Les Éditions de Minuit (Midnight Press), established in 1941, existed only as an underground publisher until the Liberation of Paris on 25 August 1944 – hence its very evocative name. The press was founded by Jean Bruller and Pierre de Lescure, and the first item to be published, in 1942, was Bruller’s own novel Le silence de la mer, under his pseudonym Vercors. This text was the subject of an earlier blogpost One thing leads to another : Vercors’ Le silence de la mer.
The only other title to be published in 1942, Jacques Maritain’s À travers le désastre, unusually bore the author’s real name, for by then Maritain was living in exile in the United States. There followed two anthologies, one of prose, Chroniques interdites, and the other of poetry, L’honneur des poètes. The latter was published, very significantly, on July 14th 1943, and had 20 contributors, including Louis Aragon, Pierre Seghers, Paul Éluard, Jean Tardieu, Guillevic, Francis Ponge and Robert Desnos. All writers used pseudonyms, sometimes chosen, like Vercors, to evoke the mountainous areas of France – Cévennes, Forez, Minervois – and thus suggestive of endurance.
Languages across Borders 