Quentin Mouron: «Literature is always committed».»

Each month, we feature a column by one of the personalities who give us the pleasure of alternating between the two. In his column, writer Quentin Mouron explores a topical issue with his usual sharpness.

Jean-Paul Sartre called for a «committed» literature, an adjective that ruffled the feathers of the literati of yesteryear just as it ruffles the feathers of the literati of today, by which I mean the feathers of the advocates of art for art's sake, the advocates of pure art - to whom Sartre replied in advance: «Art has never been on the side of the purists» (Jean-Paul Sartre, Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, Paris, Gallimard, 1948). In other words, art - and literature even more so - is always that which is mixed, that which is impure, that which is caught up in the clay of an era, caught up in the mud of an event, caught up in the blood and flesh of particular men who leave their mark on the world.