Aragon believes that the task of literature is to explain the whole personality of man, and he feels that both history and love are its constituting factors. It is both symbolic and significant that it was through love that he discovered the existence of others and he never tires of recalling that he owes this discovery to his wife, Elsa Triolet…. His path to commitment is the path of a poet who has constantly sought inspiration from reality. Personal lyricism and social responsibility are happily blended in his art…. (p. 82)

[Louis Aragon], is a little older than the present century, but it is difficult to think of him as an old man. Youthful passion is still the main feature of his personality, and in everything he writes it is always the young poet whom we see, impatient, impulsive and unpredictable, indelibly marked by what he calls "la couleur des années vingt", "the hue of the twenties". In those days, he was a fiery young man, associated at first with Dadaism, and then with surrealism, eager to express his rebellion against hypocrisy and cynicism. (p. 84)

Surrealists tended to despise prose and the novel and to condemn descriptions of real places as incompatible with automatic writing. It was therefore a clear sign of Aragon's independence that he decided to shock his friends and publish [Le Paysan de Paris (The peasant from Paris)],… based, not on an imaginary city, but on the Paris which he loved so much, and which he never ceased to love. He revealed many unknown aspects of the capital, and although his style is in the best surrealist manner—lyrical, poetic and spontaneous—the source of his inspiration is thoroughly realistic. The distinctive qualities of his future poetry are already there, for he lets his imagination run wild, whilst keeping his feet firmly planted on the ground. The book contains many other indications of the themes which he later developed and which helped him to become a committed writer, such as his passion for "la lumière moderne de l'insolite" ("the modern light of the unusual"), his belief that poetry is a way of life, ("je mène une vie poétique") ("I lead a poetic life"), his conviction, even before meeting Elsa, that love is the highest individual passion, and his awareness of the limitations of philosophical idealism. One can regard the book as the starting-point of Aragon's subsequent evolution. (p. 86)

Although Aragon joined the Communist Party in 1927, he did not immediately break with the surrealist group. The poems which he wrote between 1927 and 1929, gathered under the title La Grande Gaité (Great Fun), show that his growing awareness of the "real world" had not yet killed his surrealist beliefs. He had, in fact, divided his life into two separate compartments, political and poetic, and he was not yet regarding his commitment as an integral part of his whole self. The Traité du style (Treatise on Style), published in 1928, displays the same internal struggle. (p. 88)

[Aragon] knew, theoretically, that the greatest poetic dreams spring from reality, but his own temperament and background were such that theory was not enough to discipline his imagination. The chief result of his new approach was a series of novels to which he gave the general title of "Le Monde réel". In writing them, he combined his personal recollections and his social experience, drawing upon many events of his own childhood and youth, and transposing social and political scenes which he had directly witnessed. Although he intended his novels to have a political significance, his main concern was with private individuals. The clue to his approach is provided by what he says in the third novel of the series, Les Voyageurs de l'impériale, translated into English under the title of Passengers of Destiny. He breaks through his narrative (a favourite device of his) in order to remark that private life may appear to follow its own course, "without any relation to public affairs, to the history of the world", but that, in fact, it is "inscribed in this history, it derives from it its essential features". (pp. 90-1)

The first novel, Les Cloches de Bâle …, deals with the position of women in bourgeois society…. The author's obvious intention was to portray the capitalist world as one in which there can be no genuine love. This was necessary before he could show the contrast which, in his view, socialism affords. (p. 91)

Les Cloches de Bâle is badly constructed, as there are no real connections between its various parts. The pages devoted to Clara have all the appearance of a contrived moral which is meant to give the novel a socialist message. No attempt is made to describe her own evolution, and, in the main, Aragon's aim (to describe how a few members of the bourgeois class embrace the cause of the workers) is not fulfilled. (pp. 92-3)

His next novel, Les Beaux Quartiers …, shows a great improvement…. Aragon made no mystery of the fact that with this "national moral" he was carrying out the Party line as it had just been defined by Maurice Thorez when he stressed the bonds between patriotism and the struggle of the working class. The novel is not a particularly good illustration of this line, as it fails to show convincingly why Armand had to go to work in a factory in order to become a good Frenchman. On the other hand, it depicts fairly well the anti-national character of high finance. As a socialist novel, it is far more successful, particularly in its description of the dual personality of those who have to live in a society torn by class contradictions. (p. 93)

In Les Voyageurs de l'impériale, completed just before the second world war, the theme is the need for commitment. Once again, it is with the help of a negative character that the author makes his point. Pierre Mercadier, one of Aragon's most tragical figures, refuses commitment in the name of freedom….

