Paul Nizan
Paul-Yves Nizan (French: [nizɑ̃]; 7 February 1905 – 23 May 1940) was a French philosopher and writer.
He was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire and studied in Paris where he befriended fellow student Jean-Paul Sartre at the Lycée Henri IV. He became a member of the French Communist Party, and much of his writing reflects his political beliefs, although he resigned from the party soon after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact in 1939. He died in the Battle of Dunkirk, fighting against the German army in World War II.
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 May '68.[1][2][3][4][5]
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 École Normale Supérieure of the University of Paris in 1926 to leave for Aden where he worked as tutor to the son of French-born businessman-millionaire Antonin Besse.[6] He drew upon his six-month experience in Aden to write his first novella, Aden Arabie, published in 1931. Nizan then entered into a number of miscellaneous jobs around the French Communist Party (PCF), writing for its journal prominently and even, at one point, running a party bookshop in Paris. Nizan later took up a professorship teaching literature, during which time he took on a reputation among students as an affable and relaxed professor, sometimes even offering his students cigarettes during class. As a teacher, he was reticent about his own perspective on Marxist theory, instead encouraging his students to arrive independently at their own conclusions. Through this period, up to the onset of World War II, Nizan penned all of his major works, including "The Watchdogs", an exposé on materialist philosophy, and the novels Antoine Bloye and The Conspiracy.
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. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691052755.
- Redfern, W. (1972). Paul Nizan: Committed Literature in a Conspiratorial World. Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691062181.
- Lawrence D. Kritzman, Brian J. Reilly, ed. (2006). The Columbia History of Twentieth-century French Thought. Columbia University Press. pp. 628–629. ISBN 9780231107907.
External links
- Paul Nizan Archive at marxists.org
- La nature et l’anthropologie dans Antoine Bloyé de Paul Nizan (in French)
- v
- t
- e
- 1930 André Malraux
- 1931 Pierre Bost
- 1932 Simonne Ratel
- 1933 Robert Bourget-Pailleron
- 1934 Marc Bernard
- 1935 Jacques Debû-Bridel [fr]
- 1936 René Laporte [fr]
- 1937 Romain Roussel
- 1938 Paul Nizan
- 1939 Roger de Lafforest
- 1940
- 1941
- 1942
- 1943
- 1944
- 1945 Roger Vailland
- 1946 Jacques Nels [fr]
- 1947 Pierre Daninos
- 1948 Henry Castillou [fr]
- 1949 Gilbert Sigaux [fr]
- 1950 Georges Auclair [fr]
- 1951 Jacques Perret
- 1952 Jean Dutourd
- 1953 Louis Chauvet
- 1954 Maurice Boissais
- 1955 Félicien Marceau
- 1956 Armand Lanoux
- 1957 Paul Guimard
- 1958 Bertrand Poirot-Delpech
- 1959 Antoine Blondin
- 1960 Jean Portelle [fr]
- 1960 Henry Muller
- 1961 Jean Ferniot
- 1962 Henri-François Rey
- 1963 Renée Massip
- 1964 René Fallet
- 1965 Alain Bosquet
- 1966 Kléber Haedens
- 1967 Yvonne Baby
- 1968 Christine de Rivoyre
- 1969 Pierre Schoendoerffer
- 1970 Michel Déon
- 1971 Pierre Rouanet [fr]
- 1972 Georges Walter [fr]
- 1973 Lucien Bodard
- 1974 René Mauriès
- 1975 Voldemar Lestienne
- 1976 Raphaële Billetdoux
- 1977 Jean-Marie Rouart
- 1978 Jean-Didier Wolfromm
- 1979 François Cavanna
- 1980 Christine Arnothy
- 1981 Louis Nucéra
- 1982 Éric Ollivier
- 1983 Jacques Duquesne [fr]
- 1984 Michèle Perrein
- 1985 Serge Lentz
- 1986 Philippe Labro
- 1987 Raoul Mille [fr]
- 1988 Bernard-Henri Lévy
- 1989 Alain Gerber [fr]
- 1990 Bayon [fr]
- 1991 Sébastien Japrisot
- 1992 Dominique Bona
- 1993 Jean-Pierre Dufreigne
- 1994 Marc Trillard
- 1995 Franz-Olivier Giesbert
- 1996 Eduardo Manet
- 1997 Éric Neuhoff
- 1998 Gilles Martin-Chauffier [fr]
- 1999 Jean-Christophe Rufin
- 2000 Patrick Poivre d'Arvor
- 2001 Stéphane Denis
- 2002 Gonzague Saint Bris
- 2003 Frédéric Beigbeder
- 2004 Florian Zeller
- 2005 Michel Houellebecq
- 2006 Michel Schneider
- 2007 Christophe Ono-dit-Biot [fr]
- 2008 Serge Bramly
- 2009 Yannick Haenel
- 2010 Jean-Michel Olivier [fr]
- 2011 Morgan Sportès
- 2012 Philippe Djian
- 2013 Nelly Alard
- 2014 Mathias Menegoz
- 2015 Laurent Binet
- 2016 Serge Joncour
- 2017 Jean-René Van der Plaetsen
- 2018 Thomas B. Reverdy
- 2019 Karine Tuil
- 2020 Irène Frain
- 2021 Mathieu Palain [fr]
- 2022 Philibert Humm [fr]