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 A Quarter of an Hour with...
Maurice d'HARTOY
(Corrard Prize 1925)
The first major prize of the year has just been awarded.
A very rare, if not unique, occurrence in the history of literary awards - this prize, the "Corrard Prize," the most important of the Société des Gens de Lettres, was awarded unanimously by the members of the jury.
The winning novel, "The Blue Man," marvelous adventures of the 20th century, is a work that stands out, it is true, for its no less rare qualities of art and emotion.
The lucky winner, Mr. Maurice d'Hartoy, seriously wounded in the war, is not yet thirty years old.
His motto is one of the most beautiful: "Towards the Ideal," and everything he has done so far fully justifies the path he has taken. A simple cavalry brigadier in 1914, he transferred to the infantry, then became an officer in the 8th Zouave March Regiment of the Moroccan Division.
In 1915, he was dangerously wounded and rendered inactive after a battle that earned him the following fine citation from General Joffre: "He personally captured seventeen German prisoners, whom he brought back to parade line under heavy fire."
What could he do in the hospital but think and write! Which, moreover, he did with ardor. His travels, his reading, his faith, were to make him a noted writer.
The most impeccable of French magazines, "Le Correspondant," received its first "little paper"—this little paper—was a masterful article, "Le Gué Barré," which was reprinted throughout the press. After this first journalistic victory, he turned his attention to books under the auspices of the most honest of publishers, the much-missed Paul Perrin.
D'Hartoy is a friend of Beauty and Truth. His favorite authors are ancient or modern, red or fleur-de-lis; all those who awaken in him the image of Beauty and Truth, who carry him with them far from the mire, towards the Ideal, are his friends.
His favorite authors? Homer, Saint Augustine, Shakespeare, Bossuet, Voltaire, Chateaubriand, and Flaubert.
After such a profession of faith, he could only begin his literary career with a first-rate work, which he did, since his first book, "At the Front," was crowned by the Société des Gens de Lettres and adopted by the City of Paris. The late Marquis de Ségur, of the Académie Française, who wrote the preface to this book, said verbatim of its author: "...and seriously wounded two days after the brilliant episode, wrote, in his hospital bed, the pages that I present to the public today, as a soldier and as a writer, does he not have a double right to our sympathetic attention?
This book, reprinted several times, earned its author the most laudatory reviews; I will limit myself to quoting that of Mr. Lenotre, in "Le Monde Illustré": "Maurice d'Hartoy possesses an art of description, a penetration, a sense of observation that a Flaubert or a Balzac would have envied..., a new literature, rapid, alert, like a succession of snapshots. After "At the Front," he published "The Legend of the Devil, or the Great War Told to Children of the Year 2000," then "Cries in the Storm," also published by Perrin et Cie, a book that is at times Voltaire-like, at times Beaumarchais-like. This work was awarded prizes by the National Society for the Encouragement of Good and the Association of Independent Writers.
"P. G., a novel by a German non-commissioned officer held prisoner in France" followed "Cries in the Storm," followed by "The Words of Jacobus, or the Wonders of Progress," a book he presents to us with four epigraphs from Touchstone the Colorful Madman, J.-B. Dumas, Ed. Thiaudière, and Pascal. An inveterate altruist, he warns us in a warning that "...this book does not lead to the irremediable oblivion of things... on the contrary, it leads thought towards the invincible rise of marvelous and bitter progress."
I now come to the capital work, I would even say the masterpiece of Maurice d'Hartoy, his penultimate volume, "L'Origange, royaume d'amour." Here is the opinion of Mr. Henri Lavedan of the Académie Française on this book: "...the most opportune book par excellence, "L'Origange, raising high in the sky a vast and powerful architecture of ideas and feelings... which draw the reader, in an ardor and a perpetual nobility of aspirations, towards an ideal that cannot disappoint. And above all, what a sparkling and dazzling envelope. What luxury and what erudition of colors and horrors! Finally, the story itself, the adventure of love, death and light, is captivating from start to finish, with gradual alternations between dream and nightmare.
Before me, I have the opinions of more than a hundred scholars; all are unanimous in recognizing Maurice d'Hartoy as a writer of the "rising generation." In addition to his talents as an author, he is also a charming colleague in journalism, and apart from a few "feathered toads"—a Hartoyian word—d'Hartoy has encountered only writing companions throughout his career, always ready to help.
Let's bet that the 1925 Corrard Prize winner will remain what he has always been: an excellent comrade.
Christian DORCY,
Secretary General
of the Independent Literary Association.
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