Paul Nizan
Paul-Yves Nizan (French: [nizɑ̃]; 7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940) was a French philosopher and writer.
He was born in
His works include the novels Antoine Bloye (1933), Le Cheval de Troie [The Trojan Horse] and La Conspiration [The Conspiracy] (1938), as well as the essays "Les Chiens de garde" ["The Watchdogs"] (1932) and "Aden Arabie" (1931), which introduced him to a new audience when it was republished in 1960 with a foreword by Sartre. In particular, the opening sentence "I was twenty, I won't let anyone say those are the best years of your life" (J’avais vingt ans. Je ne laisserai personne dire que c’est le plus bel âge de la vie.) became one of the most influential slogans of student protest during
Life
Nizan was born to a middle-class family, his father having worked in rail prior to the First World War. Nizan's father's course through the bureaucracy of French industry would later form the basis of Antoine Bloye, and serve as a significant point of development for Nizan's understanding of social alienation.
He interrupted his studies at the
In August 1939, he broke with the French Communist Party following the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. His motive was not a moral judgment against the USSR; on the contrary, he criticized the French Communist Party for having lacked cynicism:
Only events will confirm or invalidate me. But not arguments of the moral type. It was not because I thought the USSR's agreement with Berlin was "bad" that I took the resolution I took. It is precisely because I thought that the French Communists lacked the necessary political cynicism and the political power to lie that would have been necessary to derive the greatest benefits from a dangerous diplomatic operation. Why didn't they have the audacity of the Russians?[7]
Given his active participation in the anti-fascist movement, as well as his commitment to the republican cause of the Spanish Civil War, Nizan could not accept the party's rapid shift against the Popular Front. Soon thereafter, Nizan enlisted to fight in the French army with the onset of World War II, and was killed in action on 23 May 1940 at the Château de Cocove in Recques-sur-Hem, during the German offensive against Dunkirk.[8]
Politics
Nizan's politics took a number of sporadic turns throughout the course of his life, with Sartre noting that Nizan in his youth had vacillated between fascist and communist sympathies, attracted to both extremes of the political spectrum. Nizan also approached the priesthood as a young man but soon turned away from that decision. Eventually, Nizan settled on membership in the French Communist Party, under whose auspices Nizan's public life as an author began. Within the party, Nizan wrote extensively for official communist publications and had his works sold in party bookstores, although his most celebrated work today is his fiction. In his various novels, Nizan explores modern alienation, as well as the situation of the radical petit-bourgeois milieu caught between contending class forces. While Nizan was a loyal adherent to the policies of the Communist Party, his writings anticipate elements of postwar radical existentialism, leaving the contemporary reader with an ambiguous image of Nizan's political standing.[9]
Works
- Aden Arabie (1931), (1960)
- Les Chiens de garde [The Watchdogs] (1932)
- Antoine Bloye (1933)
- Le Cheval de Troie [The Trojan Horse] (1938)
- La Conspiration [The Conspiracy] (1938)
- Morceaux choisis de Marx (1934) Introduction by Henri Lefebvre
- Chronique de septembre (1939)
- Paul Nizan, intellectuel communiste. Articles et correspondance 1926-1940 (1967)
- Pour une nouvelle culture (1971)
- Articles littéraires et politiques, volume I (2005)
See also
- Emmanuel Todd, his grandson
References
- ^ Paul Nizan, Aden, Arabie, MR Press, 1968.
- ^ Paul Nizan, The Conspiracy, Verso Books, 2012.
- ^ Lawrence D. Kritzman (ed.), The Columbia History Of Twentieth-Century French Thought, Columbia University Press, 2007, p. 62.
- ^ Daniel Singer, Prelude to revolution: France in May 1968, South End Press, 2002, pp. 106, 110.
- ^ "Freccero, Nizan? siamo in grande primavera - Verso la Maturità - ANSA.it". www.ansa.it. Retrieved 2023-06-19.
- ^ [1][dead link]
- ^ Letter to his wife, October 1939, quoted by Olivier Todd, André Malraux, une vie, Paris, Gallimard, 2001, p. 296 and 642, note 23.
- ^ Sartre, Paul (1960). Preface to Aden Arabie.
- ^ Nizan, Paul. "Marxist Internet Archive". various, from 1929 to 1938. Retrieved 29 June 2013.
- Schalk, David L. (1979). The Spectrum of Political Engagement: Mounier, Benda, Nizan, Brasillach, Sartre. ISBN 9780691052755.
- Redfern, W. (1972). Paul Nizan: Committed Literature in a Conspiratorial World. ISBN 9780691062181.
- Lawrence D. Kritzman, Brian J. Reilly, ed. (2006). The Columbia History of Twentieth-century French Thought. ISBN 9780231107907.
External links
- Paul Nizan Archive at marxists.org
- La nature et l’anthropologie dans Antoine Bloyé de Paul Nizan (in French)