Inseparable from the idea that we are engaged in a constant process of becoming is the belief that we have to construct our own destinies and so create ourselves.
In one of his 'Poemes interieurs', Seghers rejects any notion that his own life should be determined from outside: 'Moi je.forge mes propres chaines, / C'est pour me hisser jusqu'a moi' (DP 67). With the same emphasis on self-determination, he addresses his reader as the 'filateur de ton propre fil’ (DP 35). In 1978, in his introduction to Le Temps des merveilles, Seghers would continue to stress our capacity and our need to invent our own lives: 'jete dans sa propre vie, nu entre les dragons, l'homme decouvre bientot qu'il lui faut naviguer a l'estime, en inventant sa route' (p. 8).
In the 'Argument' which opens Figures, Tardieu expresses a similar view, that since the decline in religious belief, man has been constrained to build his own image:
Dans un monde ou tout se tait sous la menace d'une epouvantable absence, l'homme autrefois berce par la voix des
dieux se retrouve seul, contraint (...) de rebatir sa propre image & partir des demieres marches du ndant. (p. 9)
The same emphasis on self-creation underlies Frenaud's powerful declaration of human rights: 'je siffle, je proclame le droit de l'homme d'etre un dieu' (IPP 41) and Ponge's comment in Proemes: 'll faut que l'homme, tout comme d'abord le poete, trouve la loi, sa clef, son dieu en lui-meme' (pp. 161-2). It is perhaps surprising how similar to the statements of these poets, all of them atheists, is Emmanuel's comment in his introduction to La Liberty guide nos pas: 'chacun de nous est un createur d'humanite, a son rang et dans son ordre. La vie n'est pas hors de nous, elle est nous'(p. 72).15
It is interesting that the poets often describe Resisters as the builders or creators of man. Partisans of the Resistance were, for these poets, exemplary beings in so far as they were actively involved in the process of creating humanity. The type of man they were defending and creating was, in their image, creatively resistant.
The idea of Resisters as creators of humanity underlies, I believe, the use of the Promethean myth in a number of Resistance poems. Prometheus, the figure who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity, is known as the bearer of light and the bringer of hope and is also credited with the creation of mortals - with having fashioned man from clay and animated him with fire. Before examining the traces of this myth in
/
Resistance poetry, it is worth nothing that Hitler described the Aryan race as the 'Promethee de l'humanite' in Mein Kampf.^ Following in the footsteps of Gobineau and Chamberlain, he believed that the Aryan race alone was capable of spreading civilization and creating a new type of man. It is important not to lose sight of the fact that Nazism too was intent on creating a new humanity.
Eluard's statement in Poesie involontaire et poesie intentionnelle that 'tout homme est frere de Promethee' (OC I 1134), derives from his belief that we must create ourselves or will ourselves to become, in a constant aspiration towards the impossible, rendered real or possible by our dreams and imagination:
Si nous voulions, rien ne nous serait impossible. Le plus d£nu£ d’entre nous a le pouvoir, tout comme le plus riche, de nous remettre, de ses mains appliqudes et de ses yeux confiants, un tresor inestimable, ses reves et sa rdalitd que raison, bon sens, mdchancetd ne parviennent pas & detruire (...) Tout homme est frere de Promethde. (OC 11134)
The exemplary figures celebrated in Eluard's Resistance poetry are all described in terms of the light and the fire that emanates from them. They are all bearers of hope who animate our desire to become. In epitaphs written in memory of Gabriel Peri, for example, Eluard first associates Peri with light (he is in our present 'comme y est la lumiere' (OC II 691)), and then with the hope that projects us forward into a future image of ourselves. Eluard has Peri narrate his own epitaph:
J'ai chante l'homme qui viendra Prendre des forces sur ma tombe Ecoutez-moi vous qui luttez J'ai dit l'espoir qui vous anime II n'y a rien dans l'avenir
Que je n'ai desire meilleur (OC II691) Eluard described a number of writers assassinated during the war as 'Des hommes nourris d'espoir' (OC I 1286); 'tous & l'image de l'homme', they help us to aspire to a future life: 'Tous nous rendant la vie possible' (OC I 1287). Similarly, in 'La victoire de Guernica', those who live their lives authentically are said to be those who help construct a future (both a new world and a new image of man):
Hommes reels pour qui le desespoir Alimente le feu devorant de l'espoir
Ouvrant ensemble le dernier bourgeon de l’avenir (ARA; OC 11814) Seghers, whose frequent use of the emblems of light and fire witnesses the influence of Eluard, describes hope as 'un espoir ardent comme le feu de la terre' (FA
26) and revolution as a 'porteur de feu' (DP 11). For Seghers as for Eluard, the ideal and privileged man is Promethean: 'Tout homme est une n6buleuse de soleils' (TM 8). In 'Aux jeunes', he impresses upon the young their duty to build their own destinies, to carry and to spread the fire of their hope in the future:
Si tu portes en toi le feu Si tu animes qui tu touches Si tu forges pour l'avenir
Les socs les armes de la joie Et les pylones de l'espoir.
