Between 19 he published two books of documentary prose, The Communist Man. In the collections of poems Knife in the Heart (1941), Elsa’s Eyes (1942), The Wax Museum (1943), and The French Dawn (1945), in the collection of short stories Decline and Grandeur of the French (1945), and in other works the bitterness of France’s defeat is inseparable from the call to battle. During the German fascist occupation, Aragon was one of the organizers and bards of the French Resistance (1940–44) and contributed to the underground newspaper Lettres Françoises. The cycle of novels The Real World (1934–51) depicts the working class as a rising force of the nation. The Soviet Union became the symbol of the new world for him this is evident in the narrative poem The Red Front (1931 Russian translation, 1931) and the collection of poems Hurrah, Urals! (1934). In subsequent works, Aragón developed toward realism. Criticism of the bourgeois world is already strongly pronounced in his early poems. In the early 1920’s he became an adherent of dadaism (collection of poems Fireworks, 1920) and later, of surrealism. In 1915, Aragon enrolled in a Paris medical school and beginning in 1917 served as a medical orderly in World War I. Member of the French Communist Party since 1927 and of the Party’s central committee since 1954. The scholarship, the high calibre of reporting, the workmanship for many readers might have been sacrificed for a rousing, tight, well-paced story.Born Oct. Readers interested in military minutiae will find it detailed to the last item of dress.

The period comes to life by the sheer weight of detail, but that very fact prohibits the dramatic flow. Each day of the Holy Week in handled in depth and many sections of the book read like a newspaper's account of the day's incidents. Should he follow his king into exile defect- as many were doing- to the cause of Napoleon or seek a third way out? His is not the only action traced. Theodore is a man of sensibility, an artist and a thinker who is troubled by the choice thrust upon him. The central character is young Theodore Gericault, a Musketeer in the Royal Guards.

There is little of what we call ''plot'' the book rotates somewhat ponderously around a situation:- the flight of Louis XVIII and the preparations to meet the return of Napoleon from Elba, the period known as the famous 100 days. Most of the names mentioned are of people who actually lived - and unfortunately the mere listing makes for a confused welter which clogs the narrative action. Rather it is a fictionalized study of the movements of various segments of French society and their reactions to the crucial turn of events.

Although the book is called a ''novel'' it is barely that. A mammoth work by one of France's most respected poets is a detailed account of the week preceding Napoieon's return to power in 1815.

Holy Week by Louis Aragon