Mercadier ends up alone, "… without any friends, without any purpose." It is his son Pascal who, at the end of the book, draws the obvious moral that refusal to face facts leads to disaster, both personal and social, and he blames his father's generation for having made war possible thanks to "their superb contempt for politics." The novel contains two other lessons. One, illustrated by the fate of Mercadier, is that complete selfishness destroys the possibility of love, and the other is given by the painter Blaise d'Ambérieux when he asserts that art is one way of contributing to the future happiness of mankind, provided it aims at a truthful portrayal of reality.

Aurélien, the fourth novel of the series, was entirely written during the war, but only saw the light of day in 1945. Its central theme is love, and a number of Aragon's friends, including some narrow-minded Soviet critics, were shocked at the thought that he had found nothing better to do in those years. (pp. 94-5)

The last novel belonging to the "Monde réel" series, Les Communistes, appeared after the war. It was intended to be the epic of the French people's struggle against the Nazis and was to cover the whole period from 1939 to 1945. Only the first section (in six volumes) has appeared so far, and it ends in June 1940…. According to Aragon, the reception of the novel confirmed its central thesis, which was that the progressive writer has to contend with the hostility of open foes as well as with the incomprehension of some of his friends. This, he claimed, is why he is reluctant to complete a novel which he intended as a "monument" to his cause…. (p. 95)

As it stands, Les Communistes is the climax of "Le Monde réel"…. Aragon tells the story of a large number of characters, many of whom had appeared in previous novels. Among the new ones, the two who stand out are Cécile Wisner, who is married to a pro-Fascist industrialist, and Jean de Moncey, a young lad whose evolution recalls that of Armand Barbentane. Their love story is one of the main themes of the book. So is their slow, very slow, progress towards what Aragon calls the "light", although neither of them is a Communist or becomes a conscious Marxist at the end of the novel. The title Les Communistes is perhaps misleading, for the book is in no way a history of the French Communist Party during the second world war. What it is meant to convey is that the Communists' policy expressed in a systematic way the feelings and interests of France's citizens, workers, peasants, middle classes, and even some big industrialists, who were determined to hold back the invaders. It is true that Aragon takes Communist policy at its face value and never questions its motives, but his account of the situation is historically accurate. (p. 96)

It was the second world war which re-kindled Aragon's poetic flame and gave him an opportunity of expressing his militant patriotism. His love for France strikingly recalls Péguy's feelings, for both poets are attached to the soil of their country and to its traditions. The poems which Aragon wrote from 1939 to 1945 had no other ambition than to contribute to the fight of Free France against the Germans. The first book to appear was Le Crève-coeur (Heartbreak), in which the poet expresses his sorrow at being separated from Elsa and his anger at the betrayal of his country. (pp. 98-9)

Lastly, Aragon published La Diane française (French Reveille), in which he sang of the patriots' coming victory. It contains some of his best known poems, such as La Rose et le reseda (The rose and the mignonette), dedicated to Catholics and Communists …; [and] Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux (There is no such thing as a happy love), in which he recalls all the suffering that must be endured in order to enjoy a few moments' happiness…. (p. 101)

[It] has been truly said of La Semaine sainte that, in dealing with the past it is basically directed towards the future. It is the work of a committed writer who has himself taken sides in the issues of his age, and is working, according to his lights, for the future. (p. 102)

In the last few years, Aragon's work has tended to become increasingly autobiographical and personal. The public man has gradually made way for the private individual, with his sorrows and his hopes. The explanation that this approach is to be expected from an old man may be partly true, but the poet's main purpose seems to be an anticipated repudiation of the edifying picture that well-meaning friends might be tempted to draw of him, particularly after his death. Commitment, he protests, has not reduced him to being the impersonal spokesman of a cause…. (pp. 103-04)

[Les Yeux et la mémoire (Eyes and Memory)] is the first book published by Aragon which consists of a series of poems around a central theme—in this case, the author's political philosophy and his committed struggles. Significantly, it is with an assertion that life is worth living that he starts, and after listing all "the miseries that flesh is heir to", he concludes an early poem with the following line,

      In spite of everything I shall say that this life was beautiful.

