Du voyage en URSS à la mise en scène du voyageur

The aim of this paper is to study the literary scenography in André Gide’s and Paul Nizan’s accounts of their travels in the USSR. These travel accounts have often been read from a political angle that only takes into account the ideological content presented, in such a way that the traveller’s lucidity or blindness in front of the totalitarian “staging” becomes the sole criterion for judgment. We choose a different path by showing how the travel narratives of the two authors are part of more complex writing dynamics, which are rooted in diary (Gide) or novelistic realism (Nizan). Such a reading does not obscure the authors’ political stances, but it does allow us to place the accounts of their travels in the USSR within a broader writing process.