French Literature Reviews - 2026
Vincent Guillier, Maurice Blanchard, L'avant-garde solitaire
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs
Vincent Guillier
MAURICE BLANCHARD
L'avant-garde solitaire
L'Harmattan
ISBN: 978-2-296-03741-0 • Paris, July 2007 • 148 pages
Publisher's blurb:
While it may seem incongruous to pay tribute to Maurice Blanchard even through a biography, we would like to draw attention to Mandiargues's thoughts on the matter.
"The French have as much poetic sensibility as fish have maternal instinct." To this day, nothing has changed. The irony is also to see how much this Maurice Blanchard, originally from the Somme department, has been talked about. People have been content to pigeonhole him even after the work of Jean-Hugues Malineau and Pierre Drachline at Plasma editions, and despite so many other courageous attempts.
Solitary as he was, one might find it surprising that he was published in the finest poetry reviews and anthologies of the 1950s. What is the point of defining his poetry without uncovering the hidden corners of everyday life!
This biography is that of a discreet figure who lived an eventful life. Successively a worker, sailor, aviator, seaplane manufacturer, and member of the Resistance, Maurice Blanchard was also a key player in surrealist resistance poetry alongside the group *La Main à Plume*. A friend of René Char, Paul Éluard, Joël Bousquet, and Pieyre de Mandiagues, he would have only a handful of readers during his lifetime. His strange, barely "literary" life is a manifesto, an unwitting avant-garde, and an antidote to naivety and idiocy.
Contents:
History of the land of childhood
The hell of labor
He knew the melancholy of ocean liners.
Hard times and bitter bread
War, a state of perpetual becoming
Building to kill, to move fast
Writing after all
Keeping friends at a distance
The God of War
Time of resistance (1942-1946)
Outcast of the world
Selected poems
False confidences
On dove's feet
Concerto of solitude
The Annunciation
The Rite of Spring
The Temple of Segesta
The butterflies
Allegory
The Gloster hair
Strength of materials
The Rule of Thumb
Must the poet belong to his time?
Inquiry, indispensable poetry
Inquiry into the poetic instance
Memories of the homeland
Vincent Guillier, born in 1978, holds degrees in Literature and Philosophy. He wrote the preface to Maurice Blanchard's collection *La Hauteur des murs*, published in 2006 by Le Dilettante. He also conceived and curated an exhibition on Maurice Blanchard's work in 2003 at the University of Picardy Jules Verne.
The surrealist movement emerged in France during the 1920s as an artistic and literary approach that sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind. Writers and artists associated with this intellectual tradition frequently explored themes of dream, rebellion, and the marvelous, often engaging in political resistance during periods of conflict. Within this wider historical and artistic setting, figures connected to groups such as La Main à Plume participated in clandestine activities and collaborative publications during the Second World War, maintaining poetic creation under difficult conditions.
Readers interested in twentieth-century French poetry and the history of surrealism may find this publication relevant. Vincent Guillier presents a biography of Maurice Blanchard, noting his varied experiences as a worker, sailor, aviator, seaplane manufacturer, and member of the Resistance. Blanchard was associated with the surrealist resistance poetry group La Main à Plume and maintained friendships with figures such as René Char, Paul Éluard, Joël Bousquet, and Pieyre de Mandiagues. The book outlines his life and includes selected poems, detailing the trajectory of a discreet figure who had a handful of readers during his lifetime.