Henri Massis (21 March 1886 – 16 April 1970) was a French conservative essayist, literary critic and literary historian.[1]
Biography
Massis was born in the
18th arrondissement of
Paris, and attended
Lycée Condorcet and
University of Paris. He began his career as an essayist and critic in his early twenties, with works such as Comment Émile Zola Composait ses Romans (1905), Le Puits de Pyrrhon (1907), and La Pensée de Maurice Barrès (1909).[2] Together with his friend
Alfred de Tarde, he published essays commenting on the French university system and the generation of 1912.[3]
Massis converted to
Catholicism in 1913 and, following
World War I, called for a revival of the French spirit and Catholicism; from early on, he was a follower of
Charles Maurras and the Action Française. From 1920 he served as editor of the newly formed Revue Universelle, a magazine closely associated with Action Française which worked to spread Christian political philosophy. He published two volumes of Jugements that critically analysed the moral teachings of numerous writers, such as
Ernest Renan and
André Gide.
Massis' political writings expressed his concerns over what he viewed as threats to post-World War I French society, including
Bolshevism and Oriental
mysticism.[2] Together with
Robert Brasillach he wrote Les Cadets de l'Alcazar (1936; in English as The Cadets of the Alcazar, 1937), where he expressed support of
General Franco and the
Nationalists in the ongoing
Spanish Civil War. He visited
Portugal in 1938, expressing admiration for the regime of
António de Oliveira Salazar. In 1939, Chefs ("Chiefs"), a collection of interviews with Franco, Salazar and
Benito Mussolini,
fascist dictator of
Italy, was published. However, Massis condemned
Adolf Hitler and the
Nazi regime in
Germany, as he shared the Germanophobe views of the Action Française.[4]
On 23 January 1941, Massis was made a member of the National Council (parliament) of
Vichy France.[5] He was also decorated with the
Order of the Francisque. While involved in the Vichy Government during
World War II, Massis refused to collaborate with the Nazis. After the war, he was arrested and imprisoned in
Fresnes Prison in December 1944. After being released after only one month in January 1945, he went on to work as an editor for
Plon.[6] He devoted himself to biographical studies of
Ernest Renan,
Maurice Barrès, Charles Maurras and António de Oliveira Salazar. Still a follower of the
integralist and nationalist philosophy of the Action Française after the war, his writings from this period reflect his continued disdain of Nazism in Germany and Bolshevism in the
Soviet Union.
Massis was elected to the Académie française in 1960.[7] Together with other French conservative intellectuals, he signed a manifesto "of resistance to abandonment" in October 1961, a counter-manifesto to the
Manifesto of the 121 against the
Algerian War. He died in Paris on 16 April 1970.[7]
Bibliography
Comment Émile Zola composait ses romans, 1905
Le Puits de Pyrrhon, 1907
La Pensée de Maurice Barrès, 1909
L'Esprit de la nouvelle Sorbonne, 1911; with
Alfred de Tarde
Les Jeunes gens d'aujourd'hui, 1913; with Alfred de Tarde
Romain Rolland contre la France, 1915
Luther, prophète du germanisme, 1915
La Vie d'Ernest Psichari, 1916
Impressions de guerre, 1916
Le Sacrifice (1914-1916), 1917
La Trahison de Constantin, 1920
Jérusalem le Jeudi-Saint de 1918, 1921
Jugements I: Renan, France, Barrès, 1923
Jugements II: André Gide, Romain Rolland, Georges Duhamel, Julien Benda, les chapelles littéraires, 1924
^
abHeyer, Astrid (1997). "Massis, Henri". In Chevalier, Tracy (ed.). Encyclopedia of the Essay. London: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 543–544.
ISBN1884964303.
^Mazgaj, Paul (1991). "Defending the West: The Cultural and Generational Politics of Henri Massis". Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques. 17 (2): 103–123.
JSTOR41298929.
^Leymarie, Michel; Dard, Olivier; Guérin, Jeanyves, eds. (2012). Maurrasisme et littérature: L'Action française. Culture, société, politique (IV). Villeneuve-d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion. p. 149.
ISBN978-2-7574-0401-0.
^Sorel, Patricia (2016). Plon: Le sens de l'histoire (1833–1962). Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. p. 227.
ISBN9782753543683.
^
abHeyer, Astrid (2004). "Massis, Henri". In Murray, Christopher (ed.). Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought. New York: Fitzroy Dearborn. pp. 465–6.
ISBN9781579583842.
Further reading
Christophe, Lucien (1961). "Regards sur Henri Massis," Revue Générale Belge, pp. 17–41.
Connell, Allison (1962). "The Younger Generation of 1912 in Agathon's Report and in the Novel," Modern Philology, Vol. 65, No. 4, pp. 343–352.