French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Maris, L'homme dans la guerre: Maurice Genevoix face à Ernst Jünger
Comparative and World Literature
Bernard Maris
L'homme dans la guerre: Maurice Genevoix face à Ernst Jünger
Grasset, 2013
EAN: 9782246803386
174 p.
16.00 EUR
Publisher's synopsis:
They fought against one another at the Calonne Trench and were wounded on the very same day. These two young men lived through the same conflict—one a Germanophile, the other a Francophile, both lovers of literature and of the enemy country. They displayed unimaginable fervor in combat, killed with their own hands, and witnessed death all around them. Under the bombs and amidst the horror—indeed, shaped by it—they both grew into towering writers. They recount the same events, describe the same places, and depict the same filth, yet they do not portray the same war.
The Frenchman, Maurice Genevoix, speaks of every individual man who falls; the German, Ernst Jünger, evokes the soldiers, the army, the nation. Why this war? A hundred years later, reading them side by side sheds extraordinary light on the First World War. Examining these two supreme literary figures of the conflict for the first time, Bernard Maris probes a dual mystery: the relentless fury of the fighting, and the distinct characters of our two nations, France and Germany.
Alongside Genevoix and Jünger, he elevates us to the scale of what is known as the Great War, while they carry the memory of the soldiers toward that profound pity without which, since Homer, war cannot truly be understood.
The First World War remains one of the defining watersheds in modern European history, profoundly reshaping literature, national consciousness, and intellectual life across the continent. Writers who experienced the trenches firsthand often felt compelled to bear witness to an unprecedented scale of industrial slaughter, creating a vast body of testimonial and artistic work. Within this tradition, comparative studies of French and German literature frequently explore how distinct cultural frameworks and linguistic backgrounds influenced the ways authors articulated trauma, heroism, and national identity during the early twentieth century.
Readers interested in modern European literature and the cultural history of the First World War may find it relevant. Bernard Maris examines the writings of Maurice Genevoix and Ernst Jünger, exploring how these two figures depicted the same conflict through contrasting lenses. The text highlights Genevoix's focus on individual human lives alongside Jünger's broader perspective on the army and the nation, while considering the underlying causes of the war and the enduring memory of the soldiers who fought.