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Adventures on the Freedom Road

By (author) Bernard-Henry Levy, Translated by Richard Veasey

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From the days when Zola and Peguy brandished their pens in pursuit of political action, the question of literature at the service of political commitment has remained a live issue, most of all in France. As this century saw the rise first of communism, then of fascism, French intellectuals have hurried to take sides and devote their writings to the good of their chosen cause. If Breton and some of his fellow-surrealists, as also Sartre and Aragon, favoured the Left, Bataille, Celine and Drieu La Rochelle were no less passionate advocates of the Far Right. There were also nice shadings of political casuistry as Red veered to Pink and eventually to True Blue; Malraux was one of the great men to skate across the spectrum. The reader can witness many a sacred cow being led to the slaughter as this book considers the impact on the French intelligentsia of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Third Reich, the Spanish Civil War, the Algerian War and other crucial turning points in this century, and the nation's writers fashion a philosophy to match.