菲利普阿里亚斯

The Postwar Politics of Philippe Aries Author(s): Patrick H. Hutton Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), pp. 365-381 Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/261144 . Accessed: 03/07/2012 00:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. . Sage Publications, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Contemporary History. http://www.jstor.org Journal of Contemporary History Copyright ? 1999 SAGE Publications, London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi, Vol 34(3), 365-381. [0022-0094( 199907)34:3;365-38 1;008937] Patrick H. Hutton The Postwar Politics of Philippe Aries During autumn 1941, Philippe Aries, an aspiring man of letters, attended the salon of Daniel Halevy for the first time. Before the war, Aries had been active in the student wing of the monarchist inspired Action Franfaise. Halevy was a renowned intellectual of broad erudition, formed in the style of the savant of the nineteenth century. He wrote old-fashioned narrative essays on France's political heritage, with subtle insight into correspondences between past and present. As a man of letters, he epitomized refined, lingering attachments to old France. These were sombre days in Paris under German occupation, and the city's normally vibrant intellectual life had been largely stilled. But Halevy's salon was a place where intellectual exchange was carried on much as it had been before. In the midst of Paris under nazi occupation, his home was a sanctuary where the surroundings were elegant, the guests learned, and the conversations thoughtful. The young Aries had come to Halevy's attention because he had been scheduled to preside at Aries's lecture to the Cercle Fustel de Coulanges, a scholarly forum of the Action Francaise that continued to convene despite the occupation. Halevy was unable to attend, but a week later he sent Aries an invitation to one of his own gatherings. Halevy chose his guests carefully with an ear to the conversations the right selection might stimulate. On this first visit the aspiring young intellectual seems to have made little impression on the grand old man of letters. But two years later, he was invited back, this time upon the publication of his Traditions sociales dans les pays de France (1943), a historical geography of French regionalism, and his take on what a decentralized nation under Vichy might have been in the best of circumstances. Henceforth, he was a frequent guest at Halevy's soirees. As a man of letters in the royalist tradition, he must have sensed that he had arrived.1 Halevy was famous for his study of the eclipse of the political power of the notables, the monarchist faction that had fought an unsuccessful rearguard action against the emerging republican leadership in the early years of the Third Republic.2 In Aries's mind, Halevy was not only their historian but also their inheritor. He spoke for traditional values of the sort in which Aries himself believed. Is not our shared commitment today, he wondered, like that of the notables which Halevy described? Did not their struggle then lend 1 Philippe Ari6s, Un Historien du dimanche (Paris 1980), 87; idem, 'Le Secret' (1978) in Roger Chartier (ed.), Essais de memoire, 1943-1983 (Paris 1993), 29-30. A dossier of Hal6vy's letters to Ariis, most dating from the 1950s, is found among Ariis's personal papers, conserved by his family. 2 Daniel Hal6vy, La fin des notables, 2 vols (1930-37; Paris 1972). Journal of Contemporary History Vol 34 No 3 insight into our predicament now, in these uncertain times when the Republic has fallen because of the incompetence of its leaders and the hapless Vichy regime seems the only hope for the future? Aries took Halevy as a mentor to follow and a model to emulate. 'His friendship shepherded me henceforth as a guardian spirit', he reminisced in looking back on those years.3 Aries went on to become one of the leading French historians of his day. Practising what he characterized as a history of mentalities, he wrote pioneer- ing works on the culture of everyday life, notably that of family and childhood (1960), and of death and mourning (1977).4 Like Halevy, he retained an affection for the mores of old France. The difference between them was that Aries eventually relinquished his aspirations to influence politics as a man of letters, and settled instead for the honest, modest, but ultimately testimonial role of professional historian. Here he made his mark, and one might say preserved the only legacy that royalists might have hoped to maintain - a sympathetic historical representation of the traditions of old France for a generation that had no living memory of them. Aries's route to prominence as a cultural historian was not an easy one. He held no university