The postérité de Jaurès, sa mémoire au XXe This is not a part of the community measurement, with some exceptions, with the intensity of the view and the value of the action. Plus Jaurès a été célébré, hello to another compris.
Vincent Duclert and Gilles Candar 1
The assassination of Jean Jaurès in 1914 is a central theme in Thierry Froger's novel. Et pourtant ils existentIn short, sectionless chapters with rapid shifts in perspective, the novel once again explores the national myth, using Jacques Brel's chanson as a questioning motto. Jaurès (quoted from another bleak crisis year, 1977):
Et pourtant l'espoir fleurissait
Jacques Brel, Jaurès
Dans les rêves qui montaient aux yeux
Des quelques ceux qui refusaient
To crawl into old age
Oui notre bon Maître, oui notre Monsieur
Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès ?
Pourquoi ont-ils tué Jaurès ?
And yet hope blossomed
In the dreams that rose up to the eyes,
Of the few who refused,
To crawl until old age
Yes, our good master, yes, our lord
Why did they kill Jaurès?
Why did they kill Jaurès?
“Et pourtant …”: The novel's title does not come from Brel's song, but quotes Léo Ferré's the anarchists"Y'en a pas un sur cent" et pourtant ils existent / La plupart Espagnols allez savoir pourquoi / Faut croire qu'en Espagne on ne les comprend pas / Les anarchistes”. 2 The song will also be heard in the book. Like both chansons, Froger's final scene surprisingly contains something dreamlike, as someone collapses dead on the moonlit beach – just as happened to Jaurès' assassin Raoul Villain in 1936.
Sophie Jouberts The review of the book actually draws the conclusion of a historical dream poetics: “Thierry Froger composed a subtle game of correspondances, an archipelago of voices and figures that traversed the XXe siècle comme dans un rêve, une étrange photographie où les vivants cohabitent avec les fantômes.” 3 And the historian Jean-Clément Martin concludes similarly how the factual and the fictional mix: “On a donc affaire à un récidiviste de l'invention loufoque et de la réflexion sérieuse, mais surtout à un virtuoso du shaker mêlant les personnes historiques les plus authentics à ses fantasmes et à ses clones récurrents en pimentant le tout de détours improbables Il n'a pas osé, comme dans Sauve qui peut (la revolution), toutes les audaces, comme d'embarquer Danton et Robespierre quasi centenaires dans des picaresques adventures; “It is the content of a chaotic pérégrination and jubilation that is also a lesson in life and a lecture attentive, désabusée and roborative de l'histoire, vécue, racontée, imaginée.” 4
There is a whole history of motifs relating to how French writers have taken the left-wing pacifist Jean Jaurès as a subject. 5 When the 100th anniversary of his assassination came around in 2014, he quoted Ruth Jung Kurt Tucholsky again, who, on the occasion of the transfer of the dead Jaurès to the Pantheon in 1924, in the world stage wrote: “On July 31, 1914, a reader of the French local newspapers murdered the great socialist Jean Jaurès in the Café du Croissant on Rue Montmartre. That very morning, Jaurès had rushed into Parliament, news of the declaration of a ‘state of war’ in his pocket, having looked up the exact meaning of the word in the dictionary and exclaimed with unwavering faith, ‘Ce n'est pas encore la guerre!’ This is not yet war!” And just as Vincent Duclert and Gilles Candar chose the title “Jaurès: From National Master Narrative to Problematic History” in their definitive biography of Jaurès 6, so Froger can be more readily associated with the newer tendency to tell the story of legend formation critically and ambivalently.
I arrived with a pair of croissants, which arrived in the last hours of the day and July; il fait chaud ; The windows are open. Près de l'une d'elles, Jaurès a déjà presque fini de dîner, attable with de nombreux camarades. Derrière lui, the air brûlant remue à peine the rideau brise-bise à la mode. En me voyant, Jaurès me tend a bonne main, épaisse, chaude, enveloppante, la tête légèrement penchée en avant. Il lève sur moi ses grands yeux d'ami confiant et, d'un air entendu, me glisse tout bas: “Cela va mal.” J'opine doucement du chef et il se redresse d'un coup: "Voulez-vous que je vous dise la différence entre la classe ouvrière et la classe bourgeoise? C'est que la classe ouvrière hait la guerre collectivement, mais ne la craint pas individualment, tandis que les capitalistes, collectivement, célèbrent la guerre, mais la redoutent individualement. Et this difference porte en elle la tragédie qui s'announcement.” If you find a way to respond, you will have an instant silence ahead of the start of the meal without entering a part of the tart aux fraises.
