The Bells of Basel () is a novel by Louis Aragon, the first in the cycle Le Monde Réel (The Real World), first published in 1934. It was a groundbreaking work in the author's œuvre, confirming his departure from surrealism previously promoted, in favor of realism with a clear ideological message. From then on, the writer regarded his novels not only as literary works but also as Marxist social analyses aimed at encouraging readers to engage in the labor movement.
The first translation of The Bells of Basel into English was made by Haakon Chevalier in 1937.
Circumstances of creation According to Roger Garaudy, The Bells of Basel is a pioneering book, a transitional work, in the process of writing which Aragon was developing the language, structure, and style typical of later works. This work was intended to be a complete departure from the author's previous creativity, based on the general outline of Le Monde Réel, on the one hand, and on the other hand, being a kind of experimental novel, the plan of which changed during the writing process. The shape of the work was particularly influenced by the author's wife, Elsa Triolet, who read the emerging fragments of the novel on an ongoing basis and was their first reviewer. According to Garaudy, Triolet's critical comments on the form of the first part of the novel prompted Aragon to change the form of the second and third parts. Zofia Jaremko-Pytowska emphasizes that the thorough change in Aragon's writing style was related to the realistic literary tradition of France, works in which the psychological analysis of the individual was combined with a detailed description of the social background. This type of literature was advocated as the most complete in the circles of Western European left-wing, to which the writer belonged. However, Aragon consciously rejected the postulate of neutrality in narration advocated by French realist writers, deciding to make the novel a reflection of his own Marxist political views. The choice of the work's themes was influenced by the atmosphere of the contemporary era for the creator. Aware of the danger of a new world war breaking out, he decided to present in the novel the years preceding the beginning of the previous one. The concept of the work underwent further, albeit less significant transformations as it was created, remaining in close relation to the author's political commitment.
Aragon dedicated the finished novel to Elsa Triolet.
Plot The Bells of Basel consists of four parts: Diana, Catherine, Victor, and Clara.
Diana The main character of this part is Diana de Nettencourt, a divorcee, the last descendant of a ruined aristocratic family, a dissolute woman living off the money of successive wealthy lovers. Eventually, for money, she marries a wealthy man named Brunel, who turns out to be a pimp and usurer. When one of his clients, Peter de Sabran, a representative of an old aristocratic family, commits suicide, Diana leaves her husband to avoid losing her reputation as an honest woman. After obtaining a legal separation from her husband, she becomes the mistress of the industrialist Wisner, while her bankrupt husband, on the advice of the same entrepreneur, joins the police as an agent provocateur.
Catherine The main character of this part is a Georgian by origin and the daughter of an industrialist from Baku and a luxury courtesan. She spends her childhood traveling with her mother, observing men courting her. She grows into a beautiful woman but does not want to share her mother's fate in the future. Infatuated with the military man Thiebault, she becomes his mistress but ends the relationship with him – though financially beneficial – when he takes part in suppressing a strike in Cluses. The image of the workers' demonstration prompts her to rebel against her own environment. Catherine starts attending anarchist meetings, where she falls under the influence of the charismatic activist, Libertad. However, gradually, the anarchist worldview also begins to disappoint her. She accidentally witnesses the murder of Libertad by the police, after which she learns that he was an agent provocateur.
Victor Convinced of the emptiness of her life, Catherine accidentally finds a mention in the newspaper of the suicide of Paul and Laura Lafargue. This event suggests to her the idea of ending her own life in a similar way. However, at the moment she wants to throw herself into the Seine, she is stopped by a young chauffeur, Victor Deyhanin. Feeling sudden trust in the man, she tells him the story of her life. He decides to introduce the young Georgian woman to the environment of workers and labor activists. In Paris, a major strike of taxi drivers takes place, which Victor helps to organize. Catherine, distrustful of socialist ideals, feels alien among the workers, not understanding the goals of their struggle. She criticizes Victor's views from the standpoint of anarchism, but gradually, under his influence, she breaks with the proclaimed praise of individual terror and attacks. In Paris, at the turn of 1911–1912, a sense of inevitable war grows, and further workers' protests erupt. In the National Assembly vote, the socialists, contrary to earlier announcements, vote to grant war credits to the government. Catherine again hesitates between the elegant society her mother wants to introduce her to and the anarchists. Her political sympathies are detected by the police, and she is arrested and forced to leave France.
