Maurice Barres

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.