Thierry Froger, Et pourtant ils existent
I arrived at the Croissant at 21 p.m., which was glowing in the last hours of the day and of July; it was hot; the windows were open. Near one of them, Jaurès had almost finished his dinner and was sitting with many comrades. Behind him, the hot air barely stirred the fashionable curtain. When he saw me, Jaurès extended his hand, thick, warm, enveloping, his head slightly bowed. He looked at me with the wide eyes of a close friend and said with a knowing look, "Things are going badly." I nodded slightly, and he suddenly straightened up: "Shall I explain to you the difference between the working class and the bourgeoisie? The thing is, the working class collectively hates war but doesn't fear it individually, whereas the capitalists collectively celebrate war but fear it individually. And this difference brings with it the coming tragedy." When I can't think of anything sensible to say, he remains silent for a moment and then begins to half-heartedly nibble on a piece of strawberry cake.
Up to this point, the narrated murder initially appears relatively conventional iconographically; one might compare it, for example, with Eric Vuillard's Western BattlesVuillard's mosaic of images about the World War is explicitly not intended as a memorial book: "Vuillard wants to liberate us, to sober us from the drunken reveling in death, sacrifice, battles, destruction, and heroism," is how the publisher Matthes & Seitz summarizes the book. Vuillard recounts the murder cinematically, in close-up and slow motion, following the bullet as if with a probe on its way through Jaurès's skull and rapidly condensing the murderer's subsequent years until his assassination on the beach in 1936. Vuillard shapes the heated global communication after the assassination rhythmically and musically in a double cadence, first composing the multilingual cacophony of international reactions via telephone and telegram:
Mais, pour le moment, on est encore au café Le Croissant, au-dessus du cadavre de Jean Jaurès, rue Montmartre, rue tortueuse que descendront les conscrits quelques jours plus tard. Car cet assassinat precipite la crisis. The socialists are rallient. Dans son homage à Jaurès devant l'Assemblée, Deschanel invoque “le salut de la civilization” ; The war arrives… Soudain, de toutes parts, les téléphones sonnent ; les opératrices enfoncent leurs fiches dans d'immenses tableaux ; c'est l'Europe entière qui appeals, Who speaks? What? Hello! et dans toutes les langues, on sort le patois des grandes occasions. On se demande ce qu'il faut faire, si les Allemands fromt faire ceci et si les Belges fromt faire cela, si les Russes fromt faire ceci et les Autrichiens ceci ou cela, mais personne n'en sait rien ; et pour être bien sûr de tout se dire, voici qu'on se télégraphie, on exécute des séries de bips longs ou courts et de silences, titatiti tita / tatati titita ti titati titati ti ; ce qui signifie: la guerre.
Eric Vuillard, Battles of the Occident
But we're still in the café. Le Croissant over the body of Jean Jaurès, Rue Montmartre, a crooked street that conscripts would be walking down a few days later. For this murder exacerbates the crisis. The socialists unite. In his eulogy for Jaurès before the National Assembly, Deschanel mentions "the salvation of civilization"; war is imminent… Suddenly, telephones ring everywhere; telephone operators plug their earpieces into enormous boards; all of Europe is calling, Who's speaking? What? Hello!And in every language, people dredge up their holiday babble. They wonder what to do, whether the Germans will do this and the Belgians that, whether the Russians will do this and the Austrians this or that, but nobody knows anything; and to be absolutely sure that everything is said, they send telegrams, stringing together long or short beeps and pauses, dah-di-dah di-dah-dit di-dit dit dadh-dah-dit, which means: war.
Eric Vuillard, The Ballad of the West, trans. Nicola Denis
A second cadence creeps back into the skull, and the physiology of hearing and the martial drumming of the World War roar in the multilingual final chord:
Et ces miettes brisées que les satellites ont rendues à rien, comme la diérèse fut mouchée par la prose, roulent dans des milliers de fils jusqu'à des milliers de bureaux où elles se glissent dans des milliers d'oreilles, par la corne jusqu'au tympan, qui vibrate and cogne le marteau qui cogne l'enclume qui cogne l'étrier. Et, ce tout petit étrier, le plus petit os du corps, transmet the child chéri la cochlée où il va se prendre dans les cils. Et là miracle, on entend, des milliers de personnes entendent, et qu'entendent-elles ? To hear the little music, the second time is on the cash register: Voeina, savash, rat, war, was – la guerre.
