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The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940
A brilliant reconsideration of the events and the political, social, and religious movements that led to France’s embrace of Fascism and anti-Semitism. Frederick Brown explores the tumultuous forces unleashed in the country by the Dreyfus Affair and its aftermath and examines how the clashing ideologies—the swarm of ’isms—and their blood-soaked political scandals and artistic movements following the horrors of World War I resulted in the country’s era of militant authoritarianism, rioting, violent racism, and nationalistic fervor. We see how these forces overtook the country’s sense of reason, sealing the fate of an entire nation, and led to the fall of France and the rise of the Vichy government.
The Embrace of Unreason picks up where Brown’s previous book, For the Soul of France, left off to tell the story of France in the decades leading up to World War II.
We see through the lives of three writers (Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle) how the French intelligentsia turned away from the humanistic traditions and rationalistic ideals born out of the Enlightenment in favor of submission to authority that stressed patriotism, militarism, and xenophobia; how French extremists, traumatized by the horrors of the battlefront and exalted by the glories of wartime martyrdom, tried to redeem France’s collective identity, as Hitler’s shadow lengthened over Europe.
The author writes of the Stavisky Affair, named for the notorious swindler whose grandiose Ponzi scheme tarred numerous political figures and fueled the bloody riots of February 1934, with right-wing paramilitary leagues, already suffering from the worldwide effects of the 1929 stock market crash, decrying Stavisky the Jew as the direct descendant of Alfred Dreyfus and an exemplar of the decaying social order . . . We see the Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture that, in June 1935, assembled Europe’s most illustrious literati under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union, whose internal feuds anticipated those recounted by George Orwell in his Spanish Civil War memoir Homage to Catalonia . . .
Here too, pictured as the perfect representation of Europe’s cultural doomsday, is the Paris World’s Fair of 1937, featuring two enormous pavilions, the first built by Nazi Germany, the second by Soviet Russia, each facing the other like duelists on the avenue leading to the Eiffel Tower, symbol of the French Republic. And near them both, a pavilion devoted to “the art of the festival,” in which speakers and displays insisted that Nazi torchlight parades at Nuremberg should serve as a model for France.
Written with historical insight and grasp and made immediate through the use of newspaper articles, journals, and literary works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Embrace of Unreason brings to life Europe’s darkest modern years.
The Embrace of Unreason picks up where Brown’s previous book, For the Soul of France, left off to tell the story of France in the decades leading up to World War II.
We see through the lives of three writers (Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle) how the French intelligentsia turned away from the humanistic traditions and rationalistic ideals born out of the Enlightenment in favor of submission to authority that stressed patriotism, militarism, and xenophobia; how French extremists, traumatized by the horrors of the battlefront and exalted by the glories of wartime martyrdom, tried to redeem France’s collective identity, as Hitler’s shadow lengthened over Europe.
The author writes of the Stavisky Affair, named for the notorious swindler whose grandiose Ponzi scheme tarred numerous political figures and fueled the bloody riots of February 1934, with right-wing paramilitary leagues, already suffering from the worldwide effects of the 1929 stock market crash, decrying Stavisky the Jew as the direct descendant of Alfred Dreyfus and an exemplar of the decaying social order . . . We see the Congress of Writers for the Defense of Culture that, in June 1935, assembled Europe’s most illustrious literati under the sponsorship of the Soviet Union, whose internal feuds anticipated those recounted by George Orwell in his Spanish Civil War memoir Homage to Catalonia . . .
Here too, pictured as the perfect representation of Europe’s cultural doomsday, is the Paris World’s Fair of 1937, featuring two enormous pavilions, the first built by Nazi Germany, the second by Soviet Russia, each facing the other like duelists on the avenue leading to the Eiffel Tower, symbol of the French Republic. And near them both, a pavilion devoted to “the art of the festival,” in which speakers and displays insisted that Nazi torchlight parades at Nuremberg should serve as a model for France.
