Montherlant and purification - its defense file and its archives.

Henry de Montherlant and purification

« I challenge that we note a single act, one line or a single point of me during the war, either against the Russians, or against the English, or against the Americans, or against the Communists, or against the Resistance. As for the Israelites, I only acted in their favor. »»

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Exceptional meeting of some 50 letters, notes, manuscripts and documents concerning the indictment of Montherlant at the time of the Liberation, the writer - like many other intellectuals - having been one of the targets of the committee of French writers in September 1944. Forced to account for his acts and words before the Commission for the Participation of the Society of Gens of Letters, Montherlant establishes his defense, with the punctual assistance of lawyers, From his essay solstice of June (considered by some as resignation in the face of defeat), his participation in collaborationist newspapers between 1941 and 1943, and the attitude of withdrawal which he adopted during the years of war.

Set of more than 100 pages of various, handwritten or typed formats, and two classification shirts, titled in red pencil, with annotations including a biffée: " The great memory is for catering. In the shirt on my calorifer. Here in brown shirt. / The thematic table above everything ”. In addition to the handwritten manuscripts, fifteen of these documents have autograph highlights, annotations or apostilles. Certain notes and drafts are brought to the back of letters to him addressed or typed or printed sheets, including texts from the writer Alice Poirier, passionate admirer of Montherlant with whom she was in correspondence for more than twenty years.

At the Liberation, the name of Montherlant appeared in the list of writers suspected of collaboration established by the National Council of Writers. His case was then examined by the High Court which sent the case in the spring of 1945 before the Civic Chamber, the latter did not follow up, while the SGDL purification commission rendered its decision in October 1946: no charge was retained against Montherlant which had respected the professional ban of six months pronounced two years before.

The author brought together various elements for his defense, documents reused in 1952 for the collection Texts under an occupation and for the writing of a dissertation for a reissue of the June Solstice and the September equinox , envisaged in 1948 but which will only appear posthumous, in 1976.

There are therefore notes, letters received by the writer as so many testimonies in discharge, press clippings, some fragments of these texts under the occupation , dactylographies with autograph corrections of the memory where most of the arguments developed between 1945 and 1946 were taken up.

During the examination of his file, Montherlant had in particular answering a questionnaire established by the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers (SACD) composed of around fifty questions relating to a possible collaboration with the occupying forces, a possible sympathy for the regime and the policy of the enemy, requesting account of publications and professional income and which ends:

"Even if you have not actually helped enemy propaganda, and if by writing, the word, the fact or the gesture, you have not been an acting collaborator, judge, in your soul and conscience that you have not failed in your duty as a French intellectual in charge of a mission of confidence with the mass. And that your attitude, your behavior, in the private as in the public, was in accordance with the patriotic dignity which should be tackled after a humiliating defeat, during a materially and morally odious occupation and in the face of an adversary who, eager to degrade our country by seeming to call it to collaboration, strengthened our people, stifled our thought, our culture, tortured our compatriots, shot Hostages and behaved as a deadly enemy of our genius and our civilization ”. In the double copy he kept, Montherlant noted: " I judge that I have not failed in this duty ".

List of documents:

Two signed letters emanating from the Swiss Red Cross-Rescue to children , in Montherlant. October 25 and November 17, 1943. Thanks for the support he provided to this organization, by financial allocation and by offering a dedicated copy of the dead Queen for sale (Ms. Micheli obtained 800 CHF).

Signed letter from Albert Buesche to Montherlant. March 7, 1944. Editor -in -chief of the Das Reich [German weekly published between May 1940 and April 1945, editorials of Goebbels], Buesche informs him that in an article of him, "by a fault of printing, we read" anti -Semitism "instead of" antiféminism ". I regret this fault infinitely ”. Breaking of Parriser Zeitung .

Signed letter from René de Sariac to M. de Segrais, lawyer . September 20, 1944. Relating to the memory given by Montherlant "concerning the position he had adopted before the war and since the armistice. I submitted this document to the central control of the armistice where it was indicated to me that no arrest was planned and seemed useful in a similar case. ” With Autograph Apostille: “ File. It was to the Directorate General of Special Services of the 2 ^nd office that this approach would have been made ”.

Autograph letter signed by Georges Lecomte in Montherlant . February 20, 1945. After sending the brief by Montherlant and an interview with the members of the Society of Gens de Lettres treatment committee. He carefully studied her and he assures his colleague from his literary sympathy, long acquired, since the dream in particular.

Signed letter from Georges Robert, director of the SGDL in Montherlant . May 25, 1945. Double of the opinion of the General Assembly of the Company which ratified the decision taken in its regard by the treatment commission on February 7, 1945.

Signed letter from the lawyer Maurice Ribet in Montherlant . July 11, 1945. He informed him that the Government Commission decided to classify his case on the "courts of justice". "This file now will be examined by another substitute which must decide if, if necessary, it would be necessary to send you to the Civic Chamber for national unworthiness". Ribet will meet this second magistrate to plead the cause of Montherlant. Letter annotated by Montherlant.

