Abstract: Montherlant experienced the war as a soldier in 1918 and as a journalist in 1940. Drawing from mythology, he transfigured this experience, sometimes speaking about its monstrosity, sometimes its nobility, and always its vanity (for him war is nothing but a game and history an eternal return). This use of myths—chivalric war, the sun wheel—blinded him, especially in Le Solstice de juin (1941), where he submitted to the verdict of force, having failed to grasp the scope of Hitlerism.
