One of the most famous French writers of the early XX century is Henri Barbus. The best books glorified him as an anti-war author, pacifist, opponent of violence in any form. He was one of the first to describe all the horrors of the First World War as realistically and naturally as possible.
First steps
Henri Barbusse was born in 1873 in the northwestern suburb of Paris, the small town of Agnières-sur-Seine, after the revolution, which became very popular with Russian emigrants.
He was born into the international family of a Frenchman and an Englishwoman. His father was also a writer, so it is not surprising that his son entered and successfully graduated from the faculty of literature at the Sorbonne. Barbusse's first steps in literature were a collection of poems "Weepers", published in 1895. Like the novels Hell and Begging written several years later, the works are imbued with pessimism. However, they were not very popular.
At the front
In 1914, the life of Henri Barbusse changed dramatically. He volunteered for the front, fighting against Germany. In 1915 he was wounded and commissated for health reasons. He was awarded the Military Cross for participating in hostilities, but the main thing that he brought forward is the personal emotions and experiences that formed the basis of his most famous book, Fire.
The idea of this work appeared at the front, in between battles. Barbus talks about him in letters to his wife. He began to realize ideas in a hospital at the very end of 1915. The book was pretty soon finished and in August 16 already began to be published in the newspaper "Creativity". The work was released as a separate publication in mid-December of the same year at Flammarion Publishing House. It also indicated the award of Henri Barbus the Goncourt Prize - the most prestigious French literary award.
"Fire" - the main novel of Barbus
In the first chapter of the novel, the work is compared with Dante's Divine Comedy, which gives the book a poetic character. The heroes of the "Fire" as if marching from paradise to the last circles of hell. At the same time, religious notes disappear, and the imperialist war appears worse than the most fantastic invention of any writer. The book is “terrible for its merciless truth,” as Maxim Gorky writes in the preface to the first Russian edition about the Barbus novel.
Glimpses of the insights of the heroes appear in the very first chapter of Vision. It tells about the earthly "paradise" in the Swiss mountains. There is no war, and the people living in it, representatives of different nations, have already come to understand the unnecessaryness and horror of war.
The main characters of the novel, soldiers, come to the same conclusion. In the final chapter of Dawn, they awaken. The biography of Barbus Henry is closely related to the events described in the novel. His main message is the inevitable arrival of the broad masses of people to revolutionary ideas. The catalyst for this is the participation of almost all European countries in the imperialist war.
The novel is written in the form of a diary of one platoon. This allows the author to make the story as realistic as possible, following the heroes, the reader is either under fire on the front line of the front, now in the deep rear, or in the thick of the battle, when the platoon goes on the attack.
Barbus and the October Revolution
Henry Barbus took the October Revolution in Russia as a key event in world history, actively supporting it. In his opinion, it would allow all European nations to free themselves from capitalist oppression.
In many ways, these ideas were reflected in the novel "Clarity" of 1919. Inspired by the socialist revolution in Russia, Henri Barbus becomes a member of the French Communist Party. The writer’s quotes on the events of those years claim that “peace is peace stemming from labor.” So, the author really believed that, working diligently for the benefit of the whole society, people can achieve happiness in any state.
Since then, Henri Barbus led an active social and political life. In particular, in 1924 he opposed the repression of the leaders of the Tatarbunar uprising in Romania. Then an armed peasant uprising in southern Bassarabia arose against the current authorities, supported by the Bolshevik party.
Criticism of capitalism
The books of the author Barbusse Henri, the list of which is supplemented by the novels “Light of the Abyss”, “Manifesto of the Intellectuals”, published in France in the 1920s, is devoted to a sharp criticism of capitalism. The writer also did not recognize bourgeois civilization, insisting only that during the course of socialist construction in the state it is possible to build an honest and fair society. For example, Barbus took the events that took place in the Soviet Union, in particular the actions undertaken by Joseph Stalin. In 1930 his essay “Russia” was even published, and 5 years later, after his death, the composition “Stalin”. In these works these ideas were precisely stated. True, books were soon banned in the homeland of socialism, since many of the heroes mentioned in them were repressed by then.
"Stalin is Lenin today" is an aphorism that belongs to Barbusse.
Barbus in the USSR
Barbus visited the Soviet Union 4 times, for the first time in 1927. On September 20, a French progressive author spoke at the Column Hall of the House of Unions in Moscow with the report "White Terror and the Danger of War." In the same year, he made a whole journey through the socialist state under construction, having visited Kharkov, Tiflis, Batumi, Rostov-on-Don and Baku.
In 1932, Barbus arrived in the Soviet Union as one of the organizers of the international antiwar congress, which was held in August in Amsterdam. On it, he delivered his famous speech, "I Blame."
His next visit coincided with his election as an honorary member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. After that, work on a book about Stalin was conceived and started. In July 1935, Barbusse visited Moscow for the last time, actively worked on the book, studied documents, and met with friends and colleagues of Lenin. However, it was not possible to complete the work.
Barbus suddenly fell ill with pneumonia and died suddenly in Moscow on August 30, 1935. After 3 days, the body was carried to France at the Belorussky Train Station, staging a farewell rally.
The writer was buried at the famous Paris cemetery Pere Lachaise September 7th. Farewell to Barbus grew into a political demonstration of a united popular front.