Barrès, Maurice

(1862-1923)

   writer, political figure

   Born in Charmes, Vosges, Maurice Barrè's began his literary career shortly after he entered political life. The first of two volumes of his trilogy Le Culte du moi (Sous l'œil des barbares, 1888; Un Homme libre, 1889) are affirmations of his moral and social individualism, appearing when he was elected a Boulangist deputy for Nancy (1889). Le Jardin de Bérénice (1891) completed the cycle. An anti-Dreyfusard (see Dreyfus, alfred), defender of the military, and preoccupied with the German threat, Barrè's presented his nationalistic ideas in a new trilogy, Le Roman de l'énergie nationale (1897-1902); (Les Déracinés, L'Appel au soldat, Leurs figures). Conscious henceforth of the need for action, he never ceased to exalt revanchist patriotism (Colette Baudoche, 1909; La Colline inspirée, 1913), until World War I made him a supporter of the Union sacrée. A deputy for Paris since 1906, he was, in the same year, named to the Académie Française. Mes Cahiers, his journal, contains his intellectual memoirs, in which he also expresses "the melodies that are inside him" and explains his many personal complexities — "a blood that demands action, a spirit that wishes to remain free" (henri de montherlant).