position and was politely dismissed as an amateur by the leading lights of the French historical profession during the 1960s.5 In time, though, he was embraced by their younger colleagues, with such appreciation that in 1978 he was elected to the faculty of the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales, the home of Annales historiography.6 Since then, historio- graphers have grouped him with these Annaliste colleagues.7 But Aries never forgot his origins, or the attachments they implied. All his life he reverenced the traditions of old France that had been an inheritance of his childhood and the friendships formed during his university years before the war in the shared struggle to advance the royalist cause. Most students of contemporary French historiography are familiar with Aries's ascent as a cultural historian during the postwar era. But few are aware 3 Philippe Aries, 'Daniel Halevy', La Nation Franfaise (hereafter cited as NF), 7 February 1962, 1, 11. Halevy may even have inspired Aries's reflections on how history might be reconceived in light of the fall of the Republic in 1940. For his obituary on Hal6vy in 1962, he chose as his theme Halevy's essay 'Histoire d'une histoire' (1939), a meditation on the limits of the Revolutionary tra- dition. Philippe Aries, "'Histoire d'une histoire": Laissez l'ordre rentrer en vous', NF, 21 February 1962, 20-3. 4 Philippe Aries, L'Enfant et la vie familiale sous l'ancien rggime (1960; Paris 1973); idem, L'Homme devant la mort (Paris 1977). 5 Andre Burguiere, 'La Singuliere Histoire de Philippe Aries', Le Nouvel Observateur, 20 February 1978, 80; Herv6 Coutau-B6garie, Le Phenomene nouvelle histoire (Paris 1989), 350-2 traces the benign neglect of Aries's work by the leading scholars of the Annales movement until the mid-1970s. 6 Aries, Historien du dimanche, op. cit., 187. On Aries's place in the work of the Ecole des hautes etudes, see Roger Chartier, 'L'Histoire culturelle' in Jacques Revel and Nathan Wachtel (eds), Une Ecole pour les sciences sociales (Paris 1996), 84-5. 7 Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution; The 'Annales' School, 1929-89 (Stanford, CA 1990), 67-9; Francois Dosse, L'Histoire en miettes; Des 'Annales' a la 'nouvelle histoire' (Paris 1987), 201-3, 218-20. 366 Hutton: The Postwar Politics of Philippe Aries of the degree to which he simultaneously remained actively engaged in a rearguard defence of royalist politics. From 1946 to 1966, he was a journalist for newspapers that tried to adapt the perspectives of the pre-war Action Franfaise to the changed circumstances of the postwar world. In his later years, he made much of his difficulties in emancipating himself from the political commitments of his early adulthood.8 But his maturation as a historian owed much to his persistent if ultimately futile effort to redefine a role for the traditionalist right in contemporary French politics. In a way, the history of mentalities whose research he pioneered became his consolation for a royalist politics that he recognized was no longer viable. That a reinvigorated cultural history should have become the refuge for a royalist politics on the verge of disappearing is one of the most poignant ironies of contemporary French historical writing. Only gradually, painfully, and reluctantly did Aries break the political ties that had sustained his youth- ful ambitions. As his possibilities as a royalist man of letters diminished, he went on to pursue others as one of the most original cultural historians of his generation. His journalism of the 1950s and 1960s mediated these two vocations. Herein he offered a historical perspective on the mentality of the contemporary age. His essential insight concerned the way ordinary people today have come to find more significant meanings in the pursuit of what they perceive to be their private destinies than in the public ones with which their predecessors more openly identified. In the process of these investigations, he fashioned a destiny of his own. As his friend Raoul Girardet remarked: 'Over forty years, I watched Philippe Aries slowly find his path toward self- realization.'9 This article will trace the route he took in doing so. Aries's renewed dedication to political journalism from the mid-1940s through the mid-1960s - years in which he led other lives as administrator, editor and cultural historian - owes much to the influence of Pierre Boutang. Boutang, too, was an aspiring man of letters. Like Aries, he was a journalist in his prime. In his mature years, he went on to become a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. In many ways the two of them were formed in the same mould. They were students together at the Sorbonne in the late 1930s, and collabora- tors on L'Etudiant Franfais, the student newspaper of the Action Franfaise in Paris during that era. Boutang was a young man of energy and purpose. Intellectually self-possessed, an imposing presence in any gathering, he exer- cised a magnetic influence upon those who knew him. Aries was not immune to his spell.10 They went their separate ways during the war, but maintained a correspond- 8 Philippe Aries, 'Le Temps de l'Histoire' (1983) in Essais de memoire, op. cit., 46. 