“You have not asked for glory nor tears/Neither the organ nor prayer to the dying…” Not sure that this poem from Aragon (in The unfinished novel1956) sung by Léo Ferré is appropriate on February 21, the date of entry into the Pantheon of Missak Manouchian, great figure of the French Internal Resistance, accompanied by Mélinée, his wife, a resistance fighter like him. The French Republic will therefore pay honors with great pomp to this famous Armenian worker poet and communist activist, eighty years to the day after his death by the Nazis with 21 other members of his group Francs-Tireurs et Partisans – Main-d immigrant work (FTP-MOI) – Olga Bancic, the only woman in the group, was guillotined in Stuttgart on May 10, 1944.
As usual during commemorations, events, etc., the edition took up the subject. Well, we are a long way from the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of May 68, which led to a record production of 150 works and almost as many disappointments. The fact remains that in recent weeks, publications have multiplied and this in all genres, essays, archives, beautiful books, comics, novels, poetry. Among the very leading writers in this salvo, Didier Daeninckx, already author of Missak (Perrin, 2009), signs a children’s novel with Oskar, a comic book, Missak Manouchian. A heroic life (Les Arènes), the preface to Missak and Mélinée Manouchian. A couple in Resistance (The Archipelago) by Gérard Streiff, as well as the introduction to Manouchian’s collection, Drunk with a great dream of freedom (Poetry Points, bilingual edition). Note his yo-yo game with Jean-Pierre Sakoun, president of the Committee for the entry into the Pantheon of Missak Manouchian, who is preface to Les Arènes and postface to L’Archipel…
Let’s also mention a comic book album (Missak, Mélinée & the Manouchian group) at Dupuis signed Jean-David Morvan and Thomas Tcherkézian, a beautiful book (Manouchian: Missak and Mélinée Manouchian, two orphans of the Armenian genocide involved in the French Resistance) at Textuel concocted by Denis Peschanski, Claire Mouradian and Astrig Atamian, a libelle at Seuil, Red Poster Anatomy by Annette Wieviorka, etc. Phew! How can we not get tangled up with all these “Manouchianesque” titles? Will you be able to read everything? And which of these works will have the success of The Red Poster, by our former colleague from L’Express, Philippe Ganier-Raymond, published by Fayard in 1976, the year of the famous eponymous film by Franck Cassenti? For the moment, the short work by historian Annette Wieviorka holds the rope. It is true that the Shoah specialist has already been invited by France Inter and that her short 60-page work published in the Libelle collection costs only €4.90. The bets are on.