Signed letter from Fernand Rouvray, vice-president treasurer of the SACD commission in Montherlant . November 2, 1945. He sends him the questionnaire established by the National SGDL Participation Committee, to be returned within 8 days. Letter annotated by Montherlant which indicates that the said questionnaire was carried on November 10 and which claimed, on the following 21, an acknowledgment of receipt. With a letter from the SACD controller accusing receipt of the said questionnaire, December 7, 1945.

Dactylographed and signed exemplary of the SACD questionnaire, with answers and autograph notes, with the mention " hand -worn, 10.11.45 ". A typed copy of the said questionnaire is attached, which remained virgin (under sheet titled by Montherlant).

He answers no on the sidelines of all the questions asking if, in his pieces played during the occupation ( the dead queen and son of a person ), he was able to serve German propaganda or the Hitlerian or fascist ideology, if he collaborated on German or Italian films, if he sold copyright on one of his works his works to German and Italian firms, etc. He explains that the small sixty articles he published between 1940 and 1943 (which he lists and whose remuneration he indicates) is only in the literary domain. He recalls that June Solstice was prohibited by German censorship at first, which he refused twice to go to the Weimar Congress, that he underwent a search of the Gestapo at his home in March 1944, etc.

Set of autograph notes or in typed and corrected parts (about 30 pages), including:

- Notes taken the advice of MM. Leclair, Maurice Ribet, Georges Robert and Leclair, between November 6 and 11, 1945 (on the back of typed pages).

- Fragments of pleadings (including 4 pages on the back of typed sheets of a translation of the play by Luis Vélez de Guevara dedicated to Inez de Castro [ La Reine Morte ]). He evokes the slanders of which he the object, claiming to have never ceased, " both by my writings and by my actions ", to testify to his hostility to the government of Vichy and to the German authorities, returns to the ban on the June solstice by the Germans, authorized by the spontaneous intervention of deputy director of the German Institute, "without my intervines ".

- Financial account sheets. With state of her copyright for the editions of the Dead Queen and Son of a person (" are confronted and approved by the Gallimard accountant, 9. 11. 1945 ).

- List of his articles and their remuneration.

- Notes justifying his collaboration in the press under the Occupation. For example about the article Vilenies (La Gourbe, February 4, 1943): “Our defeat is moral. I summarize what the intellectuals of 70 are said. Is it a crime to say it? No, it's not anti patriotic. Mauriac said it "... or, citing a phrase from the solstice which has been criticized for him," we will see a Christian age…. (But) Will we be there to "betray" again? ", He comments:" The word " betray " is taken in an ironic sense since it is in quotes. These quotes indicate that it is not really a question of betraying, but of what the world calls betrayal and what the world calls betraying, it is abandoning itself at this rate of alternation on which each idea, the rotating wheel, is replaced by an opposite idea ”.

- Note dactylographed on the June solstice (" The way today even the meaning of my recent and non -political works, is knowingly distorted by a certain number of commentators (made in their articles by men as little benevolent towards me as MM. Gabriel Marcel and JJ Gautier, for example) continue the methods with which adversaries interpreted the Solstice of June. pass ").

- Summary of a judicial thesis. Montherlant evokes his military commitment during the war of 1914-1918, how he never stopped in his writings to predict a new conflict with Hitlerian Germany, pleading for a rearmament of France, violently appearing Antimunich in the September Equinox while specifying his conception of war considered as a sport, the defeat having to be accepted "sportingly " Filled with attacks against Vichy's policy, justifying its positioning during the war, its income, even claiming certain acts of "resistance" as having been able to subtract some young people from the STO. " I challenge that a single act, one line or a single point of me during the war, either against the Russians, or against the English, or against the Americans, or against the resistance. As for the Israelites, I only acted in their favor.

A - Refusal to withdraw from a new book from me a new favorable to the Jews, when this condition was imposed on me by a German publisher. B-Refusal to be part of the Balzac Prize jury, founded by a publisher to whom the Germans had given the Calmann-Lévy fund. C - Refusal to be part of the League of French Thought because the Jews were excluded. D. Petition to the government with a view to restoring the weekly Marianne , suspended for having published an article by an Israelite. E. Two interventions in favor of Mr. Benjamin Crémieux, arrested. Sentences favorable to the Israelites in works of month appeared during the occupation ».

Autograph letter signed by Henri d'Amfreville in Montherlant . October 24, 1946. Reporting comments heard at the Café de Flore in 1943 between two consumers about a Montherlant article published in La Gourbe . "Montherlant," said the young man, "he pleasantly handles the irony," he pays for the Germans. He added something like 'he had them. These words struck me and I even repeated them to several friends ”.

