Galerie Claude Lemand

CLAUDE AVELINE AND HIS CENTURY (Paris, 1901-1992).
Claude Lemand
Translated from French by Valérie Hess.

Born in Paris in 1901, Claude Aveline was a pro­lific writer and the peak of his glory and of great lit­erary cre­ativity cul­mi­nated from 1933 to 1944 and from 1945 to 1968. Using a beau­tiful clas­sical lan­guage, he wrote novels, essays, five detec­tive novels, 2 vol­umes of short sto­ries, chil­dren’s books, poems,… It is inter­esting to com­pare L’Étranger by Camus (1942) with Le Prisonnier by Aveline (1936).

Claude Aveline was a leading figure for the Parisian cul­tural scene of the 1930s. From 1933 onwards, he sup­ported the working classes and was a writer with ties to the Front Populaire, like many French intel­lec­tuals of his gen­er­a­tion. He cam­paigned against the Fascist regimes in Europe and for the Republican Spain.

He was also a com­mitted resis­tant, first amongst the intel­lec­tuals from the net­work of the Musée de l’Homme, then in the resis­tance’s under­ground move­ment in Lyons and its sur­round­ings. In 1944, he pub­lished with Éditions de Minuit Le Temps mort, an admirable and poignant novel. Twenty-five years later, he pub­lished Monologue pour un dis­paru, a poem full of revolt, written in memory of his friend Jacques Lion, who was arrested by the Gestapo and who died in depor­ta­tion.