Exactly fifty years ago, Aragon published his first novel with Gallimard, ” Anicet ». Half a century later, he has just completed a ” Henri Matisse » that he calls ” novel » and he is preparing two more. Claudine Chonez wanted to ask the author what was the continuity of his work as he felt it – what was also the continuity in man. Aragon, now 74, takes stock of himself.
Louis Aragon. You ask me what is the continuity in my work? It is visible, both in poems and in novels. poems from ” Fires of joy »which was my first collection and shortly preceded ” Anicet », I never stopped writing. And however different some lines of resistance may appear from my surrealist poems, they have the same meaning for me: it is always a question of expressing what we love and would like to forbid you to express.
As for novels, ” Anicet » joins exactly the ” Matisse » which I have just published, and which is called, as you know, ” Henri Matisse, novel ». I call novel an imaginary language by which I want to explain a character – whether real or fictitious. However, the actual title of ” Anicet »which involved real characters – even friends, like Picasso, Breton, Chaplin and others – was: ” Anicet or the Panorama – novel »novel forming part of the title, as for “ Henri Matisse ». But I was too young then to impose my point of view, and at Gallimard we
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