Georges Duhamel

For the former Quebec politician, see Georges Duhamel (politician).

Georges Duhamel
Georges Duhamel, circa 1930
Born	(1884-06-30)June 30, 1884 Paris, France
Died	Valmondois, Seine-et-Oise, France
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	French
Genre	Novel
Notable works	Civilisation (1918) Vie et Aventures de Salavin (1920–1932) Chronique des Pasquier (1933–1945)
Spouse	Blanche Albane
Children	3
Signature

Georges Duhamel (/ˌdjuːəˈmɛl/; French: [dy.amɛl]; 30 June 1884 – 13 April 1966) was a French doctor, writer and poet. Made famous by his book Civilisation (which won him the Prix Goncourt in 1918) and the Chronique des Pasquier, he was elected in 1935 as a member of the Académie française, of which he was perpetual secretary from 1944 to 1946. Georges Duhamel was also the father of the composer Antoine Duhamel and the grandfather of the journalist Jérôme Duhamel.

He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-seven times.

Biography

Early life

Georges Duhamel was born near Place d'Italie in the 13th arrondissement of Paris on 30 June 1884. He was the third child of a family which struggled to survive on the income of his unstable father. His parents, Pierre-Émile Duhamel (1849-1928), and Marie Emma Pionnier (1854-1939), were both herbalists. The strains and tensions of these early years are reflected in his famous autobiographical novel Le Notaire du Havre (1933), the first book of his Pasquier saga.

After attending the Lycée Buffon in Paris, Duhamel studied at the lycée in Nevers, and finally, he attended the Institution Roger-Momenheim. In spite of this childhood disrupted by numerous crises, which on far too many occasions caused the Duhamel family to relocate abruptly, Georges nonetheless passed his baccalauréat in 1902. His first choice of career was to become a doctor, although he had a great love of literature and the arts and continued to pursue these interests also.

Members of the Abbey of Créteil (1906). Foreground: Charles Vildrac, René Arcos, Albert Gleizes, Henri-Martin Barzun, and Alexandre Mercereau. Background: Georges Duhamel, Berthold Mahn, and Jacques d'Otémar

Blanche Albane, portrait by Henri Doucet (1908)

Abbaye de Créteil

Between 1906 and 1909 he founded an artistic community l'Abbaye de Créteil with Charles Vildrac (who would become his brother in law). The group brought together poets, writers, musicians and painters into a phalanstery at Créteil, in the suburbs of Paris.

During a theatrical performance at the abbey, Duhamel met and fell in love with actress Blanche Albane, with whom he would maintain an important correspondence. He married her on December 2, 1909 in Paris. They had three sons together: Bernard (1917–1996, a pediatric surgeon), Jean (1919–1998, a proctologist) and Antoine (1925–2014, a noted composer).

From 1910 to 1914, soon after earning a double degree in medicine and biological chemistry, he worked on the properties of metals in the colloidal state for the Clin pharmaceutical laboratories in Paris, directed by the bibliophile Léon Comar, while giving free rein to his literary aspirations. While his plays were represented at the Odéon theater in 1912, he was given a position as editor of the literary review Mercure de France. Duhamel became one of the authors of their publishing house, which he then directed for a few years, upon the death of Alfred Valette in 1935.

First World War

When the First World War was declared, Duhamel signed up and worked as an army surgeon for four years, often in dangerous situations. He served in the western front, taking part in the Battle of Verdun, and the Battle of the Somme. This painful experience provided the subject matter for two narratives which brought him immediate success, Vie des martyrs and Civilization. The press compared the former to Henri Barbusse's novel Le Feu, winner of the Goncourt Prize in 1916. The later book came out in April 1918 under the pseudonym Denis Thévenin, because Duhamel did not want to be accused of taking advantage of the war to make literature. Civilization earned him the Goncourt Prize on December 11, 1918.

