“Un prophète discret”

Abstract

Abstract This article analyzes how the French fascist and collaborationist author Pierre Drieu la Rochelle thought critically about the forms and the functions of the modern writer-prophet. In essays dedicated to the cases of D. H. Lawrence and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as to his own ideological and literary trajectory in the interwar years, Drieu defined the true prophet as a writer of decadence, one compelled to narrate and embody the decline of the nation. By assuming this burden, the writer-prophet in turn becomes doomed to be misunderstood or ignored by his decadent contemporaries. This logic of prophecy’s ultimate failure provides a key to understanding the political and literary vision of Drieu’s autobiographical fascist bildungsroman Gilles (1939). Finally, this article considers how Drieu’s linking of prophecy and literary posterity can be seen as anticipating his recent controversial inclusion in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.