Les Extravagants: Scènes de la vie de bohème cosmopolite

by Paul Morand

Voici le tout premier roman de Paul Morand, écrit en 1910-1911, et inédit jusqu'en 1986. On pensait que le manuscrit de cette oeuvre de jeunesse avait été détruit par l'auteur. Il a été retrouvé en 1978 chez un libraire de Los Angeles, et acquis par la bibliothèque de l'Université Yale. À vingt-deux ans, l'auteur n'a pas encore trouvé son style, bref, ironique, détaché. C'est du Morand d'avant Morand. Mais l'intrigue ne manque pas de charme. Les extravagants est un roman d'éducation esthétique et morale où l'écrivain a mis beaucoup de sa jeune expérience : Paris, Londres, Oxford, Caen (où il fait son service militaire), Venise. Le héros, Simon de Biéville, s'attachera à deux héroïnes : Mrs Hyde, l'Anglo-Indienne en qui s'affrontent deux races mêlées, et la princesse Lemska, fière Polonaise vaincue par l'amour. Ce qui donne aux Extravagants toute leur valeur aux yeux du lecteur familier de l'oeuvre de Morand, c'est d'y trouver exposé pour la première fois le thème auquel son nom est demeuré attaché : le cosmopolitisme.

Genres: Fiction, 20th Century

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Paul Morand was a French diplomat, novelist, playwright and poet, considered an early Modernist.

He was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). During the pre-war period, he wrote many short books which are noted for their elegance of style, erudition, narrative concision, and for the author's observation of the countries he visited combined with his middle-class views.

Morand's reputation has been marred by his stance during the Second World War, when he collaborated with the Vichy regime and was a vocal anti-Semite. When the Second World War ended, Morand served as an ambassador in Bern, but his position was revoked and he lived in exile in Switzerland.

Post-war, he was a patron of the Hussards literary movement, which opposed Existentialism. Morand went on to become a member of the Académie française; his candidature was initially rejected by Charles de Gaulle, the only instance of a President ever exercising his right to veto electees to the academy. Morand was finally elected ten years later, though he still had to forgo the official investiture).

Paul Morand was a friend of Marcel Proust and has left valuable observations about him.

Reviews

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel - Morand's first, and unpublished during his lifetime - is not only a delight to read, but also a fascinating window on the making of a writer who, later in his life, will come to embody a certain myth of the cosmopolitan, refined, literary French man (despite - and maybe because, too - of his political flaws). Very much rooted in a world that reminds us at the same time of Marcel Proust, Edith Wharton, E.M.Foster, or Oscar Wilde, to name a few, this book seems to belong to the end of the XIXth century - and it does, in a way, since it was written before WWI, which is often considered as the real end of the prior century. But it is also written in a surprisingly modern language, which displays Morand's famous style and wit. Paris, London, Oxford, a British Island, a French provincial town, and Venice are the places where the main character's bohemian lifestyle takes him - it is quite a charming, luxurious European tour, and Morand describes it with verve - the Oxford chapters are really good. There is a somehow decadent "fin de siècle" atmosphere permeating the whole story: it helps in making the rather conventional love triangle appealing and lively. A few years after Morand's finished this novel, WWI will exploded - and the world this book describes (and which Morand obviously knew first hand) would vanish forever. This knowledge adds a tint of nostalgia and poignancy to the reading.