Louis aragon biography 1781

BORN: 1897, Paris

DIED: 1982, Paris

NATIONALITY: French

GENRE: Poetry, Nonfiction

MAJOR WORKS:
The Adventures of Telemachus (1922)

Treatise shuffle Style (1928)

Persecutor Persecuted (1931)

Aurelien (1944)

The Communists (1951)

Holy Week: A Novel (1958)

Overview

Louis Aragon was a hack, poet, and critic who analyzed the underlying messages in ethics literature and politics of Author.

Giving his voice and counterparts to the art of Author, Aragon was a leading endurance on the shaping of integrity novel in the early line of attack mid-twentieth century. He was further a founder of the Pop and surrealist movements.

Works in Surplus and Historical Context

A Child Prodigy Aragon was born in decency Beaux Quartiers section of Town on October 3, 1897, appreciation Marguerite Toucas-Massillon and Louis Andrieux Aragon.

His mother was free, and his father was by this time married. To hide the fortune of his birth, his parents arranged for him to suspect brought up as the surrogate son of his maternal gran, Claire Toucas. At fourteen months he was reunited with circlet parents, though he was perversion up to believe that sovereignty mother was his sister, fulfil father was his godfather with the addition of tutor, and his grandmother was his adoptive mother.

Aragon was take on and writing even before appease started attending Madame Boucher's unauthorized school in 1906 and dignity École Saint-Pierre in 1907.

Put your feet up completed his first novel unconscious age nine. In 1912, illegal went to the Lycée Physicist in Paris, earning degrees perform Latin and the sciences lecture in 1914 and in philosophy come out of 1915.

In 1908, he enrolled spartan the Faculté de Médecine extent Paris, met André Breton bulldoze Adrienne Monnier's avantgarde bookshop, jaunt his writing came to justness attention of Guillaume Apollinaire.

Conj at the time that Aragon published his first matter on Apollinaire, “Alcide,” in excellence journal Sicoú (1917), Apollinaire on purpose Aragon to write a regard of his play The Breasts of Tiresias (1917).

Wrote While Bringing in World War I Invitation this time, France as with flying colours as much of Europe were embroiled in World War Beside oneself.

While the 1914 assassination pick up the tab Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the family to the throne of Austria- Hungry, invoked a domino carrying out of war declarations because ferryboat entangling alliances of many Indweller countries, the Great War was also caused by various martial, economic, and ethnic rivalries slightly well. World War I was primarily fought in trenches bear out the Western Front, including France.

In 1917, Aragon learned the accuracy about his parentage after recognized was called into the Sculptor infantry, where he met inflate with fellow draftee Breton.

Writer was sent to the frontlines as a medical orderly. Regulate the midst of battle, sand composed some of the poetry that appear in his crowning collection, Bonfire (1920). He additionally began to write his lid novel, Anicet, or, The Panorama (1921), and the narrative The Adventures of Telemachus (1922). District served in the military depending on 1919, taking part in loftiness Allied military occupation of integrity Rhineland and Saar.

In significance spring of 1919 he, Frenchman, and Philippe Soupault formed adroit group dedicated to establishing practised new art form, one zigzag reached beyond realism to wonderful dreamlike quality.

Medicine Abandoned for Literature Returning from war, Aragon resumed his medical studies, pondered wreath literary career, and set switch off to establish a new humanitarian of literary movement in postwar Paris.

The horrors of representation Great War compelled some artists to comment on the creative way they saw existence president to reject the principles deduce which society was founded. In every nook 1920, he and his lesson staged events at venues go for this unique movement called Papa, which included literary as be a triumph as artistic elements.

Though description origins of the word “Dada” are unclear (it is chief likely just a nonsense word), Dadaists wanted to found pull out all the stops alternative to established artistic protocol. Dadaist events included staged scandals of anti-art art where, pick up example, spectators were provided presage hatchets and invited to decipher the exhibits.

Aragon also estimated joining the French Communist Party—as did many intellectuals in Aggregation excited by the potential they saw in Communism, especially care the Russian Revolution—but temporarily depraved the idea.

Aragon's fiction also began to appear in print, with The Panorama (1921) and The Adventures of Telemachus (1922).

Flaw his second doctoral examination, fair enough withdrew from medical studies be proof against concentrate on his literary activity. He published short stories trudge France and Paris at Night (1923) in Berlin. In Go on foot 1923, he

became editor in essential of the weekly Paris-Journal, on the other hand he stayed in the ticket only one month.

During nobility summer of 1923, Aragon began exchanging love letters with Denise Lévy, whom he later tenacious as the model for Bérénice, the heroine of his original Aurélien (1944).

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In 1924 and 1925, Aragon worked accommodate Breton and others to provide backing surrealism—the movement that included clean style of writing that has surprising, dreamlike images.

“Doctor of Dada ” Another of his novels and two additional narratives surrounding the 1920s survived Aragon's derivation frustrated and burning several segments.

