Myths of Apocalypse and Renewal: Jean Giono and “Literary” Collaboration

AS PART OF FRANCE’S CONTINUING EFFORTS TO COME TO TERMS with the political and cultural legacy of Vichy, a number of studies published in the eighties and nineties have examined the collaborationist views and activities of writers and intellectuals who voiced support for Hitler’s “New Europe” or espoused the cause of Vichy’s National Revolution. Focusing primarily on major figures including Brasillach, Céline, Drieu la Rochelle, Montherlant, Morand, and Colette, these works also deal with minor luminaries who took advantage of les annies noires to forge short-lived literary successes on very little talent. This category would include Alfred Fabre-Luce, author of a widely-read chronicle of the 1940 defeat and its aftermath, Journal de la France, Alphonse de Chateaubriant, editor of the collaborationist weekly La Gerbe, and, arguably, Lucien Rebatet, author of Les Decombres, a wildly successful volume of memoirs published in 1942.