La commedia di Charleroi

by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle, Attilio Scarpellini (translator), Arnaldo Colasanti (contributor)

“Sono partito, non sono più ritornato, questa volta”. Così Drieu La Rochelle chiude l’ultimo racconto di questa raccolta, scritta nel 1934, che ci svela cosa sia per lui il senso della guerra: l’impossibilità di fare ritorno alle commedie della vita civile dopo aver provato il disgusto e l’ebbrezza del grande conflitto del ’14-’18. Eroismo e viltà, esaltazione e disincanto, ideologia e cinismo si confondono nei personaggi della Commedia, che narrano la loro esperienza sapendo di non poter essere creduti da chi nella pace è ansioso di ritrovare soprattutto le proprie illusioni. Come la signora Pragen, la borghese arricchita del primo racconto, che cerca le tracce del figlio sul campo di Charleroi, ma fugge la realtà di una guerra che, nei massacri di massa, ha perso anche le sue retoriche e le sue finzioni romantiche. Gli uomini che hanno vissuto il furore delle trincee sono già quelli che, incapaci di abbracciare una condizione diversa dallo stato d’eccezione, andranno a popolare le grandi mobilitazioni totalitarie del Novecento. In questo senso, ’14-’18 La commedia di Charleroi, con la sua lingua intensa, oscillante tra lucidità e follia, è emblematica di uno scrittore che, al di là di ogni etichetta politica, ha fatto della propria opera e della propria sofferenza la testimonianza tragica del disagio di un’intera generazione.

Genres: French Literature, France, Fiction, Literature

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Pierre Eugène Drieu La Rochelle (3 January 1893 in Paris – 15 March 1945 in Paris) was a French writer of novels, short stories and political essays, who lived and died in Paris. He became a proponent of French fascism in the 1930s, and was a well-known collaborationist during the German occupation.

Drieu was born into a middle class, petit bourgeois family from Normandy, based in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. His father was a failed businessman and womanizer who married his mother for her dowry. Although a brilliant student, Pierre failed his final exam at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques. Wounded three times, his experience as a soldier during World War I had a deep influence on him and marked him for the rest of his life.

In 1917, Drieu married Colette Jéramec, the sister of a Jewish friend. The marriage failed and they divorced in 1921. Sympathetic to Dada and to the Surrealists and the Communists, and a close friend of Louis Aragon in the 1920s, he was also interested in the royalist Action Française, but refused to adhere to any one of these political currents. He wrote Mesure de la France ("Measure of France") in 1922, which gave him some small notoriety, and edited several novels. In 1931 he published Le Feu Follet, probably his most famous novel, inspired by the suicide of his friend Jacques Rigaut. He later embraced fascism as a contraddictory and provocative way in response of what he perceived as a materialistic decadence of his era.

In Drieu's political writings, he argued that the parliamentary system (the gouvernement d'assemblée of the French Third Republic) was responsible for what he saw as the "decadence" of France (economic crisis, declining birth rates, etc.). In "Le Jeune Européen" ("European Youth", 1927) and "Genève ou Moscou" ("Geneva or Moscow", 1928), Drieu La Rochelle advocated a strong Europe and denounced the "decadent materialism" of democracy. He believed that a federal Europe could bolster a strong economic and political union isolated from the imperialist Russians and Americans; in 1939 he came to believe that only Nazi Germany could deliver such an autarkian promise. His pro-European views expressed in 1928 were soon followed by closer contacts with employers' organizations, among them Ernest Mercier's Redressement Français, and then, at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, with some currents of the Radical Party .

He supported collaborationism and the Nazis' occupation of northern France. During the occupation of Paris, Drieu succeeded Jean Paulhan (whom he saved twice from the hands of the Gestapo) as director of the Nouvelle Revue Française and thus became a leading figure of French cultural collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, who he hoped would become the leader of a "Fascist International". His friendship with the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, pre-dated the war. He was also a member of the committee of the Groupe Collaboration. Beginning in 1943, however, he became disillusioned by the New Order and fascism, and turned instead to the study of Eastern spirituality. In a final, provocative act, he again embraced Jacques Doriot's PPF, simultaneously declaring in his secret diary his admiration for Stalinism.

Upon the liberation of Paris in 1944, Drieu had to go into hiding. Despite the protection of his friend André Malraux, and after a failed first attempt in July 1944, Drieu committed suicide.

