Drieu la Rochelle, Pierre (1893-1945). A French novelist and essayist of the inter-war period, Drieu la Rochelle was imbued with a sense of the decadence of contemporary society, which led him into a variety of forms of escape, including a political commitment to fascism. His collaborationist policies during World War II led to an initial neglect of his work in the post-war period; but he is now recognized as one of the more remarkable novelists of his time.
World War I was a major influence upon him. But even before the war certain tendencies in his thought were already established. Above all, there was the influence of Nietzsche and of Barrès, and a personal tendency to depression and despair, leading to thoughts of suicide. The war brought him action and a sense of liberation from the mediocrity and futility of human existence. His war poems, published in the collection Interrogation in 1917, express the need for ‘la force du soldat’, and for struggle, suffering, and danger.
Back in post-war civilian life, Drieu felt ‘dépaysé’. The world around him appeared to have learned none of the lessons of the war. He plunged into a despairing quest for pleasure amid the distractions of post-war Paris, including varied sexual adventures. He moved in fashionable literary circles, and through Aragon became involved with the Surrealist movement. His writings, up to 1934, reflect his continuing disillusion. On the one hand, the novels (e.g. L'Homme couvert de femmes, 1925; Blèche, 1928; Une femme à sa fenêtre, 1930; Drôle de voyage, 1933) and the short stories express the futility of sexual encounters and a desire for escape from tedium and mediocrity. On the other, a series of essays seriously examines the political and social situation (Mesure de la France, 1922; Le Jeune Européen, 1927; Genève ou Moscou, 1928; L'Europe contre les patries, 1931); he invites France to accept her diminished position in the post-war world, and to see herself as part of a greater federal Europe which, rejecting both old-style nationalism and the outmoded distinction between capitalism and communism, could counteract the power of Russia and America. In 1931 he wrote a masterpiece which stands out from his contemporary output, Le Feu follet, the stark depiction of the last days in the life of a drug-addict before he commits suicide.
The year 1934 produced an enormous change in Drieu's ideas. The riots of 6 February [see Croix-de-feu] convinced him of the healthy renewal for France that could be achieved through fascism. Later that year his Socialisme fasciste declared the need for one party on the fascist model. By 1936 he had joined Doriot's Parti Populaire Français, whose theorist he became in regular contributions to the party newspaper, L'Émancipation nationale, many of which were gathered into the volume Avec Doriot (1937). Typically, however, he was soon disillusioned with the party, at one stage considering suicide because of his sense of universal futility. In January 1939 he broke with Doriot.
It was the disillusionment of 1938-9 which was to produce his greatest novel, Gilles (1939), whose hero Gilles Gambier goes through a political and social development similar to Drieu's own. The theme of purification through war recurs in the final section, where the hero participates in the Spanish Civil War.
After the French defeat in 1940, Drieu, despite his contempt for the Vichy regime [see Occupation and Resistance] and his continuing disillusionment with fascism in practice, strongly advocated collaboration with the Germans. He accepted the editorship of the Nouvelle Revue Française. In 1943 he produced a final novel, L'Homme à cheval, one of his best works. After the Liberation he committed suicide on 15 March 1945, to evade arrest.
In the last year of his life Drieu produced three remarkable documents, which were eventually published in 1961 under the title Récit secret. These were: a treatise in which, prior to producing a philosophy of suicide, Drieu describes his various suicide attempts from childhood onwards, culminating in a full description of his feelings the day before his last attempt in August 1944; a ‘Journal’ from 11 October 1944 to 13 March 1945 (touching on the political situation, his own pressing concerns, his attraction towards suicide, his readings, and his progress on the novel he was writing); and finally the outline of his own defence (for the trial he expected), in which he described his political evolution from 1918 to 1945.
Drieu, by his cult of action and his despair at the decadence and aimlessness of modern life, parallels a number of other writers of the inter-war period, including Malraux, whom he described as his ‘frère en Nietzsche et en Dostoievski’, and the German author Ernst Jünger. Like them, he found a temporary outlet in political commitment; but his individualism always prevented him from espousing for long any precise cause. The tensions thus aroused, and his complex and neurotic personality, combined, however, to produce a handful of remarkable works of art.
[Richard Griffiths]
Bibliography
- F. Grover, Drieu la Rochelle (1962)
- R. Soucy, Fascist Intellectual: Drieu la Rochelle (1979)
