The Holy Week
the Holy Week of Louis Aragon, 1958.
the Holy Week reports the week from March 19th to 26th 1815 when Napoleon, which has just escaped from the isle of Elba, tries to take again the capacity. Essential character of the novel, the painter Theodore Géricault who, renonçant with his art to engage in the military career, accompanies the king Louis XVIII in his escape.
This novel, at the same time very rich of precise historical details, and at the same time romantic invention describes one period of the History where indecision is strong: Napoleon T he will reinstall himself durably, Louis XVIII to be driven out for always? the characters of the novel do not know it but the author, it, know it and it is in resonance with one time of its life where all it with what it grows, Communism, seems to collapse (after the revelations in 1956 of the XXe Congress of the Communist party of the Soviet Union). In this novel, the characters are painted with humanity, with all their complexity, Theodore Géricault initially, but also the marshal Berthier who défenestre with Bamberg (Franconie German) or the Duke of Richelieu which negotiates hard with the Congress of Vienna, or the Duke of Anzin, founder of the first mines in North, aristocrat and participant of the premises of the industrial revolution impelled by the middle-class. One also finds, at a meeting secretes in the valley of the Sum, of old Conventional wondering about the party to take in the situation created by the return of Napoleon. It is thus also a novel with political resonance even if he does not speak also any more directly about the 20th century as in his preceding novels; there are however incursions into this century since the author also reports how his political conscience developed during the occupation of the Saar in 1919, in particular during a strike of German minors with Vocklingen; it underlines at the same time how, in a singular way to each human being, that it is Louis Aragon, Theodore Géricault or whoever, can put in resonance the clean life of each one and the great History to lead to a political commitment, but also possibly with an artistic engagement.
This novel of transition will very open another fertile period of the work of Louis Aragon where he will always seek to exceed his limits, while remaining, through the tragedy, that it is political, or in love, after the death of Elsa Triolet in 1970, faithful to its will to know to like.
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