Eric Vuillard, Battles of the Occident
And these ground-up crumbs, obliterated by the satellites just as diaeresis was dispatched by prose, slip through thousands of wires into thousands of offices, where they sneak into thousands of ears, across the auricle to the eardrum, which vibrates and strikes the malleus, which strikes the anvil, which strikes the stapes. And this tiny stapes, the smallest bone in the body, transmits the dear child to the cochlea of the inner ear, where it gets caught in the hair cells. And there, oh wonder, one hears, thousands of people hear, and what do they hear? Always the same little piece of music, the same dry wood that one laughs and breaks in two. Voeina, savash, rat, guerre, was - War.
Eric Vuillard, The Ballad of the West, trans. Nicola Denis
Froger's interpretation of Jean Jaurès's final moments is directly reflected from a personal perspective, as the powerful face evokes a Rembrandt painting, Paul, or Abraham. And, quite unlike Vuillard's work, the murder intrudes upon personal contemplation.
Je regarde ce visage puissant aux yeux bons et profonds, au front immense, à la barbe d'argent ruisselante sous la clarté des lampes et je ne peux m'empêcher de songer aux peintures de Rembrandt, à ces beaux visages où affleurent tant la grandeur de l'esprit humain que la conscience inquiète de sa fragilité. L'évidence me frappe pour la première fois: Jaurès est de l'étoffe des Saint Paul, des Abrahams, des philosophes en meditation que le Hollandais a éclairés avec son pinceau. Pour l'heure, the figure of the grand homme dégouline. Il s'essuie le front avec sa serviette tandis que nous remuons l'air en agitant Humanity pour all eventual. Il nous regarde en souriant et said: “This tart is very delicious. Mais quelle chaleur!” The ride on the derrière is both plie and soulful. A main jaillit, prolongée by a tube metal that makes a étincelle rougeâtre and gonfler a fume de cigare.
Thierry Froger, Et pourtant ils existent
I gaze at this powerful face with its good, deep eyes, its vast forehead, its silver beard gleaming in the lamplight, and I can't help but think of Rembrandt's paintings, of those beautiful faces that express the grandeur of the human spirit and the anxious awareness of its fragility. For the first time, it strikes me: Jaurès is made of the same cloth as Saint Paul, Abraham, the meditating philosophers whom the Dutchman illuminated with his brush. At the moment, the figure of the great man is dripping. He wipes his forehead with his napkin as we stir the air and with the Humanity He waves his hands like a fan. He looks at us smiling and says, "This cake is really delicious. But how hot!" The curtain behind his head folds and lifts slightly. A hand shoots out, extended by a metal tube that sprays a reddish spark and emits cigar smoke.
The moment gains significance not through media orchestration, but through this brief, swift death and the narrator's speechlessness. The ordering, poetic power of Vuillard's historiographical narrative contrasts in Froger's short chapters with individual echoes of this murder, whose polyphony only unfolds upon reading.
Je regarde, figé, abruti pendant a demi-seconde, avant qu'un second coup de fire n'explos mais Jaurès déjà est tombé sur Renaudel, la serviette aux mains, a morceau de fraise encore aux lèvres. Je ne vois pas de sang. À peine at-il tressailli, n'ayant pas eu le temps de faire le geste de se retourner. It's not like this, it's just like that. Je regarde la fenêtre, Landrieu vient d'arracher le rideau ; J'aperçois une ombre, un chapeau, un verre de beer qui valse, puis une bousculade qui met fin à l'étrange stupeur et au silence. J'entends hurler quatre mots, répétés furieusement deux fois, et je reconnais la voix de ma femme qui, la première, a recouvré la parole.
Thierry Froger, Et pourtant ils existent
I stare, frozen, for half a second before a second shot rings out, but Jaurès has already fallen on top of Renaudel, the towel clutched in his hand, a piece of strawberry on his lips. I see no blood. He barely flinched, having had no time to turn around. He said nothing, perhaps not even thought anything. I look toward the window; Landrieu has just ripped back the curtain. I see a shadow, a hat, a beer glass pass by, and then a jolt that breaks the strange stupor and silence. I hear four words, repeated angrily twice, and I recognize my wife's voice, the first to speak again.
