Rocco D'Alfonso

Maurice Barrès e gli scritti politici giovanili

214

Gennaio-Aprile 2007

Anno LXXII    n. 1

Summary - This work aims to illustrate the early political ideas of Maurice Barrès (1862-1923), an intellectual from Lorraine who had a career very influential and a great fame as writer during the Third Republic in France . He was also an ideologist and a professional of politics committed at first in the boulangiste movement, then in nationalist ranks, to became later one of the prominent spokesmen of this wave with Scènes et doctrines du nationalisme, edited in 1902. Before joining boulangisme, in april 1888, Barrès wrote about political issues and themes in «Les Taches d’encre», a monthly review which he created in november 1884, then in «Le Voltaire», a republican and anticlerical newspaper, to which he contributed from may 1886 to april 1888. This was the time of the intellectual training of the young lorrainer writer, during which he promoted the improvement of the relations between France and Germany , that were on edge since the end of the French-Prussian War, 1870-1871. This stand, founded on the notion of a common civilization unifying Europe, and shaped by a sense of friendship and solidarity, is very different from the position that Barrès will later embrace during his life: that is to say, a slow, progressive shifting to ideals and conceptions marked by nationalism, esprit de revanche and anti-semitism. So, only beginning from the early Barrès we are able to catch, and understand, the full development of the political thought of this author, from the cosmopolitan ideals of the first years until the harshly nationalist and xenophobic theories that followed the years of the affaire Dreyfus.