ARAGON Louis (1897-1982). Lot n° 46

Autograph manuscript on his conception of poetry. 6 folio pages (additions and repentances). Reflections on the revolutionary poetry evoking among the greatest names of literature. "The themes of poetry with the people: prison, bloody repression, the struggle against war, the construction of socialism (utopias, Lamartine, Hugo)... Two sources to our poetry revol. contemporary. One the written poetry, the heritage... The other the folklore. Beside Babeuf, the atheist poet Sylvain Maréchal... Under the Restoration and Louis-Philippe, among the best poets of the bourgeoisie: Gérard de Nerval, Pétrus Borel, Mme Desbordes-Valmore, Béranger. Later, 1848, development industry that forces the French bourgeoisie to resort to strong method. Empire. This transforms the greatest poet of the previous period Victor Hugo into a true revolutionary poet. He becomes the cantor of 1830 and insurrections against the Empire, Châtiments, Napoleon the Small. And with incomprehension Commune, horror of the repression, defense of the communards. [Victor Hugo] was the last of the great poets that the people read. Yet Arthur Rimbaud. "Hands of Jeanne-Marie". The war that gave birth to Le Feu awakened the folklore. Songs. Nowadays in front of USSR is born in all the countries a consequent poetry revol. Example of Mayakovsky. It takes its roots in all the tradition and finds in the working class even men .... in the oppressed races. Langston Hughes, Siao... End with me....... Poetry is with the people. It is against the tyrants. From all times it draws its origins from the people. Homer. François Villon. Hans Sachs. Dante the exile... IF the lords knew how to attach themselves to it, if Racine and Shakespeare, it was only in the time when the power of the possessing class was an instrument of progress. Quote from Robespierre and forecast of the present times. In the 19th century, the great poets of the bourgeoisie reflect these contradictions and the greatest, the most generous are on the side of the people: in France, Hugo, Rimbaud; in Russia, Nekrassof, Pushkin; in England, Shelley (Marx); in Germany, Büchner, Heine. Thus in the very bosom of bourgeois romanticism..." With important quotations from Gérard de Nerval and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore: Aragon transcribes in full Nerval's poem entitled "Politique" ("In Sainte-Pélagie / Under this enlarged reign / Where, dreamy and pensive, / I live captive..."), a large portion of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore's poem "Dans la rue" ("We have no more money to bury our dead...") and a few lines from the poem "À Monsieur A. L." of the same one ("Do you know that it is big, all a people which cries"). He also quotes briefly Pétrus Borel or Ronsard.