Les listes noires de 1944

The list of undesirables goes back to antiquity. It was widely practiced in France in the 1940s. The National Committee of Writers, who had just emerged from hiding, drew up a first list of untouchable personalities in September and then a second in October 1944, prompting a wide debate which had its tenors , Including Mauriac, Paulhan, Aragon, Camus, and its activists. Some compromised authors, from Brasillach to Céline, had to be held accountable, others settle their accounts. It is the history of literary collaboration and resistance, followed by the purification of the republic of letters, which is here revisited from newspapers and archives now available, but also from plays and novels. The event has left deep traces, where malaise and rancor are mixed. Seventy years later,--Translation of page 4 of cover by Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle.