According to the critics, this novel by Aragon was a turning point in his works. While the novel series known as The Real World was allegedly defined as a form of (Socialist) realism, Aragon then went beyond the strict boundaries of the novel as a genre in his late period. In this novel, the rules of enunciation play a major part in the blurry building‐up of a semantic structure. The structure relies on internal monologue – even, to widen the scope, on free indirect speech or literary devices giving free course to subjectivity. The term “intersubjectivity” may even be used, as it is quite obvious the fictionalised biography of French painter Théodore Géricault is closely intertwined with Aragon’s own life. It relates the career of an artist struggling with the torments of History, as well as the awaken ing of his political and moral conscience.