Anatole France: Popular on Both Sides of the Barricades

BELIEVE it or not, there have been times when the Far Left and the Far Right have spoken with a single voice and one such example involves the attack on Anatole France (1844–1924) by the newly-formed Surrealist movement. France, considered by his fellow citizens to be the greatest man of letters in the country’s history and a recipient of the 1921 Nobel Prize for Literature, lay helpless on his deathbed as a group of conspirators set about producing a vitriolic diatribe in which their waning target would be exposed as an eager-to-please conformist who was unforgivably adored by both sides.

Devised by André Robert Breton (1896–1966), Paul Éluard (1895–1952) and Louis Aragon (1897–1982), the offending article was a four-page pamphlet entitled A Corpse and it was designed to blacken the name of the socialist poet, novelist and playwright in response to the fact that his literary works were devoured in such large numbers. Although France was universally revered, Breton explained that he and his fellow conspirators

“considered his attitude the shadiest and most despicable of all: he had done everything possible to win the approval of both Right and Left. He was bloated with honours and self-satisfaction.”

Acerbic phrases such as “he is an old man like all the rest,” “a bit of human servility leaves the world” and “the man no longer needs to make any dust” looked fairly insignificant beside Aragon’s own contribution. Titled ‘Have You Ever Slapped a Dead Man,’ the poet and novelist described his fading quarry as a man who had been “hailed simultaneously by the imbecile [Charles] Maurras and doddering Moscow” whilst appearing as the “incarnate [of] French ignominy”.

With the Parisian newspapers crammed with lurid details about Anatole France’s declining state of health, the Surrealists were keen to create a backlash and grab some publicity for themselves at the same time. The pamphlet was due to be distributed on the actual day of France’s death, although the legal and moral concerns of their printer over the nature of the document were such that it was not published until one week after his actual demise.

Predictably, A Corpse sparked an enormous scandal and Right-wing journalist Camille Mauclair (1872–1945) - who would go on to become a collaborator in the Vichy regime and work for Revivre: Grand Magazine illustré de la Race - described Aragon and his associates as “raving lunatics” who had the manners not simply of “hoodlums but jackals”. The pro-Communist newspaper, Clarté, accused the Surrealists of “thoughtlessness” for their attack on the global epicentre of Marxist-Leninism and Breton responded by describing the Russian Revolution as a “vague ministerial crisis” full of “miserable revolutionary activity” that was, ironically, undeserving of the name.

Even France himself had praised the foundation of the Parti communiste français (PCF) and was later defended by the English writer George Orwell (1903–1950) on account of the humanitarian statements that one finds in his novels. On one occasion, France had spoken of the madness of living in a country that “forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread.” Given his exposure of liberal-democracy, therefore, it is clear to see why he might be defended by Communists and proto-fascists alike.