Henri Barbusse
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Henri Barbusse (May 17, 1873, Asnières-sur-Seine—August 30, 1935, Moscow) was a French novelist, journalist and communist.
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[edit] Life and works
Born in Asnieres-sur-Seine, France in 1873, he grew up in a small town but in early life left for Paris in 1889 at age 16. In 1914 already at the age of 41 he enlisted in the French Army and served against Germany in World War I. Barbusse would serve in the war for 17 months, until the end of 1915, when he was moved to an office due to pulmonary damage, exhaustion and dysentery. He came to fame with the publication of his novel Le Feu (translated as Under Fire) in 1916, which was based on his experiences during World War I. It shows his growing hatred of militarism and drew criticism at the time for its harsh naturalism. His book won the Prix Goncourt.
By January, 1918 he left France and moved to the city of Moscow, Russia where he got married to a Russian woman and joined the Bolshevik Party. His later works, Manifeste aux Intellectuels, Elevations (1930) and others show a more revolutionary standpoint. Of these, the 1921 Le Couteau entre les dents (The Knife Between the Teeth) marks Barbusse's siding with Bolshevism and the October Revolution. He joined the French Communist Party in 1923 and later travelled back to the Soviet Union. He was a member of the League against Imperialism created in Brussels in 1927.
An associate of Romain Rolland and editor of Clarté, he attempted to define a proletarian literature, akin to Proletkult and Socialist realism. Barbusse was a Stalinist and the author of a 1936 biography of Joseph Stalin, titled Staline. Un monde nouveau vu à travers un homme (Stalin. A New World Seen Through the Man). The book was a Western equivalent of the Soviet personality cult and Barbusse led a violent press campaign against his former friend Panait Istrati - a Romanian writer who had expressed criticism of the Soviet state. He was harshly criticized for his Stalinist activities by his former comrade Victor Serge who noted that Barbusse had dedicated a book to Leon Trotsky before Stalin had definitively won the power struggle against Trotsky. Serge called Barbusse a hypocrite who was determined to be on the winning side.
Barbusse was an Esperantist, and was honorary president of the first congress of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda. In 1921, he wrote an article for Esperanto journal, Esperantista Laboristo. ("Esperantist worker")[1]
He is buried in Le Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris.
In the foreword to I saw it Happen, a 1942 collection of eye-witness accounts of the war, Lewis Gannet wrote: "(...) We shall be hearing and reading of this war for decades to come. No one of us can yet guess who will be its Tolstoys, its Barbusses, its Remarques and its Hemingways".
[edit] Bibliography
- Le Feu, 1917
- Esperantista Laboristo, 1921
- Le Couteau entre les dents, 1923
- Manifeste aux Intellectuals: Elevations, 1930
- Staline: Un mode nouveau vu a travers un homme, 1936 (posthumously published)
[edit] References
- ^ Enciklopedio de Esperanto. 1933.
[edit] External links
- Works by Henri Barbusse at Project Gutenberg
- Barbusse and Vsevolod Meyerhold.
- Pierre Michel, Octave Mirbeau, Henri Barbusse et l’enfer.
