Céline hates everyone. Everyone gets it in the neck in his books. And he's irresistibly readable. This is the first volume of his postwar trilogy — thCéline hates everyone. Everyone gets it in the neck in his books. And he's irresistibly readable. This is the first volume of his postwar trilogy — the second book is North and the third, Rigadoon — which recounts his flight from Montmarte to Germany during World War 2 and back.
Céline says he fled only because he was vilified by the Paris press and had to go somewhere to escape the murderous mob. That somewhere was Germany. In Germany he mostly dodged the Allied Flying Fortresses which seemed perpetually roaring just above the treetops. His position is that he is not a collaborator so much is someone simply running for his life. It doesn't quite fly. He was after all a writer of virulent antisemitic screeds.
Now here he is after the war, after his vindication by a French military tribunal — on what basis, Lord knows —living in Meudon (Paris), but very much despised and impoverished, writing these three last novels which he only does for to survive. The novels are highly autobiographical, and they take aim at almost everyone, giving it to them in the neck. These personal attacks on others are combined with Cèline's lament that his books no longer sell. Very amusing.
Céline can be entertainingly vulgar, but he's also very smart and his analyses ruthlessly penetrating. A lot, too, is bitter recrimination. It occurs to me again, for I've mentioned this in my notes, I believe, for North, that Céline's hypervigilance is a form of mental instability. He was said to be trepanned during World War I for service for which he was later decorated. This constant wariness must have been stressful and exhausting.
After seeing a patient on the former Quai Faidherbe, he has a phantasmagorical fit. He sees phantoms debarking from a barge in the nearby Seine which is said to be piloted by Charon. This sequence is long and fascinating and completely without parallel in the others books of his I have read. It turns out to be an attack from an old malaria infection, but it’s harrowing while it's underway and a bit spooky.
After this prelude we get to Céline's recollection of Schloss Sigmaringen — a 12th century Hohenzollern castle. Actually he stayed with his wife at the nearby Lower Hotel. But he was almost daily in the castle where the collaborationist French government (Petain, Naval, et al.) were holed up after being run out of Vichy. Especially amusing is his description of the Hohenzollern portraits:
"Those mugs . . . whole processions of them . . . fascinating . . . between patients, between doors, I went to see them . . . especially the ones of the twelfth, thirteenth century ... wait till you see them! all monsters! really? . . . that's easily said . . . but when you take a good look at them and think it over . . . more like devils . . . cloven hoofed! . . . with lances! . . . horns . . . founders of dynasties! that family resemblancel demons! . . . it was when they stopped being devils that their family collapsed! (p. 134)
Here's another amusing bit:
"Every time I leave the Lowen [hotel] to see this one [patient] . . . or that one . . . it never fails . . . you run into some lunatic that stops you short . . . every doorway . . . every street corner . . . wants to know what you think . . . how things are going . . . and not some other time! right away and frankly! the whole truth! a slap on the back . . . enough to throw your shoulder out of joint! a handshake that makes you reel and stagger! . . . 'Ah, why, there's our dear doctor!' my, what a pleasant surprise! . . . what rejoicing! . . . ah, but watch your step . . . supercareful! . . . extra caution! this is the time for spontaneous, dynamic, optimistic answers! absolute conviction! the man who's asking you your opinion isn't any ordinary rank-and-file stool-pigeon! don't stutter! don't mince! give him the works! . . . 'The Germans are winning, victory is in the bag . . . the New Europe is here to stayl . . . the secret army has destroyed everything in London . . . absolutely kaputt . . . Von Paulus is in Moscow but they won't announce it until the winter's over! . . . Rommel is in Cairo! . . . it will all be announced at the same time! the Americans are suing for peace . . . we . . . you and I on the sidewalk . . . are practically home again! parading on the Champs-Elysées! . . . only a question of trains, transportation! . . . not enough trains! . . . matter of weeks return trip via Rethondes and Saint-Denis!'" (p. 226)...more
Philip Roth said “Céline is my Proust! . . . Even if his anti-Semitism made him an abject, intolerable person. To read him, I have to suspend my JewisPhilip Roth said “Céline is my Proust! . . . Even if his anti-Semitism made him an abject, intolerable person. To read him, I have to suspend my Jewish conscience, but I do it, because anti-Semitism isn’t at the heart of his books… . Céline is a great liberator.” (New Yorker, 2013)
Martin Amis has often spoken of the "accelerated novel." It's clear to me now that Céline was an early accelerator. Céline is his own most captivating character. Reading him is to understand just how absurd and homicidal humans can be. Anthropocene is a word he never uses, but it's clear his books track the era's "progress."
Just a few notes to give you a sense. This novel is the second of a trilogy. I am reading them in reverse order. The first is Castle to Castle and the last, Rigadoon.
Céline was sort of the French equivalent of the American Ezra Pound. Though to my knowledge, Pound never addressed his Nazi collaboration in print, as Céline does here. He was tried for treason, but declared incompetent and locked up in St. Elizabeth's, an asylum in Washington D.C. Céline wrote three or four anti-semitic pamphlets, at least one of which was removed from circulation by the Vichy collaborators, presumably because if its vitriol. Céline was cleared by a military tribunal in 1951, though I'm not sure what rationale was used. Maybe it was just his great literary fame.
The book starts with a gathering of "anti-Hitlerites" at the Simplon Hotel in Baden-Baden. (Today's Brenners Park Hotel & Spa.) The date is 20 July 1944. It's been reported that an attempt has been made on Hitler's life at the Wolfsschanze, but not whether he lives. Many of the people in the hotel are said by the fictional Céline to have been part of the plot.
Céline, a doctor, is asked by the local Nazi honcho to go to certain hotel rooms and check on the well-being of others. In the first room he sees a picture of Adolf Hitler hanging upside down with a piece of black crape across it. An orgy has been in progress; people lie about in various states of undress.
"They looked pretty dumb, loving it up as if the thing had come off! . . . that Adolf wasn't dead! . . . not in the least! . . . the blond colonel and the elevator boy lying on the carpet . . . drunk! . . . gagging." (p. 24)
Antisemite and Nazi collaborator Céline, in flight from France during World War II, thinks of his neighbors back home viciously stripping his home if its valuables. It's clear, he says a number of times, that had he stayed he and his loved ones would have been mobbed to death.
