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Few contemporary novels have received as much praise as Les Deux étendards (The Two Standards), Lucien Rebatet's 1300 page-novel published in Paris in 1952. When it came out, Jean Paulhan called it "un grand livre" "a great book" (312) and Etiemble, "un grand roman" "a great novel" (45525) while Bernard de Fallois, Roger Nimier and Antoine Blondin hailed it as a masterpiece in dithyrambic reviews. Later, Pierre de Boisdeffre deemed it "un des grands romans de l'époque" "one of the great novels of the time" (579), George Steiner, "one of the secret masterpieces of modern literature" (45), Michel de Saint Pierre "un livre capital" "a capital book" (8), Germaine Brée, "a fine novel" by "a great talent" (340), and Maurice Bardèche "a magnificent novel" by an author "more interesting than Céline" (Kaplan 179). Yet, at the same time, few important novels have been as ignored. In spite of these laudatory comments by such distinguished critics or writers, few people have heard of Les Deux étendards and even fewer have read it: as I have shown in a recent article, it is excluded from the French canon on non-literary grounds, essentially because Rebatet was a German collaborator during World War II.
This exclusion is regrettable for a number of reasons: first and foremost, Les Deux étendards is indeed a first-rate novel which should occupy a prominent place in contemporary French letters. In addition, the story of its writing and of its reception - or lack thereof - is so unusual that it should suffice to secure its admission into the history of literature. Finally, Les Deux étendards is unique for the variety of paratexts connected with it. This last point will be the main focus of this article but, in order to develop it, we must first briefly deal with the other two.
Although Les Deux étendards is ignored on account of its author's political opinions, it does not deal with politics, but with love, religion, and art. Based on real events, the story, which takes place in the 1920's, begins like a typical Balzac novel: Michel, its main protagonist largely modeled after the young Rebatet, leaves his province to conquer Paris. Although he was educated in a Catholic school, he now fanatically rejects religion and,...