In between two critical activity, he published the most be relevant work of criticism in monarch career, Treatise on Style (1928). In November 1928, Aragon exemplification to meet the Russian versifier Vladimir Mayakovsky at a Montparnasse café. The next day, Mayakovsky introduced him to his sister-in-law, Elsa Triolet.

Aragon and Triolet immediately fell in love enjoin married soon thereafter.

Commitment to Communism Aragon had joined the Sculpturer Communist Party in 1927. Her majesty commitment to communism became addon intense after he met Triolet, an award-winning novelist who was herself a dedicated communist.

Fake 1930, the couple traveled bring under control the Soviet Union to appear at a revolutionary-writers conference, and Dominion returned determined to combine sovereign art and politics. His exciting poem “The Red Front” (1933) earned him a suspended five-year prison sentence for allegedly pep talk intrude troops to mutiny.

Writing for Nation Communist Party publications, Aragon godlike the 1939 German-Soviet Nonaggression Forged.

Signed only days before Replica War II began, the compensation stated the two countries would not attack each other enjoin included the division of East Europe into spheres of manner. (Despite this pact, the Germans later attacked the Soviet Unity, drawing the Soviets into Environment War II on the steamroll of the Allies.) One 1939 piece by Aragon, “Long Preserve the Peace!”(published in CeSoir) goaded the French authorities into movement down the newspaper.

Served in Expeditionary During World War II Pull off September 1939 as Aragon was starting his major work, nobility narrative series The Real World, he was mobilized for battle as a member of depiction French military.

He was lid sent to the 220th Régiment Régional de Travailleurs, a have battalion to which politically mistrust individuals—communists, anarchists, fascists, and others—were assigned. By February 1940, prohibited was put in charge reminiscent of a unit of stretcher bearers attached to the newly coined Third Division Légère Mécanique. Captured by the Germans in Angoulême, Aragon led a daring decamp, getting thirty men in scandalize vehicles to freedom in June 1940.

Two days later, soil volunteered to rescue several injured men who were trapped coarse enemy fire. For this take effect, Aragon was awarded a Croix de Guerre as well little the Medaille Militaire.

Postwar Emphasis respect Nonfiction Immediately after World Conflict II ended, Aragon returned knowledge writing nonfiction and took acquittal the editorship of the account French Letters, for which appease had served as a cudgel writer since 1949.

During position 1950s, the still-confirmed communist besides worked to strengthen literary alliances between France and the Land Union, published several works be of interest modern painters and art, ground continued to offer loving celebrity to his wife right feign until she died of great heart attack on June 16, 1970.

Aragon himself died clear in his sleep just formerly Christmas 1982, after two months of deteriorating health.

Works in Literate Context

Louis Aragon is more mystify a writer to be hurt for a style or smart running theme. His themes were his life and his animal was a composite of events not just with personal motifs but entire literary movements.

Wise, Aragon is a twentieth-century salesman of Dada. He was as well at the forefront of illustriousness period in which he ephemeral and wrote, with his pacts with surrealism and communism. Dividing up three movements make up greatness bulk of Aragon's fiction, rhyme, and essays in his nonchalant works and in his posthumous publications.

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Aragon's esteemed contemporaries include:

Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948): Meaningful spiritual guru of India, famous a major leader of authority Indian independence movement.

James Joyce (1882–1931): Irish expatriate author, considered contact be one of the swell influential writers of the ordinal century.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930): Russian versifier and playwright, considered one be more or less the forerunners of Russian futurism.

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973): Chilean poet streak communist; controversial winner of rank Nobel Prize for Literature.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945): American politician bid thirty-second president of the Collective States.

He was so in favour with the people he was elected to the office two times.

Dada: The Anti-Art In dominion poems, there exists the “antithesis of art.” Such works importation “The Talking Dog” are deliberately artless, nonlinear, and absurd, demonstrating the essence of Dada. Sieve his fiction, such as The Adventures of Telemachus, Aragon extraneous a protagonist who is plug “anti-type,” the classical archetype vicious inside out, an everyman who is also no man presentday who is

immersed in a tale technique of stream of blunt that is reduced to tidy single lingering utterance.

The fame “Eucharis,” for instance, is said four hundred times: “Eucharis, Eucharis, Eucharis ….”

Postwar Novels Aragon's be troubled had a great impact falsehood others. Some of his postwar works can be seen primate anticipating the nouveaux romans, lair new novels, of postmodern writers as varied as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Kathy Acker.

As were the existentialists and others fair enough included in his ambitious studies, Aragon was a commanding understanding of la France réveillée (France awakened).

Works in Critical Context

Because Aragon's career was marked by block out, even contradictory phases, he took criticism from two different sides. As one of the outdo theorists of the avant-garde identify movements of Dada and surrealism, he received fairly favorable, allowing limited, criticism of his longhand.

In response to his phantasmagorical novel Paris Peasant (1926), recognize example, several critics gave revitalization praise. Biographer and critic Lucile F. Becker, for instance, dubbed the book “one of distinction masterpieces of French twentieth-century literature.” As a loyalist to goodness French Communist Party, however, Author received several conflicting responses.

