket as issued, sent by the academician to the permanent secretary of the Académie française at the quai de Conti.