". . . our place on rue Girardon, I'm thinking it must be the same [looted] right this minute, they must be helping themselves . . . bet they've got sweet ordinances! [allowing them to do so] . . . and we'll never see any of the stuff again . . . one side or the other, Boches or brethren, don't worry! all the same, crooks, scavengers, vampires of disaster . . . bloodsuckers, phony lunatics, shysters barge in! . .. take everything you've got! . . . bad reputation? string him up!" (p. 58)
Céline starves himself because he thinks he will be poisoned by his German hosts. He can't sleep because he feels he or his wife Lili may be stabbed in the night. Never is any attempt made on their lives but he's sick to death with fear of what might happen. What us this but hypervigilance? Mental illness. My point is that he never depicts himself in cushy circumstances. He meets conscientious objectors, gypsies (Roma), SS men, Countesses and other remnants of the old nobility, but never does he feel himself safe. And he is forever suspect of any good turn done for him.
". . . we were talking about the picnic under the sequoias . .. Lili, Le Vig, and me, we've agreed not to touch a thing . . . but we've got to be polite, we pretend . . . Lili hands me a sandwich . . . another . . . Le Vig too . . . I've got enormous pockets . . . only one hand free, but it's very deft. . . I think . . . the only trouble. . . if they see my pockets swelling up . . . they won't like it ... I throw a few sandwiches behind me . . . and I chew . . . and chew some more . . . and tell the old battleax that it's really amazing all she's seen in Paris!. . . . . . have I got pockets? . . . ten! twelve on each side . . . leberwurst! . . . foie gras ... it spreads, it melts, it oozes . . . my pants are full of it ... I'll be afraid to move . . . horrible when I have to . . . but Inge interrupts her mother . . . time to get up . . . the picnic's over . . . at least a three-hour drive ahead of us . . . the horses are rested." (p. 271)
440 pages. So a lot more here I'm not even touching on. The end is so frenetic I am reminded of certain Marx Brothers films....more
This starts with a harangue when Céline is back in France after World War II. He's being hounded for debts, antisemitic, pro-Nazi writings, etc. Then This starts with a harangue when Céline is back in France after World War II. He's being hounded for debts, antisemitic, pro-Nazi writings, etc. Then the narrative flashes back to Céline's flight from Sigmaringen, in south west Germany, near Switzerland, where he had been holed up with officials of the collaborationist Vichy government. He and his wife, Lili — and their cat, Beibert — get on board a train to hell. It's filled with the dead and the near living on their way to Rostock. Why Rostock? Who knows.
Céline's prose is flat, and fragmented, but at the same time vivid and compelling. It draws the reader on. He is a ranter à la Thomas Bernhard, but Bernhard is usually humorless, whereas Céline's humor is black as a fetid corpse.
Céline was supposedly trepanned three times due to action in World War I. He was a decorated war hero. Maybe that turned a switch to his brain, made him more voluble. Maybe not. Many passages here wonder about the same thing; he speaks about his brain creating symphonies for him when he was in prison in Denmark. Then a flying brick to his head in Hanover turns him positively phantasmagoric.
Now though it's off to Rostock, but no, suddenly they're heading to Berlin. Here's a helpful note about chronology. This is the third volume of a trilogy. I've not read the earlier volumes, but will.
"SIGMARINGEN. The order of events in Rigadoon is rather different from that described in the preceding volumes and also from the actual course of events, which is roughly as follows: In July 1944, Céline, whose life had been threatened in France because of his collaboration with the Germans, crossed the German border, intending to go to Denmark. In Baden-Baden his papers were confiscated and for three months he waited in vain for permission to proceed to Denmark. Finally he asked leave to go to Switzerland or return to France. He spent two weeks in Berlin, trying to obtain a visa. After refusing to broadcast Nazi propaganda he was interned for three months at Kressling near Neuruppin in Prussia in a camp of "free thinkers." This would seem to be the setting of North. At this time he tried again to go to Denmark and reached Rostock-Warnemünde, but was unable to cross the border. At this point he decided to join the Vichy refugees in Sigmaringen, where he stayed until March, 1945. It was then, with Sigmaringen as its starting point, that the 21-day odyssey related in Rigadoon began." (p. 268n)
Céline was sort of the French equivalent of Ezra Pound. Though to my knowledge, Pound never addressed his Nazi collaboration in print, as Céline does here. Rather, Pound was committed to an asylum, St. Elizabeth's in DC. Cèline was cleared by a military tribunal in 1951, not sure what rationale was used. Maybe it was just his great fame.
Some may find this difficult to read. Céline opines if fleetingly on mongrelization, Jews, the mentally deficient, the ignoble end of white race, etc. What he doesn't do is either praise the Axis or lambaste the Allies. The French get it in the neck though, and you could argue that in this manner he does criticize the Allies, obliquely. Mostly he's enraged by the critics at home whom he doesn't hesitate to name: Jean Cocteau, dying of rectal cancer, among them....more
1. Deeply transgressive novel that's Dovstvyeoskian in length and intellectual depth. I feel assailed by the bNotes (since the book is unsummarizable)
1. Deeply transgressive novel that's Dovstvyeoskian in length and intellectual depth. I feel assailed by the book yet I keep on reading.
2. It reminds me a little of my emotional response while watching the World Trade Center collapse from my UWS rooftop. (In the days after, whenever a plane flew over, everyone would look up: "Oh, it's one of ours. . .")
3. The narrative often feels derived from post hoc historical considerations, but I suppose this is inevitable. For instance, the talk our Dr. Aue has with his friend Thomas about the possibility of the Wehrmacht failing to subdue Moscow before the winter. There’s a post-hoc feeling, too, when Sturmbannführer Blobel rants against the Wehrmacht’s efforts to distance themselves from the killing. Examples might be multiplied. So, I wonder, were these considerations undertaken by the Germans themselves during the war? But then isn’t this the problem with historical novels generally? Didn’t Tolstoy have to deal with it too?
4. Years ago I began reading widely on the Holocaust. So it's almost as if I can recognize the source material as I read. No doubt I am sometimes mistaken, but sometimes I think I've absolutely nailed it. Here are a few of my suspicions.
5. The Einsatzgruppen— death squads which entered Poland with the Wehrmacht in September 1939 — found the direct killing of Jews too traumatic. This repulsion was one of the reasons why an industrialized killing process requiring less human involvement had to be devised, resulting in the lethal adaptations of Auschwitz and other camps. These “factories” however were not up and running until late 1941 at the earliest, and most of the mass killing — gassing— began in 1942.
