you don’t have a monopoly on style

“The Reactionary Style. From Maurras to Houellebecq”, by Vincent Berthelier, Amsterdam, 388 p., €22.

In the 1930s, Albert Thibaudet (who then reigned over criticism in the pages of The New French Review) noted that if the left was slowly imposing itself in politics, conversely the letters were sliding to the right. Freed, according to him, from the ideological weight of Marxism, right-wing writers would have enjoyed the freedom that the exercise of style demands. This firmly established thesis, Vincent Berthelier discusses its merits by going through a century of so-called reactionary literature, of the classical ideal advocated by Charles Maurraswhich reigned on the traditionalist right during the interwar period, until the neutralized style of illiberalism of a Michel Houellebecq.

The desire to restore an old order

Between these two poles: the imprecations of Bernanos, whose writing reflects the desire to restore an old order; the tension between classical purity and aesthetic preciousness of Marcel Jouhandeau; an art of the aphorism and the point at cioran, “a kind of hysterization of classicism and [d’]calming down of the metaphor”, writes Berthelier; or even the “conservative role” writing according to Renaud Camusincluding L’“linguistic and literary imagination is articulated in a social and racial hierarchy”…

The Hussars, Roger Nimier in particular, had the intelligence to push the distinction established in his time by Thibaudet and to attribute to the right the monopoly of style – a way for them to rehabilitate Céline, Paul Morand or Marcel Aymé, compromised during the ‘Occupation. However, under the charm of the formulas, Vincent Berthelier detects above all the desire to neutralize the political options. Whether it is the biting irony with which Aymé attenuates his criticism of the purge in Uranus (Gallimard, 1948), or paradoxes that give Cioran a disillusioned lucidity, but maintain, secretly, a racialist thought: “After having ruled the two hemispheres, Westerners are on the way to becoming a laughing stock: subtle specters, ends of race in the true sense of the term, doomed to the condition of pariahs, weak and flabby slaves”he wrote in 1977 – the fear of the “great replacement” was already in the air…

The Celine case

The brilliant stylistic study proposed by Vincent Berthelier, where the only thing missing, he admits, is Maurice Barrès (whose influence he exerted on Malraux, Aragon or Mauriac blurs the political lines), nevertheless comes up against Céline. In the latter, fascism coexists with a revolution in style, where reactionary writers most often subordinate their writing to political affects that limit its possibilities for innovation. Should we consider the lyricism of Celinian slang as the vehicle of his fascism?

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