IN THE YEARS before World War II,
Roger Martin du Gard had acquired a reputation as an outstanding realist, in the same category as a Jules Romain, and as a master of "le roman fleuve." But by the end of the century, he had become, in spite of winning the Nobel Prize (1933) for the eight volumes of the family epic Les Thibault, something of a distinguished unknown, overshadowed by the vogue of existentialism and "le nouveau roman." The French text of Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort, edited by Andre Daspre, appeared in his collected works (Gallimard, Pleiade series, 1985).
(1) Liuetnant-Colonel de Maumort, by
Roger Martin du Gard, translated by Luc Brebion and Timothy Crouse; Alfred A.
Examples include Jean-Christophe (1904-12) by Romain Rolland, A la recherche du temps perdu (1913-27; Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust, Les Thibault (1922-40) by
Roger Martin du Gard, and Les Hommes de bonne volonte, (1932-46; Men of Good Will) by Jules Romains.
Reymont (Pol); 1925, George Bernard Shaw (Eng); 1926, Grazia Deledda (Ital); 1927, Henri Bergson (Fr); 1928, Sigrid Undset (Norw); 1929, Thomas Mann (Ger); 1930, Sinclair Lewis (U.S.); 1931, Erik Axel Karlfeldt (Sw); 1932, John Galsworthy (Eng); 1933, Ivan Gasse Bunin (Russ); 1934, Luigi Pirandello (Ital); 1935, none, 1936, Eugene O ' Neill (U.S.); 1937,
Roger Martin du Gard (Fr); 1938, Pearl S.
Autrement dit, il peut amuser la galerie mais se tait et detourne les yeux de la souffrance, de la torture, contrairement a d'autres intellectuels francais comme Sartre,
Roger Martin du Gard, Mauriac ou Malraux cites dans la lettre ouverte.
But this correspondence, concerned in large measure with publishing "business" and the administration of the NRF, cannot be compared in literary and intellectual significance with the rich exchanges, for example, between Gide and
Roger Martin du Gard or between Paulhan and Roger Caillois (1991; see WLT 66:3, p.