“As the weeks went by, the officers acquired experience, and the soldiers got used to the procedures; at the same time, one could see that everyone was searching for his place in all this, thinking about what was happening, each in his own way. At table, at night, the men discussed the actions, told anecdotes, and compared their experiences, some sadly, others cheerfully. Still others were silent; they were the ones who had to be watched. We had already had two suicides; and one night, a man woke up emptying his rifle into the ceiling, he had to be held down by force, and a noncom had almost been killed. Some reacted with brutality, sometimes sadism: they struck at the condemned, tormented them before making them die; the officers tried to control these outbursts, but it was difficult, there were excesses. Very often our men photographed the executions; in their quarters, they exchanged their photos for tobacco, or stuck them to the wall - anyone could order prints of them. We knew, through the military censors, that many of them sent these photos to their families in Germany; some even made little albums of them, with captions: this phenomenon worried the hierarchy but seemed impossible to control. Even the officers were losing their grip. Once, while the Jews were digging, I surprised [SS officer] Bohr singing: ‘The earth is cold, the earth is sweet, dig, little Jew, dig deep.’ The Dolmetscher was translating; it shocked me deeply. I had known Bohr for some time now, he was a normal man, he had no particular animosity against the Jews, he did his duty as he was told; but obviously, it was eating at him, he wasn't reacting well. Of course there were [also] some genuine anti-Semites in the Kommando.” (p. 88-89)
6. The author evinces a deep knowledge of the units and divisions and legions of the Wehrmacht and the SS, the place names, terrain, equipment, ranks (Hauptscharführer, Obersturmführer etc.), not to mention some of the many German euphemisms for killing. My favorites are Sonderbehandlung or special treatment (gassing), and Aktion or bloody massacre. Victor Klemperer wrote an entire book about such Nazi euphemisms; it’s called The Language of the Third Reich: LTI--Lingua Tertii Imperii.
7. The author was about 38 when the novel was published by Gallimard in French, though he’s American and a Yale grad. One wonders in what way his father’s many novels of espionage — The Amateur, Mother Russia, etc. — were influential. The father was publishing in the 1970s when the author was in short pants. How fortunate such a dad must have been for the author's development. I am reminded of other literary fathers & sons, — a relatively rare phenomenon — Kingsley Amis & Martin Amis; etc.
8. Dr. Aue’s speech about the ancient rituals of homosexuality is both preposterously long and clearly an evocation of Remembrance of Things Past. It cleverly seeks to provide his handsome young friend, whom he meets on leave in Crimea, with something like a National Socialist basis for homosexual behavior.
"’After the thirteenth of June,’ I went on, ‘when it turned out that many of Röhm's accomplices, like Heine’s, were also his lovers, the Führer was afraid that the homosexuals might form a State within a State, a secret organization, like the Jews, which would pursue its own interests and not the interests of the Volk, an Order of the Third Sex, like our Black Order. That's what was behind the denunciations. [“The Night of Long Knives”] But it's a political problem, not an ideological one. From a truly National Socialist point of view, you could on the contrary regard brotherly love as the real cement of a warlike, creative Volksgemeinschaft. . .' — ‘Yes, but still! Homosexuals are effeminate, men-women as you said. How do you think a State could tolerate men that are unfit to be soldiers?’ — ‘You're wrong. It's a false notion that contrasts the virile soldier with the effeminate invert. That type of man does exist, of course, but he's a modern product of the corruption and degeneration of our cities, Jews or Jewified men still caught in the clutches of priests or ministers. Historically, the best soldiers, the elite soldiers, have always loved other men. They kept women, to watch over their household and give them children, but reserved all their emotions for their comrades. Look at Alexander! And Frederick the Great, even if no one wants to acknowledge it, was the same. The Greeks even drew a military principle from it: in Thebes, they created the Sacred Band, an army of three hundred men that was the most famous of its time. The men fought as couples, each man with his lover. . . .’” (p. 197)
9. In my view, the book doesn’t take off until page 291. It’s the winter of 1941-42 and the narrator and his fellow officers are 450 miles south of Stalingrad, in the Caucasus Mountains, distracting themselves with “Who’s the Jew?” Here’s a portion of the discussion:
"‘From the Abwehr's standpoint,’ von Gilsa explained, ‘it's a purely objective question of the security of the rear areas. If these Bergjuden cause disturbances, hide saboteurs, or help partisans, then we have to treat them like any enemy group. But if they keep quiet, there's no reason to provoke the other tribes by comprehensive repressive measures.’ — ‘For my part," Bräutigam said in his slightly nasal voice, ‘I think we have to consider the internal relations of the Caucasian peoples as a whole. Do the mountain tribes regard these Bergjuden as belonging to them, or do they reject them as Fremdkörper [foreigners]? The fact that Herr Shadov intervened so vigorously in itself pleads in their favor.’ — ‘Herr Shadov may have, let's say, political reasons that we don't understand,’ Bierkamp suggested. ‘I agree with Dr. Bräutigam's premises, even if I cannot accept the conclusion he draws from them.’ He read some extracts from my [narrator Aue’s] report, concentrating on the opinion of the Wannsee Institute. ‘This,’ he added, ‘seems confirmed by all the reports of our Kommandos in the theater of operations of Army Group A. These reports show us that dislike of the Jews is general. The Aktions against the Jews — such as dismissals from public offices, yellow star, forced labor — all meet with full understanding from the general population and are heartily welcomed. Significant voices within the population even find actions so far against the Jews insufficient and demand more determined actions.’ — ‘You are quite right when it comes to the recently settled Russian Jews,’ Bräutigam retorted. ‘But we don't have the impression that this attitude extends to the so-called Bergjuden, whose presence dates back several centuries at least." He turned to Köstring: ‘I have here a copy of a communication to the Auswärtiges Amt from Professor Eiler. According to him, the Bergjuden are of Caucasian, Iranian, and Afghan descent and are not Jews, even if they have adopted the Mosaic religion.’ — ‘Excuse me,’ said Noeth, the Abwehr officer from the OKHG, ‘but where did they receive the Jewish religion from, then?’ — ‘That's not clear,’ Bräutigam replied….’” (p.295-96)
The subject, historiography perverted for genocidal ends, has been explored elsewhere, but to my knowledge its treatment has not been equalled in fiction.
10. The virtues of narrative — continuity, catharsis, closure etc— are things that the Holocaust does not possess. The book abounds in the pleasures of storytelling; it’s masterly. There’s an account of famished soldiers dying in Stalingrad that’s terribly sad. Does it humanize the Einsatzgruppen, too? I’m afraid it does. No doubt this is what director Claude Lanzmann meant when he criticised the novel. Are the pleasures of narrative misplaced in such a story? Someone said, after Auschwitz to write a poem is barbaric. That’s a noble view. But, there is poetry, there is art.
11. In the Stalingrad kessel – a few days before General Paulus's surrender to the Red Army — Dr Aue, feverish and lice-ridden, begins to ramble; his narration soon turns phantasmagorical.