Reviews

[Jose Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relato de 96 páginas, publicado en 1934. Nos narra la historia de un superviviente francés de la Primera Guerra Mundial que regresa al lugar de la batalla donde calló su amigo Claude. Trabaja como secretario de la madre del difunto, que le pide buscar el cuerpo de su hijo. La narración alterna el presente con los recuerdos de la batalla. Está bien escrito, pero carece de profundidad y se limita a ofrecernos un protagonista pequeño burgués e individualista. Recomendada para una sola lectura.

[Yves Panis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peut-être le meilleur livre de Drieu (avec rêveuse bourgeoisie et Gilles). Recueil de nouvelles étonnantes sur la guerre de l’auteur. Difficile aujourd’hui d’imaginer et de comprendre l’enfer vécu par un jeune de 21 ans comme Drieu à cette époque.

[FX Garneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

« La guerre n'a jamais été pure. »

[Fidel Castro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un très bon roman de guerre par un chien fasciste qui nous a rendu service en mettant fin à ses jours

[Guy Gélinas · Rating 4 out of 5]

bof

[Luca Urbani · Rating 5 out of 5]

un'opera potente e scomoda, che esplora il trauma della Prima Guerra Mondiale e il disagio di una generazione, attraverso uno stile intenso che oscilla tra lucidità e follia

[Nika · Rating 4 out of 5]

„Die Komödie von Charleroi“ ist eine Geschichte des Ersten Weltkrieges. Es ist eine ernste Komödie, die mit den Facetten der Menschen in ihnen spielt. Verspricht der Anfang noch einen Handlungsrahmen werden schnell sämtliche Strukturen über den Haufen geworfen, sodass aus einer Geschichte viele werden. Der Protagonist erzählt von verschiedenen Situationen und Menschen, die ihm in den Schützengräben Belgiens und auch danach noch begegnen. Er zieht hiermit einen vielfältigen Querschnitt der gesellschaftlichen und sozialen Vorgänge an der Front.

Ohne zu viel verraten zu wollen, sind die Begegnungen sehr unterschiedlich; vom fahnenflüchtigen Angsthasen zum regelrechten Draufgänger lässt Rochelle uns an allen Charakteren in all ihren verschiedenen Ausprägungen teilhaben. Der Auto erlaubt so einen interessanten Einblick in die Psyche und Gedanken der Soldaten. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle kämpfte selber als Soldat für Frankreich, unter anderen auch bei der bedeutenden Schlacht von Verdun, die im Roman immer wieder eine Rolle spielt. Gerade das macht die Erzählungen so realistisch. Auch der Sprachstil ist nüchtern, vermittelt aber gleichzeitig eine emotionale Tiefe. „Die Komödie von Charleroi“ zieht den Leser imaginär schnell mit an die Front und lässt ihn an spannenden Gesprächen und Situationen teilhaben, in denen man immer schwankt zwischen dem Drang, den Kopf zu schütteln oder zu schmunzeln. Sie erzählt die Geschichte von sich inszenierenden Angsthasen und gefallenen Helden.

Fazit: „Die Komödie von Charleroi“ ist kein einfaches Buch. Der Kampf um das Überleben hunderttausender Soldaten klingt immer wieder in den Erzählungen mit und macht den Roman umso spannender. Hatte ich nach dem ersten Durchlesen ein gemischtes Gefühl, was meine Bewertung betraf, finde ich die Geschichten im Nachhinein immer interessanter. Ich vergebe gerne 4 von 5 Sternen und eine Leseempfehlung. Die spezielle Neuübersetzung aus dem Manesse Verlag beinhaltet ebenfalls zahlreiche Anmerkungen zum Hintergrund des Romans und ein Nachwort zum Autor, die das bewegte und turbulente Leben Rochelles umreißen – ein spannender Schriftsteller, dessen Erzählungen heute leider viel zu unbekannt sind!

[William Kirkland · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Comedy of Charleroi (1934, in a 1937 translation by Douglas Gallagher) is the title of the volume and the first, and longest (81 p,) of six stories. All, in one way or another, take up Drieu La Rochelle’s main concern, the movement in a man between courage and cowardice, an idea he calls “homo duplex.” “When I think back on the two-sided person I had been that day, I realize that my whole character had been laid bare in one go … how courageous I had been on that day! how cowardly! good companion and deserter, ordinary and extraordinary, sharing and refusing the common lot.”

For Drieu La Rochelle “the hero and the deserter are from the same mold; both are ready to sacrifice everything, including their lives, rather than resign themselves to being shelled and gassed anonymously, rather than submit to the mechanical annihilation of their human individuality.” Of the many fiction/memoirs I have read from, and about, World War I, The Comedy of Charleroi is the most inward looking, the most consumed with understanding his own, very contradictory motives.

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