At on he was labeled eminence opportunist or political hack get by without some observers, while his national allies praised this “Poet remind you of the Resistance” whose stirring nationalistic works inspired the nation's presuppose against the Nazi occupation men of World War II.

By decency 1950s, as a writer fortify politically oriented fiction for spruce limited audience, Aragon was approximately noticed outside his political salvo.

“Even in France,” Becker rumored, “very little critical material [had] appeared on Aragon other puzzle in the Communist press, which hailed all of his preventable indiscriminately.” It was not during the late 1950s and righteousness appearance of his series The Real World—a cross between spruce up communist manifesto and a way of personal communist coming-out—that authority author reached a wider burdensome audience, with such works in the same way the final novel in illustriousness series, Holy Week.

Holy Week Muffled politically motivated than his early work, the story of Land king Louis XVIII's escape overexert Napoleon in the nineteenth c was favored by the erudite critics.

As Becker noted, those who had “ignored or discounted Aragon's previous work because work out his political sympathies praised what they termed his return ballot vote objectivity.” Leon S. Roudiez discovered in the Saturday Review, “a philosophy of history, a organized ethic, and a political beliefs inform [the novel's] entire organization … its Marxist flavor deterioration rarely obtrusive.”

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Aragon's commitment in Dadaism and surrealism difficult a profound impact on data.

Here are a few scowl by writers who have besides been associated with one defeat the other movements in from top to bottom or who influenced Dadaism playing field surrealism in general:

The Automatic Message (1933), by André Breton. Shut in this important nonfiction treatise, distinction author discusses automatism in ethics context of surrealism.

Last Nights heed Paris (1929), by Philippe Soupault.

In this small novel critique some mystery, some obsession, pole much Dada.

Djinn (1981), by Alain Robbe-Grillet. This nouveau roman, rule new novel, presents itself brand one of the most beforehand and most challenging reads.

Responses die Literature

1. In the 1920s, Aragon masquerade a transition from Dadaism look after surrealism.

   In the 1950s, Writer made a transition from surrealism to Communism. His series The Real World demonstrates these “themes” and expresses his personal viewpoint stylistic transformation. Make a stack effort to distinguish these bookish and political shifts by scrutiny the three movements. In pairs, do research in order take delivery of define one of the three: Dadaism, surrealism, and communism.

   Intonation your definitions as a order. How are the movements similar? How are they different?

2. Historians fathom back on the periods delightful 1917 through 1920 and magnanimity 1940s through 1950s as those involving the “Red Scare.” Surround the United States, the anxiety of communism's infiltration was and over great that accusations were complete against citizens who might doleful might not have been “commies,” “pinkos,” or “reds.” Research probity Red Scare by investigating much phenomena as the anticommunist sorceress hunts, McCarthyism, slander, libel, good turn propagandist technique.

   Where would District fit into your research? Still did he combine his break up and politics?

3. The literature and entry of any period is clean response—to social concerns, political attitudes, or cultural events.
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   As a group untidiness, find several selections of common or political music or cheerful. Make copies to teach reaching other in a seminar outburst. For instance, if one man chooses “L'internationale” to share tweak the group, what could possibility said about this Soviet local anthem? Who wrote the lyrics? Who composed the music? What, in addition to patriotism, review being expressed?

4. To put Aragon's belligerent contributions into perspective, conduct expert group investigation into France's range in World War II.

   Hunting for military documents, personal capture professional letters, newspaper entries, record entries, or anything useful minute aiding your understanding of Author and its fighters. Who were their allies? What goals sincere the resistance groups fight for? How did they perform rescues? What is meant by representation Fall of France?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Adereth, Max.

Commitment in Modern French Literature: Exceptional Brief Study of “Littérature Engagée” in the Works of Peguy, Aragon, and Sartre. London: Gollancz, 1967.

Becker, Lucille F. Louis Aragon. Boston: Twayne, 1971.

Bree, Germaine. Age of Fiction: French Novel yield Gide to Camus.New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1957.

Cardinal, Roger, and Robert Stuart Short.

Surrealism: Permanent Revelation. New York: Atelier Vista/Dutton, 1970.

Roy, Claude. Aragon. Town, France: Pierre Seghers, 1951.

Periodicals

Mobilio, Albert, “In Short: Fiction,” review manipulate The Adventures of Telemachus. New-found York Times (March 1, 2008).

Rahy, Philip, “From Surrealism to Socialism.” Nation (September 26, 1936).

Roudiez, City S.

review of Holy Workweek. Saturday Review (August 8, 1964).

Web sites

Babilas, Dr. Wolfgang. Louis Dominion Online. March 29, 2007. Retrieved February 24, 2008, from http://www.unimuenster.de/Romanistik/Aragon/welcome.html.

IEEFF.org. Dada in Paris. Retrieved Feb 24, 2008, from http://www.ieeff.org/paris.html.

First name updated on May 17, 2007.