When Emmanuel Macron concluded his 2017 election campaign, the headline read: Les Echos : “Emmanuel Macron in the footsteps of Jean Jaurès” 7And like Jaurès in 1903, Macron also gave a "speech to the youth". In his speech on the murder of teacher Samuel Paty, Macron said that Paty was the kind of teacher Jaurès dreamed of. The interpretive positions and historical facts seem to be settled for the time being, but the publisher Actes Sud emphasizes, regarding Froger's novel, both the polyphonic ambivalences and the gaps that historical fiction seeks to fill: "Between the assassination of Jaurès and the Spanish War, between grand history and small lives, how the legend of the ambiguous heroes is written and unraveled. 'Et pourtant ils existent' patiently and not without a touch of irony reconstructs the questionable heroic deeds of Florentin Bordes, a tenacious freedom fighter, the totem of his own family, at the center of a novelistic whirlwind in which voices answer, pursue, and contradict each other in order to disentangle the ambiguities of reality, the improbable truths, and the infallible hypotheses of fiction." 8
And indeed, Froger takes a swipe at historical myth-making by having a museum shop stocked with Jaurès souvenirs in the novel, gleefully linking cultural sociology and the consumer world with the culture of remembrance, right down to ecologically produced commemorative espadrilles.
Ce délai m'a permis de paufiner la campaign de communication pour l'ouverture du musée et de diversifier les products dérivés proposés à la vente. Aux assiettes, cups, mugs, tee-shirts and serviettes de bain que la tête du crazy décorait, j'ai pu ajouter des sets de table ornés de la signature de Jean Jaurès et une serie de figurines représentant les différents combatants de la guerre d'Espagne: nationaliste tires à quatre épingles, anarchistes dépenaillés, communistes à petites lunettes rondes, aviateurs everyone from the Condor Legion, regular marocains and même des infirmières pour ne pas frustrer les petites filles. It also involves the use of networks with plus manufacturers for the production of imitation arms that are used in conflict (Astra 400, Naranjero, Mauser Gewer, pistol Ruby, etc.).
Thierry Froger, Et pourtant ils existent
The delay allowed me to refine the communication campaign for the museum's opening and to diversify the merchandise offered for sale. This included plates, cups, mugs, T-shirts, and towels featuring the head of the crazy In addition to the decorations, I was able to add placemats signed by Jean Jaurès and a series of figurines depicting the various combatants of the Spanish Civil War: impaled nationalists, scruffy anarchists, communists with small round glasses, German Condor Legion airmen, Moroccan soldiers, and even nurses, so as not to disappoint the little girls. I also negotiated with several manufacturers to produce replicas of weapons used during the conflict (Astra 400, Naranjero, Mauser Gewerb, Ruby gun, etc.).
In the company founded by Jaurès Humanity Sophie Joubert summarizes Froger's writing style and the interpretations of the historical novel of commitment and heroism of that generation: "Thierry Froger writes in the blank spaces of history. Readers of his previous novels, Sauve qui peut (la révolution), qui fasait de Danton and Godard des personnages de fiction, et Les Nuits d'Ava, sur Ava Gardner and Gustave Courbet, connoisseur son talent pour brouiller les frontières entre le vrai et le faux, pour entrelacer avec brio des fils qui n'auraient jamais dû se croiser. “C’est l’entreprise qu’il poursuit dans ce roman-puzzle où de multiples voix se font écho pour reconstituer le passé trouble de Florentin Bordes, questionner l’héroïsme, l’engagement politique, la fidélité aux idéaux de jeunesse.” 9
In the chapter "Rose Pierre," the novel's title is ultimately called into question from a generational perspective when the young Ariane exposes leftist attempts to whitewash history. For her, Léo Ferré is a false myth of old men: "You are two nostalgic old wives. You make me feel sorry," she said as she left the garden when Ferré was singing. The Anarchists. Alors qu'elle s'engageait dans la nuit en direction de sa maison, elle fit demi-tour et je crus qu'elle s'était ravisée ou qu'elle voulait nous embrasser avant de nous quitter. This is not the case. Elle nous dit juste: “Your Léo n'avait d'anarchiste que la tronche et les mots. Il roulait en Rolls, le fumier.” 10
Even a small one reads like this: historically attested The anecdote about the journalist Dolié in Froger's short chapter on the murder of Jean Jaurès serves as a self-reflexive commentary on the representability of war:
A journalist like me, Dolié, s'approche and lui montre une photographie en couleurs de sa girl. Jaurès s'y interest, demande l'âge de l'enfant, et s'émerveille de la fidélité des images à la vie. Puis il se rembrunit, perdu dans ses pensées. The murmure: “I ignore the portrait of the paix with modern modernity. You can't imagine Goya photographing you without a chance to see the disasters of the war with the magic box. “Cela ne change pas grand-chose à l'affaire. Et les morts de la war sont les plus hideux qui soient.” The sourit doucement en se forçant à avaler une bouchée.
