Barrès, Maurice

Barrès, Maurice (môrēs` bärĕs`), 1862–1923, French novelist and nationalist politician. As an advocate of the supremacy of the individual self, he wrote the trilogy of novels Le Culte du moi (1888–91). Finding that cultivation of the ego called for action as well as analysis, Barrès turned to a nationalism that grew into vengeful hatred of Germany, fanned by strong racist feeling and by love for his native Lorraine. The trilogy Le Roman de l'énergie nationale (1897–1902) embodied his nationalistic views. The Sacred Hill (1913, tr. 1929) is a symbolic story showing Catholicism as a bar to nationalism. After World War I, Barrès remained a patriotic extremist. His reputation as a literary artist rests on his graceful, lyrical prose and his powers of analysis and description.

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Barrès, (Auguste-) Maurice

Barrès, 1906.

(credit: H. Roger-Viollet)

(born Aug. 19, 1862, Charmes-sur-Moselle, France—died Dec. 5, 1923, Paris) French writer and politician. He served in the Chamber of Deputies (1889–93) and became a strong nationalist. With Charles Maurras, he expounded the doctrines of the French Nationalist Party in two newspapers, and in his novels he expressed an individualism that included a deep-rooted attachment to one's native region. His series of novels titled Les Bastions de l'Est earned success as French propaganda during World War I.

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Barrès, Maurice 

Born Aug. 19, 1862, in Charmes, Vosges; died Dec. 4,1923, Neuilly-sur-Seine. French writer. Member of the Académie Française beginning in 1906.

Barrès’ novels In the Eyes of the Barbarians (1888), A Free Man (1889), and Berenice’s Garden (1891), which make up the trilogy The Cult of Myself, as well as the decadent book On Blood, Passion, and Death (1894), are characterized by mystical self-analysis and also by chauvinism. The comedy A Day in Parliament (1894; Russian translation, The Seamy Side, 1895) ridicules parliamentary government. The book The Enemy of the Laws (1893) contains a reactionary critique of socialism. The trilogy The Novel of National Energy, which consists of the novels The Uprooted (1897), The Call to Arms (1900), and Their Faces (1902), propounds racist ideas. The novel The Inspired Hill (1913) is pervaded by apologias for Catholicism. Barres was well known for his sarcastic attitude toward the Third Republic; however, all his accusations had a distinctly antidemocratic quality.

WORKS

Mes Cahiers, vols. 1–14. Paris, 1929–51.

REFERENCES

Rykova, N. Sovremennaia frantsuzskaia literatura. Leningrad, 1939.
Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 3. Moscow, 1959.
Aragon, L. “Barres v nashi dni.” Sobr. soch., vol. 10. Moscow, 1961.
Lalou, R. Maurice Barrés. Paris, 1950.
Domenach, J.-M. Barres par lui-même. Paris, 1954.
Zarach, A. Bibliographie barrésienne, 1881–1948. Paris, 1951.