Maurice Barrès

Maurice Barrès [ba%CA%81%C9%9Bs]1, né le 19 août 18622 à Charmes (Vosges) et mort le 4 décembre 19233 à Neuilly-sur-Seine (Seine), est un écrivain et homme politique français, figure de proue du nationalisme français.

Le premier axe de sa pensée est « le culte du Moi » : Barrès affirme que notre premier devoir est de défendre notre moi contre les Barbares, c'est-à-dire contre tout ce qui risque de l'affaiblir dans l'épanouissement de sa propre sensibilité.

Le second axe est résumé par l'expression « La terre et les morts » qu'approfondissent les trois volumes du Roman de l'énergie nationale : Les Déracinés (1897), L'Appel au soldat (1900) et Leurs Figures (1902) qui témoignent de l'évolution de Maurice Barrès vers le nationalisme républicain et le traditionalisme, l'attachement aux racines, à la famille, à l'armée et à la terre natale.

Il est resté l'un des maîtres à penser de la droite nationaliste durant l'Entre-Deux-Guerres.

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Maurice Barrès (French pronunciation: [ba%CA%81%C9%9Bs]; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist, and politician and agitator known for his nationalist and antisemitic views.

In his youth a Boulangist deputy, he progressively developed a theory close to Romantic nationalism and shifted to the traditionalist right during the Dreyfus Affair, leading the Anti-Dreyfusards alongside Charles Maurras. In 1906, he was elected both to the Académie française and as deputy of the Seine, and until his death he sat with the conservative Entente républicaine démocratique. A strong supporter of the Union sacrée (Holy Union) during World War I, Barrès remained a major influence of generations of French writers, as well as of monarchists, although he was not a monarchist himself.

Auguste-Maurice Barrès (French: [ba%CA%81%C9%9Bs]; 19 August 1862 – 4 December 1923) was a French novelist, journalist and politician. Spending some time in Italy, he became a figure in French literature with the release of his work The Cult of the Self in 1888. In politics, he was first elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1889 as a Boulangist and would play a prominent political role for the rest of his life.

Barrès was associated in his literary works with Symbolism, a movement which had equivalence with British Aestheticism and Italian Decadentism; indeed he was a close associate of Gabriele d'Annunzio representing the latter. As the name of his trilogy suggests, his works glorified a humanistic love of the self and he also flirted with occult mysticisms in his youth. The Dreyfus affair saw an ideological shift from a liberal individualism rooted in the French Revolution to a more collectivist and organic concept of the nation, advocating for corporatism and an organic society, he also became a leading anti-Dreyfusard[1] popularising the term nationalisme to describe his views. He stood on a platform of "Nationalism and Protectionism.".[2]

Politically, he became involved with various groups such as the Ligue des Patriotes of Paul Déroulède, which he became the leader of in 1914. Barrès was close to Charles Maurras, the founder of Action Française, a monarchist party. Despite the fact that he remained a republican, Barrès would have a strong influence on various following French monarchists, as well as various other figures. During the First World War, he was a strong supporter of the Union Sacrée political truce. In later life, Barrès returned to the Catholic faith and was involved in a campaign to restore French church buildings and helped establish 24 June as a national day of remembrance for St. Joan of Arc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Barr%C3%A8s