On the fields on the horizon
On the wings of birds
And on the mill of shadows
I write your name [1]
Between the wars
Some authors do not doubt the value of words, and therefore do not consider it necessary to worry about language and its possibilities. During the interwar period, the literary movement of Surrealism arose. Language becomes the written medium of dreams and imagination, of the unconscious and irrationality. They are poets like André Breton, Paul Eluard, Louis Aragon, who thirst for revolt and claim freedom in the face of traditional poems, as well as the omnipresent academicism. This revolt is also found on the side of the Dadaist painters, since surrealist poetry claims the power of art. And art, soon, will become a weapon. Indeed, surrealism being under communist influence, poets like Aragon and Eluard will engage in the Resistance, and their words will be their hope for freedom. For the surrealist poets, it is with conviction that they affirm that language has a value more powerful than any other weapon, and that the words that engage are words without limits.
I believe in the future resolution of these two states, seemingly so contradictory, which are dream and reality, into a sort of absolute reality, of "surreality", if one can so say. [2]
Words involved in the Resistance
Between 1939 and 1944, France was at war, and it was in the same spirit of resistance that moved citizens to fight for their country that Aragon wrote his poem There is no happy love . The poet translates the militant that he is, engaging in the Resistance as one engages in love, because he is idealistic, he believes in freedom and he does not see the danger because he loves the fatherland as one loves a woman:"And no more than you do the love of the fatherland." [3] An analogy emerges between violated and wounded France, which engenders revolt in the lover. But that’s before feeling sorry when the fight seems lost:the homeland suffers the same abuse as the man in love and the insurgent finds himself like “unarmed soldiers. [4] Love for one's country goes through pain, and defending it requires sacrifice. But the militant finally realizes that his sacrifice is worth it, and that he will find a certain serenity since there will always be something to hope for, even if we only glimpse it in the last line of the poem:"But it's our love to both. [5] It was at the end of these dark years that Aragon's poems brought hope:the poet believed in the power of words, and thus encouraged men, lovers of imprisoned France, to contribute to it. rebelling.
It happened that one fine evening the universe shattered On the reefs that the wreckers set on fire I saw shining above the sea Elsa's eyes Elsa's eyes Elsa's eyes [ 6]
The post-war period
At the end of the Second World War, authors such as Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and Boris Vian deal with the absurd for a population in shock. Ten years later, Nathalie Sarraute and Robbe-Grillet innovate and found a new literary movement:the New Roman. Characterized by its fragmented writing, its absence of punctuation and its suppression of the linearity of the narrative, the authors use it to express the feeling that arises after the discovery of the atrocities which took place in the world between 1939 and 1945. But this state of mind is inexpressible. Despite the recourse to absurdity, to seemingly unfinished novels, we realize that literature carries with it a part of impotence. It is once the words are put to the test, charged with expressing the inexpressible, that their destination finds itself disturbed.
Man looks at the world, and the world does not look back at him. [7]