"I was walking on the Volga . . . . In front of me, a dark hole opened up in the ice, quite wide, probably pierced by a high-caliber shell that had fallen short. . . . I dove in. The water was clear and welcoming, a maternal kind of warmth. The swift current created whirlpools that soon carried me away under the ice. All kinds of things were passing by me, which I could clearly make out in this green water: horses whose feet the current was moving as if they were galloping, fat and almost flat fish, bottom-feeders, Russian corpses with swollen faces, entwined in their curious brown capes, pieces of clothing and uniforms, tattered flags floating on their poles, a wagon wheel that, probably soaked in oil, was still burning as it swirled beneath the water. . . Above me, the ice formed an opaque screen, but the air lasted in my lungs, I wasn't worried and kept swimming, passing sunken barges full of handsome young men sitting in rows, their weapons still in their hands, little fish threading through their hair agitated by the current. Then slowly in front of me the water grew lighter, columns of green light plunged down from holes in the ice, became a forest, then melded into each other as the blocks of ice drifted farther apart. I finally rose back to the surface to regain my breath. . . . Upriver, to my left, a Russian ship was drifting in the current, lying on its side, gently burning. Despite the sun, a few large flakes of luminous snow were falling, which lay hidden as soon as they touched the water. Paddling with my hands, I turned around: the city, stretched all along the shore, lay hidden behind a thick curtain of black smoke. Above my head, seagulls were reeling and shrieking, looking at me curiously, or possibly calculatingly, then flying off to perch on a block of ice; the sea was still far away, though . . . ." (p. 415-416)
And then it corkscrews into something close to slapstick. Dr Aue comes out onto the far side of the Volga where he sees a dirigible aloft and walks toward it. Soon uniformed men without military insignia accompany him aloft in a kind of balloonist's basket to meet a mad doctor (foreshadowing Auschwitz) whom he interviews then has to escape by climbing a ladder, running across the dirigible's convex surface chased by thugs with guns, before parachuting to safety.
12. Many historical figures appear. Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, Rudolf Höss (see Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz), Odilo Globocnik, Josef Mengele, Albert Speer (see Albert Speer: His Battle with Truth), and Hitler himself, batshit in the Führerbunker. When Aue travels to Occupied Paris in the center of the book he meets old pro-Nazi friends again like Robert Brasillach, Lucien Rebatet, Charles Maurras, and is newly introduced to another rabid antisemite, Louis-Ferdinand Destouches (Celine). All the names but Celine's I had to look up. Moreover, Dr. Aue walks insouciantly around Paris. He's on convalescent leave and primarily concerned with his next posting. He's a careerist.
13. Meanwhile a hideous extermination is taking place in Poland. This is the background to Aue's days. While cracking jokes with his friend Thomas, dining out, "having my ass drilled by unknown boys," (p. 763) taking his twin sister to Potsdam, seeking a new post, while all this and more transpires — 6 million Jews are executed. Goldhagen called it "eliminationist anti-semitism." Eleven million if we include the Roma, "asocials," homosexuals, and 3 million Soviet POWs who were starved to death in open camps.
14. There's a twins motif. Dr. Aue and his sister, Una, are twins. When he goes to visit his mother in Italy, she is watching the children of friends, twins who can't be told apart. I think the image has popped up about five or six times. This might make it convenient for Aue when he visits Auschwitz, where Dr. Mengele performed infamous pseudo-scientific experiments on twins, causing enormous pain and death. See Robert Jay Lifton's The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide.
15. A great enigma is the tussle within the SS between those who want to exterminate the Jews, and those who wish to employ them as slaves. It's interesting to see dramatized a conflict that some scholars have blamed for Germany's loss of the war, since it diverted essential investment from a commitment to so called total war. They couldn't work the prisoners as slaves because they were too intent upon killing them. In this sense, they were shooting themselves in the foot. Here's the fundamental argument: Eichmann wants to kill the Jews, and Aue wants war production out of them.
"'You know, Obersturmbannführer [Eichmann],' [Aue] replied evenly, 'in 1941 we had the most modern army in the world. Now we've gone almost half a century back. All our transports at the front are driven by horses. The Russians are advancing in American Studebakers. And in the United States, millions of men and women are building those trucks day and night. And they're also building ships to transport them. Our experts confirm that they're producing a cargo ship a day. That's many more than our submarines could sink, if our submarines still dared to go out. Now we're in a war of attrition. But our enemies aren't suffering from attrition. Everything we destroy is replaced, right away, the hundred aircraft we shot down this week are already being replaced. Whereas with us, our losses in materiel aren't made good, except maybe for the tanks, if that.' Eichmann puffed himself out: 'You're in a defeatist mood tonight!' . . . 'I'm not a defeatist,' I retorted. 'I'm a realist. You have to see where our interests lie.' But Eichmann, a little drunk, refused to be logical: 'You reason like a capitalist, a materialist ... This war isn't a question of interests. If it were just a question of interests, we'd never have attacked Russia.' I wasn't following him anymore, he seemed to be on a completely different tack, but he didn't stop, he pursued the leaps of his thinking. 'Were not waging war so that every German can have a refrigerator and a radio. Were waging war to unify Germany, to create a Germany in which you'd want to live. You think my brother Helmut was killed for a refrigerator? Did you fight at Stalingrad for a refrigerator?' I shrugged, smiling: in this state, there wasn't any point in talking to him." (p. 767)
16. Himmler, declaring the "Jewish Question" solved, orders Auschwitz shut in October 1944. Subsequently attempts were made to demolish it. Dr Aue's account of the Death Marches rings true, but not his involvement in them. Not his running about trying to secure food and clothing for the exhausted inmates or trying to stop the killing of those who can't walk....more
Some notes on first reading of this new translation. The story has an odd kind of partial omniscience even though based on first person narration. TheSome notes on first reading of this new translation. The story has an odd kind of partial omniscience even though based on first person narration. The fiction is a psychohistory; that is, the psychology of a people. This passage refers to those quarantined in the city and parted from their loved ones.
