Chapter Three - Claiming cultural dissidence: the case of Montherlant's La Rose de sable

Summary

The colonies are made to be lost. They are born with the cross of death on their forehead.

[‘Les colonies sont faites pour être perdues. Elles naissent avec la croix de mort au front …’]

POLITICAL LOYALISM AND THE ‘MISSION CIVILISATRICE’

Montherlant wrote La Rose de sable while living in Algiers between September 1930 and February 1932. He saw the work, which he classified as being anticolonialist, as a conscious reaction against the centenary celebrations of the French arrival in Algeria and L'Exposition coloniale of 1931. With hindsight, he defines his project as ‘writing a novel in which one of the characters would embody the struggle between the most traditional colonialism and anticolonialism’ [‘écrire un roman dont un des personnages incarnerait la lutte entre le colonialisme le plus traditionnel et l'anticolonialisme’]. Montherlant was exercised at this period by what he termed the moral and social question of the European's dealings with the African. He nevertheless refused to publish his novel then, claiming that, for reasons of patriotism, it was inappropriate to release a work openly critical of the French presence in Morocco at a time when other European powers, especially Italy, harboured colonial ambitions in respect of North Africa. Not until 1968 did the novel appear in its entirety.