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2 000 €

Réf : 86460

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Louis ARAGON

Georges ADAM

Eclairez votre religion - Aux enfants rouges

Bureau d'Éditions et de Diffusion, Paris 1932, 18x23,5cm, agrafé.

First edition.
Illustrated with 16 drawings by Georges Adam.
A superb copy of this rare booklet by Louis Aragon, a true ‘anti-clerical, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist, anti-patriotic' (Pierre Juquin) catechism aimed at the children of the exploited working masses.
 

"Le 25 juin 1932, l'Imprimerie centrale achève d'imprimer pour le Bureau des Editions et de diffusion, 132, faubourg Saint-Denis, à Paris, une belle plaquette, aujourd'hui devenue une rareté bibliophilique [...] Sur la couverture une grand étoile rouge - image importante et récurrente chez Aragon - s'imprime sur des cerveaux d'enfants. Seize quatrains, drolatiques et didactiques, ponctués pour faciliter la lecture, alternent avec des dessins de Georges Adam, qui chargés d'une dérision quasi-expressionniste comme des peintures de Rouault, renversent tabous et mythes" (Aragon. Un destin français 1897-1939).

 

‘On June 25, 1932, the Imprimerie centrale completed printing for the Bureau des Editions et de Diffusion, 132, Faubourg Saint-Denis, Paris, a beautiful pamphlet, now a bibliophilic rarity [...] On the cover, a large red star - an important and recurrent image in Aragon's work – appears imprinted on children's brains. Sixteen quatrains, droll and didactic, punctuated for ease of reading, alternate with drawings by Georges Adam, whose nearly expressionist mockery, reminiscent of Rouault's paintings, overturns taboos and myths.' (Aragon. Un destin français 1897-1939).

 
After breaking with the Surrealists, Aragon threw himself wholeheartedly into the Journal de la Lutte antireligieuse. Writing from Moscow, he authored this pamphlet, published on the Party's presses, to ignite the fervor of proletarian youth. Jacques Prévert would later follow a similar path with his play Emasculée Conception. Anticlerical activism within French Communist associations was in full swing at the time:  all the symbols and events of religious life were reinterpreted through the lens of class struggle. ‘Red baptisms' were organised, forming a community of “Godless” children (according to the Association of Godless Workers) who corresponded with their Soviet counterparts.
 
Aragon contributed to these new rituals by providing this particularly radical children's book, deemed too antipatrotic by Maurice Thorez, which he would disown at the end of his life.
Aragon contributed to these new rituals with this particularly radical children's book, deemed excessively antipatriotic by Maurice Thorez, which he would later disavow at the end of his life.

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