Robert BRASILLACH / Signed Autograph Letter / Collaboration / I Am Everywhere

  
Autographed letter signed "Robert Brasillach" to Thierry Maulnier [Paris, late 1930s], 1 p. In-8° on the letterhead of the weekly Je suis partout. Trace of a fold inherent to the period's folding, small browning at the corners. Light ink smudges indicating a fold by Brasillach while the ink was not yet dry. Brasillach is trading a favor in exchange for an article with his friend Thierry Maulnier, then thanks him for his favorable review of his work on Corneille. BUT (let's do a little blackmail), send an article in return. Live as a slave or die! Best regards, and thank you for your articles on Corneille, where I find (which doesn't surprise me) finally someone who understood. Schoolmates at Lycée Louis-le-Grand, Brasillach and Maulnier, along with six other friends, made an impression by publishing Fulgur in 1927, a police and fantastic serialized novel. While the two friends cultivated a certain Maurassian ideology close to Action française in the early 1930s, Brasillach's ideological trajectory, who became editor-in-chief of the collaborationist weekly Je suis partout in 1937, took a radical turn.

Having become the champion of collaboration, he expresses his hatred for Jews, the Popular Front, the Republic, and his admiration for the Third Reich, whose triumph in France he constantly hoped for. During the debacle in the spring of 1940, the management of Je suis partout, which includes Brasillach, is summoned by the police for endangering state security, along with numerous fascist intellectuals. The publication of the last issue is urgently entrusted to Thierry Maulnier, an occasional contributor to the weekly. The newspaper reappears in 1941 and becomes openly pro-German. Brasillach publishes Pierre Corneille (mentioned here) with Fayard in 1938.

This letter is therefore necessarily dated from that year or the beginning of the following one.