9 Raoul Girardet, 'L'Ombre de la guerre' in Pierre Nora (ed.), Essais d'ego-histoire (Paris 1987), 164. 10 See the portraits of Boutang by Raoul Girardet in Pierre Assouline (ed.), Singulierement libre, entretiens (Paris 1990), 41; Francois Brigneau, Mon Apres-guerre (1966; Paris 1985), 14. 367 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 34 No 3 ence that strengthened their friendship. At the time of the armistice of 1940, both had been enthusiastic about the possibilities of Petain's new regime. Aries taught for a while at a Vichy-sponsored ecole des cadres, then accepted a position as director of a commercial documentation centre.1l Boutang was ini- tially a spokesman for Les Amis du Marechal, a booster group formed to support the cause of Vichy.12 He then went to Algeria, where he became a lead- ing adviser to Jean Rigault, the regime's high commissioner there.13 Aries was disappointed with Vichy, and might have retired from politics altogether but for the coming of the Cold War, and Boutang's appeal to him to persevere in a cause that he might otherwise have let fade away.14 Still, he judged the purge that followed the Liberation excessive. The left, he believed, was bent upon settling old scores, and he was appalled by the reprisals taken against Vichy's sympathizers. He also recognized that communist partisans were rising to intellectual prominence, and threatened to play a more imposing role in French politics than ever before. His own traditionalist right, compro- mised by the fellow-travelling of the war years, found itself vulnerable to the exaggerated and oversimplified claims of its old enemies.15 As for intellectuals in public life in postwar France, Aries was particularly bothered by the appearance of a new breed of opportunists. He identified them as products of the totalitarian politics of the contemporary age. Before and during the war, he claimed, they had used their talents to advance extrem- ist ideologies - fascism on the right, communism on the left. Now, as emo- tions surrounding the purge ran high, they sought to curry popular favour through public confession of their errant ways, or to reinvent themselves in the guise of the politics now in vogue. For Aries, they represented a disturbing trend. He had always thought of men of letters in terms of the particular traditions in which they were grounded. Tradition set the course and the limits of the intellectual positions they might take. For example, one could reckon with a Marxist intellectual because one knew the terrain on which he took his 11 Early on, Aries was disabused of his initial hopes for what the Vichy regime might be. His brief stint as an instructor at the Vichy-sponsored Ecole nationale des cadres superieurs at La Chapelle-en-Serval ended in disillusionment in light of the director's attraction to national social- ism. In the waning days of Vichy, Aries retreated to a job as director of a documentation centre on tropical fruit in France's overseas empire. As data-gathering had been suspended for the duration of the war, he used it as a sanctuary in which to launch a research project on the historical demography of modern France. Aries, Historien du dimanche, op. cit., 77-92. 12 Pierre Boutang and Henri Dubreuil, Les Amis du Marechal (Paris 1941). 13 Brigneau, Mon Apres-guerre, op. cit., 48-9, 73; Pierre Boutang, Maurras, la destinge et l'oeuvre (Paris 1984), 708 n. 17. 14 Nor did Aries ever forget Boutang's solicitude in the closing days of the war, after his brother Jacques died in one of the French army's last campaigns. Aries, Historien du dimanche, op. cit., 99. Boutang also wrote appreciative reviews of Aries's book on demography, Histoire des populations franqaises et de leurs attitudes devant la vie depuis le XVIIIe siecle (Paris 1948) in Aspects de la France, 3 and 10 March 1949. 15 On Aries's reaction to the purge, see Aries, Historien du dimanche, op. cit., 98-101; idem, Le Temps de l'histoire (Monaco 1954), 63-4. 