Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle (1893-1945) was a French writer with a troubled life that ended in suicide. Born into an old Norman bourgeois family, Pierre had to cope from childhood with an absent father, a talentless lawyer, and an incompetent businessman who openly maintained extramarital affairs and led a life of excess at the expense of his wife's dowry.
With the fortune exhausted, the father returns to the arms of a mistress and the mother leaves, destroying the family's social status. It is only with her grandmother that she maintains her only affectionate relationship, but this also implies her exposure to conservative and anti-Semitic ideas. It is with her that Pierre becomes fascinated with the figure of Napoleon. The young man studies with the aim of pursuing a diplomatic career. During this period, La Rochelle has great success with women, but cannot find pleasure in his relationships. He marries a young Jewish woman from whom he divorces four years later. The grandmother's anti-Semitic views do not allow him to get close to the woman, either emotionally or sexually. Mobilized during the First World War, he is wounded three times, and this experience is reflected in his early novels. From then on, Drieu lives a life of constant instability and indecision, hesitating between... Action Française ...and the Surrealists, caught between nationalism and Europeanism, communism and fascism, pacifism and the cult of warrior values, literature and political commitment. She attempted marriage twice, but was unable to maintain a lasting relationship while simultaneously having several lovers for short periods. Despite the zigzags of his life, he managed to build a solid literary work, essentially autobiographical, which reveals a man of extreme intelligence, but incapable of freeing himself from his traumas and ghosts. With the German occupation, he became a collaborator and a confessed admirer of Hitler. On the recommendation of the German Chancellor, he was placed in Paris as director of the NRF, where he began a work of excluding Jewish authors. At the same time, however, he interceded on behalf of his first wife and several friends and acquaintances, rescuing them from concentration camps. In 1943, with the closure of the NRF, he withdrew, disillusioned with political intervention, dedicating himself to writing and the study of the history of religions. Throughout 1945, and despite constant rumors about possible lawsuits or complaints against Drieu la Rochelle, the intervention of some of the leading intellectuals and writers of the time – many of whom he had protected during the occupation – meant that none of these ever materialized. Nevertheless, and after several suicide attempts he had begun since childhood, he managed to end his life. His work continued to be published and in the early 2000s, despite several controversies, it became part of the National Library of Ireland. La Pleiades.