"There had to be moments of distraction where they made some plan that implied the end of the plague. They had to unexpectedly feel, through some mercy, the bite of jealousy without its object. Others also found sudden rebirths, emerging from their torpor some days of the week, like Sundays, naturally, and Saturday afternoons, because, in the time of the absent one, those days had been consecrated to certain rites. Or else a certain melancholy that took hold of them at the end of each day would give them a warning, not always accurate, that their memory was going to come back to them. That hour of the night, which for the believers is the time for examining their consciences, that hour is hard for the prisoner or the exile who has nothing to examine but emptiness. It held them suspended for a moment, then they returned to apathy, they were shut in with the plague." (p. 195)
I was comparing treatments of Marris with those of Stuart Gilbert for readability. Until p. 140 or so, Gilbert's English was more readable. But then something wonderful happened as I read Marris. This was during the scene where Rieux and Tarrou, in the car, and Rambert and Cottard, on the street, bump into the city magistrate. At this point suddenly the prose improved. I think it might have something to do with the long philosophical opening stopping about here - it continues later on - and the story moving on to Rambert's plan to escape from the quarantined city.
But as soon as that action-based scene ends, we're back to the same old halting diction. I haven't read the original so I can't really speak to the text's faithfulness to it. But I have read the Stuart Gilbert English translation twice, and Gilbert finds an English rhythm for the prose that is not matched here. Gilbert makes The Plague an English-language novel, to the extent that that's possible. Marris never consistently finds that rhythm. Maybe this has to do with a die-hard loyalty to the original, I don't know. If so, she may have adhered to it so much that she has compromised her effort. Someone blessed with both languages will have to determine that.
It's important to remember, too, that The Plague is colonialist literature as much as, say, Rudyard Kipling's Kim is colonialist literature. That both books are exquisite in their idiosyncratic way doesn't relieve us of the burden of considering them in such terms. I had often thought while reading, before I remembered the book's colonialist taint, that Camus's choice not to write about race (or class) was almost admirable. How enlightened, I thought, of Camus to take a color-blind approach. I was mistaken. Subsequently it occurred to me that the choice was not altruistic, but somehow minimizing.
The long, brutal Algerian War of Independence (1954-62) killed hundreds of thousands. Afterward one million Europeans and 200,000 Jews fled, and over two million Algerians were displaced. (Wikipedia) When Camus writes of the opera house, and the attendance there of "an orchestra section filled to bursting with our most elegant fellow citizens," he is almost certainly not talking about non-whites. I don't mean to impute impure attitudes to him, but in 1947 when the novel appeared it still must have been possible to think of Algeria as French, and the locals as peripheral. It's this ease with the repressive status quo that so disappointing when found in an artist of Camus's exalted stature. This is an ahistorical view, I know, but there it is....more
Published in 1949 this book still serves as The Holy Concordance of Rough Trade. It brilliantly subverts churchy language and ritual for purposes of pPublished in 1949 this book still serves as The Holy Concordance of Rough Trade. It brilliantly subverts churchy language and ritual for purposes of physical degradation, which often for Genet equalled pleasure. Its language is highly coded. No wonder The Beats adored him. Jack Kerouac being one of the more obvious worshippers.
He's frank and withholds nothing from the reader, no matter how selfish or cruel.
"I felt a curious sweetness; a kind of freedom lightened me, gave my body as it lay on the bed an extraordinary agility. Was that what betrayal was? I had just violently detached myself from an unclean comradeship to which my affectionate nature had been leading me, and I was astonished at thereby feeling great strength. I had just broken with the army, had just shattered the bonds of friendship." (p. 40)
He is an odd melange of motivations, to say the least. This horrible blackness and coming from it, insight, light. I can think of no one else even remotely like him....more
I can say this so far, the writing is of great clarity. Superior math skills not needed. If you can read, say, Paul Krugman, or other popular economisI can say this so far, the writing is of great clarity. Superior math skills not needed. If you can read, say, Paul Krugman, or other popular economists of the day, you can read this.
Beautiful book production, sewn signatures and such....more
1. A beautiful book. Highly readable and gratifying. Too much description, but that was a convention of Flaubert’s day. The book is full of histNotes:
1. A beautiful book. Highly readable and gratifying. Too much description, but that was a convention of Flaubert’s day. The book is full of history, the abortive Revolution of 1848, the rise and fall of the French Second Republic and so on. The story of Frederic Moreau himself is the faux-biographical thread that ties it all together.
2. The Alhambra sequence here is reminiscent in the phantasmagoric “Nighttown” chapter in Ulysses. James Joyce knew Sentimental Education well. A later costume ball echoes the Alhambra scene, and it’s just as wild, just as frenetic. In other ways, in how it deals with the tribulations of Frederic’s desire, the book reminds me of Knut Hamsun’s Pan. At one point he’s running between three women — not unlike the protagonist of Isaac Bashevis Singer‘s Enemies: A Love Story. Love is mad.
3. Frederic Moreau has been pining away for years for Madame Arnoux, the wife of a wealthy gallerist. He earns his law license but after five years gives up. He admits that Madame Arnoux is unattainable. Much disappointment arises from his low income. He cannot remain on the same playing field as the Arnouxs if he is poor. He moves back to his mother’s house in the provinces. He takes walks with a four-year-old girl. His hygiene starts to go. He loses touch with his Paris friends, especially Deslauriers, with whom he had shared boyhood dreams. But then, when all hope is lost, he receives an enormous inheritance from his sourpuss uncle. Everything changes, so he feels.
Yet Madame Arnoux is out of his reach. She’s a good woman. He’ll never have her. He presses on making strange plans to further ingratiate himself and make him look even more pathetic. M. Arnoux starts borrowing money from Frederic. Strangely, our hero traipses about with the husband, the man he’s trying to cuckold, and is a witness to some of his extramarital affairs. Meanwhile Frederic remains a virgin. They’re being nothing to indicate he’s ever had a woman. Interestingly other characters can claim relationships with available women.
4. This novel uses Paris in the same way Woody Allen uses New York in his films. Here’s one colorful passage. It occurs when Frederic, flush with his legacy, is returning to Paris impatient to see Madame Arnoux.
“They stopped a good while at the city gate, for it was blocked by poultry-farmers, carriers, and a flock of sheep. The sentry, his hood thrown back, walked up and down in front of his box to keep warm. The toll-clerk clambered on to the top of the coach, and a fanfare on a coronet rang out. They went down the boulevard at a brisk trot with swingle-bars rattling and traces flying. The thong of the long whip crackled in the damp air. The guard gave his ringing shout: ‘Look sharp there! Hullo!’ And crossing-sweepers stood aside, passersby jumped out of the way, and mud splashed against the windows. They passed wagons, carriages, and omnibuses, and finally reached the iron gate of the Jardin des Plantes.” (p. 115)
When Frederic returns to Paris he finds the Arnouxs in reduced circumstances. All the luxury and grandeur have gone. The husband‘s gallery has failed and he now lives with his family above his pottery shop; this as opposed to his former gallery “just beyond the rue Monmartre,” the family home in rue de Choiseul, and the country place in Saint-Cloud. Madame Arnoux is dressed with a simplicity Frederic has never seen before.
