Born: Neuilly-sur-Seine, 23 March 1881. Education: Educated at Ecole Fenelon, Paris, 1892; Lycee Condorcet; studied under Louis Mellerio in Passy, 1896, baccalaureat, 1897; Lycee Janson-de-Sailly, 1897, baccalaureat, 1898; the Sorbonne, 1899, failed exams, 1899; Ecole des Chartes, 1900-05, certificate of historiography and paleography, 1905. Military Service: Infantry, 39th Regiment in Rouen. Family: Married Helene Foucault in 1906 (died 1949); one daughter. Career: Worked with Jacques Copeau at the Theatre du Vieux-Colombier, Paris, 1913-14, and 1918-20. Closely associated with Andre Gide q.v. during the 1920s. Travelled in Italy and France; visited Martinique, 1939. Awards: Grand Prix Litteraire de la Ville de Paris, 1937; Nobel prize for literature, 1937. Died: 22 August 1958.
Publications
Collections
Oeuvres completes. 2 vols., 1969-72.
Fiction
Devenir!. 1909.
JeanBarois. 1913; as JeanBarois, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1949.
Les Thibaults. 1922-40; parts translated in The World of the Thibaults, by Madeleine Boyd, 1926; The Thibaults, by Stephen Hayden Guest and Stuart Gilbert, 1933-34, and by Gilbert, 1939-40.
Le Cahier gris. 1922; as The Grey Notebook, translated by Madeleine Boyd, 1926; also translated by Stephen Hayden Guest, 1933; Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
Le Penitencier. 1922; as The Penitentiary, translated by Madeleine Boyd, 1926; as The Reformatory, translated by Stephen Hayden Guest, 1933; as Le Penitencier, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
La Belle Saison. 2 vols., 1923; as The Springtime of Life, translated by Madeleine Boyd, 1926; as High Summer, translated by Stephen Hayden Guest, 1933; as La Belle Saison, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
La Consultation. 1928; as The Consulting Day, translated by
Stuart Gilbert, 1934.
La Sorellina. 1928; as La Sorellina, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
La Mort du pere. 1929; as La Mort du pere, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
Ete 1914. 1936; as Summer 1914, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1939.
Epilogue. 1940; as Epilogue, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 1940.
Confidence africaine. 1931; as Confidence Africaine, translated by Austryn Wainhouse, 1983.
Vieille France. 1933; as The Postman, translated by John Russell, 1954.
Le Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort (unfinished), edited by Andre Daspre. 1983; translated by Luc Brebion and Timothy Crouse, 1999.
Plays
Le Testament du pere Leleu (produced 1914). 1920; as Le Testament du pere Leleu, translated by Victor MacClure, 1921.
La Gonfle. 1928.
Un Taciturne (produced 1931). 1932; revised by Martin de Gard, 1948.
Other
L’Abbaye de Jumiege (on architecture). 1909.
L’Une de nous. 1910.
Temoignage. 1921.
Noizemont-les-Vierges. 1928.
Dialogue. 1930.
Le Voyage de Madagascar. 1934.
Notes sur Andre Gide (1913-1951). 1951; as Notes on Andre Gide, translated by John Russell, 1953; as Recollections of Andre Gide, translated by Russell, 1953.
Oeuvres completes. 2 vols., 1955.
Correspondance, with Andre Gide. 2 vols., 1968.
Correspondance, with Jacques Copeau, edited by Claude Sicard. 2 vols., 1972.
Correspondance generale, edited by Maurice Rieuneau, Andre Daspre and Claude Sicard. 5 vols., 1980-88.
Eugene Dabit, Roger Martin du Gard, correspondance (1927-1936), edited by Pierre Bardel. 2 vols., 1986.
Temoins d’un temps trouble: Roger Martin du Gard, Georges Duhamel, correspondance 1919-1958, edited by Arlette Lafay. 1987.
Lettres de confiance a Jean Morand: 1938-1957. 1991.
Translator, Olivia, by Dorothy Bussy. 1949.
Critical Studies:
Roger Martin du Gard by Rene Lalou, 1937; Roger Martin du Gard and the World of the Thibaults by Howard C. Rice, 1941; Roger Martin du Gard by Clemont Borgal, 1957; Reflexions sur la methode de Roger Martin de Gard by Pierre Daix, 1957; The World of Roger Martin du Gard by Edwin Grant Kaiser, 1957; ”The Function of Irony in Roger Martin du Gard” by Leon Roudiez in Romanic Review, 48, 1957; Roger Martin du Gard issue of Nouvelle Revue Frangaise December 1958; Martin du Gard by Jacques Brenner, 1960; Roger Martin du Gard by Robert Gibson, 1961; Roger Martin du Gard, by Denis Boak, 1963; Roger Martin du Gard et la religion by Rejean Robidoux, 1964; Roger Martin du Gard: The Novelist and History by David Schalk, 1967; Roger Martin du Gard by Catharine Savage, 1968; The Quest for Total Peace: The Political Thought of Roger Martin du Gard by R. Jouejati, 1971; Index de la correspondance Andre Gide-Roger Martin du Gard by Susan M. Stout, 1971; Martin du Gard: Jean Barois by Michael John Taylor, 1974; Roger Martin du Gard: Les Annees d’apprentissage litteraire 1881-1910 by Claude Sicard, 1976; Martin du Gard issue of Folio, 13, 1981; Roger Martin du Gard; ou, De l’integrite de l’etre a l’integrite du roman by P.M. Cryle, 1984; Roger Martin du Gard: Etudes sur son oeuvre edited by Andre Daspre and Jochen Schlobach, 1984; L’Art de Roger Martin du Gard by Renee Fainas Wehrmann, 1986; Martin du Gard, romancier by Bernard Alluin, 1989.
