André Thérive

Roger Jean Puthoste (19 June 1891 – 4 June 1967) was a French writer, novelist, journalist and literary critic. Initiator, with Léon Lemonnier, of the populist literary current, he was better known under pseudonyms, most notably André Thérive.

Biography

Family

André Thérive was born in Limoges, into a family of Maizey, in the Meuse department. Son of a Maizey landowner, his great-grandfather Jean-Martin Puthoste was born there in 1766 and made a career as an infantry officer, ending as a captain and knight of the Legion of Honour in 1804. Married with Marianne Victoire Comte, they were the parents of Antoine Puthoste born on December 30, 1802 in Tours (Indre-et-Loire), grandfather of the writer. He too had a military career, which he ended as a field officer. Lieutenant Antoine Puthoste was also made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1857. He died in 1862. From his marriage to Marie Cécile Bérard he was the father of Georges Puthoste (1844–1905), deputy director of the colonies, government commissioner for the New Hebrides, knight of the Legion of Honour; and of Ferdinand Puthoste, born in 1846 in Maizey and died in 1916. He was the father of André Thérive. He also had a military career which he ended as a principal veterinarian of 2nd class and officer of the Legion of Honour. He married Madeleine Laugelot.

Early life and education

André Thérive studied at the Collège Stanislas, at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and at the Faculté des Lettres in Paris, where he obtained the agrégation des lettres in 1913. When the 1914 war broke out, he was wounded at Ville-sur-Cousances on September 6, 1914. Evacuated for 53 days, he returned to the front and on December 14, 1914, took part in the ill-fated attempt to capture the Jumelles d'Ornes and in the battle of Marchéville on April 12, 1915. Once again wounded, he was evacuated for 47 days. He was appointed corporal on March 9, then sergeant (December 2, 1915) and finally sergeant major (January 17, 1917) in a machine gun company. His courage earned him the Croix de Guerre and the Military Medal.

Career overview

After the Great War, Thérive taught at the Collège Stanislas, published L'Expatrié (The Expatriate) begun during the war and was awarded the Balzac Prize in 1924 and a Blumenthal grant in 1926. From that date he became a literary critic for the Revue critique des idées et des livres and for L'Opinion and collaborated with the Nouveau Siècle. Between 1929 and 1942 he succeeded Paul Souday as literary critic for the newspaper Le Temps. From 1937 to 1942 he succeeded Jean Vignaud as president of the Association of Literary Critics. Close to the Croix-de-Feu (he collaborated to the organ of the movement), he founded with Léon Lemonnier the school called "populist" which he defined as a return of the novel "to the painting of class, to the study of social problems."

Although his independent character led him to stay away from any political militancy during the German occupation of France, in October 1942 he participated in the Weimar Book Week, which led to his arrest and banning by the National Writers' Committee at the Liberation. On April 1, 1942, a decree of the Vichy government had also created a Commission for the control of publishing paper, "responsible for distributing scarce paper among publishers. Among the forty or so accredited readers were Brice Parain, Dionys Mascolo, André Thérive, Louis de Broglie, Paul Morand, and Ramon Fernandez, who were often on opposite sides of the political spectrum. The secretary of the commission was none other than Marguerite Antelme, later known as Marguerite Duras."

After the World War II, he published his day-to-day reflections in a small book entitled L'Envers du décor, 1940-1944 (1948) and collaborated as a literary critic for many periodicals: La Revue des deux mondes, Rivarol, Paroles françaises, Carrefour, etc. Vice-president of the Union of Independent Intellectuals, this writer, essayist, columnist, critic, whose work is impressive and varied, died in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, a few days before his 77th birthday.

Thérive was made a knight of the Legion of Honour in 1931, as a "man of letters". It was the publisher Bernard Grasset, who had published most of his works and of which he was one of the leading authors, who proceeded to the reception in the order. And when he was promoted to Officer of the Legion of Honour in 1938, it was his writer friend Jacques Boulenger who gave him this decoration. He was also a knight of the Order of Leopold of Belgium and an officer of Polonia Restituta.

Ginette Guitard-Auviste described Thérive as having "a sharp face, as lively as a mongoose, dry, the voice fusing, cutting and ironic, the mouth small, a little pinched, the repartee always ready and percussive, Thérive it is the sagacity made man." She specified that "reserved in front of the novelist's work, Chardonne, always, will be amazed by the critic ″savant like a monster, intelligent to make you ashamed″. This fundamental independent was well suited to get along with the nonconformist Jacques Chardonne. When, for no other reason than having exercised, in Le Temps, during the Occupation, a literary criticism without complacency for anyone and made, with other artists, the second trip to Weimar organized by the occupying power, Thérive was ″purged″, to Chardonne indignation. Michel Déon wrote: ″Thérive is the great victim of the purge (among the living). Perhaps the only one. There is nothing to reproach him for during the Occupation. He behaved like an anarchist, shouting against Vichy, against the occupier, against everything; but afterwards he scared people. One should never scare people. One should never be afraid... You can kill your enemy, but you must not frighten him."

Works

Novels and novellas

• L'expatrié (1921)
• Le voyage de M. Renan (1922)
• Le plus grand péché (1924)
• La revanche (1925)
• Les souffrances perdues (1926)
• Sans âme (1928)
• Le charbon ardent (1929)
• Noir et or (1930)
• Anna (1932)
• Le troupeau galeux, chronique véritable d'Antoinette Bourignon (1934)
• Fils du jour (1936)
• Cœurs d'occasion (1937)
• La fin des haricots (1938)
• Tendre Paris (1944)
• Comme un voleur, À l'enseigne du cheval ailé (1947)
• Les voix du sang (1955)
• L'homme fidèle (1963)
• Le baron de paille (1965)

Non-fiction

• Poèmes d'Aminte (odes et élégies) (1922)
• Le français, langue morte? (1923)
• Les soirées du grammaire club (1924; with Jacques Boulenger)
• J.-K. Huysmans, son œuvre (1924)
• Le retour d'Amazan ou une histoire de la littérature française (1925)
• Les portes de l'enfer (1925)
• Opinions littéraires (1925)
• Georges Duhamel ou l'intelligence du cœur (1925)
• Essai sur Abel Hermant (1926)
• Du siècle romantique (1927)
• Le Limousin pittoresque (1929; illustrated by Pierre Lissac)
• Querelles de langage (1929)
• Le Parnasse (1929)
• Blason de la Pologne (1929)
• Kisling (1929)
• Supplément aux caractères ou mœurs de ce siècle de La Bruyère (1930)
• Lettres parisiennes sur les divertissements et l'amour (1930)
• Frères d'armes (1930)
• Galerie de ce temps (1931)
• Discours prononcé à l'Académie Française par M. le Vicomte Henri de Bornier pour lé réception de M. Emile Zola et recueilli par... (1930)
• Chantiers d'Europe (1933)
• "Feu Minouchet," L'Image, No. 56 (7 Avril 1933)
• Anthologie non classique des anciens poètes grecs (1934)
• Hommage à Eugène Dabit (1939; collaboration)
• L'avenir de la science (1941; with Louis de Broglie, Raymond Charmet, Pierre Devaux, Daniel Rops, Antonin Sertillanges)
• Moralistes de ce temps (1948)
• L'Envers du décor, 1940-1944 (1948)
• Hommage à René Benjamin (1949)
• Essai sur les trahisons (1951; preface by Raymond Aron)
• Libre histoire de la langue française (1954)
• Clotilde de Vaux ou La déesse morte (1957)
• Christianisme et lettres modernes (1715–1880) (1958)
• Moralistes de ce temps (1958; studies on Maurice Maeterlinck, Julien Benda, Louis Lavelle, Henry de Montherlant, André Gide, Louis Dimier, Georges Bernanos)
• Procès de langage (1962)
• Entours de la foi (1966)

External links

• Works by André Thérive at Gallica