Groupe de l'Abbaye

Abbaye, Groupe de l'. A group of young French writers, artists, and theatrical people, sharing a disenchantment with the new capitalist, industrial, and anonymous society of the time, who decided to live and work together in a self-supporting community at Créteil between 1906 and 1908. The driving force and initiator of the enterprise was Charles Vildrac. He was joined by Georges Duhamel (who published his first volume of poetry there in 1907), René Arcos, Jules Romains, and the painters Albert Gleize and Berthold Mahn. It was through art and literature, rid of all artifice, that a more humanitarian and socially just society, based on moral values, would be achieved. The group's association with Romains—it published his Vie unanime—and its emphasis on universal fraternity, led to the venture being linked to Unanimism. They were in fact quite separate, but with shared ideals.

The material survival of L'Abbaye depended on the success of the hand-press printing venture, on paintings, and on visits and donations from like-minded people who wanted to participate in the simple, active, creative community life, in which each artist preserved his own individuality. The ideal lasted 14 months and came to an end through lack of an assured material future. The group's experience is the subject of Duhamel's book Le Désert de Bièvres (1937).

[Ethel Tolansky]