368 Hutton: The Postwar Politics of Philippe Aries stand. But this new type of intellectual displayed no such loyalties. Aries characterized them as 'reprobates, heroes without a past'. They looked to the whims of public opinion for the positions they would adopt. They were harbingers of a new politics of propaganda, apologists for what he prophesied would become the terrorism practised by the modern state.16 Sensing the need to reaffirm an older conception of the role of the intel- lectual, Aries was persuaded by Boutang to enter the fray of postwar politics. Together they joined the editorial staff of Les Paroles Franfaises in late 1945. It was a venture designed to contribute to the emerging politics of the Cold War, and it brought together unlikely allies. This newspaper was owned by Andre Mutter, a moderate republican elected to the Constituent Assembly for his role in the Resistance. Boutang viewed him cynically, and as managing editor quickly took possession of the newspaper's editorial policy. He sur- rounded himself with a staff of journalists that included veterans of the Action Francaise, some of whom had been wartime collaborators. The coalition was too unstable to last very long. Its major story was an expose of the massacres of Poles by the Red Army at Katyn as it advanced toward Berlin in 1945. By late 1946, Boutang and his entourage were in open disagreement with Mutter, and collectively resigned.17 Boutang went on to serve as political director of Aspects de France, the organ of the reconstituted Action Franfaise. Aries turned to his work as an editor for the publishing house Plon, and more deeply into his own research and writing on historical demography. The collaboration between Boutang and Aries in this venture nonetheless set the style of the working relationship they would resume a few years later. In 1955, they found the resources to launch a newspaper of their own, La Nation Franfaise. In both papers, Boutang wrote boldly and polemically in the style of his mentors of the pre-war Action Francaise. No issue ever appeared without his lead editorial. At Les Paroles Francaises, Aries's role had been modest by comparison. He carried out editorial tasks behind the scenes and contributed only a few articles of his own.18 At La Nation Franfaise Boutang remained the managing editor and the more prolific journalist. But in the end Aries's articles counted for more. Boutang continued to be preoccupied with the issues advanced by Charles Maurras and his followers before the war, and much of 16 Aries noted their similarities to the 'deracines' identified by Maurice Barres two generations before at the time of the Dreyfus Affair. Barres likewise had been critical of intellectuals without roots in particular traditions. Aries, Le Temps de l'histoire, op. cit., 67-78. This image of the 'intellectual' may explain his own preference for the term 'man of letters' to characterize the role he aspired to play. Philippe Aries, 'L'Intellectuel es-qualite', NF, 5 October 1960, 1-2. 17 On the composition of the staff at Les Paroles Francaises, see Brigneau, Mon Apres-guerre, op. cit., 31-2, 48-51. On the expose of the massacre at Katyn, see Aries, 'Sagesse de J. Czapski', NF, 1 March 1961, 1, 13. 18 Aries wrote only three articles during his tenure at Les Paroles Francaises: 'Ce que pense l'Amerique', dealing with public opinion polling, 2 March 1946; 'Le Protestantisme franqais', 9 March 1946; 'L'Evolution sociale d'apres le referendum', which dealt with the political geography of French elections, 18 May 1946. For the context in which this paper operated, see esp. Jeannine Verdes-Leroux, Refus et violences (Paris 1996), 423-6. 369 Journal of Contemporary History Vol 34 No 3 this was remote from present-day concerns.19 Aries, by contrast, addressed the issues raised by the realities of the present age. As a journalist he sought to reaffirm the ongoing significance of traditionalist values with which even the Action Francaise had lost touch. He soon acquired a following of faithful readers. Between 1955 and 1966, Aries wrote some 130 articles dealing with the contemporary scene.20 They constituted what he characterized as a 'history of the present', a way of evaluating present circumstances by emphasizing their differences from the past, not their similarities, as was the more common practice among historians.21 This project paralleled and provided an important counterpoint to his historical studies of family and childhood, for which he was soon to win widespread acclaim.22 These topical essays reveal Aries at a crossroads, leaving behind the familiar path of the royalist apologist for the uncharted domain of the cultural historian. Indirectly, they evince his own painful and reluctant abandonment of his traditionalist politics while seeking to remain true to the more profound convictions on which they were based. As a man of letters bent on making a difference in politics, he witnessed the disappearance of his cause. As a historian, however, he was more successful in explaining the role that tradition continues to play in the contemporary age. The two projects were i