Essays on literary works - 2023

The Image of the Modern Patriot Hero in the Poetry of Aragon
Louis Aragon

The Legend of Gabriel Peri is written with that simplicity that is the age-old mark of mature craftsmanship. Behind it lies a high culture of the word and that boundless depth of the image, which evokes in the reader many associations and impressions. Behind the "Legend" of Aragon is France, a centuries-old culture, a great tradition of folk art. In the miniature quatrains of this poem, a communist who died for his homeland grows into the image of the whole people, France itself, its land, its ever-emerging flowers. The enormous moral strength, the charm of a person looms here with such certainty that you “see” the hero, although he is not depicted.

In the image of the communist-patriot of the poetry of Aragon during the war, that schematic and predetermined features, which, as a rule, are inherent in the images of revolutionaries in his works of the 30s, were removed. Penetration into the essence of the "national soil with its characteristics" gave here an artistic effect of exceptional power. Moreover, the image of a communist patriot is not only epic, but also lyrical. The strength of the poetry of Aragon lies in this fusion of the poet and his hero, in personal experience and direct revelation of the heroism of the struggle.

In the collection "French Dawn" attracts the polyphony of poetry, which is a sign of the mature skill of Aragon. Virtuosity and variety of rhythms, meters, flexibility of form, which changes with the change of thought, feelings, is not just a sign of mastery of professional technique, but first and foremost a sign of the richness of poetry, a reflection of its ideological richness. The perfection of poetic forms in the collection "French Dawn", associated with the appeal of Aragon to the richest tradition of French national poetry, was of fundamental importance for modern French poetry, for the establishment of a realistic method, for the practical resolution of disputes about tradition and innovation. The point here, of course, is not that the poet applied some features of folk and national poetry. The point is the truthful poetic resolution of the significant,

After the Second World War, at a new stage in the development of society, in difficult and difficult conditions, the work of Louis Aragon also changed. As for many representatives of French literature, the events of the Resistance were for him those events, the comprehension and depiction of which seemed to be the most urgent and necessary task. Then other issues arose. Responding to them, Aragon enriched both the artistic prose and poetry of France with the fruits of his tireless labor, his searching thought. Not all the answers given by Aragon can be considered indisputable and successful. But he remained one of the most dynamic, major figures in post-war literature.