5. At times Flaubert’s description becomes cloying in its excess; a writer today could suffice with ten percent of it, if that. These descriptive flights are the only bits where one feels oneself slogging through.
6. This novel was published in 1869 and one thing is clear, capitalism has not changed, except perhaps in the variety of its cons. Frederic’s position in uneasy; he is at heart not social, and yet he is condemned to negotiate so-called high society. He’s such a timid little man. Everyone’s robbing him blind. When failed bomber Sénécal is released from Sainte-Pélagie for lack of evidence, Dusardiers gives a party in his flat to celebrate; it’s here that Flaubert eviscerates the socialist, ostensibly pro-Republic, mindset. The monarchists don’t come out much better; everyone gets it in the neck.
So eventually, at a restaurant, Madame Armoux’s honor is besmirched; Frederick throws a plate at Viscount Cisy, the besmircher, and a particularly hilarious duel ensues in the Bois de Boulogne. The duel is called with off when Cisy faints under pressure and accidentally cuts himself with the knife with which he was to have fought Frederic. Too funny. When Madame Arnoux learns about the duel she realizes she loves Frederic. They then enter upon a difficult platonic friendship; difficult because of their physical lust for each other. And who hasn’t at some time in life been in such a fix, forswearing sex for friendship? It’s utter torture.
7. It’s impressive how adroitly Flaubert incorporates the 1848 Revolution — also known as the February Revolution it ended the July Monarchy and led to the brief French Second Republic — into the narrative. It corroborates for the most part what I had recently read in Pages from the Goncourt Journals. The revolution begins, however, on the very day Frederic was to have taken Madame Arnoux to a love nest he had designed presumptuously without her consent. She never shows. Frederic is humiliated and angry. In something like retaliation he picks up the Marshall, a prostitute, and takes her to the love nest prepared for Madam Arnoux. This is Frederic’s first sexual experience; he is 28 or 29.
8. We watch Frederic enter the Imperial palace as it’s vandalized by the “common people.” Frederic is encouraged to stand for office by M. Dambreuse, an arch monarchist who hopes to control him in that role. Frederic prepares a speech and goes to deliver it at a ribald meeting. He steps up to speak and is called an aristocrat by his erstwhile friend, Sénécal, a sociopathic “revolutionary” who has him booed into the street. It’s hard to know what the gathering’s true purpose is since it’s such a zoo. For example, before Frederic is sent away, “A man in a cassock, with crinkly hair and a peevish expression, had already put up his hand. He mumbled that his name was Ducretot, and that he was a priest and an agronomist, the author of a work entitled Manure. He was advised to join a horticultural society.” (p. 329)
9. The street names and place names and palace names of Flaubert‘s day have for the most part not changed and can be easily looked up, but then many nineteeth century books are “illustrated” for us in this way.
The essential Goncourt Brothers were like the twin Truman Capotes of their day. However, unlike Capote they never had a big novel, though they tried. The essential Goncourt Brothers were like the twin Truman Capotes of their day. However, unlike Capote they never had a big novel, though they tried. Oh, and they were straight.
“Suspicion of the entire female sex has entered into our minds for the rest of our lives; a horror of the duplicity of woman’s soul, of her prodigious gift, her consummate genius for mendacity.” (p. 76)
This is a worthwhile read. But the misogyny will set your hair on fire. The Goncourts—debauchees and gossips—saw women as whores, and blamed them for their troubles. Given that Jules, the younger brother, was eventually to die of neurosyphilis, maybe that was prescient.
Gustave Flaubert on Marquis de Sade: “‘He is the last word in Catholicism,’ he said. ‘Let me explain: he is the spirit of the Inquisition, the spirit of torture, the spirit of the medieval Church, the horror of nature. There isn’t a single tree in Sade, or a single animal.’” (p. 48)
The Goncourts’ critiques of their contemporaries may be justified; frankly many are of artists or journalists I’m not familiar with. But the rants against some, especially those in the lucrative theater, are clearly spiteful envy. As Martin Amis said, I paraphrase, envy never comes to the ball as envy, it always comes as some superficially objective criticism. There’s plenty of that here.
The journals give a good sense of the politicization of the theater, with paid claques, audience members hissing, declarations of pique from the audience—just madness. Imagine people going out to first nights solely to hiss and ruin the show for others, no matter its merits.
Much energy is spent ridiculing critics of the Goncourts’ novels, which though seen as unimportant today, other contemporaries we’re known to imitate; Zola being one.
“It is wonderful what a center of debauchery the theater is . . . It would be impossible to gather together in a smaller space a greater number of sexual stimulants, of invitations to copulation. It is like a Stock Exchange dealing in women’s nights.” (p. 68)
“If there is a God, atheism must strike Him as less of an insult than religion.” (p. 135)
Early in 1870 Jules dies of neurosyphilis; his brother Edmond describes his death throes in excruciating detail. Absolutely heartbreaking pages…
Later that year the Prussians ignominiously defeat France. This part of French history I know about mostly from Emile Zola’s superb The Debacle, which is about the Battle of Sedan. Here Goncourt, a monarchist to the marrow, describes street scenes during the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of the Paris Commune, which is ultimately massacred (15-20,000 souls) by the French Army. Goncourt witnesses some of the round ups.
“The semaine sanglante ("bloody week"), from 21 to 28 May 1871, was a short and bloody military campaign by the French Army . . . that recaptured Paris from the Paris Commune. Many Commune prisoners . . . were summarily shot by the army. In the final days, the Commune executed about one hundred hostages . . . and burned many Paris landmarks . . . .” — from Wikipedia
On Flaubert’s Temptation of Saint Anthony: “The Bible, the Christian past, brought up to date in the Horace Vernet manner, with the addition of Bedouin and Turkish bric-a-brac.” (p. 195)
“Looking at the Jews I know growing old around me, I am sometimes astonished at the peculiar ugliness which the years bring them. It is not our decrepitude but a moral ugliness. What is the explanation? I believe it is to be found in the purely material appetites and desires, in a life with no other object than money.” (p. 284)
There is so much that is objectional here: the anti-Semitism, the discussions about how real men fuck women correctly, etc. So you’ve got to measure each part separately and not let the bad cancel out the considerable amount of good.
