Jules Romains


Jules Romains was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement. His works include the play Knock ou le Triomphe de la médecine, and a cycle of works called Les Hommes de bonne volonté . Sinclair Lewis called him one of the six best novelists in the world.
He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature sixteen times.

Life

Jules Romains was born in Saint-Julien-Chapteuil in the Haute-Loire but went to Paris to attend first the Lycée Condorcet and then the prestigious École Normale Supérieure. He was close to the Abbaye de Créteil, a utopian group founded in 1906 by Charles Vildrac and René Arcos, which brought together, among others, the writer Georges Duhamel, the painter Albert Gleizes and the musician Albert Doyen. He received his agrégation in philosophy in 1909.
In the interwar years, he pleaded the cause of pacifism and a united Europe against incipient fascism and despotism. In 1927, he signed a petition against the law on the general organization of the nation in time of war, abrogating all intellectual independence and all freedom of expression. His name on the petition appeared with those of Lucien Descaves, Louis Guilloux, Henry Poulaille, Séverine... and those of the young Raymond Aron and Jean-Paul Sartre from the École normale supérieure.
His novel The Boys in the Back Room appeared in English in 1937.
During World War II he went into exile first to the United States where he spoke on the radio through the Voice of America and then, beginning in 1941, to Mexico where he participated with other French refugees in founding the Institut Français d'Amérique Latine.
A writer on many varied topics, Jules Romains was elected to the Académie française on 4 April 1946, occupying chair 12. He served as President of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers from 1936 to 1941. In 1964, Jules Romains was named citizen of honor of Saint-Avertin. Following his death in Paris in 1972, his place in the Académie française was taken by Jean d'Ormesson.
He was criticized by writer and politician Aimé Césaire in the 1950 essay Discourse on Colonialism for racist statements by the title character of his novel Salsette Discovers America: "I will not even censure our Negroes and Negresses for chewing gum. I will only note... that this movement has the effect of emphasizing the jaws, and that the associations which come to mind evoke the equatorial forest rather than the procession of the Panathenaea.... The black race has not yet produced, will never produce, an Einstein, a Stravinsky, a Gershwin."

Unanimism

Jules Romains is remembered today, among other things, for his concept of Unanimism and his cycle of novels in Les Hommes de bonne volonté , a remarkable literary fresco depicting the odyssey over a quarter century of two friends, the writer Jallez and politician Jerphanion, who provide an example in literature of Unanimism.
Romains originally considered unanimism to mean an opposition to individualism or to the exaltation of individual particularities, universal sympathy with life, existence and humanity. In later years, Romains defined it as connected with the end of literature within "representation of the world without judgment", where his social ideals comprise the highest conception of solidarity as a defense of individual rights. His first book was La vie unanime, published in 1904, and in the preface to Men of Goodwill he identified the ideas in it as essentially the same as those of that later work.

In popular culture

The Red Envelope catalog company, in their 2007 Holiday catalog, surprisingly featured Les Createurs on the cover in a photograph, showing a female model playfully frustrated with her husband, a male model posing as a detached intellectual, half-heartedly helping her to decorate the Christmas tree, while his attention is focused on reading Les Createurs.

Works

Novel Series

  • Men of Goodwill :
  1. 6 October
  2. Quinette's Crime
  3. Childhood Loves
  4. Eros of Paris
  5. The Superbs
  6. The Humble Ones
  7. Searching for a Church
  8. Province
  9. Rise of Perils
  10. The Powers
  11. Recourse to the Abyss
  12. The Creators
  13. Mission to Rome
  14. The Black Flag
  15. Prelude to Verdun
  16. Verdun
  17. Vorge versus Quinette
  18. The Sweetness of Life
  19. That Great Light in the East
  20. The World Is Your Adventure
  21. Days in the Mountains
  22. Works and Joys
  23. Birth of the band
  24. Appearances
  25. The Magic Carpet
  26. Françoise
  27. 7 October
  28. The Son of Jerphanion
  • Psyche or The body's rapture Trilogy, London: John Lane, 1933
  1. Lucienne
  2. The God of Bodies
  3. When the Ship…
  • Madame Chauverel Trilogy :
  1. A Singular Woman
  2. The Need for Clear Vision - Antonelli's Second Report
  3. Memoirs of Madame Chauverel

    Standalone Novels