Roger Martin du Gard’s artistic aim was to render reality as accurately and thoroughly as possible; he is thus one of the principal heirs of the 19th-century French Realists, although, unlike the Naturalists, he did not confine his attention to the lower classes and the sordid aspects of existence. His historian’s training prepared him well for his mimetic project; he took voluminous notes and based his work on observation and careful research. He handled his material with an exemplary craftsmanship. He did not, however, lack the imagination that allows a writer to create convincing characters different from himself and treat topics foreign to his experience; he also had a powerful visual imagination, which he used to convey an intense impression of life. Moreover, his artistic discipline was tempered by strong emotions, and his conservatism of personal habit did not prevent his treating aberrant behaviour and controversial topics such as incest and homosexuality. It should not be supposed, therefore, that his work has the tedious and unimaginative quality of writing that merely records the mundane.
Martin du Gard worked chiefly in fiction and preferred the full-length novel, even the roman-fleuve (series novel), which he illustrated exceptionally well in Les Thibaults (The Thibaults). With the expection of the novella Confidence africaine [African Confession], he turned away from the classical French recit and worked instead with several plots and characters, often arranged in pairs. In the plays Le Testament du pere Leleu [Daddy Leuleu's Will] and La Gonfle [Dropsy], and the satirical sketches Vieille France (The Postman), peasant language is used to effect. Elsewhere he combined an unobtrusive but flexible and sensitive style, whose aim was to convey truth clearly, with careful composition, in the tradition of Flaubert and Maupassant; he was also influenced by Tolstoi. Most of his fiction is narrated by an implied third-person omniscient narrator, but other narrative modes appear; Jean Barois is written almost entirely in dialogue, Confidence africaine has two first-person narrators, La Sorellina contains a story-within-a-story, and the Epilogue to The Thibaults is narrated in first and third persons, from one character’s point of view. To create narrative rhythm and deal economically with the large amount of material in the series novel, description and summary are alternated skilfully with scenes, built around superb dialogue. The importance of perspective is underlined by showing events occasionally from more than one viewpoint.
Martin du Gard’s fiction is concerned primarily with the dramatic interactions between individual and society in the period between the 1890s and 1918. His insights into these relationships and into social dynamics and structures, especially those of the bourgeoisie, to which he belonged, have been praised by Marxist critics such as Georg Lukacs. Rebellious young heroes are contrasted with the families and institutions against which they revolt. Conversely, the claims of individualism as understood by the Third Republic—the rights to wealth, to capitalism—are qualified by socialist views of the rights of the collectivity. Truths such as those concerning the conviction of Dreyfus are weighed against the need for social order. In most cases, the author refrains from interjecting his position directly into the text. Moreover, for each spokesman for a position or institution—Socialism, Rationalism, family—there is someone who expresses the opposite view; although most believers are shown as simple-minded or hypocritical, even religion has a persuasive defender. Unlike thesis novels, there is no explicit resolution of the debates.
However, despite the author’s narrative and stylistic objectivity, attentive reading reveals authorial preferences. An early work in which a failed artist becomes a dull, conventional country squire suggests authorial blame for the hero’s surrender of his idealism. In Jean Barois, the author shows preference for the partisans of Dreyfus and for rationalism as opposed to belief. In The Thibaults the novelist’s sympathy seems to go to the rebellious Jacques, although the moderate positions of his brother Antoine are expressed convincingly. The author’s views on war are particularly perceptible. Although the historical plot line of Ete 1914 (Summer 1914) moves toward the outbreak of war—Europe was approaching war as the work was being written—he clearly sympathizes with individual efforts to prevent conflict. His pacifism is, however, qualified somewhat in Le Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort, his unfinished posthumous novel.
Another major topic in his plays and fiction is the seemingly doomed nature of human relationships. Passion is destructive, as in Un Taciturne [A Quiet Man], where the hero shoots himself, and The Thibaults, when Jerome de Fontanin destroys his marriage through philandering, and Rachel, the beautiful woman Antoine loves, returns to her sadistic lover in Africa. Friendship is often built on misunderstanding; family ties do not suffice for communication, and often interfere with it, as siblings develop differently and sons struggle to establish their individuality. The darkest element in Martin du Gard’s work may be, however, the self, in which reason struggles with passion, practical compromise with idealism, and the will to live with the urge to destroy inner demons.
These features and others point to a strong vein of determinism, which may reflect the scientific positivism of the late 19th century in France, the author’s study of psychiatry, or deep personal pessimism. As in Zola’s work, heredity plays a major role, presiding over destinies like Greek fate. There is also a collective, historical determinism, which makes Martin du Gard’s world view resemble somewhat that of Hegel and Marx, although he was not a Marxist. Historical irony is abundant, as individual efforts during the belle epoque to prevent the cataclysm of war are powerless before the momentum of historical event. Even works marked by vitality have a sombre, crepuscular, or cruel element.
While considered uninteresting by partisans of experimental literature, Martin du Gard’s work has worn well, thanks doubtless to its psychological and social truth and its superb craftsmanship. As a mirror of the society it treats and the human, even metaphysical problems it wrestles with, it retains great pertinence.
