Davanti alla legge: Exorde di Drieu La Rochelle

Abstract

This paper aims to bring to light a short text by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle, Exorde, and to analyze its shifty belonging to various genres such as autobiography, political testament, or judicial defensive memorial. In doing so, the paper takes account of the historical background of the French collaboration with the Nazi occupant during the Second World War. A portrait of one of the major intellectuals of les annees folles emerged; a character who consumed to the end his involvement with the new totalitarian cult. Through the forms of the text, the concealing of the style, the singular alteration of the genres between judicial fiction and literary truth, some essential aporias have been unravelled: aporias between different perspectives on law in the debate around purges. The text’s scandal is therefore revealed before the court, in conformity with democratic law procedures, with democracy itself, and, more deeply, in the negation of the concept of history’s justice.