Lettre autographe signée adressée à Max-Pol Fouchet

“… I hesitated for a very long time before writing you this letter; I was afraid of being carried away by my first impulse, anger. Then I fell ill, and let the days go by. But after a month, nothing has changed in what I think, so I cannot put it down to a passing mood. You know perfectly well what this concerns, and how I took that ‘Brève histoire de Fontaine.’ It seems entirely pointless to go back over it, and I have no need to explain to you what I find odious in it, what is unacceptable to me. You know it, you knew it in advance. And it is you who forced me to choose between my friends. My choice is certainly made. I am now obliged no longer to count you as my own, to do no more than shake your hand, or if you prefer, to pretend to shake it. The time it has taken me to tell you this measures well enough my reluctance to do so. This has the character of a separation; let us try, if you will, to make it free of scandal, and to preserve some dignity: I have always had respect for people who parted in this way. And so, since in that ‘Brève histoire…’ you alluded to my friendship for Fontaine, I will ask you for one last mark of esteem: let us, if you will, give up the book we were to publish together, let us tear up the contract for the Circonstances de la poésie; I hold the copy I made of it at the disposal of M. Goldschmitt, in exchange for the one he has, as well as the sums he paid me (20,000, I believe, but I would be glad if he could confirm it, as I am essentially prone to error in such matters). This will spare us false and useless dealings. Believe, my dear Max-Pol, in the regret I feel that you left me nothing else to do but act as I am doing…”

The letter was published in issue no. 8 of the journal Recherches croisées Aragon-Elsa Triolet, transcribed and annotated by Augustin Guillot and Nathalie Limat-Letellier in the article “Aragon–Max-Pol Fouchet: Correspondance inédite,” where it is quoted and extensively commented upon. It brings to an end the correspondence between the two men, which extended from May 1941 to May 1945. At the outset of this exchange, Aragon lent his support to the editor of Fontaine, hoping that the early centers of literary Resistance would help one another and build fraternal ties. His most significant poetic contribution to the Algiers review, by his own account, arose from a tragic event: Fouchet’s young wife died in the sinking of the Lamoricière in January 1942, while traveling to mainland France to meet the author of Le Crève-cœur and Elsa Triolet in Nice. Immediately, out of sympathy for Fouchet, Aragon asked Jean Roire to convey that he would give Fontaine an advance publication of the “Cantique à Elsa,” which he had just finished. The offer was accepted with gratitude.

The break came three years later, when Fouchet published in his review the editorial “Brève Histoire de Fontaine,” in which he asserted the unrivaled preeminence of his journal, claiming it had been the first, after the defeat, to turn to the “guerrilla of ideas.” A hostile distance thereafter set in between the two poets, for clear and definitive reasons. Shortly before this rupture, Fouchet had also had to return to Elsa Triolet her article “Les amandes amères,” concerning Le Domaine public, a collection by Pierre Seghers, which had been intended for issue no. 42 of Fontaine.