Academic archive
Jean Giraudoux
Career diplomat and author
1882-1944
At Gallipoli, Sous-Lieutenant,176th Régiment d’Infanterie
Jean Giraudoux archive document
SEN resources
Jean Giraudoux symbol story
-
Biography
Jean Giraudoux was born in Bellac, Haut Vienne, France, on 29th October 1882. He was an outstanding student at school and university.
From early in life he was greatly attracted by German culture and literature and in 1905 won a bursary to study in Munich, where among many others, he met Frank Wedekind, the author of the notorious Lulu plays. Another bursary took him across the Atlantic to Harvard University, where he taught a course in French for six months.
On his return in April 1908, he joined the editorial staff of Le Matin newspaper, but was more interested in the French diplomatic service, which he won entry to in 1910.
By this time he was contributing essays, reviews and allegorical stories – allegories were always a favourite vehicle for his ideas - to a range of publications. He drew some of these together in the collection Les Provinciales (1909), which won a favourable review from Andre Gide.Giraudoux had completed national service in the army while a student and so was able to join the 298th Infantry Regiment as a sergeant immediately after the outbreak of war in August 1914. He was wounded soon afterwards, in the first week of the Battle of the Marne in September 1914.
By February 1915 he had recovered sufficiently to be transferred to the 176th Regiment of Infantry and was soon training recruits at Riom in the Auvergne. During this time he met and fell in love with Suzanne Boland, who is often mentioned in his memoirs of the regiment’s time with the French forces in the Dardanelles.
During the brief period of preparation for the Gallipoli invasion, Giraudoux was attached to the office of the Colonel of the regiment. He was put in charge of preparation with interpreters of a phrase book in anticipation of the Regiment’s occupation of Turkish territory. After translations of such phrases as ‘I am hungry’ and ‘Show me the way to..’, Girardoux also added ‘ I was the first one into the harem..’ before heading to Marseilles to board a troopship for the Dardanelles.’
His regiment arrived in Gallipoli on 21st May 1915 and disembarked at Sedd-el-Bahr (W Beach) in the south of the peninsula (Helles). A typical passage in his Carnet des Dardanelles records that they slept by the beach after a meal with ‘a little wine and some anchovies. We had a nocturnal visit from Turkish dogs. Juery [a comrade and poet] explained to me how to speak to them.’
The 176th Regiment’s arrival coincided with that of German submarines in the seas off the Dardanelles. When U-21 sank the battleship HMS Triumph just off W Beach on the 25th May, the Admirals quickly decided that their most powerful ships should be withdrawn from harm’s way. Their removal allowed Turkish heavy guns to fire freely on the rear store depots and encampments, putting the sea bathing that the Allied troops had so much enjoyed on rest days was forbidden. Giraudoux and others literally mounted a gesture of defiance: they undressed, climbed on horses and galloped into the sea to cool off.
But more sensible soldiering soon had to reassert itself and Giraudoux, now commissioned to Sous-Lieutenant, was heavily involved in every aspect of the trench warfare that was rapidly draining the optimism of the Allied troops. His regiment was in reserve on the 4th June 1915 and so avoided the appalling slaughter of the Third Battle of Krithia. By 21st June, he was back in the front line, in one of the French units attacking on a narrow front near the Kereves Dere ravine. He was wounded early in the day, but refused to leave his position, telling his commander ‘I don’t want to leave you. If I go you will be the only officer left in the battalion.’ A second wound 12 hours later finally persuaded him to go back from the front for treatment. By this time the 176th had achieved a major part of their objectives by the capture of the powerful Haricot Redoubt. This was one of the few significant Allied successes of the Gallipoli campaign. Giraudoux’s courageous actions won him the military Légion d’Honneur with palm.
The wounds meant the end of his active service and he became a military instructor until the war’s end in 1918. He then married Suzanne and their only child, Jean-Philippe, was born in 1919.
Giraudoux continued his career in the diplomatic service. He was appointed to oversee the gathering of war reparations from Turkey and held the role for seven years. Once Ataturk was well established, the new republic was not about to pay any country anything, so the post, if not quite a sinecure, allowed plenty of time for writing.
Giraudoux was an intensely political and humanistic author who rarely reported literally on his experiences. Carnets des Dardanelles is a memoir of his time at Gallipoli, but frequently sails away in daydreams about the situation. Similarly, his novels, such as Suzanne et le Pacifique (1921), are in many ways light parables thatreflect his intense commitment to French culture as a positive force. At the same time, he passionately mistrusted the French politicians who he felt were working against European reconciliation after the war and did his best from within the diplomatic service to challenge their attitudes.
A meeting in 1928 with Louis Jouvet, the theatre director, transformed the scope of his interests and inspired him into playwriting. His plays won great fame, large audiences and many awards. Roger Fry and Maurice Valency translated several into English after the second world war and they became popular outside France.
La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu [Tiger at the Gates in Fry’s translation] is a fine example of his work, written in 1934 as the threat of war was growing in Europe. Giraudoux uses stereotypes such as ‘the poet’ (who stands for those who romance about war from the sidelines) and familiar characters, such as Helen and Hector from Homer’s Iliad, to explore the tensions and drivers of any struggle to keep the peace in belligerent times. While the intention is deadly serious, his writing is always witty and elegant and carries its messages lightly.
Something of a cloud hangs over the end of his life. Confronted by the torrent of refugees driven across Europe by Hitler’s depredations, he published in Pleins Pouvoirs (1938) ideas which now appear racist and anti-semitic. His reputation was not enhanced by his role at the beginning of the war as French High Commissioner for Information in the Daladier and Reynaud administrations. In May 1940, Giraudoux withdrew from public life as it became intolerable after the German invasion. He died after a short illness on the 31st January 1944.
Giraudoux’s plays are now rarely produced. The allegorical mode is unfashionable and can feel precious. The stories and characters of the allegories are drawn from French, Latin and Greek sources which are less well known than they were. In contrast, his last play, La Folle de Chaillot (The Madwoman of Chaillot), is an early ecological campaign piece that tells the story of a group of outsiders’ fight to protect Paris from the greedy exploiters who want to drill for oil in its streets. It was produced after Giraudoux’s death. It has retained a place in the repertoire better than his works with more classical allusions; it has travelled successfully onto Broadway as a play, then a musical and finally a film, starring Audrey Hepburn.
‘I win every fight, yet after each victory the cause for which I fought fades into empty air’ Hector, the successful Trojan general in La Guerre de Troie n’aura pas lieu [Tiger at the Gates]
-
The community
-
Examples of work
Giraudoux, Jean (1963) Three Plays translation by Christopher Fry New York: Oxford University Press (includes Tiger at the Gates)
Correspondence
-
Other primary sources
Giraudoux, J (1921) Carnet des Dardanelles
-
Where commemorated
He is buried in the Cimetiere de Passy, in Paris
-
Gallantry awards
Military Légion d’Honneur with palm
-
Secondary sources
The Friends of Jean Giraudoux maintain a website of sources in French http://giraudoux.univ-bpclermont.fr/
-
Additional activity resources
