This article comparatively examines French and English literature based on two novels published in 1947, Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano and Jean-Louis Curtis’ The Forests of Night. Both novels employ the mythic device to construct narratives on the twilight of the British Empire and the German occupied French Vichy regime, respectively, depicting experiences of resistance and collaboration on the eve of and during the Second World War. Both invent a system of symbolic imagery modelled on the Surrealist template in Jean Cocteau’s The Infernal Machine, that turns the classical mythic device still prevalent in the early 20th century (i.e. in Joyce or Eliot) upside down. The revolution in Mythic Imagination follows the Structuralist Revolution initiated by Durkheim, Saussure and Bachelard, evacuating fixed ontological architecture to portray relational interdependency without essence. These novels pursue overlapping ethical investigations, on “non-interventionism” in Lowry and “fraternity” in Curtis. The novels raise questions about the relation between colonialism and fascism and the impact of non-Western mythic universes (i.e. Hinduism) upon the Mythic Imagination. They have implications for our understanding of gender relations, as well as the value of political activism and progress.

中文翻译：

---

地狱机器的回响：1940年代法国和英国的抵抗与合作文学，作为神话想象中的一场革命

本文根据1947年出版的两本小说对法国和英国文学进行比较，这两本小说是马尔科姆·洛瑞的《火山下》和让·路易斯·柯蒂斯的《夜之森林》。这两部小说均使用神话般的手段在大英帝国和德国占领的法国维希政权的黄昏下构建叙事，描绘了第二次世界大战前夕和第二次世界大战前夕的抵抗与合作经历。两者都发明了以让·科克多（Jean Cocteau）的《地狱机器》（The Infernal Machine）中的超现实主义模板为模型的象征意象系统，这使经典的神话装置在20世纪早期仍然流行（例如在乔伊斯或艾略特）。神话想象力的革命是继涂尔干，索绪尔和巴切拉德发起的结构主义革命之后，撤消固定的本体论体系结构以描绘没有本质的关系相互依赖。这些小说在洛里的“非干预主义”和柯蒂斯的“博爱”中进行了重复的伦理学研究。这些小说提出了关于殖民主义和法西斯主义之间的关系以及非西方神话世界（即印度教）对神话想象力的影响的问题。它们对我们对性别关系的理解以及政治行动主义和进步的价值具有影响。