‘Qui sont ces pédants qui se permettent ainsi de trancher ?’

Abstract

Contemporary French fictional accounts of the Spanish Civil War are scarce and, besides the dominant case of Malraux’s L’Espoir, largely restricted to the far right and warnings against Republican ‘disorder’. Drieu la Rochelle and Robert Brasillach use the war as an epilogue to their novels, in which the uprooted French intellectual finds commitment and sacrifice. In the post-Liberation period, Sartre’s Les Chemins de la liberté explores a similar role for Spain in his protagonist’s development. Louis Guilloux’s depiction of Spanish refugees in Le Jeu de patience constitutes a rare record of the Spanish Republican diaspora in France. His particular focus on the militant Pablo underpins not merely the historical panorama in all its complexity, but also the frailty of memory and the difficulties and ambiguities of narration – all contained in the many meanings of the novel’s title.