Aragon's optimism … is not achieved by denying tragedy but by transcending it, and although in subsequent books the accent is definitely on tragedy, the difference is only one of emphasis…. Les Yeux et la mémoire strikes a more confident note than the poems and novels which followed it…. (p. 104)

The political autobiography was followed in 1956 by a more personal one, [the poem] Le Roman inachevé (The Unfinished Novel)…. The poem lacks the central theme of its predecessor; instead, what unfolds before us is a succession of events viewed and experienced subjectively. (p. 107)

It is not only because of its subject matter that Le Roman inachevé represents a break from Aragon's previous poems, but because it illustrates his skill in handling the widest variety of metres. These correspond to his various moods and they are a magnificent proof both of the deeply human content of commitment and of the fact that in "littérature engagée" technical achievement is far from despised. The traditional metre of French poetry, the alexandrine, still keeps a privileged place, as if to stress Aragon's rejection of the surrealist dogma that it was a "decadent" metre, but many others find their way into the poem, including blank verse, free verse and the prose poem. (p. 108)

For Aragon, taking stock of reality does not only involve reviewing his past life, but also reflecting on the meaning of his art and on the purpose of his commitment. In a remarkable poem published in 1960, Les Poètes (Poets), he tries to divine the secret of poetic creation, drawing upon the experience of other poets, past and present, as well as his own. Once more, it is a new and unexpected aspect of Aragon which is revealed. This is particularly the case when we hear him say that his chief passion "in this age of adventures, of downfalls, of crashes, in this age of tragedies," has been the magic of language, the fascination of translating poetic images into words and vice-versa. After the initial moment of surprise, of shock even, the meaning becomes clear: what has always appealed to him is the reflection of reality embodied in language and in the images of poetry. (p. 111)

The whole purpose of Les Poètes is to claim for poetry its rightful place in the new world of technological and scientific changes. Poetry, together with science, increases human knowledge and enriches human experience, and many of Aragon's metaphors are borrowed from the latest scientific discoveries…. Although the confident optimism of Les Yeux et la mémoire has gone, the message is still one of hope: struggles and disappointments will never end, but it is up to the future to contradict the poet's pessimism. (pp. 111-12)

[J'abats mon jeu (I lay my cards on the table)] contains most of the texts which explain Aragon's purpose and method in La Semaine sainte, as well as a number of others dealing with the issue of socialist realism…. [The spirit of the book] is one of open-mindedness towards all genuine artistic and literary efforts. Aragon approaches the work of other writers without any dogmatic preconceptions, and says he asks nothing from a work of art but the power to make him "feel dizzy". (p. 113)

It is because of his commitment, not in spite of it, that Aragon can write in this vein. For him, "socialist realism" is but one way—the best one, naturally!—of depicting 'the real world'; yet it can afford not to be an exclusive club because the battle it is waging is not confined to the field of literature…. (pp. 113-14)

In 1965, Aragon made a critical reassessment of his past in a novel which he called La Mise à mort—a title which literally means 'putting to death', as if he meant to convey that he was striking a death blow at his own illusions, his own mistakes and his own limitations. He achieved his effect by a remarkable blending of humour and tragedy…. We begin to realize that there is more than one theme in the novel, and [later] the author intervenes in order to ask aloud, "What is the real subject of my book, a man who has lost his reflection in the mirror, the life of Anthoine Célèbre and Ingeborg d'Usher, song, realism or jealousy? It might also be a novel about the plurality of the human self, about fictional creation, or a novel about a novelist. Choose for yourselves." (pp. 114-15)

La Mise à mort is the sequel to Les Yeux et la mémoire and Le Roman inachevé, as it continues Aragon's exploration of his past…. [Aragon] subjects his youth to merciless self-criticism, and the pages in which he condemns his blind acceptance of Soviet propaganda in the thirties are among the most bitter he ever wrote. Yet this is not the work of a renegade. Its tragic and moving character is rather due to the undying loyalty which Aragon displays—he remains attached to his cause, despite the monstrous distortions which it suffered, and one does not have to be a Communist in order to respect his grief as well as his constancy. (pp. 115-16)