Dactylographed report of the National Committee for the Participation of Gens of Letters, Authors and Composers . Paris, October 29, 1946. Report established after an interview with Montherlant and the lawyer Maurice Ribet and the examination of the defense memory produced by the writer, pronouncing all the prohibitions of article 3 of the ordinance of May 30, 1945 for a period of one year from October 1, ^1944. It is notably a question of June solstice and articles published in German -inspired newspapers. It is notified that this "error of judgment", as the writer himself qualified his choices, "is particularly regrettable because of the important place that Montherlant occupies in our literature and the brilliance of his name. […] Apart from these facts, the attitude of M. de Montherlant as revealed by the file, cannot be criticized for him; that it should be taken into account that he has not published a new work since the Liberation. ” With typed list of documents presented to the treatment committee, including the list of articles published in La Gourbe , Le Matin , today, New French Revue , Comœdia and Germinal between 1940 and 1943. With the signed letter from the Secretary of the National Committee for the Wednes of Letters. November 8, 1946, giving advice from the decision of October 29.

Signed letter from Maurice Ribet to Montherlant . January 17, 1946. He asked Government Commissioner that the Montherlant Bank account was unlocked "since no investigation has been opened and will be opened to him in any capacity". Underline in red pencil.

Part signed by an inspector of direct contributions . April 18, 1946. relating to solidarity tax: "M. de Montherlant is not liable for the contribution of enrichment relating to the years of war".

2 autograph letters signed by the Swedish writer and linguist Ernst Bendz in Montherlant. Göteborg December 14 and 24, 1946. About a book he wants to devote to him to do him justice and after receiving his plea which explains the deep reasons for the Montherlant's abstention attitude. He is delighted to know it "rehabilitated" in the eyes of a few thousand fools. Some sentences highlighted in red pencil.

Signed letter from Maurice Ribet to Montherlant . November 14, 1946, sending it a copy of the decision rendered by the National Registration Committee. “The pronounced sanction is of pure form since it had passed out before even being born. I would obviously have, like you, no doubt, preferred a more courageous solution, but in legal matters, it is obviously necessary to be satisfied with what we offer you. This is the case where never to remember your chivalrous theory according to which, the fight finished, the adversaries must be reconciled while waiting for 'the wheel turns' ".

Autograph draft of a letter from Montherlant to Henry Muller. April 23, 1947. Montherlant asked him to confirm what he was aware of while he worked at Grasset: will of his German publisher to partially censor Mors and Vita by removing the new entitled a small Jew , which he refused - ban on the June solstice in Belgium and Holland. On the back of a letter from V. Bataille thanking Montherlant for his new book [ Carnets or the master of Santiago ?]. 

Autograph letter signed by Léon-Pierre Quint in Montherlant . March 10, 1958. Evocation of their meeting during one of the very rare stays of Quint, in Paris, in the spring of 1944. During this lunch, Quint had told Montherlant that he was Jewish. “I still see your movement, you seemed to be a friendly catastrophe. You must have thought silently: what should be bored. And you told me, I didn't know anything. If I remind you of this memory, it is to tell you my self -confidence then - total of course, because I never liked to play with fire. […] Today, I think I know less well than you are where you are. There is no occupation '. And you do not write news articles (whether it is the present or the past participle). It also seems to me that since 44/45, what others call your casualness has changed shape "... A declaration by L.-P. Quint, dating from 1945, about Montherlant will be inserted into the reissue of Solstice in 1976: "The only accusation that could be held against Henri de Montherlant is not to have taken the wrong side is not to have taken part at all".

Press or print cuts, laminated and annotated by Montherlant . Two articles concerning the treatment committee (May 1945 and April 1946). English translation of an article fragment of the resistant Jacques Debû-Bridel (published in Horizon in July 1945), accusing Montherlant and Chardonne of benefiting from revolting immunity when they played the game of the Germans, with article by the British Montgomery Belgion taking the defense of Montherlant. Extract from a report from the extraordinary assembly of the Société des Gens de Lettres (February 24, 1946).

Set of autograph or typed notes and manuscripts, for texts under an occupation (Gallimard, 1953) and for the memory (published posthumously).

- " notes from 1952 ". Brief priests for texts under an occupation (on the back of typed extracts of September equinox) .

- Autograph or typed fragments of some texts of this essay: - " A man was standing in a metro compartment. At the time of major press. He seemed to her that a woman cling to one of the uprights of metal resistant to all the turmoil of the crowd, had been killed rather than not staying against him ”. - A young French girl lit Goethe . - " Sometimes it seems to me that everything that happens in me is happening so far from all human understanding ". Severity for contemporary France . " We see now I think how the deepest of my nature led me to accept defeat for a time ."

- Work manuscript, partly typed, from the memory (30 sheets). Version presenting some variants with the final version. It can be noted for example that he repeatedly quotes the fact that he would have managed to subtract several young people in the service of compulsory work, mention which no longer appears in the text published in 1976. With a sheet titled by Montherlant: “ End of thesis in his first text. For text files ” (on the back of a letter from the director of the SACD, June 12, 1952, about a contract concerning the translation of the master of Santiago in Finnish language).