Once he returned to civilian life, Duhamel dedicated himself to literature and defending human civilisation. In 1919, he found two spots in the Val-d'Oise where he would henceforth spend his summers (Sausseron Valley and Valmondois).

In 1920, he was invited by Adrienne Monnier to give an important conference on the theme of War and Literature at the Maison des Amis du livre. According to literary scholar Antoine Compagnon, it was at this point that Duhamel created the notion of "literature of testimony," concerned with the rapid literary disinterest of the Great War, which could lead to "historical amnesia [...] and to denaturing the meaning of History" in favor of "conventional literature" — an analysis which will be repeated two years later by Maurice Genevoix in the foreword to the book Les Éparges.

Recognition and literary cycles

He then wrote Confession de minuit, which would become the first book of his multi-volume roman-fleuve Vie et aventures de Salavin (1920-1932), considered by many literary critics as a precursor of existentialist questions that would develop more than fifteen years later with Camus in La Chute (1956), and Sartre in La Nausée (1938).

Caricature of Georges Duhamel, by "Don"

It was in the 1930s that he began his second novel series, the Chronique des Pasquier, which would make him famous, and is sometimes compared to Les Rougon-Macquart of Émile Zola or to Le Thibault of Roger Martin du Gard.

In 1935, Duhamel was elected at his second attempt to the Académie française, following the death of G. Lenotre. His official reception took place on June 25, 1936 with a welcoming speech by Henry Bordeaux.

In 1937, he was elected to the French Académie Nationale de Médecine. In 1938, due to his anti-war stance, Duhamel was replaced by Jacques Bernard. With François Mauriac, who spearheaded it, he clearly but in vain opposed the election of Charles Maurras to the Académie française.

Between 1930 and 1940 he traveled to many conferences in France and abroad, speaking brilliantly of French language and culture as well as promoting the idea of a civilisation built on the human heart rather than technological progress.

Second World War

Duhamel described himself as "a pacifist and an internationalist." During the Second World War, Duhamel's work was banned by the Germans. He showed courage in his opposition to the occupation and the Petainist faction of the Académie française, later receiving public praise from Général de Gaulle.

After the war, Duhamel was named president of the Alliance française and returned to public speaking on French culture. He built up numerous schools of the Alliance. Duhamel's health deteriorated from 1960 and he reduced his activities.

He died in Valmondois on April 13, 1966.

Works

General

• Vie des martyrs (1917)
• Civilisation (1918) (Prix Goncourt)
• La Possession du monde (1919)
• Les Hommes abandonnés (1921)
• Vie et Aventures de Salavin (5 volumes; 1920–32)
  • I. Confession de minuit
  • II. Deux hommes
  • III. Journal de Salavin
  • IV. Le Club des Lyonnais
  • V. Tel qu'en lui même
• Les Plaisirs et les Jeux (1922)
• Le Prince Jaffar (1924)
• La Pierre d'Horeb (1926)
• Lettres au Patagon (1926)
• Le Voyage de Moscou (1927)
• Les Sept Dernières Plaies (1928)
• La Nuit d'orage (1928)
• Scènes de la vie future (1930)
• Géographie cordiale de l'Europe (1931)
• Les Jumeaux de Vallangoujard (1931)
• Querelles de famille (1932)
• Chronique des Pasquier (10 volumes; 1933–45)
  • I. Le Notaire du Havre
  • II. Le Jardin des bêtes sauvages
  • III. Vue de la terre promise
  • IV. La Nuit de la Saint Jean
  • V. Le Désert de Bièvre
  • VI. Les Maîtres
  • VII. Cécile parmi nous
  • VIII. Le Combat contre les ombres
  • IX. Suzanne et les Jeunes Hommes
  • X. La Passion de Joseph Pasquier
• Fables de mon jardin (1936)
• Mémorial de la guerre blanche (1939)
• Positions Françaises (1940)
• Lieu d'asile (1940)
• Chronique des Saisons Amères (1944)
• La Musique consolatrice (1944)
• Paroles de médecin (1944)
• Lumières sur ma vie (5 volumes; 1944–53)
  • I. Inventaire de l'abime
  • II. Biographie de mes fântômes
  • III. Le Temps de la recherche
  • IV. La Pesée des âmes
  • V. Les Espoirs et les Épreuves
• Twinka (1945)
• Souvenirs de la Vie du Paradis (1946)
• Emaille au vent (1947)
• Le Bestiaire et l'Herbier (1948)
• Le Voyage de Patrice Périot (1950)
• Cri des Profondeurs (1951)
• Chronique de Paris au temps des Pasquier (1951)
• Manuel du protestataire (1952)
• Vues sur Rimbaud (1952)
• Le Japon entre la tradition et l'avenir (1953)
• Les Voyageurs de l'espérance (1953)
• Refuges de la lecture (1954)
• La Turquie, nouvelle puissance d'Occident (1954)
• L'Archange de l'aventure (1955)
• Croisade contre le cancer (1955)
• Les Compagnons de l'Apocalypse (1956)
• Pages de mon journal intime (1956)
• Israël, clef de l'Orient (1957)
• Problèmes de l'heure (1957)
• Le Complexe de Théophile (1958)
• Travail, ô mon seul repos (1959)
• Nouvelles du sombre empire (1960)
• Problèmes de civilisation (1961)
• Traité du départ (1961)

