French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Reverseau, On the Rails: From Victor Hugo to Jacques Roubaud
Novel and Narrative Prose
Bibliographic reference: Anne Reverseau, Sur les rails. De Victor Hugo à Jacques Roubaud, Les Impressions Nouvelles, "Traverses" collection, 2018. EAN13: 9782874496196.
Anne Reverseau, Sur les rails. De Victor Hugo à Jacques Roubaud,
Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2018.
After love and war, the train is undoubtedly the favorite theme of literature, past and present. Since the 19th century, authors have constantly evoked train travel, unexpected encounters, landscapes, but also threatening turmoil, accidents, and terrible separations. Between the train we wait for, the one we catch, and the one we miss, the railway is a true path of life.
Sur les rails brings together the most famous pages by poets of the train (Verhaeren, Cendrars, Larbaud), more unexpected texts by French novelists (Zola, Huysmans, Proust), foreign perspectives (Whitman, Marinetti, Svevo), and contemporary voices (Jacques Roubaud, Valérie Rouzeau, François Bon, Christine Jeanney).
By alternating early texts and recent reflections, personal accounts, imaginative writings, and more experimental prose, accompanied by sometimes surprising vintage engravings and photographs, this work celebrates the richness of train imagery and imagination. It might even make you want to spend your life on trains, which are so conducive to dreaming and reading.
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Table of Contents
Train Dreams
Express Trains
Émile Verhaeren, "The Mad Trains"
Alfred de Vigny, The Shepherd's House: A Poem
August Strindberg, "Deranged Sensations"
Paul Morand, "Displacement"
Jean-Jacques Viton, "2.2 Taking the Train"
Jean-Pons de Viennet, "Epistle to Despréaux"
Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto
Émile Verhaeren, "The City"
Pierre Loti, "Moments of Contemplation"
Richard Minne, International Trains
Pierre Albert-Birot, "Train"
Guillaume Apollinaire, "Victory"
Blaise Cendrars, Panama, or the Adventures of My Seven Uncles
Hellish Trains
Walt Whitman, "To a Locomotive in Winter"
Maxime Du Camp, "The Locomotive"
Théophile Gautier, Zigzags
Émile Zola, La Bête Humaine
Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature
Maurice Alhoy, Physiology of the Traveler
François Coppée, Promenades and Interiors
Victor Hugo, "Letter to Adèle, August 22, 1837"
Émile Verhaeren, "Foreword"
Philippe de Jonckheere, "What Are You Thinking?"
Amédée Pommier, "May 8, 1842"
Night Trains
Valery Larbaud, "Ode"
Henry Bataille, "Summer Nights"
Miriam Van Hee, "Station in the Evening"
Pierre Louÿs, The Woman and the Puppet
Harry Blomberg, "The Northern Night Train"
Maurice Dekobra, The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars
Christine Jeanney, Line 1044
Max Jacob, "Nocturne of Family Hesitations"
Trains and Landscapes
Paul Verlaine, "The Landscape in the Frame of the Carriage Doors"
Paul Valéry, "Letter from a Friend", Monsieur Teste
Italo Svevo, Short Sentimental Journey
Christine Jeanney, Line 1044
François Bon, Iron Landscape: The Book, the Film
Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower
Georges Jean, "Time Rolls in the Train"
Trains of Happiness
Franc-Nohain, "Songs of Trains and Stations"
Paul de Kock, "The Railways"
Anna de Noailles, "Trains in Summer"
Charles Cros, "Tableau"
Robert Desnos, "Couplet of the Glass of Wine"
Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian
Joris-Karl Huysmans, The Vatard Sisters
Paul Verlaine, "Malines"
Anna de Noailles, "Travels"
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Paul Valéry, "Return from Holland"
Trains of Memory
Guillaume Apollinaire, "The Traveler"
Robert Desnos, "The Escapee"
Valérie Rouzeau, Go Where
Piet Paaltjens, "To Rika"
Maurice Fombeure, "The Local Train"
Léon-Paul Fargue, "Under the Lamp"
Jules Laforgue, "X"
Valery Larbaud, "The Old Station of Cahors"
Jacques Roubaud, "First Railway Prose"
Léon-Paul Fargue, "The Station"
Blaise Cendrars, "In the 7:40 p.m. Express"
Trains and Phantasmagoria
Raymond Queneau, "A Train Whistling in the Night"
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, "The Demon of Speed"
Paul Dermée, Poem to Mrs. Gréta Pozor
Béranger, "Our Globe"
Yvan Goll, "Montparnasse Station"
Léon-Paul Fargue, "Plea for Disorder"
Pierre Albert-Birot, The Blue Train
Jan Baetens, "Louvain-Waremme Section"
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way
Blaise Cendrars, Prose of the Trans-Siberian
Pierre Giffard, Life on the Railway
Further reading
Sources
This anthology explores the profound impact of the railway on literary imagination from the nineteenth century to the contemporary era. Gathering diverse texts by canonical authors alongside lesser-known voices and foreign perspectives, the volume illustrates how the locomotive transformed modern perception, spatial experience, and writing. It situates the railway not merely as a technological marvel or a means of transit, but as a privileged space for introspection, sensory disruption, and narrative innovation across multiple literary genres and aesthetic movements.
The book will appeal to scholars of modern literature, cultural historians, and readers interested in the intersections between technology, landscape, and the arts. By juxtaposing nineteenth-century realism and romanticism with avant-garde manifestos and contemporary prose, it sheds light on how mechanized travel reshaped human relationships with time and space. It offers valuable insights into the persistent fascination with journeys, departures, and the transient encounters that define the modern travel experience.