ARAGON, LOUIS

born Oct. 3, 1897, Paris, France died Dec. 24, 1982, Paris original name Louis Andrieux French poet, novelist, and essayist who was a political activist and spokesman for communism. Through the Surrealist poet Andr Breton, Aragon was introduced to avant-garde movements such as Dadaism; and together with Philippe Soupault, he and Breton founded the Surrealist review Littrature (1919). Aragon's first poems, Feu de joie (1920; Bonfire) and Le Mouvement perptuel (1925; Perpetual Motion), were followed by a novel, Le Paysan de Paris (1926; The Nightwalker). In 1927 his search for an ideology led him to the French Communist Party, with which he was identified thereafter, as he came to exercise a continuing authority over its literary and artistic expression. In 1928 he met Elsa Triolet (the Russian-born sister-in-law of the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky), who became his wife and his inspiration (she died in 1970). In 1930 Aragon visited the Soviet Union, and in 1933 his political commitment to communism resulted in a break with the Surrealists. The four volumes of his long novel series, Le Monde rel (193344; The Real World), describe in historical perspective the class struggle of the proletariat toward social revolution. Aragon continued to employ Socialist Realism in another long novel, Les Communistes (6 vol., 194951), a bleak chronicle of the party from 1939 to 1940. His next three novelsLa Semaine sainte (1958; Holy Week), La Mise mort (1965; The Moment of Truth), and Blanche ou l'oubli (1967; Blanche, or Forgetfulness)became a veiled autobiography, laced with pleas for the Communist Party. They reflected the newer novelistic techniques of the day. The poems of Le Crve-Coeur (1941; Heartbreak) and La Diane franaise (1945) express Aragon's ardent patriotism, and those of Les Yeux d'Elsa (1942; Elsa's Eyes) and Le fou d'Elsa (1963; Elsa's Madman) contain deep sentiments of love for his wife. From 1953 to 1972 Aragon was editor of the communist cultural weekly Les Lettres Franaises. He was made a member of the French Legion of Honour in 1981.