Epilogue – Clara
In the epilogue, the congress of the Second International in 1912 is depicted in the Basel Minster. Delegates from all sections of the organization are present in the city. Jean Jaurès delivers a great anti-war speech. On the last day of the congress, the voice is taken by Clara Zetkin, a member of the German Social Democratic Party, whom Aragon – unlike other women appearing in the work – presents as a woman of the future, truly worthy of praise.
Characteristics
Form and message of the novel According to Roger Garaudy:One cannot judge this novel and its composition by classical criteria. It is not built on the basis of action development. It submits to the internal dialectics of the writer's development and his times.Despite the overall structure as a novel, there are clear differences between its individual parts. Diana was written in a constructionally similar manner to Honoré de Balzac's novella. Such a narrative approach was criticized by Elsa Triolet, who suggested a different, more free-form text to the writer. This suggestion was actually applied in the second and third parts. However, Garaudy believes that the first part, although the least innovative, is the most formally successful component of the novel.
Aragon later claimed that it was during the writing of The Bells of Basel that he learned to write novels and admitted that the work contains numerous formal flaws resulting from his lack of experience in this type of writing. He was also harsh in his assessment of all his texts written between 1930 and 1935 when he moved away from surrealism towards realism. In the novel itself, he included another comment in this regard, stating that the "poor construction" of the work reflects a similarly improper social structure, in which the reader should engage in changing:The world, reader, is poorly constructed, just as poorly constructed as you think my book is. Yes, both must be reworked, with Clara as the protagonist, not with Diana and not with Catherine. If I have encouraged you even a little to do so, you can tear up this little book, what do I care!By dividing the novel into three parts and an epilogue, Aragon indicated that each component of the work is dedicated to a different social layer. The first part depicts the wealthiest circles of France, industrialists, military, and the slowly declining aristocracy. The second part is devoted to the representative of the previously described environment, who wants to break away from it. The third part is dedicated to French workers, while the epilogue, resembling the form of a journalistic report, anticipates a better world that the socialist revolution is supposed to bring. The strict allocation of characters to their social environments – except for Catherine – significantly influences their characterization and the resulting assessment. The characters in The Bells of Basel are generally already formed and do not change throughout the action. The events involving them gradually reveal their hidden traits, contributing to the unmasking of the entire environment. An exemplary case is the character of Brunel, who initially appears as an elegant and well-mannered man but turns out to be capable of murder, a usurer, a police provocateur, and a cynic. The characters of The Bells of Basel are typically one-dimensional. By primarily wanting to present a general picture of each social class, Aragon does not differentiate psychologically between the people constituting them. Consequently, both unambiguously negative representatives of the world of financial elites and workers depicted solely in a positive light (although not activists) become schematic characters. According to Jaremko-Pytowska, the merits of the work in terms of social analysis do not correspond to a thorough psychology of individual characters; the only exception is the continuously metamorphosing Catherine.
Unambiguous assessments of characters and entire environments build the political message of the work: Aragon expresses support for the labor movement, against the prevailing form of the capitalist system in his time, even when the activists of this movement espouse views not as radical as his own. By making women the main characters of the text, he also presents his stance on the feminist movement: women can only be liberated when they actively engage in the labor movement, recognizing the connection between gender inequality and economic stratification of society. The conclusion of such a constructed message is a call to the reader contained in the epilogue:Your strength is also needed to transform the world.This appeal is one of several direct authorial comments placed by Aragon in the epilogue of the work.
The significance of collective action is emphasized by the construction of scenes involving crowds in the work, depicted in an extremely vivid manner, as a force with a specific goal, not as a disorganized mass. However, focusing on the general ideology of crowds and their most common beliefs results in a complete abandonment of characterizing individual workers, even achieving their artificial uniformity. Despite this, The Bells of Basel is an important work in the history of French literature addressing wage laborers: for the first time, the world of workers and associated socialist activists was depicted in such a broad way.
In a review by Georges Sadoul that appeared shortly after the publication of The Bells of Basel, this novel was described as the first example of socialist realism in French literature. However, J. Heistein opposes the unequivocal classification of the novel as implementing the Soviet concept of socialist realist novels. Despite the work being based on clear ideological foundations, Aragon retained many features of surrealist writing in The Bells of Basel, primarily the lack of uniformity in style and the overlapping of plotlines (collage technique). This author believes that there is not as clear a contrast between The Bells of Basel and Aragon's earlier work as the writer himself claimed.
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