| Name: |
Henri Barbusse |
| Birth Date: |
|
| Death Date: |
|
| Nationality: |
|
| Gender: |
|
The importance of Henri Barbusse is twofold: first as the author of Le Feu (1916; translated as Under Fire, 1917), the best known and most influential French antiwar novel written during World War I; second as a major left-wing writer and thinker during the first third of the twentieth century. More militant than Romain Rolland but less so than Louis Aragon or Paul Nizan, Barbusse had a career as a novelist, pamphleteer, and editor characterized by a deep concern for the underprivileged and exploited and for the educative role of art and writing in the class struggle. He believed that by virtue of his particular gifts, the writer had a perception of life which it was his duty to transmit to others. In 1919, in a letter to the Italian author Gabriele d'Annunzio, he wrote: "L'écrivain, le penseur, le guide, doit voir plus loin que les prétendus avantages immédiats, et plus loin que le temps présent" (The writer, thinker and guide has a duty to see beyond so-called immediate advantages of the present moment).
This is a free page. This page contains 151 words. This
biography contains 2,510 words (approx. 8 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Henri Barbusse Access Pass.
