Life

Martinet, a Communist and pacifist, opposed the First World War from its outset: his antiwar poems Les temps maudits were banned in France during the war, but circulated secretly: helped by Marguerite Rosmer, he sent copies on thin paper to soldiers at the front. La Maison à l'Abri, a novel about the First World War, was runner-up for the Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

 in 1919. Martinet's poem La Nuit,completed in 1919, was published in 1922 with a preface by Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

, whom Martinet had befriended when Trotsky was in Paris. Martinet's series Les Cahiers du Travail [Labour Notebooks] published pamphlets by Victor Serge

Victor Serge

Victor Serge , born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich , was a Russian revolutionary and writer. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator...

.

His son was the surgeon Jean-Daniel Martinet.

Works

• Les temps maudits; poèmes, 1914-1918, 1918
• La Maison à l'Abri
• Culture prolétarienne, 1935
• Correspondance croiseé : 1932-1944, Bassac: Plein Chant, 1987.

Further reading

• George Paizis, Marcel Martinet: poet of the revolution, London: Francis Boutle, 2007

External links

• Nicole Racine, Marcel Martinet (1887-1944)