Georges Darien (1862-1921) is a French writer who happens to be free. Born in Paris, his real name is Georges Hyppolite Adrien. Without Georges Darien and a few other authors, Les Editions de Londres would probably have no reason for being. Darien is unique amongst French writers. We like him for many reasons; those reasons, we are going to share them with you.
A hectic life
Georges Darien is born in a bourgeois protestant Parisian family. Rebel to the education he was given, to his bourgeois surroundings, he also resisted his mother-in-law’s attempts to convert him to Catholicism. In 1881, aged nineteen, he does not wait for the legal age of conscription and joins the army. He leaves the army in 1886, following three years spent in military prisoner camps. This experience will inspire Biribi, written in 1888, and published in 1890. Biribi is the story, a novelised non-fiction as we would say nowadays, of Darien’s three-year ordeal in the disciplinary camps of the North African French colonial army. Biribi will also be Albert Londres’s inspiration thirty years later when he investigates and looks for Biribi in Dante n’avait rien vu. Following Londres’s piece, Biribi will be closed at last.
In Paris, Darien frequents literary circles. He writes Bas les cœurs (following Biribi), a novel denouncing bourgeoisie’s behaviour during the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, and Les Pharisiens, a novelised pamphlet against Drumont and his anti-Semitic friends. He then has a go at writing plays, most of which have been forgotten (even more than his novels). He writes and stages Les chapons, then a few years later, L’ami de l’ordre, Le parvenu, Les mots sur les murs…He also tries journalism. He contributes to L’endehors, the anarchist newspaper created by Zo d’axa, he launches a weekly paper called l’Escarmouche, and then, once back in London, he contributes to another anarchist paper, L’ennemi du peuple. So, no wonder most people would consider Darien to be an anarchist. Still, at the end of a troubled century where bombs regularly explode and politicians are fired at, being called an anarchist is a dangerous thing as Darien will soon learn himself.
Darien the expatriate
Following the implementation of the Lois scélérates, like most French anarchists, or those who espouse anarchist ideas, Darien has to flee. And like most of 19th century anarchists, he settles in London. Aged only thirty two, here is a man who is angry at the bourgeoisie (education), at religion (mother-in-law), at the army (North Africa), at the colonials (North Africa), at society (three years as a military convict for a minor offence), at the justice system (idem), who is angry at Parliament, society, France (Lois scélérates). Over the next eleven years, he will travel in England, Belgium, and Germany. He lives in London for a few years, then some time in Brussels. Darien is multilingual, at ease with foreign cultures. He is also an anglophile, rather uncommon for French people at the time. Still, very little is known of those years he spent outside of France. Some say Darien was a bookmaker. Others suspect he was a thief. One thing is for sure: he writes. First, Le voleur, his masterpiece, one of the 27 books of the bibliothèque du Docteur Faustroll, then La belle France, one of the most violent pamphlets ever written against French bourgeois society, its functioning, its values, its system; La belle France has something of a Jacques Brel –like settling of scores (refer to les flamingants). He then writes and publishes Gottlieb Krumm, the only novel he originally wrote in English, and which will be translated for the first time in French by Walter Redfern in 1984. He returns to Paris in 1905, writes plays, is a newspaper contributor, and tries politics. In 1912, he is a candidate at the Parliamentary elections ; he creates the league of the impôt unique (inspired by Henry George‘s ideas). He dies in 1921.
Darien : libertarian, anarchist, or a rebel with a cause ?
In this wonderful country called France, pigeon-holing is a national past time. When the French can’t categorise, they are unhappy, they get bored, their whole value system falls apart, and they start behaving badly. Darien can’t be categorised. Anarchist, say those who ignore him, libertarian, say the others. Les Editions de Londres would rather claim he is a rebel. Like Harry Callahan, Darien hates everyone and everything: the clergy, the military, the poor, the bourgeois, the anti-Semites, taxes, protectionism, colonialism… But one has to understand him. The society that he inhabits is not pretty. So no wonder he feels close to the anarchist spirit, whilst rejecting at the same time some of the collectivist, socialist tendencies that anarchists would often be associated with. Darien is a fierce individualistic libertarian. But he is no rightist or far rightist (at the difference of Louis-Ferdinand Céline who will be influenced by Darien). Darien cares. He cares for the poor, for the oppressed, he strives for justice, but he can’t accept their submission to an unjust order. It is a terrible time. Besides colonialism, bourgeois-dominated society, revengeful militarism, a corrupt parliamentary system, exploitation of industrial workers by scoundrel bankers, property sharks responsible for the destruction of Paris during the Second Empire, carriages which splash the lower castes, crushed under the combined weight of work, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases, Darien struggles with the rise of other means of exploitation, presented with all the best intentions in the world: compulsory school system in 1882, compulsory military service in 1883, compulsory vaccination…. Darien recognises exploitation when he sees it. He can’t stand it. He has to shout, protest, he lashes out. Sixty years before Orwell, he rejects this society which encourages submission of the individual to inhuman ideals.
So, no wonder Darien is angry. What would be surprising would be not to be angry in his time as in ours. Darien is tough, harsh, a fierce critic of his time, he sometimes says things which might seem to contradict others ; in fact the commits the supreme sin: he does not belong. He does not belong to the right nor does he belong to the left. Of course, right-wingers can’t stand him from the comfort of their nice bourgeois living room, and the left-wingers can’t stand him either. His acerbic, célinien criticism of the poor in La belle France did not win him many friends amongst the lefties. So, for having taken the risk of telling the truth, for having always been true to his ideas, he is given a treatment worse than literary damnation: those who cast the spell will make sure he is forever forgotten. Of course, Les Éditions de Londres could not let this happen.
A French specialty, forgetting those who do not think like us
Yes, in the literary France, “literary damnation” is rather uncommon. The best example of “Literary damnation” is Céline, but also Sade, or Radiguet. In fact, most pundits now recognize that Darien probably influenced Céline. So, what is literary damnation? Literary damnation happens when someone great does something very wrong. The writer is admired, but his behaviour makes him an “écrivain sulfureux”, ie controversial. So, hating him allows the hater to belong, something essential in French society. In this case, the hater belongs to the league of the virtuous dogmatists.
Literary oblivion is much less common, as the victims are so forgotten that one forgets they have been forgotten. Darien is one of those victims. His sin: his refusal to belong to one of the little coteries. His sin: not having wanted to belong, not being part of one of the cosy little groups, or pressure groups, shall we say nowadays. His sin: pour the salt on the wound, where it hurts, at a time when society, bipolar and schizophrenic, was obsessed with hiding his dark side ever since the Revolution, ever since the Franco-Prussian war, ever since the Commune and its distasteful crushing by the legitimate forces. Still, nowadays, reading la Belle France is unbearable for the French. The French can’t deal with the military extermination camps of the Third Republic, with the Commune, with the 1870 defeat, with the constant late 19th century war-mongering leading to WW1, with the amazing continuity between the Second Empire and the Third Republic, they can’t deal with the beauty of Le voleur, anarchist literature masterpiece some say, or rather a masterpiece. So, Darien, admired in his time by Allais, Jarry, Breton…Darien will be forgotten. In 1967, Louis Malle and Jean-Paul Belmondo bring him back from the literary oblivion where he had been confined with the movie Le voleur. Unmissable. Thanks to them!
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