Written with historical insight and grasp and made immediate through the use of newspaper articles, journals, and literary works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, The Embrace of Unreason brings to life Europe’s darkest modern years.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 2014
19 people are currently reading
241 people want to read
About the author
Frederick Brown
66 books14 followersFrederick Brown is the author of several award-winning books, including For the Soul of France; Flaubert, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and Zola, one of The New York Times best books of the year. Brown has twice been the recipient of both Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships. He lives in New York City.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 28, 2020
Brown covers a lot of ground, but I zeroed in on his treatment of one of my favorite topics: delicate products of the bourgeoisie playing Tough Guy. Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle were all schoolboys who never fit in, and later worked in that demimonde of minor writers and men of letters who shot for transcendence as right-wing publicists and authors of what Nabokov (whose novels feature many such glib, sinister fools) dismissed as “ethnopsychic fiction,” Bildungsroman full of allegorical sloughs and cartoonish racial advisaries.
I want to adopt “Henry James, for one, distrusted him” as a camp phrase for anyone talented but shady. Of the three, I was most interested in La Rochelle, a genuinely pathetic figure, with his First War wounds, his attempts at suicide, and his desperate womanizing, which offered escape through imposture; his dreams of artful force, his wish to drown his changeful self in a spurious collective, a calisthenic martial mob. He is wonderfully vulnerable in his diaries, and in them you get to see the Fascist fantasy of force dying hard at the hands of the “decadent” democracies and the supposedly inferior Slavs:
The most noble thing he did was pull strings to save his Jewish ex-wife from deportation to Auschwitz - but even that act he saw as an unmanly capitulation to a temptress, writing: “The Jews tricked me. My first wife deliberately got herself imprisoned, it seems, to put me under the obligation of freeing her. I was cowardly enough to whine over her fate and have her chains removed.” There’s an epitaph in this passage from January, 1945, entered while he was living as a wanted man, a few months before his successful suicide:
That is a perfect description of dandyism - in the heroically hermetic sense of the term - but La Rochelle was wrong to think such dandyism was available to him. The comportment of Baudelaire and Flaubert was as far beyond his strength as that of the Middle Ages knight who haunted his kitsch reveries.
Acquiantences wondered how Barrès the militant nationalist had suddenly come to supplant Barrès the aesthete. Henry James, for one, distrusted him.
I want to adopt “Henry James, for one, distrusted him” as a camp phrase for anyone talented but shady. Of the three, I was most interested in La Rochelle, a genuinely pathetic figure, with his First War wounds, his attempts at suicide, and his desperate womanizing, which offered escape through imposture; his dreams of artful force, his wish to drown his changeful self in a spurious collective, a calisthenic martial mob. He is wonderfully vulnerable in his diaries, and in them you get to see the Fascist fantasy of force dying hard at the hands of the “decadent” democracies and the supposedly inferior Slavs:
In 1943 he turned fifty, reimmersed himself in Nietzche...and questioned his reasons for living as the world order in he had tried to make his home began to crumble. The Russians had triumphed at Stalingrad. The Allied forces had landed on Sicily. In July the Fascist Grand Council dismissed Mussolini, who was arrested and imprisoned. “Mussolini has resigned like some vulgar democratic minister.” “It’s ludicrous. So Fascism turns out to be nothing more than that. Fascism was no stronger than I, an armchair philosopher of violence.”
The most noble thing he did was pull strings to save his Jewish ex-wife from deportation to Auschwitz - but even that act he saw as an unmanly capitulation to a temptress, writing: “The Jews tricked me. My first wife deliberately got herself imprisoned, it seems, to put me under the obligation of freeing her. I was cowardly enough to whine over her fate and have her chains removed.” There’s an epitaph in this passage from January, 1945, entered while he was living as a wanted man, a few months before his successful suicide:
I wanted to be a complete man, not only a bookworm but a swordsman, who assumes responsibilities, who absorbs blows and returns them. I shall regret not having filled during these past few years the role that remained available to me, that of the dandy - of the unflinching nonconformist who rejects fatuities of every persuasion, who discreetly but firmly displays his impious indifference.
That is a perfect description of dandyism - in the heroically hermetic sense of the term - but La Rochelle was wrong to think such dandyism was available to him. The comportment of Baudelaire and Flaubert was as far beyond his strength as that of the Middle Ages knight who haunted his kitsch reveries.
