Judith Lyon-Caen
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris
Abstract
In 1950, Jean Cayrol (1910-2005), a poet and a novelist, prisoner in Mauthausen during the Second World War and winner of the 1946 Renaudot Prize for a novel dealing with the life after the concentration camp, wrote a preface for Balzac’s Illusions perdues in a new edition of La Comédie humaine under the direction of Albert Béguin. This article seeks to understand the stakes of this very peculiar act of writing, which aimed at restoring the possibility of reading La Comédie humaine in the post-war world and which made of the Balzacian novel a habitable house for returning to life.
Keywords
Illusions Perdues – J. Cayrol – A. Béguin – Post-War studies – Second World War Memory
DOI: 10.13131/2611-9757.suitefrancaise.n2.1
