Joseph Kessel: Cimetière du Montparnasse #11

'JOSEPH KESSEL

DE L'ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE

31 JANVIER 1898 – 23 JUILLET 1979'

 

Joseph Kessel was a French novelist born in Argentina and was the uncle of the writer and politician Maurice Druon. Uncle and nephew illegally crossed the Pyrenees during the Occupation and reached London to join de Gaulle's Forces Aériennes Françaises Libres. It was in the White Swan pub in Coulsdon, south London, that Kessel and Druon composed Le Chant de la Libération, which became the hymn of the French Resistance.

Kessel spent twenty years working on Le Tour du Malheur (1950), a tetralogy with a strongly autobiographical element.

N.B. It seems someone at Google raised an objection to my post #10 on Alfred Dreyfus, although I've no idea what. I said nothing whatsoever that anyone could possibly have objected to, my facts were perfectly correct, I was simply highlighting a historic wrong done by the military that is common knowledge. And you only have to key in 'J'accuse...!' and click on 'Images' to see how the expression has now become common currency and is used way beyond its original meaning by Zola. I really don't have a clue why they pulled it because I have received no notification of anything: I just blinked and it disappeared! I think the only way it can make any sense is that it must have been an objection from a French person whose English isn't very good. 

 

My first – and very long – post on the Cimetière du Montparnasse:

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Montparnasse Cemetery / Cimetière du Montparnasse