Lucien Descaves

The son of a dirty engraver, Lucien Descaves sympathized with the Paris Commune and his “anti-authoritarian” activists. The important collections he had gathered on the event and on the men are today at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Two of his works at least were inspired by the Commune: La Colonne, 1902, and Philémon, old man of the old, history book more than novel.

The Manifesto of the Five united, in 1887, Paul Margueritte, Paul Bonnemain, Gustave Cuiches, Rosny and Lucien Descaves in a review by Émile Zola who had just published La Terre. Descaves was an editor at the Dawn, whose Dreyfusardes position he followed.

L. Descaves, a theatre man, wrote libertarian-inspired plays: La Cage, 1898, in collaboration with G. Darien, invites men to rally to the revolutionary cause and break their chains; La Clairière, 1900, and Les Oiseaux de passage, 1904, in collaboration with M. Donnay, the first, address the problem of “free circles” or anarchist colonies, the second, the study of the morals of Russian nihilists. In 1908 he gave an important preface to the book by Léon and Maurice Bonneff, The Tragic Life of Workers.

Lucien Descaves was also a journalist and trade unionist. He was an activist of the Association for Defence and Professional Discipline, founded on 10 March 1918. Lucien Descaves succeeded Jean-Ernest Charles, literary columnist at Le Temps, in May 1919, as president or secretary general of this professional association. Following internal difficulties, he resigned and was replaced by Georges Bourdon. This association turned into a trade union in 1928.

In 1927, his name appeared, alongside those of Alain, Louis Guilloux, Henry Poulaille, Jules Romains, Séverine... on the petition that denounced the law on the general organization of the nation for the time of war, repealing all intellectual independence and freedom of opinion.

This writer, who was among the collaborators of the En Dehors de Zo d’Axa (5 May 1891-19 February 1893) and the Temps Nouveaux (4 May 1895-August 1914), told the story of his life in Souvenirs d’un ours, Paris, 1946, 296 p.

If he was one of the founding members of the Académie Goncourt in 1903, he had difficult relations with his colleagues from 1932 to 1939 after the refusal of the prize for Le Voyage at the end of Céline’s night. He was president from 1945 to 1949.

In The Proletarian Revolution of September 1949, Pierre Monatte wrote: “We admired and loved this great writer. Unfortunately we had not found him after the first war. He even renounced to write two books of which he had gathered the elements, two biographies, those of Varlin and Louise Michel.