April 23, 2015
Brown, Frederick. The Embrace of Unreason: France, 1914-1940, Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 2014 (345pp. $28.95)
On May 16, 1915, one of the largest crowds ever to gather on the Place des Pyramides honored Joan of Arc, Catholic heroine in the long French war against the English during the 14th century. For decades a movement composed of monarchists, Right-wing Catholics, and super-patriots, had urged that “dream govern movement”, a short-handed ideology concerning the “supernatural” or “superhuman” spirit of a woman whose being embodied France herself. That May, while carnage reigned on the Western Front, some 15,000 French pilgrims jammed St. Peter’s Basilica on the occasion of Joan’s canonization, under panels depicting the many miracles attributed to the new saint. A trainload of French legislators attended, along with sixty-nine French bishops, and Gabriel Hanotaux, French ambassador extraordinary to the Vatican. Pope Benedict XV made May 30 Joan’s feast day.
Symbolic of everything at once, and nothing at all, the thralldom in which Saint Joan held the French during and after World War I is a particular example. The masterful historian Frederick Brown knows France as few historians know any subject. As the author of For The Soul of France, Zola, and a biography of Flaubert (which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Brown has undertaken to understand Europe’s last dark follies, partially exemplified by the cult of Joan, but encompassing a decades long entrancement by anti-Semitism, xenophobia, militarism, fascism and super-patriotism. Coupled with such intellectual foibles as surrealism and futurism, and heated by misinterpretations of philosophers like Nietzsche and Bergson, the French fatally poisoned themselves and their society, arriving at the ultimate dead-end when, during the Paris World’s Fair of 1937 the massive stone pavilions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany stood facing one another across a wide promenade.
These grotesque ironies, and many others, make for compelling reading, especially when recounted by a writer as meticulous and sweeping as Brown. Brown wisely chooses a focus for his book---the lives of writers and politicos Maurice Barres, Charles Maurras, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, each exemplifying a facet of “unreason”, perhaps super-patriotism (Barres), race hate and violence (Maurras) and collaboration coupled with anti-Semitism (Drieu). The Embrace of Unreason picks up where For the Soul of France left off, with the Dreyfus Affair. Brown clearly demonstrates how French politicians and intellectuals gradually abandoned their Enlightenment roots, a grounding in reason, universalism, and Kantian morality, and rejected bourgeois decadence.
What resulted in France during the fateful years between the wars was a descent into the irrational fervor of “soil and blood”, brought on partly by the desire for vengeance from the defeat by Prussians in 1871, and partly by a steadily advancing spy paranoia, numerous financial and political scandals, and fear of Hitler. The glorification of uniforms was soon to follow, as was hatred of Jews, foreigners and socialists. Pretty soon Right-wing militias were marching in the streets of Paris and a full-fledged fascist party of enormous influence was born. Circling all this like a batch of ragged buzzards were the Surrealists and the Futurists, always ready to make mincemeat of society.
The names of the famous are many: Leon Blum, Sartre, the writers Collette and Malraux, along with artists like Man Ray and Duchamp, and politicians like Marshal Petain. With his meticulous scholarship and flavorful writing style, Brown evokes a dreadful era with great care. Not only a mine of detailed historical information, the book is replete with excellent photographs and a fine index.
Typical of the age was Barres’ dogmas and imaginings; that diasporic Jews with shallow roots were susceptible to treason, that trench warfare was consecrated in glory, that France was holy and exceptional, that, in the words of Petain, “The earth does not lie; it will be your refuge.” This drumbeat from long ago we still hear, sometimes not so quietly. It says to us, “put on your uniform, march with us, hate the others, glorify our lands…die gladly and unquestioningly for the cause.”
New York, 2014 (345pp. $28.95)
On May 16, 1915, one of the largest crowds ever to gather on the Place des Pyramides honored Joan of Arc, Catholic heroine in the long French war against the English during the 14th century. For decades a movement composed of monarchists, Right-wing Catholics, and super-patriots, had urged that “dream govern movement”, a short-handed ideology concerning the “supernatural” or “superhuman” spirit of a woman whose being embodied France herself. That May, while carnage reigned on the Western Front, some 15,000 French pilgrims jammed St. Peter’s Basilica on the occasion of Joan’s canonization, under panels depicting the many miracles attributed to the new saint. A trainload of French legislators attended, along with sixty-nine French bishops, and Gabriel Hanotaux, French ambassador extraordinary to the Vatican. Pope Benedict XV made May 30 Joan’s feast day.
Symbolic of everything at once, and nothing at all, the thralldom in which Saint Joan held the French during and after World War I is a particular example. The masterful historian Frederick Brown knows France as few historians know any subject. As the author of For The Soul of France, Zola, and a biography of Flaubert (which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), Brown has undertaken to understand Europe’s last dark follies, partially exemplified by the cult of Joan, but encompassing a decades long entrancement by anti-Semitism, xenophobia, militarism, fascism and super-patriotism. Coupled with such intellectual foibles as surrealism and futurism, and heated by misinterpretations of philosophers like Nietzsche and Bergson, the French fatally poisoned themselves and their society, arriving at the ultimate dead-end when, during the Paris World’s Fair of 1937 the massive stone pavilions of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany stood facing one another across a wide promenade.
These grotesque ironies, and many others, make for compelling reading, especially when recounted by a writer as meticulous and sweeping as Brown. Brown wisely chooses a focus for his book---the lives of writers and politicos Maurice Barres, Charles Maurras, and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, each exemplifying a facet of “unreason”, perhaps super-patriotism (Barres), race hate and violence (Maurras) and collaboration coupled with anti-Semitism (Drieu). The Embrace of Unreason picks up where For the Soul of France left off, with the Dreyfus Affair. Brown clearly demonstrates how French politicians and intellectuals gradually abandoned their Enlightenment roots, a grounding in reason, universalism, and Kantian morality, and rejected bourgeois decadence.
What resulted in France during the fateful years between the wars was a descent into the irrational fervor of “soil and blood”, brought on partly by the desire for vengeance from the defeat by Prussians in 1871, and partly by a steadily advancing spy paranoia, numerous financial and political scandals, and fear of Hitler. The glorification of uniforms was soon to follow, as was hatred of Jews, foreigners and socialists. Pretty soon Right-wing militias were marching in the streets of Paris and a full-fledged fascist party of enormous influence was born. Circling all this like a batch of ragged buzzards were the Surrealists and the Futurists, always ready to make mincemeat of society.
The names of the famous are many: Leon Blum, Sartre, the writers Collette and Malraux, along with artists like Man Ray and Duchamp, and politicians like Marshal Petain. With his meticulous scholarship and flavorful writing style, Brown evokes a dreadful era with great care. Not only a mine of detailed historical information, the book is replete with excellent photographs and a fine index.
Typical of the age was Barres’ dogmas and imaginings; that diasporic Jews with shallow roots were susceptible to treason, that trench warfare was consecrated in glory, that France was holy and exceptional, that, in the words of Petain, “The earth does not lie; it will be your refuge.” This drumbeat from long ago we still hear, sometimes not so quietly. It says to us, “put on your uniform, march with us, hate the others, glorify our lands…die gladly and unquestioningly for the cause.”
August 10, 2014
I can't help but agree with many of the existing criticisms of this book. No doubt Frederick Brown has a mastery of the material and has performed meticulous research. Yet thorough out my reading, the same question kept nagging at me: what is this book? Is it biography, intellectual history, history of political philosophy, historical narrative?
In addition to lacking context, the book seems to have little relation to its title and does not seem to have a strong directional force. Where is it going? What is the point. I found many champters interesting in reviewing seminal moments in recent French history or the biography of key political and intellectual figures. Yet the book lacks fundamental value in framing or informing the reader about this period.
In addition to lacking context, the book seems to have little relation to its title and does not seem to have a strong directional force. Where is it going? What is the point. I found many champters interesting in reviewing seminal moments in recent French history or the biography of key political and intellectual figures. Yet the book lacks fundamental value in framing or informing the reader about this period.
July 23, 2015
Intense anti-democratic thought in the pro Royalist Right and Ultra Right. Communist longings on the Left. Surrealism as a social, artistic and political movement. The cult of Jeanne d'Arc. Protofascist groups like the Camelot du Roi and underlying everything, the strong foundation of French anti-Semitism. By the end of this book, I felt I was in the French intellectuals' version of the Weimar Republic...minus the sleazy nightclubs and the riotous sex.
