FRENCH 306 Literature and Inhumanity: Novel, Poetry, and Film in Interwar France

An examination of the the twentieth century confrontation between literature and inhumanity . Poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, Robert Desnos and René Char, films by Luis Buñuel, and novels and short stories by André Gide, André Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Blanchot and Marguerite Duras, all serve to illustrate the profound crisis in human values that defined and shaped the twentieth century. Prerequisite: Two Grade II units, one of which must be 210 or 211 or above.

" My skull's been x-rayed! Even though I’m still alive, I saw my skull! If that's not new, what is!" The French poet Guillaume Apollinaire’s anecdotal exclamation (after seeing an x-ray of his shrapnel wound received during World War I) announces the crisis of the modernist and neo-humanist belief in the merits of technological, social and artistic progress in early twentieth-century France. The works studied in this seminar illustrate the link between modernism's optimism and the Freudian concept of death; they also reveal humanity's own potential inhumanity.

In André Gide’s Symphonie Pastorale we will study how this crisis takes the form of a blurring of the distinction between spiritual and sexual love. The exploration of automatism in the Surrealist poetry, prose and films of Robert Desnos, André Breton and Luis Buñuel further reveals a humanity divested of its cherished prewar avant-garde and modernist values. We also will examine the pre-war, wartime and postwar writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, René Char, André Malraux, Maurice Blanchot, and Marguerite Duras’ La Douleur to experience the changed vision of humankind; one of "lucid despair” before man's ever more clear inhumanity. These authors are haunted by both the events of World War II and their own lack of a raison d'être. They are also lucid about their inability to further pretend that art can be the immediate and unproblematic remedy for man's inhumanity. Rather than quick answers, these wartime writings offer their own reformulation of Malraux’s question, in his last novel Les Noyers de l'Altenburg, “does the notion of humanity make any sense?”

Assignments: Oral presentation, mid-term paper, and a final paper.

Reading list:

Apollinaire, Poèmes à Lou (selections)
André Gide, Symphonie Pastorale
André Breton, Nadja
Luis Buñuel, L’age d’or (film)
Robert Desnos, Corps et biens (selections)
Jean-Paul Sartre, “L’enfance d’un chef”
Francis Ponge, “Notes Premières de l’homme” & “Pages bis”
Albert Camus, “Le Mythe de Sisyphe”
René Char, Feuillets d’Hypnos (selections)
André Malraux, Les Noyers de l'Altenburg
Maurice Blanchot, L’Instant de Ma Mort
Marguerite Duras, La Douleur (selections)