The Individual and the Crowd in the Work of Georges Darien (1862-1921)
In the novels and pamphlets of Georges Darien (1862-1921), the motif of the crowd – alongside that of the individual – reveals the writer’s struggle against post-1870 ideology, the bourgeoisie, as well as institutions and their representatives. Eager to defend the ideal of a free individual in a free land, Darien takes up a theme – the crowd and its related lexemes (people, peat, masses) – which he considers critically, thereby affirming a pamphleteer’s word and style characteristic of the rebellious writer he embodied at the turn of the nineteenth century, like Octave Mirbeau.