Even so, it was an interesting look at French intellectual and political influence between the wars. I'm still not sure how much all of this actually affected what happened in May of 1940.
Even so, it was an interesting look at French intellectual and political influence between the wars. I'm still not sure how much all of this actually affected what happened in May of 1940.
December 15, 2016
This was a compelling book. It pulled me in and kept me reading, even if it was about figures I had only scarcely heard of, such as Maurice Barres and Charles Maurras, or never heard of, such as Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.
At the same time the book was a bit frustrating. Their three careers didn't really add up to a coherent movement, but I suppose that makes sense since the French right didn't really become a coherent movement during the interwar era, or even the Vichy era. (I have to think of De Gaulle's joke about how impossible it is to rule a people who make over a hundred types of cheese.)
"The Embrace of Unreason" suggests why France, while having a political Right, did not become Fascist. French anti-democratic views looked back to the Monarchy and the Middle Ages instead of focusing on a more "modern" figure, like a hypothetical French Hitler. Also, while anti-democratic forces were strongly influenced by Catholicism, the church itself, while disliking the Third Republic, didn't really have any desire to take power or have a clear vision of what it wanted other than the repeal of some laws. (In Italy, the Fascist movement was rather anti-clerical.)
Strongly recommended to those interested in European history in general or French history in particular.
At the same time the book was a bit frustrating. Their three careers didn't really add up to a coherent movement, but I suppose that makes sense since the French right didn't really become a coherent movement during the interwar era, or even the Vichy era. (I have to think of De Gaulle's joke about how impossible it is to rule a people who make over a hundred types of cheese.)
"The Embrace of Unreason" suggests why France, while having a political Right, did not become Fascist. French anti-democratic views looked back to the Monarchy and the Middle Ages instead of focusing on a more "modern" figure, like a hypothetical French Hitler. Also, while anti-democratic forces were strongly influenced by Catholicism, the church itself, while disliking the Third Republic, didn't really have any desire to take power or have a clear vision of what it wanted other than the repeal of some laws. (In Italy, the Fascist movement was rather anti-clerical.)
Strongly recommended to those interested in European history in general or French history in particular.
May 14, 2018
This book took much longer to read than it should've. For me, it was an exercise in futility. I picked it up, because I wanted to learn more about what happened in France between the Wars--where the deep seated anti-Semitism came from; how & why Communism grew in France; why France (and the rest of Europe) turned a blind eye to Hitler's machinations; why France capitulated so quickly, etc. Instead, we are taken back to the 1880s, Joan of Arc, and to people & places that received far too much attention. There had to have been a better way to tell this story, without being dragged down with details on who went for an afternoon stroll with whom. Granted, writings of the period are important to recognize, but do we really need to know intimate details of these writers in order to comprehend the power of their words?
While I did get partial answers to my questions, unfortunately, I am still left looking for more answers.
While I did get partial answers to my questions, unfortunately, I am still left looking for more answers.
June 17, 2014
A classical literary style reminiscent of old-school Harper's magazine clothes this history of France ranging more or less from 1871 to 1941 (more cover-friendly years are listed in the title). Frederick Brown ably recounts a national self-immolation that sounds strangely ripped from today's tweets. Is the unreason of the Tea Party compared to that of L'Action Française a symbol of relative progress over the past century? Le/la lecteur(e) ddécidera.
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April 21, 2014"Brown’s presentation of the historical context is sometimes so unclear that I, despite having spent four decades studying and writing about this period, am unsure how much he understands."
Read more here.
Read more here.
February 5, 2017
I'd not heard of Frederick Brown or this book, but the combination of my interest in France and the 2016 US election results drove me to read it when it popped up on my Amazon suggestion list.
There are a lot of criticisms in the other Goodreads reviews that I think are understandable, but do not agree with. I think American readers are used to narrative histories that are balanced between presenting the narratives of their subjects (in this case, the three primary writers - though in France, "writers" does not do justice to the cultural scope of these individuals - Brown focuses on: Barrès, Maurras, and Drieu La Rochelle), and providing both historical context and drawing out the author's implications and conclusions from the words of their subjects. Brown really does neither, focusing on allowing the three writers' own words and the narratives of specific episodes involving them to make the author's points. As a result, the tight, well-connected narrative many readers are no doubt used to is not present here. For some, that seems to have caused confusion or left the author's point unmade. And despite the years in the title, much of the book covers the end of the 19th century and the Dreyfus era, as well as the lead-up to the First World War.
