Louis Aragon
born Oct.
3, 1897, Paris, France
died Dec. 24, 1982, Paris
original
name Louis Andrieux French poet, novelist,
and essayist who was a political activist
and spokesman for communism.
Through the
Surrealist poet André Breton, Aragon was
introduced to avant-garde movements such as
Dadaism; and together with Philippe Soupault,
he and Bretonfounded the Surrealist review
Littérature (1919). Aragon's first poems,
Feu de joie (1920; “Bonfire”) and Le Mouve
mentperpétuel (1925; “Perpetual Motion”),
were followed by a novel, Le Paysan de Paris
(1926; The Nightwalker). In 1927 his search
for an ideology led him to the French
Communist Party, with which he was
identified thereafter, as he came to
exercise a continuing authority over its
literary and artistic expression. In 1928 he
met Elsa Triolet (the Russian-born
sister-in-law of the poet Vladimir
Mayakovsky), who became his wife and his
inspiration (she died in 1970).
In 1930
Aragon visited the Soviet Union, and in 1933
his political commitment to communism
resulted in a break with the Surrealists.
The four volumes of his long novel series,
Le Monde réel (1933–44; “The Real World”),
describe in historical perspective the class
struggle of the proletariat toward social
revolution. Aragon continued to employ
Socialist Realism in another long novel, Les
Communistes (6 vol., 1949–51), a bleak
chronicle of the party from 1939 to 1940.
His next three novels—La Semaine sainte
(1958; Holy Week), La Mise à mort (1965;
“The Moment of Truth”), and Blanche ou
l'oubli (1967; “Blanche, or
Forgetfulness”)—became a veiled
autobiography, laced withpleas for the
Communist Party. They reflected the newer
novelistic techniques of the day.
The poems
of Le Crève-Coeur (1941; “Heartbreak”) and
La Diane française (1945) express Aragon's
ardent patriotism, and those of Les Yeux
d'Elsa (1942; “Elsa's Eyes”) and Le
foud'Elsa (1963; “Elsa's Madman”) contain
deep sentiments of love for his wife. From
1953 to 1972 Aragon was editor of the
communist cultural weekly Les Lettres
Françaises. He was made a member of the
French Legion of Honour in 1981.