Poetry

• Des légendes, des batailles (1907)
• L’homme en tête (1909)
• Selon ma loi (1910)
• Compagnons (1912)
• Elégies (1920)
• Anthologie de la poèsie lyrique française (1923)
• Les voix du vieux monde (1925)

Criticism

• Propos Critiques (1912)
• Paul Claudel (1913)
• Les Poètes et la Poésie (1914)
• Maurice de Vlaminck (1927)
• Défense des Lettres (1937)
• Confessions sans Pénitence (1941)

Theatre

• La lumière (1911)
• Dans l'ombre des statues (1912)
• Le combat (1913)
• Le cafard (1916)
• l'œuvre de athlètes (1920)
• Quand vous voudrez (1921)

Correspondence

• Correspondance de Guerre: 1914-1919 (2007–2008; Georges and Blanche Duhamel)
• Correspondance, 1912-1942 (2014; Romain Rolland and Georges Duhamel)

Translated into English

• In the Shadow of Statues (1914)
• The Combat (1915)
• The New Book of Martyrs (1918)
• Civilisation, 1914-1918 (1919)
• The Heart's Domain (1919)
• America: The Menace (1931)
• Confession de Minuit (1933; reprinted as Confession at Midnight, 1936)
• Young Pasquier (1935; reprinted as Caged Beasts, 1970)
• The Fortunes of the Pasquiers (1935)
• In Sight of the Promised Land (1935)
• Salavin (1936)
• In Defence of Letters (1938)
• The Pasquier Chronicles (1938; reprinted as St. John's Eve, 1970)
• The White War of 1938 (1939)
• Days of Delight (1939)
• The French Position (1940)
• Cécile Pasquier (1940)
• Suzanne and Joseph Pasquier (1946)
• Patrice Periot (1952)
• Cry Out of the Depths (1953)
• News from Havre (1964)
• The House in the Desert (1970)

See also

• Abbaye de Créteil
• Criticism of technology
• Unanimism

References

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Further reading

• Barjon, Louis (1960). Mondes d'Écrivains, Destinées d'Hommes. Paris: Casterman.
• Claudel, Paul et al. (1937). Duhamel et Nous. Paris: Bloud et Gay.
• Picon, Gaëtan (mai 1956). "Sur l’œuvre de Georges Duhamel," Mercure de France, pp. 86–91.

External links

• Works by Georges Duhamel at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Georges Duhamel at Gallica
• Works by Georges Duhamel at Hathi Trust
• Works by Georges Duhamel at JSTOR
• Fables de Mon Jardin