However, if you can get past that and embrace Brown's style, you're left with a moving portrait of a great nation slowly and irrevocably heading for the abyss, driven by its own unresolved internal contradictions. Right vs. left, Catholicism vs. anti-clericalism, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," vs. vicious anti-semitism, Marianne and the spirit of 1789 vs. 18 Brumaire and the ever-present specter of authoritarianism. All are present, and the failure to resolve any of these divides drives the search for solutions that become ever more apocalyptic - first the shared purifying sacrifice of the First World War, and then the flirtation with fascism that would lead to Petain, Vichy, and that regime's embrace of the Third Reich and its enthusiastic collaboration in deporting French Jews to Dachau and Auschwitz.
Additionally, for American readers in the wake of our most recent elections, this book is riddled with quotes, anecdotes, and themes that will elicit shivers from those who believe that history truly does rhyme. From the "inexplicable vertigo that gripped the masses and left no room for rational thought" and drove them to support the unqualified and seemingly out-of-nowhere demagogue Boulanger in the 1880s, to the increasing unrest, internecine clashes, and open and virulent anti-semitism of the 1930s (all exacerbated by economic instability and skyrocketing inequality), many things will ring familiar to observers of the current American political landscape. Perhaps most of all, though, the reader is reminded that perhaps the greatest danger is when elites - cultural or political - begin openly hoping for a purifying crucible to bring people together and recapture some nostalgic distortion of the past. That longing amongst much of the French cultural and political elites drove the embrace of war during the 1914 July crisis, and the embrace of Petain, Vichy, and fascism after 1940 - as well as fatally weakening France in the run-up to the disaster of 1940.
There are a lot of criticisms in the other Goodreads reviews that I think are understandable, but do not agree with. I think American readers are used to narrative histories that are balanced between presenting the narratives of their subjects (in this case, the three primary writers - though in France, "writers" does not do justice to the cultural scope of these individuals - Brown focuses on: Barrès, Maurras, and Drieu La Rochelle), and providing both historical context and drawing out the author's implications and conclusions from the words of their subjects. Brown really does neither, focusing on allowing the three writers' own words and the narratives of specific episodes involving them to make the author's points. As a result, the tight, well-connected narrative many readers are no doubt used to is not present here. For some, that seems to have caused confusion or left the author's point unmade. And despite the years in the title, much of the book covers the end of the 19th century and the Dreyfus era, as well as the lead-up to the First World War.
However, if you can get past that and embrace Brown's style, you're left with a moving portrait of a great nation slowly and irrevocably heading for the abyss, driven by its own unresolved internal contradictions. Right vs. left, Catholicism vs. anti-clericalism, "Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité," vs. vicious anti-semitism, Marianne and the spirit of 1789 vs. 18 Brumaire and the ever-present specter of authoritarianism. All are present, and the failure to resolve any of these divides drives the search for solutions that become ever more apocalyptic - first the shared purifying sacrifice of the First World War, and then the flirtation with fascism that would lead to Petain, Vichy, and that regime's embrace of the Third Reich and its enthusiastic collaboration in deporting French Jews to Dachau and Auschwitz.
Additionally, for American readers in the wake of our most recent elections, this book is riddled with quotes, anecdotes, and themes that will elicit shivers from those who believe that history truly does rhyme. From the "inexplicable vertigo that gripped the masses and left no room for rational thought" and drove them to support the unqualified and seemingly out-of-nowhere demagogue Boulanger in the 1880s, to the increasing unrest, internecine clashes, and open and virulent anti-semitism of the 1930s (all exacerbated by economic instability and skyrocketing inequality), many things will ring familiar to observers of the current American political landscape. Perhaps most of all, though, the reader is reminded that perhaps the greatest danger is when elites - cultural or political - begin openly hoping for a purifying crucible to bring people together and recapture some nostalgic distortion of the past. That longing amongst much of the French cultural and political elites drove the embrace of war during the 1914 July crisis, and the embrace of Petain, Vichy, and fascism after 1940 - as well as fatally weakening France in the run-up to the disaster of 1940.