“My cousin Fédora, talking to me today about a branch of her family which is almost poor, said: ‘Just imagine: they are people who for five generations have married for love!’” (p. 337)
Herein lies the “revelation” that Guy de Maupassant was in fact Gustav Flaubert’s biological son. The biographer of both men, Francis Steegmuller, questioned the claim in a Oct. 5 1974 New York Times article. It’s true Flaubert and Maupssant’s mother knew each other as youths. But the timing for him to have impregnated her just before his trip to the “orient” is iffy. Then again Flaubert was the younger man’s mentor. Maupassant studied under Flaubert, planned and managed his funeral and brought sculptor and donors together for the Flaubert memorial bas-relief
“‘A child! The eyes of a child . . . No, it’s too much!’ exclaimed [Alphonse] Daudet in connection with the graveside speeches and newspaper articles about Verlaine’s funeral. ‘A man who used to stab his lovers, who, in a fit of bestial lust, once tore off his clothes and ran stark naked after an Ardennes shepherd! . . . And that article by Barrès, who has never written a line of verse and who acted as one of the pallbearers, Barrè who is fundamentally a champion of stylish dressing and decent living . . . . The joker wrote that article just to proclaim that he is the intellectual prince of the younger generation!’ (p. 407)...more
Self aggrandizing and egotistical, but very well written.
Wonderful is the book's ability to completely immerse you in a vanished world. A world in whSelf aggrandizing and egotistical, but very well written.
Wonderful is the book's ability to completely immerse you in a vanished world. A world in which all the idiocies of the present day do not pertain. So in that sense like all worthwhile books it's an escape. Its description of landscape in particular reminds me of the works of Patrick Leigh Fermor, especially A Time of Gifts and the other volumes of his Danube trilogy.
It's not for everyone, however. The prose is highly allusive, often citing myth, literature, world history, etc. All of this is dutifully footnoted, but that hardly makes it a light beach read. But perfect for someone like me who reads slowly, not missing a thing.
He's extraordinarily Catholic and a longstanding virgin. (Check that: Peter Gay has written about his incredibly rakish ways. That's something of a relief, for no one can be that chaste. But it makes paragraph number 7 below rather hypocritical, does it not?)
He prides himself on his Christian humility, but also loves to speak of his extraordinary intelligence. His boyish escapades are delightful, as when he fights a monk at school who was intent on punishing him for climbing a tree, which had been expressly forbidden. His fits of vomiting when an Italian sought to cure him of tertian fever, for his father was a fool for quacks.
I'm particularly pleased when he quotes Montaigne, whose essays I admire. Chateaubriand writes "suffering is prayer," which reminds me of a sentiment expressed in Bellow: "The forgiveness of sin is perpetual and righteousness first is not required." (Martin Luther)
"If it were true that I had prostituted myself to the courtesans of Paris, I would not consider myself obliged to enlighten posterity; but I was too timid on the one hand, and too idealistic on the other, to let myself be seduced by the filles de joie. When I shouldered my way through packs of these unhappy women, who grabbed at the arms of passersby to pull them up to their quarters like Saint-Cloud cabmen trying to make travelers climb into their carriages, I was overcome by disgust and horror." (p. 155)
N.B.: Well, he did, and so he does not consider himself obliged.
The surprise of Chateaubrand is that despite his nobility he despised social climbing. His brother tried to introduce him at court, but he was unable to withstand it. In his young adulthood, he was a solitary and incredibly shy. After a single hunt with the King, he rushed back to Brittany. Though impressed by the opulence of Versailles, he hated Paris and all cosmopolitan doings, only his brother and beloved sister's presence there made it briefly tolerable.
About 35,000 people were killed during the French revolution for political reasons. That number is considered conservative. Yet Châteaubriand writes of the normality in Paris during the Revolution's early days. In short, people didn't anticipate the slaughter.
"In every corner of Paris, there were literary gatherings, political meetings, and theater shows; future celebrities wandered in the crowd unknown . . . I saw Marshal Gouvion-Saint-Cyr play a part in Beaumarchais's La Mère Coupable at the Théâtre du Marais. People went from the Club des Feuillants to the Club des Jacobins, from balls and gambling houses to the crowds at the Palais-Royal, from the gallery of the National Assembly to the gallery of the open air. Popular delegations, cavalry pickets, and infantry patrols marched every which way in the streets. Beside a man in French dress, with powdered hair, a sword at his side, a hat under his arm, leather shoes, and silk stockings, walked a man with unpowdered hair cropped close to his skull, dressed in an English frock coat and an American cravat. In the theaters, actors announced the latest news, and the pit burst into patriotic song. Topical plays drew the crowds: a priest would appear on stage, and the people would shout, Calotin! Calotin! and the priest would reply: Messieurs, Vive la Nation! Everybody hastened to hear Mandini and his wife, Viganoni, sing with Rovedino at the Opéra-Buffa, only minutes after hearing "Ça ira" howled in the street. . . ." (p. 226)
N.B. Chateaubriand is a better writer than the clap-ridden Giacomo Casanova, whose twelve-volume memoir I have yet to finish. It's not that Casanova is such a poor memoirist really, just that Chateaubriand is such a very good one.
His writings about contact with the "savages," his unfortunate word, gives insight to Indian culture in the early 1790's. He sees, already then, how it's been warped by exposure to the colonizers, and this is something he laments. Factually he is often incorrect, but his impressions of the newly expropriated nation can be riveting.
The chapter "Dangers for the United States" reminds me of de Touqueville. I wonder to what extent it was influenced by that famous book, the first volume of which appeared in 1835? The US chapter is the weakest part of the book because, as the author emphasizes, there's nothing in the US at this particular time. No art, no literature. . . Just commerce, brothels and Indian genocide. When he returns to France and the Revolution things rapidly become more interesting.
The author's claims at the volume's close that Lord Byron imitated him ferociously bears some looking into. ...more
Reading Sarah Bakewell's excellent new Humanly Possible, about the development of humanist thought, has sent me back to reread Montaigne. My first reaReading Sarah Bakewell's excellent new Humanly Possible, about the development of humanist thought, has sent me back to reread Montaigne. My first reading was the translation by M.A. Screech on Penguin books, which may be out of print now, but which I highly recommend. This collection of the complete works, translated by Donald H. Frame, includes the essays, the travelogue of Montaigne's journey through Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to Italy, and his letters to various correspondents.
from That the taste of good and evil depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
"Men, says an old Greek maxim, are tormented by the opinions they have of things, not by the things themselves. . . . For if evils have no entry into us but by our judgment, it seems to be in our power to disdain them or turn them to good use. . . . If what we call evil and torment is neither evil nor torment in itself, if it is merely our fancy that gives it this quality, it is in us to change it." (p. 39)
"Epicurus says that being rich is not an alleviation, but a change, of troubles. In truth, it is not want, but rather abundance, that breeds avarice." (p. 51)
1. This story is beautifully modulated, unrushed and a pleasure to read. It's a love story that becomes a disappointed-in-love story. It reminds me of1. This story is beautifully modulated, unrushed and a pleasure to read. It's a love story that becomes a disappointed-in-love story. It reminds me of Flaubert's Sentimental Education and two Knut Hamsun books: Mysteries and Pan.
