Henry de Montherlant auteur-éditeur de Nadia (1906-1908)

Abstract

Like De Augusto, dated 1907, which was mentioned in volumes LXII (n° 1-2) and LXIII (n° 3-4) of Les Lettres romanes, Nadia ou Pour Elle belongs to what Montherlant called his infantilia. But unlike De Augusto, which appears to be a collection of very short stories, Nadia is a longer and more ambitious work, an actual adventure story where a young Roman helped by a band of friends, slaves and soldiers starts pursuing a gang of Gauls who kidnapped his “fiancée”. Montherlant had begun Nadia in 1906. He “published” its first part in 1907, if we agree with him that “to publish” means to copy out the text in an ad hoc notebook. In 1908 he carried on this publishing activity. Unfortunately he did not carry his work through to completion so that the reader may feel that there is something missing. That’s no problem. Nadia, as it can be read nowadays, confirms the precocity ot its author and his uncommon knack as an “arranger”. Whatever the reading, his dear Quo vadis or the history schoolbooks by Albert Malet or one novel by the orientalist Léon Cahun, the boy Montherlant wonderfully absorbs, digests, assimilates everything he has read, to make it his own in spite of his youth.