November 26, 2025
In one sentence: the book analyzes the rejection of the Apollonian in favor of the Dionysian. This book is a very insightful look into the mentality of the French right (and to a lesser extent, the French left) through the literature and politics of the 1880s-1930s, a period which is disturbingly similar to our own. Starting off with a biography of Maurice Barres, Brown introduces us to the idea that the French right considered irrationality (not in the pejorative sense, but a rejection of the belief in the supremacy of the conscious mind, empiricism, and individualism - all the products of the enlightenment) a feature, not a bug of its worldview: that there is a true, integral self whose objectives transcend reason and anything, even the principles of law and justice, presenting an impediment to those objectives is necessarily alien and illegitimate. Brown traces the projection of this principle onto the ideas of nation and race in the 1880s and 1890s as the foundation of the ills of the 1920s and 1930s - especially horrifying are the passages illustrating the rampancy of anti-semitism in French society, especially that of Barres and other figures on the right, like Charles Maurras and Leon Daudet. We get further insight into this mentality in the sections about Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, who, searching for a quasi-religious (or suicidal) annihilation of his troubled individuality, which was laden with uncertainty and self-betrayal, dived headlong into French Fascism, where he might dissolve his self in the certainty and uniformity provided by the movement. He did this despite, I think it is implied, knowing such a move went against all decency.
This book has undoubtedly changed the way I think about the political right, though it perhaps could have stood to incorporate more economic and social history. While I do think an unconscious embrace of the unreason of the nation as an alternative to the complexities of individuality was a factor in bringing about Europe’s calamitous 20th century, your average person likely was more concerned with their standard of living; integrating that viewpoint would have given more complete analysis.
This book has undoubtedly changed the way I think about the political right, though it perhaps could have stood to incorporate more economic and social history. While I do think an unconscious embrace of the unreason of the nation as an alternative to the complexities of individuality was a factor in bringing about Europe’s calamitous 20th century, your average person likely was more concerned with their standard of living; integrating that viewpoint would have given more complete analysis.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 8, 2019
Rather a let-down after Brown's look at the Dreyfus era; this one is much less focused, is nowhere near as good on contextualizing and stringing together a narrative, and has an unfortunate case of the 'fair and balanceds,' so that everyone has to be equally unreasonable--as though rampant anti-semitism and fascism are no better and no worse than someone like Gide hoping for a moment that the grotesqueries of the first half of the twentieth century might be overcome by communism. I mean, he was wrong in that moment, but he wasn't literally murdering politicians in the street for being Jewish, so you might want to throw in some sense of proportion.
December 31, 2017
Many bad reviews on Goodreads but David Bell gave it a great review (Shadows of Revolution, Oxford Univ., p.315) so I’m biased. I greatly anticipated the book and perhaps had more patience. Found it very enjoyable. The style is somewhat unique but I learned a lot about this time period. Perhaps the reviews are bad because this time period of French history was bad...
July 15, 2025
This was horrifying and disturbing to read, as expected. It is the current climate that adds the horror however.
It meandered a little in the middle but is packed with facts and I knew many of the people written about already due to my obsession with WWII, resistance, collaboration especially in France.
I liked the photo inclusions also.
It meandered a little in the middle but is packed with facts and I knew many of the people written about already due to my obsession with WWII, resistance, collaboration especially in France.
I liked the photo inclusions also.
April 28, 2024
A good companion book to 'The Collapse of the Third Republic" by William Shirer
April 6, 2022
This book is an exploration of the pernicious influence of popularized philosophy, literature, and art on the political course of France during the fateful period of 1910 through the 1950s. The French pride in language, and philosophy is re-examined in this book to expose the manipulation of words and images in service of national mythology. French purity and redemption was equated with blood sacrifice. There was no possibility of being French if your ancestors blood was not shed on French soil. There was no middle ground. No Jew could be truly French and the greatest threat to France was the assimilated Jew. The greater truth was belief, not fact. While the populace was historically Anti-Semitic, it was the intellectuals who brought dramatic narrative to this ingrained prejudice. The rise of both Nazism and Communism brought the system to a boil. Yet oddly the loudest voices for the heroic French masculine fight club became soft, docile, and subservient to their historical enemy, glorifying the power of the Nazi regime and submitting to it. The Nazis gave them justification for purification of the homeland, so maybe this ugly alliance was not altogether unreasonable.
