Louis Aragon 1897–1982
paris, france
A
ragon was a noted poet, novelist, and essayist whose work has ex-
ercised an enormous influence on literary theory and encompasses
most of the primary literary trends and ideas of the twentieth cen-tury—from Surrealism through Social Realism. He was born in the fashionable
sixteenth arrondissement, where his family ran a pension. He met André Breton
while studying military medicine and serving in a psychiatric center for soldiers.
Together with Philippe Soupault, the three began the review Littérature, funded
by Soupault’s private fortune. During this period Aragon wrote his first auto-
matic texts and Dadaist invectives against bourgeois values. His early novels, the
boldly innovative Anicet ou le panorama (1921), Le Paysan de Paris (1926), and his
ironic Traité du style (1928), are easily counted among the masterpieces of early
Surrealism. Like many other Surrealists of the time, he believed revolution could
occur only through a change in the predominant social structure. Deciding this
was best done through politics, he broke with Breton in 1933 and, with his
Russian wife, the novelist Elsa Triolet, joined the Communist Party. Aragon
became one of the leading figures of the Resistance. Principal works: Feu de joie,
1920; Le Mouvement perpétuel, 1925; Persécuté persécuteur, 1931; En étrange pays
dans mon pays lui-même, 1945; Le Voyage de Hollande, 1964.