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Aurlien
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Wikipedia article
:'see also Aurlien (given name), for individuals with the masculine given name.
'Aurlien' is a novel by Louis Aragon, the fourth of the 'Le Monde rel' cycle. It was ranked 51st in 'Le Monde'
Plot
'Aurlien' explores the moral quandaries and aesthetic diversions of its titular bourgeois hero. Through the lens of its protagonist, a forty-something who has never quite recovered from his experiences in the First World War, Aragon's novel depicts a forgotten and wayward inter-war generation, devoid of any definite identity. The action unfolds against a backdrop of the famous Roaring Twenties (complete with cameos from Picasso and the Dadaists in Pigalle, mentions of the backlash against Cocteau, and allusions to fashionable outings in the Bois de Boulogne).
Despite the meaningless pursuits that surround him, Aurlien becomes swept up in an all-consuming, tortuous and impossible love for Brnice, a young woman fresh from the provinces with a husband and a "taste for the extreme" ('"le got de l'absolu"'). Their love cannot, however, withstand the pressures of their reality. Brnice eventually returns to her provincial existence, leaving Aurlien to embrace a life of disaffection and hedonism with renewed vigour. Eighteen years later, they meet again and re-live the impossibility of their lost love.
Genesis
In his 1969 essay 'Je n'ai jamais appris crire ou les Incipit' ('"I never learned to write, or Incipits"'), Aragon describes 'Aurlien' as having stemmed from a single sentence that came to him while he was walking in Nice: '"La premire fois qu'Aurlien vit Brnice, il la trouva franchement laide"' ("The first time Aurlien saw Brnice, he found her downright ugly"). . This sentence became the incipit of the finished novel.
Adaptations
'Aurlien' (1978), TV film directed by Michel Favart, screenplay adapted by Michel Favart and Franoise Verny, starring Philippe Nahoun as Aurlien and Franoise Lebrun as Brnice.
'Aurlien' (2003), TV film directed by Arnaud Slignac, screenplay adapted by ric-Emmanuel Schmitt, starring Olivier Sitruk as Aurlien and Romane Bohringer as Brnice.
References
Category:1944 novels
Category:Novels by Louis Aragon
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