Peots and The Algerian War

The Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) was one of the bloodiest post-1945 liberation struggles. Characterised by civilian massacres and the widespread use of torture, it led to the death and displacement of two million people. It was also the first major conflict since the Spanish Civil War to mobilize a generation of writers and artists to protest against the conduct of the war, most notably in Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth and Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. In 1960 many of France’s leading writers and intellectuals – including Simon de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, André Breton, Pierre Boulez, François Truffaut and Marguerite Duras – signed Le Manifeste des 121, calling on the French government to renounce the use of orture in Algeria. Many writers found themselves on the front-line. The Algerian writer Mouloud Feraoun was assassinated by the OAS in 1962. They tried, unsuccessfully, to kill Madeleine Riffaud, who reported on the war for L’Humanité. There were two attempts on Sartre’s life.

This anthology features some of the French poets who opposed the war, including Louis Aragon, Jacques Gaucheron, Madeleine Riffaud, Pierre Seghers, Henri Deluy and Guillevic, as well as Algerian poets like Jean Sénac, Kateb Yacine, Bachir Hadj Ali, Noureddine Aba, Messaour Boulanouar, Mohammed Dib, Omar El Bernaoui and Mohamed Saleh Baouiya. It also includes a remarkable series of poems written in memory of Maurice Audin, a young university lecturer and member of the Algerian Communist Party who was murdered by the French authorities. These poets are important, not only as historical witnesses to a terrible war. They remind us of the possibilities and of the responsibilities of poetry in our own times. As Francis Combes argues in his introduction to this book, ‘Ils disent que les poètes ne sont pas restés silencieux. Parfois, ils disent même beaucoup plus…’