August 23, 2014
French political history is, to me, much more interesting than American or British politics, because the gap between the players is so much larger. However much Americans or the British may disagree on policy, there's general constitutional agreement — acceptance that republican democracy on the one hand, or parliamentary monarchy on the other, is the way to organize society. Not so in France, as Frederick Brown demonstrates in this intellectual history of the French right in the decades leading up to Vichy. Brown's primary tool is a series of multi-chapter biographies of prominent French intellectuals of the Third Republic, thinkers who came to reject liberalism, democracy and Jews as cancers on the nation. The biographical sketches can get over-long and distract from the book's broader themes, but they help illustrate through examples the ideology that helped tear the French Republic apart. (Brown is also critical, though much more briefly, of the Far Left during this same time, who similarly embraced totalitarianism as an improvement on a parliamentary Republic. To the degree he has sympathies, it's with the comparatively moderate Socialists of Léon Blum, who are shown to reject totalitarianism and anti-Semitism without reaching the fecklessness of the largely contemptuous latter-day Radicals, "who were radical in name only.") I personally preferred Brown's previous work, "For the Soul of France," as a more engaging work less caught up in the private lives of writers, but "The Embrace of Unreason" is still enlightening.
July 31, 2016
This book looks at France between the First and Second World Wars, to try and illuminate the trends that led to the country's embrace of Fascism. I found the book a bit hard to follow, although I have some knowledge of France during this period. I thought the author was very detailed about many French literary figures without adequately explaining why they were important. I also thought that there were probably many currents of thought that came to the fore during the 19th century that would have been relevant to this discussion, but the author does not look at those. My understanding was that France entered the 20th century divided, and that those divisions probably caused some Frenchmen to embrace Fascism. I would also have been interested in the author's opinion about the rise of the National Front in contemporary France.
September 22, 2015
I am a huge fan of Brown's earlier book, "For the Soul of France," which covers the period 1871 to 1914. Much of the political and social division (Church v. state; republicans v. monarchists; and French anti-Semitism) addressed in this more recent book had its roots--or reached its "modern" form during that time. However, while Brown's writing and pace were flawless in the earlier work, "The Embrace of Unreason" seems uneven. Perhaps it is the appalling time period he's covering here, but Brown seems to be two different writers: in some places, the writing is quite good; and others, leaden. Still, for anyone interested in the history of France, and the Third Republic in particular, I would recommend this book.
September 19, 2014
Dit boek gaat over de periode tussen beide wereldoorlogen. Een tijd waarin Frankrijk uiteindelijk afzakte naar het fascism, hoewel ze dat nu natuurlijk zullen ontkennen. Het is een goed verhaal, verteld aan de hand van de levens van drie (politieke) schrijvers uit die tijd. het vraagt wel enige kenneis van de gechiedneis van die periode. Voor mij vooral beklemmnd om te zien hoe makkelijk zo'n "beschaafd" land zich overgeeft aan o.a. het antisemitisme.
April 28, 2015
A history of conservative thought in French life through the examination of a few prominent writers. This book is a good introduction to anyone trying to grapple with Vichy, but I can't imagine anyone thinking upon reading this book that French from 1914-40 was a Conservative paradise. PS: Maurice Barres should be the posterchild for the stereotypical Frenchman: pretentiously upturned nose, silly mustache, self-satisfied smirk and greasy hair.
May 17, 2016
This book certainly contains key stories and personages in French history leading to WWII, but they are presented in such a loose manner that makes it unbearable to read. The book could have used a narrative, common thread or main argument to tie everything up and trim down some of its sections, keeping things to the point.
October 22, 2024
A poor work of history, with a confused chronology, far too occasions where its author suggests a personage "might of" and with a polemic slant that becomes more and more obvious over the course of the narrative. By the end of Frederick Brown's book, he had not just failed to impress that France ever embraced unreason at all.
May 12, 2014
Scholarly, but tells more than I wanted to know about intellectual life in France between the wars, and not so clearly as I would like. Reinforces my conclusion that the French Revolution was a disaster whose consequences have lasted for centuries.
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