Aragon, Louis

(1897-1982)

   writer

   A novelist, poet, and essayist, Louis Aragon, who was also a leader in the dadaist and surrealist literary movements in France, was born in Paris. During his early years he wrote a number of experimental works, including the collection of poems Feu de joie (1920) and a long essay, Traité du style (1928), as well as Anicet ou le Panorama (1921) and Le Paysan de Paris (1926). Aragon also founded, with other surrealist writers, the revue Littérature (1919). Along with andré breton, he joined the communist party in 1927 and adhered to the related aesthetic doctrine of socialist realism. He would become one of the most active French Communist propagandists. Aragon praised the Soviet Union in his Persécuté persécuteur (1930-31) and Hourras l'Oural (1934), and presented his theme of socialist realism in a vast work, Le Monde réel, completed between 1934 and 1951. During World War II, he was a leading figure in the resistance. in his other works, including Le Crève-Coeur (1941), Cantique à Elsa (1942), Les Yeux d'Elsa (1942), Brocéliande (1942), Le Musée Grevin (1943), and La Diane française (1946), he exalts subjects dear to the French, such as love and hope. Among Aragon's other works are Le Nouveau Crève-Coeur (1948), Élégie a Pablo Neruda (1966), La Mise à mort (1965), Le Fou d'Elsa (1963), Blanche ou l'Oubli (1967), Je n'ai jamais appris à écrire ou les Incipit (1969), and Henri Matisse, roman (1971). Until 1972, he directed the journal Les Lettres françaises. Aragon became a member of the French Communist Party's Central Committee in 1954 and, in 1957, was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.