Marcel Martinet (Dijon, 22 August 1887 – Saumur, 18 February 1944) was a French pacifist socialist revolutionary militant and a prolétarian writer.
Martinet, a Communist and pacifist, opposed the First World War from its outset: his antiwar poems Les temps maudits were banned in France during the war, but circulated secretly: helped by Marguerite Rosmer, he sent copies on thin paper to soldiers at the front. [1] La Maison à l'Abri, a novel about the First World War, was runner-up for the Prix Goncourt in 1919. [2] Martinet's poem La Nuit, completed in 1919, was published in 1922 with a preface by Leon Trotsky, [3] whom Martinet had befriended when Trotsky was in Paris. [1] Martinet's series Les Cahiers du Travail [Labour Notebooks] published pamphlets by Victor Serge. [1]
His son was the surgeon Jean-Daniel Martinet.
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, playwright, novelist, designer, filmmaker, visual artist and critic. He was one of the foremost creatives of the surrealist, avant-garde, and Dadaist movements; and one of the most influential figures in early 20th-century art as a whole. The National Observer suggested that, “of the artistic generation whose daring gave birth to Twentieth Century Art, Cocteau came closest to being a Renaissance man.”
Louis Aragon was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review Littérature. He was also a novelist and editor, a long-time member of the Communist Party and a member of the Académie Goncourt. After 1959, he was a frequent nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realism.
François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a French poet and novelist.
Georges Duhamel was a French author, born in Paris. Duhamel trained as a doctor, and during World War I was attached to the French Army. In 1920, he published Confession de minuit, the first of a series featuring the anti-hero Salavin. In 1935, he was elected as a member of the Académie française. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-seven times. He was also the father of the musicologist and composer Antoine Duhamel.
Frans Masereel was a Flemish painter and graphic artist who worked mainly in France, known especially for his woodcuts focused on political and social issues, such as war and capitalism. He completed over 40 wordless novels in his career, and among these, his greatest is generally said to be Passionate Journey.
Victor Serge, born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich, was a Russian revolutionary Marxist, novelist, poet and historian. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was critical of the Stalinist regime and remained a revolutionary Marxist until his death. He is best remembered for his Memoirs of a Revolutionary and series of seven "witness-novels" chronicling the lives of Soviet people and revolutionaries and of the first half of the 20th century.
Julien Michel Leiris was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with Georges Bataille and head of research in ethnography at the CNRS.
Francis Jammes was a French and European poet. He spent most of his life in his native region of Béarn and the Basque Country and his poems are known for their lyricism and for singing the pleasures of a humble country life. His later poetry remained lyrical, but also included a strong religious element brought on by his (re)conversion to Catholicism in 1905.
The International Federation of Independent Revolutionary Art (FIARI) was a short-lived organization established in 1938 following the publication of the Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art, which was signed by André Breton and Diego Rivera, based on their political and cultural rejection of the Communist International. It was likely co-authored by Leon Trotsky.
The grand prix de l'Imaginaire, until 1992 the grand prix de la science-fiction française, is a French literary award for speculative fiction, established in 1972 by the writer Jean-Pierre Fontana as part of the science fiction convention of Clermont-Ferrand.
Pierre Seghers was a French poet and editor. During the Second World War he took part in the French Resistance movement.
The works of Tristan Tzara include poems, plays and essays. A number of his works contain artwork by well-known artists of the time, including Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.
The prix Guillaume Apollinaire is a French poetry prize first awarded in 1941. It was named in honour of French writer Guillaume Apollinaire. It annually recognizes a collection of poems for its originality and modernity.
Jacques Numa Sadoul, commonly known as Captain Sadoul, was a French lawyer, communist politician, and writer, one of the founders of the Communist International. He began his career in the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in Vienne, and, by the time of World War I, was serving under Albert Thomas, the Minister of Armaments. A French Army Captain, he was Thomas' envoy to the Russian Republic, keeping contact with the socialist circles and steering them toward the Entente Powers. After the October Revolution, he maintained close contacts with the Bolsheviks, pledging them his support against the Central Powers during the crisis of 1917–1918. He was unable to prevent Bolshevist Russia from signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which took her out of the war, but, having established close contacts with Leon Trotsky and other communist leaders, became a communist himself.
Georges Jules Charles Pioch was a French poet, journalist, pacifist and socialist intellectual. He was president of the International League for Peace from 1930–37.
Magdeleine Paz was a French journalist, translator, writer and activist. She was one of the leading left-wing intellectuals in the interwar period. For a time she belonged to the French Communist Party, but she was expelled due to her support of Leon Trotsky. She was the driving force in the campaign to have Victor Serge released from prison in Russia and allowed to return to the west. She wrote a number of books, and translated several others.
Georges Chennevière was the pen name of Leon Debille a French poet and playwright.
The prix Broquette-Gonin was a former prize awarded by the Académie française.
Lucien Scheler was a French author, poet, publisher, and bookseller who participated in the literary resistance against Nazism.