It is impossible to summarize La Mise à mort, or even to mention all its themes. At times, it is a straightforward novel, at others a lyrical poem, yet at others a critical reflection on life, on literature, on love, and lastly, as if to complicate matters still further, it contains three short stories, said to have been written by Anthoine, but without any immediate link with the main "plot". All one can do is to single out a few salient points, without claiming to have exhausted the subject. In addition to realism, an idea which recurs time and again in the book is the dissociation of personality, the fact that a man is split up into two or more different parts. (pp. 116-17)

Clearly linked with this theme of the plurality of the self is the misadventure of the character who has lost his reflection in the mirror. This allegory can have different meanings. On one level, it represents the end of Anthoine's individualism, the fact that he has begun to think of others instead of himself. (p. 117)

"Optimism" would not be a bad word with which to conclude this brief account of Aragon's evolution, provided it were qualified. Aragon's optimism could almost be called "deferred optimism", in the sense that it is a belief in the future happiness of mankind, "that great posthumous happiness", as he called it in Le Roman inachevé, which will blossom out of tragedy itself and will be the fruit of the sacrifices made by the present generation. (p. 125)

Aragon's position about the relationship between form and content can be expressed as follows: Form is the tool through which a new content must be communicated. This attitude leads him to make a serious attempt to develop form, to experiment with all the possibilities available in French prosody, to suit his metre to the various moods he wishes to convey, to make rhymes tell their own story, and generally speaking, to make such a thorough study of poetic language that it can be handled by him as a scientist handles a complex piece of machinery whose technical secrets he has completely mastered.

His conception can best be understood by seeing it as a dialectical process in which the first step is the assertion of the poet's freedom to choose the form he likes; the second step is the apparent negation of that freedom (insistence on the labour required for good poetry); whereas the third one is the "negation of the negation", i.e. liberty on a higher level, which combines the freedom of selection and of inspiration with supreme workmanship. The guiding thread of the poet throughout these various steps is that poetry is language, a means of communication. (p. 217)

Aragon's second step concerns the mastery of technique, for a poet must strive after perfection. This is not an intellectual pastime for its own sake, but a necessary consequence of commitment: if the nature of the message determines the choice of form, its importance requires the poet to tackle his verse in such a way that it yields the best of itself. The paradoxical result is thus reached that "littérature engagée", or rather, despite Aragon's dislike for the phrase, "poésie engagée" demands perfection of form on behalf of "engagement" itself…. We therefore find the poet laboriously at work in front of his writing desk, handling his poetic devices as the craftsman his tools or the artist his paint-brushes. From Le Crève-coeur to Le Fou d'Elsa, there is hardly a line of his left to chance. All his poems reveal an increasing mastery of poetic technique, achieved as a result of painstaking effort. But it is not enough to work hard in order to produce great poetry: the poet's genius consists in making one forget all the labour involved. (p. 218)

Aragon proves his freedom by selecting the metres and rhymes which best correspond to his ideas and makes them fulfil their role in conveying his message. There is a science of poetry, and if a writer does not want to master that science, he is perfectly free not to become a poet or to choose other means of expression; but if he is spontaneously led to choose poetry, he does not give up his freedom by working at his poem and by making his instrument as effective as possible—he rather establishes his freedom on a solid basis. (p. 219)

With regard to rhymes, two features should be mentioned. First, his endeavour to introduce more flexibility into French rhyming patterns in order that poetry should reflect the new world in which we live, that its language should express the scientific and technological revolution of our time, whilst still remaining musical. In order to achieve this, Aragon believes that new rhymes must be found, and he suggests in particular the modern "rime enjambée" (now known as the "Aragon rhyme"), in which a sound is carried over from the end of one line to the beginning of the other …, and the "complex rhyme" which allows one word to rhyme with many others…. The whole object is to achieve an effect of surprise, which is not to be despised since it arrests the reader's attention, and mainly to prevent the poet from rejecting certain words which are important from the point of view of the theme, but which could not find their place at the end of a line according to conventional rules. Moreover, the discontinuity of the above rhymes is particularly suited to express the realities of the twentieth century. Secondly, together with novelty, Aragon believes in tradition because it represents a link between the national past and the present…. [Aragon is] almost alone among modern poets to have used so many rhymes which recall the mediaeval epoch, the glorious period of Classicism and the early Romantics. (pp. 219-20)

M. Adereth, "Aragon" and "Poetry and Commitment," in his Commitment in Modern French Literature: A Brief Study of "Littérature Engagée" in the Works of Péguy, Aragon, and Sartre (© M. Adereth 1967), Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1967, pp. 81-126, 209-22.∗