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While the novel' relationships to history is the subject of increasing interest, the ability of poetry to tell history in the twentieth century, however, is almost never an issue. This article analyzes Franck Venaille's writing of the Algerian war. Related to intense formal experimentation as well as to a movement back to the "intimate", the presence of the Algerian war leads to "a terrible game with the truth", in a poetry which key words are hermeticism and acceleration.

Decades after Henri Alleg's testimony La Question and Pierre Guyotat's unclassifiable lyrical epic Eden, Eden, Eden, two autobiographies about the Algerian War, were censored, Laurent Mauvignier's Des Hommes was published by Editions de Minuit in 2010 and the press was unanimous in its praise of the novel. Yet, of these three books which all deal with history's identical silences, only one seems to resonate with the current times and be legible. Beyond analysing the relationships between time, memory and narrative, the primary issue is to examine the authorial ethos that orchestrates the narration. What is the position to adopt and the scenario to invent on the writing stage to succeed in "inhabiting the social space" and being granted a place in the repertoire of the common tales of a specific time?

This article focuses on the question to what extent Laurent Mauvignier's Des hommes is not simply a novel on the Algerian War but also an enquiry into how past experiences inform the present, making it a symptom of the past. The novel's characters are both subjects and objects, caught up in the remorseless mechanism of repressing, remembering and forgetting. The questions that arise in view of the novel's major themes help to make sense of Laurent Mauvignier's poetic choices in approximating the past: how and to what extent does literature make it possible to remedy the absolute absence of the past? Does literature enable us to reconsider the logic of historiography's dominant knowledge about the past? How does literature proceed in order to link the intimate and individual to collective history, thereby signalling that the intimate is inextricably tied to the collective and vice versa? Laurent Mauvignier's novel shows that collective memory, which is always polyphonic, may be the best means to reactualise a complex past and that perhaps this is only possible in fiction.

While the novel’s relationships to history is the subject of increasing interest, the ability of poetry to tell history in the twentieth century, however, is almost never an issue. This article analyzes Franck Venaille’s writing of the Algerian war. Related to intense formal experimentation as well as to a movement back to the “intimate”, the presence of the Algerian war leads to “a terrible game with the truth”, in a poetry which key words are hermeticism and acceleration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decades after Henri Alleg’s testimony La Question and Pierre Guyotat’s unclassifiable lyrical epic Eden, Eden, Eden, two autobiographies about the Algerian War, were censored, Laurent Mauvignier’s Des Hommes was published by Editions de Minuit in 2010 and the press was unanimous in its praise of the novel. Yet, of these three books which all deal with history’s identical silences, only one seems to resonate with the current times and be legible. Beyond analysing the relationships between time, memory and narrative, the primary issue is to examine the authorial ethos that orchestrates the narration. What is the position to adopt and the scenario to invent on the writing stage to succeed in “inhabiting the social space” and being granted a place in the repertoire of the common tales of a specific time? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the question to what extent Laurent Mauvignier’s Des hommes is not simply a novel on the Algerian War but also an enquiry into how past experiences inform the present, making it a symptom of the past. The novel’s characters are both subjects and objects, caught up in the remorseless mechanism of repressing, remembering and forgetting. The questions that arise in view of the novel’s major themes help to make sense of Laurent Mauvignier’s poetic choices in approximating the past: how and to what extent does literature make it possible to remedy the absolute absence of the past? Does literature enable us to reconsider the logic of historiography’s dominant knowledge about the past? How does literature proceed in order to link the intimate and individual to collective history, thereby signaling that the intimate is inextricably tied to the collective and vice versa? Laurent Mauvignier’s novel shows that collective memory, which is always polyphonic, may be the best means to reactualise a complex past and that perhaps this is only possible in fiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]