Thierry Froger, Et pourtant ils existent
A journalist friend, Dolié, comes to see him and shows him a color photograph of his daughter. Jaurès is interested, asks how old the child is, and is amazed at how lifelike the pictures are. Then his expression darkens, lost in thought. He murmurs, “I don’t know if one can paint a picture of peace with these modern means. But I don’t want a Goya as a photographer to tell us tomorrow about the catastrophes of war with his magic kit. Whether the dead are frozen with charcoal or a delicate emulsion makes no difference. And the dead of war are the most terrible of all.” He smiles gently and forces himself to swallow a bite.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- Vincent Duclert and Gilles Candar, Jean Jaures (Paris: Fayard, 2014). German: “With a few exceptions, Jaurès’s legacy and his memory in the 20th century cannot be compared to the intensity of his life and the value of his actions. The more Jaurès was celebrated, the less he was understood.”>>>
- There isn't one in a hundred, and yet they exist / Most of them are Spanish, imagine that / I think they're not understood in Spain / The anarchists>>>
- Thierry Froger composes a subtle play of correspondences, an archipelago of voices and figures that traverse the 20th century as if in a dream, a strange photography in which the living coexist with ghosts.>>>
- So we are dealing with a repeat offender of mad invention and serious reflection, but above all with a virtuoso of the convoluted, who mixes the most authentic historical figures with his fantasies and recurring clones, seasoning the whole thing with improbable digressions. He has not, as in Sauve qui peut (la revolution), daring all audacity to involve Danton and Robespierre, almost a hundred years old, in picaresque adventures; here he contents himself with a chaotic and jubilant wandering, which is also a lesson of life and an attentive, disillusioned and amusing reading of history experienced, narrated and imagined.>>>
- See, for example, Jaurès et les écrivains, ed. by Julie Bertrand-Sabiani. Orléans: Center Charles Péguy, 1994.>>>
- “Jaurès, you roman national à l'histoire problème”.>>>
- Grégoire Poussielgue, “Emmanuel Macron on the traces of Jean Jaurès pour cloturer sa campaign”, Les Echos, 5.5.2017.>>>
- Entre l'assassinat de Jaurès et la guerre d'Espagne, entre la grande Histoire et les vies minuscules, comment s'écrit et se détricote la légende des héros ambigus. «Et pourtant ils existent »reconstruit patiemment et non sans malice les exploits questionnables de Florentin Bordes, soldier têtu de la liberté, totem de sa propre famille, au cœur d'un tourbillon romanesque où les voix se répondent, se poursuivent, se contredisent pour démêler Equivoques du réel, vérités improbables and infaillibles hypothèses de la fiction. (South Acts) >>>
- Thierry Froger writes in the blank spaces of history. Readers of his earlier novels Sauve qui peut (la révolution), in which Danton and Godard became fictional characters, and Nuits d'AvaReaders familiar with Ava Gardner and Gustave Courbet know his talent for blurring the lines between truth and falsehood and brilliantly intertwining threads that should never have crossed. This is the undertaking he pursues in this enigmatic novel, where multiple voices resonate to reconstruct Florentin Bordes's turbulent past, questioning heroism, political engagement, and loyalty to the ideals of youth.>>>
- “You two are nostalgic drunks. I feel sorry for you,” she said and left the garden, while Ferré The Anarchists sang. As she walked out into the night towards her house, she turned around one last time, and I thought she'd changed her mind or wanted to kiss us before she left. She didn't. She just said, "Your Leo was an anarchist in face and words only. He drove a Rolls Royce, that bastard.">>>
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