Tu es un homme de chez nous (FA 71) Marcenac describes the Resisters of the time in terms of this same promethean ideal. All of the following excerpts are taken from Le Ciel des fusiltts. Marcenac describes a Resistance hero, Valentin Feldman, as a 'temoin de lumiere' and a 'forgeron de l'obscur' (p. 31). The allies are referred to as 'guerriers du soleil' (p. 52); the death of a young partisan is shrouded in light: 'Le jeune. mort au flanc de l'abime solaire / Brille entre deux haies de cristal' (p. 28), and stars are said to rise from the 'corps lumineux des martyrs' (p. 35). Jean Lurgat's son, killed in the Resistance, is imagined as a ball of flame falling, like Icarus, from the sky:
Icare ecartele dans son sang de lumiere n venait de mourir pour nous donner le jour Et du fond d'une nuit dont nous ne savons rien
H allumait un feu irrevocable (pp. 62-3) In direct contrast to this, the enemy (represented in Marcenac's work as an inverse humanity) is described in terms of darkness. The soldiers of National Socialism are described as 'les serviteurs de l'ombre' who make war on daylight (and on the possibility of becoming): 'Us ont fait la guerre aux enfants / Ils la font au jour qui se leve' (p. 52). A young German, killed in the service of Nazism, is described as a 'fossoyeur de soleils' (p. 70), and the occupying forces are dubbed 'les sauvages chasseurs d’etoiles' (p. 45).
The light that surrounds exemplary figures in Marcenac's work is a light which illuminates and inspires all who come into contact with it. Of Lurgat's son, he writes: 'll venait de mourir Nous l'ignorions encore / Mais nous tendions deja les deux mains vers sa flamme' (p. 63). The light emanating from the communist martyrs celebrated in 'Le ciel des fusilles1 illuminates, significantly, the future of humankind:
Douze 6toiles rouges dans la poitrine Constellation O mes amis assassines Au plus noir de la vie se devine le monde Ou vous inscrivez l'avenir
(...)
Les astrologues ennemis
Perdent la vue Perdent la voix Perdent la tete Leurs etoiles ne comptent plus
Nous entrons dans le signe des Fusillds. La nouvelle saison des hommes
Commence avec celles qui montent
Du corps lumineux des martyrs (pp. 34-5) The old Collaborator caricatured in 'Un jour viendra' describes Resisters as 'des monstres de lumiere' (p. 42). What he fears from them is precisely the hope that they give: the 'maigre espoir qui le torture' - which tortures in as much as it threatens to tear him from the apathy that he prefers. He curses Resisters as 'la grande race devineuse / Qui sait voir l'aube en plein minuit' (p. 42). The ultimate result of this hope, and the thing that he most fears, is that it will create new beings who will radiate a similar light: 'Ils fecondent le monde & leur dernier regard / Et puis naissent naissent des monstres de lumiere comme eux-memes' (p. 42).