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Antone Ramon (1914) - master - 05-12-2026
Né dans une famille de la grande bourgeoisie lyonnaise (son père est un « soyeux »), Antone Ramon, découvre pour la première fois, à l’âge de treize ans, l’univers du collège. Il était en effet, jusque-là, éduqué par un précepteur, chez ses parents, place Bellecour. Ce précepteur – le père Brillet – étant gravement malade, Antone est mis en pension à l’Institution Saint-François-de-Salle de Bourg-en-Bresse. Là, en raison de son inexpérience, il est chaperonné et guidé par un « grand » de quinze ans, Georges Morère.
Antone, séduit par la personnalité de ce camarade, veut en faire son ami, son unique ami. Le règlement du collège s’y oppose. Cette amitié particulière va en outre trouver des obstacles en la personne de Madame Morère, la mère de Georges, et du père Buxereux, le confesseur de la famille. Si l’on ajoute les interventions d’un camarade jaloux, Modeste Miagrin, et les interférences d’autres collégiens ou de professeurs, on a presque tous les éléments d’un drame prévisible. L’histoire, pleine de rebondissements, est attachante notamment en raison de la personnalité des garçons mis en scène par Amédée Guiard.
Les biographes de Montherlant et les exégètes de son oeuvre ne doivent pas, ne peuvent plus ignorer, aujourd’hui, cette source d’inspiration que fut, pour La Ville dont le Prince est un enfant, le roman d’Amédée Guiard Antone Ramon.
Antone Ramon a d’abord paru en feuilleton dans le quotidien de Marc Sangnier La Démocratie, du samedi 15 mars 1913 (n° 943) au Dimanche 25 mai 1913 (n° 1014). Il a ensuite été publié en un volume, tiré à un millier d’exemplaires (Tourcoing, Duvivier, 1914), quelques semaines avant que n’éclate la Grande Guerre. L’essentiel du tirage fut saisi chez l’éditeur par les Allemands. Aussi Duvivier procéda-t-il, avec l’aide de Jean des Cognets, à une nouvelle édition en 1919.
This novel belongs to what seems to be a peculiarly French genre -- a novel about an intense relationship between two adolescents at a boys' school. What make this theme dramatic is that the authorities in schools run by Catholic clergy looked askance at such relationships, even if they were physically innocent. I would imagine that the reason why we haven't had such novels in this country is that these relationships, on condition there is no suspicion of sexual misconduct, have been tolerated in English public schools.
The best known example of this genre is Roger Peyrefitte's 'Les amitiés particuliaires' (1944), which was seriously considered for the Prix Goncourt and which Gide predicted would still be read in a hundred years' time. In fact, it is already out of print, and largely remembered via a film version, for the writing is pedestrian. Antone Ramon is much livelier and more vivid (his boys are real boys!), and just as moving. It has the advantage that, unlike Peyrefitte, Guiard writes from within a Catholic standpoint, and this helps to bring the religious and ethical context to life.
In this novel the feelings of the younger boy are much more intense than those of the senior boy, which means that they fall into the category of what we call a 'crush', something that is typically viewed with benign contempt. Guiard treats it seriously and with respect, but at the same time critically, as disordered and inevitably divisive in a small boarding school community. It is this combination of keen sympathy and critical judgement that makes this novel so outstanding.
There have been several reprints of this novel in recent years, aided by its being out of copyright (unlike Peyrefitte's novel). Some of these have sold it as a gay novel. But the question the novel addresses is not the question of the rightness or wrongness of homosexual relations (of which there is no question in this novel), but a pedagogical question that was very much alive at the time it was written: was the traditional disapproval of 'intimate friendships' justified, or could they play a valuable part in the formation of the young? The answer given in this novel is that they can, but can't be relied upon. This is a not a propagandist 'roman à thèse', but a thoughtful reflection by a deeply devout and exceptionally intelligent Catholic schoolmaster.
This was Guiard's first novel. Would he have lived on to become a major novelist? But two years after writing his book (in 1913) he died on the western front.