Mi-dire…

Ten of these poems were published clandestinely, notably in Le Musée Grévin, issued by Éditions de Minuit under the pseudonym François La Colère. La Diane française also includes the poems “Il n’y a pas d’amour heureux” and “La rose et le réséda,” published as early as March 1943 in Marseille under Aragon’s own name in the newspaper Le Mot d’ordre.

Aragon’s diane, “which sang in the courtyards of the barracks,” is clearly borrowed from Baudelaire and the opening line of his “Crépuscule du matin”; it was to sound “au soir de mon pays” to announce France’s awakening, already perceptible in 1943. To free itself from tyranny, the nation had to unite its forces, joining the rose, symbol of the Left, with the white réséda, symbol of the Right.

The collection is dedicated to four Resistance figures executed by the Germans between 1941 and 1944: Guy Môquet, Gabriel Péri, Honoré d’Estienne d’Orves and Gilbert Dru — two communists and two Catholics.