Contents of the dossier: 1936, arts and literature

• Henri Béhar The Turning Point of Dreams p. 3
• Jean Albertini At the Hour of Ferment p. 12
• Michel Bressolette The Hope of a New Christendom p. 19
• Henri/Michel Lefebvre/Trebitsch The Aborted Philosophical Renewal of the Thirties p. 29
• Suzanne Ravis Realism in Debate p. 42
• Anne Roche The Pink Terror p. 50
• Francis Marmande From Contre-Attaque to Acéphale: Towards the Real Revolution p. 59
• Jean-Yves Debreuille When Action Contests the Dream: Point of View on Poetry in 1936 p. 69
• Jean-Yves Guérin Traveling Through the Journals p. 78
• Danielle/Guy Bonnaud-Lamotte/Palayret A New Stage of Commune p. 88
• Daniel Leuwers Gide's Returns p. 97
• Jacques Madaule Mauriac and Bernanos, a Moral Choice p. 99
• Roger Bordier The Elephants of the October Group p. 101
• Wolfgang Klein The Naive Hope p. 107
• Serge Fauchereau The Plastic Arts, a Community Concern p. 114
• Jean-Pierre Jeancolas Cinema, or Light Before the Mists p. 119
• Lucienne Cantaloube-Ferrieu There's Joy p. 131
• Frédéric Robert From the Marseillaise to Romain Rolland's Fourteenth of July p. 134
• Mario Luzi For the Baptism of Our Fragments p. 140
• Milo De Angelis Land of the Face p. 144
• Pierre-Bérenger Biscaye Image of a Dwelling p. 147
• Henri Martraix A Cruel Pleasure p. 148
• Gérard Cartier The Desert and the World p. 153

Download the PDF of my article

The place of my article, at the head of this special issue of the journal Europe, means that I took responsibility for soliciting the contributions composing the central dossier, intended to retrace a crucial year for our country. The title of my intervention was suggested to me by Charles Dobzynski, a great connoisseur of Aragon's work (his godfather in letters) as well as Lenin's. It takes up an article by Aragon bearing the same title in the same journal, in 1957, presenting a dossier on Soviet literatures. Obviously, my friend Charles was questioning with me what had accompanied the Popular Front on the artistic and literary level, while turning against Stalinist measures.

Download the PDF: Aragon the turning point of dreams

Here is the gloss provided by Pierre Juquin, twenty years later, to Aragon's article bearing this title, published in the October-November 1957 issue of Europe: "Seeker of the marvelous, Aragon passes from the surrealist pamphlet A Wave of Dreams to the formula borrowed from Lenin: 'The Turning Point of Dreams'. Even after the revelations about Stalin, he deciphers in the USSR the figure of hope. The History of the USSR ends with a soaring on the near triumph of communism." (Aragon, a French Destiny, 2005). However, all the contributions analyze very precisely the reversal that dreams undergo in this year 1936, without believing in the triumph of Leninism in France.

Review:

Text reprinted in: History of Literary Facts, Classiques Garnier, 2022, pp. 39-48.

Extensions: Bernard Banoun, Michaela Enderle-Ristori. The Turning Point of Dreams. translating into French in 1936. Presses université François Rabelais, Tours, 2021.