This iteration involves an aristocratic woman widowed from a tyrannical husband who since his fortunate demise has started a salon. She casts it with her failed lovers. She has never permitted them in her bed, we are told, but she can't do without their adoration. She is brash, overconfident. Then she meets André Marrioll. He is 37 and something of a dilettante. He's dabbled in the arts but has never found his niche. Madame de Burne is rapt, and he with her.
He desires from her an ideal reciprocal love she is incapable of. Alien Hearts does something more than the other novels cited above. This something is implicit in the title; the author's characters argue that male and female ways of loving are so dissimilar as to be virtually alien. Stated baldly, this sounds absurd, which is precisely why the novel must be read. Summary won't do.
"'A woman cannot always love,' she answered quickly, 'she can only be faithful. And do you imagine that the exalted delirium of the senses can last for years on end? No, no. As for the majority of women given to passions, to violent liaisons lasting . . . however long they last, such women merely live their lives as a novel: the heroes differ, the circumstances and the crises change, the outcomes vary. For such women it must be diverting, even entertaining, for the feelings at the start, in the middle, and at the end are different each time. But for the man, when it's over, it's over. Do you understand?'
"'Yes, I suppose I do. But I don't see what you're driving at.'
"'At this: there are no passions which last very long, I mean burning, tormenting passions of the sort you're still suffering. It's a phase which I've made painful, very painful for you, I know that now, by the ... aridity of my kind of tenderness, by my incapacity for... expansion. But this phase passes, it can't go on indefinitely—' She broke off." (p. 172)
2. There is the gross over description of that time; the book was published in 1890. The Russians Formalists saw such over description as a device to get the reader to see things in a new way. The term is ostranenie, or defamiliarization.
Here's a brief example.
"Mariolle observed Madame de Burne, now seated under a bronze column that supported an enormous lamp. Her delicate nose with its turned-up tip, the dimples in her cheeks, and the slight fold of flesh that divided her chin made her look like a mischievous child, though she was nearing thirty and the faded-fower expression of her eyes gave her face a sort of disturbing mystery. Her skin, under the bright light, had the texture of pale velvet, while her hair glowed with russet highlights whenever she moved her head." (p. 17)
The question is, of course, and there is surely a scholar somewhere who knows, how intentionally is Maupassant applying the device? "Her skin . . . had the texture of pale velvet." How estranging, almost alarming.
3. There is a scene in the film "Network, written by Patty Chayefsky, in which two lovers are having sex. While the man (William Holden) is overcome with fascination to have this paragon of womanhood in his arms, the woman (Faye Dunaway) humps away while blabbing about office politics. That's sort of what happens here, only the gossip about network TV is replaced by Faubourg Saint-Germain society prattle. Now imagine that scenario raised to near literary perfection and you have something like the present novel. Superb.
"It seemed to him she was escaping into an elegant, gaudy crowd, dancing away, far from that strong secret happiness he had so hoped for, and he was jealous of it all — men, women, things even. He detested the kind of life she was leading, the people she was seeing now, the parties she was invited to, the music, the theaters, parceling out her hours, absorbing her days and her nights: only a few hours remained for the intimacy they once had. His resentment was so fierce that his health began to suffer. . . ." (p. 107)
4. Guy de Maupassant was half-insane and close to death from syphilis when he wrote this novel. Not just this novel, but as Richard Howard explains in the introduction here, quite a few stories as well. After several attempts at suicide he died horribly (blindness, paralysis) at a clinic in Passy, age 43.
5. The novel's attack on women dates to its time and to understand it we must read accordingly. Only the rare woman was permitted an intellectual life then. When they are criticized for their limitations, it rings false to us. Naturally today we see it as blaming the victim. The materialist context explains Madame de Burne. Given her background how can Marrioll honestly expect an extraordinary love from her.
6. Robert Walther, I just reread his first two novels, can do with striking narrative clarity and such apparent ease, what Maupassant does here. That is to follow his protagonist around while he is thinking things over, considering a view, talking to a pretty waitress etc. He can do all of this with such compelling ease that it astonishes. Yasunari Kawabata can do it too. Many masters can, but only these....more
Sonorous prose evoking the discursive skittering of a troubled mind. Translated from the French, do I sense the influence of Alain Robbe-Grillet? But Sonorous prose evoking the discursive skittering of a troubled mind. Translated from the French, do I sense the influence of Alain Robbe-Grillet? But that might be said of many writers of Gallic literary thrillers, no? It starts with a murder and flashes back to the long con which motivated the killer. The con was a scheme to develop a particularly beautiful portion of the landscape on the peninsula opposite Brest. Everyone, including the municipality, invests. A lot of images of flying above everything. All good metaphors for the emotional detachment of the killer, our narrator. He’s a seagull, he’s a cormorant; he’s in a hot-air balloon. These are the same seagulls who watch him murder his tormentor and who look upon his deed as work well done. The red-ringed eye of the gull, all seeing, all knowing. It would have been stronger with more voices, instead of the monologue it is. This writer can’t do the Camus—The Fall—which strikes me as another model, along with Georges Simenon, though I could be wrong. I was hopeful at the start but at 146 pages it seemed interminable....more
Genet’s great innovation was to take crime and murder and prostitution and death and write about it as a religious institution whose hallowed sphere iGenet’s great innovation was to take crime and murder and prostitution and death and write about it as a religious institution whose hallowed sphere is prison. How appropriate then that the prison here, Fontevrault, was once a Catholic convent; an ecclesiastical institution that’s now a penal one. The novel operates by systematically blaspheming all that is holy which in turn strangely girds and buoys the reader.
I thus aspired to heavenly glory, and Harcamone had attained it before me, quietly, as the result of murdering a little girl and, fifteen years later, a Fontevrault guard. (p. 6)
Genet’s metaphor is no mere literary device, it is the emotional solution he’s devised to survive his world. Harcamone is a Christ-like figure who will soon leave his woes behind when he is blessed by swift and glorious death. He is an object of envy, and lust, one whose tragic beauty—which can only be glimpsed fleetingly, peripherally, lest it fade—dazzles.
To speak of saintliness again in connection with transportation [death] will set your teeth on edge, for they are not used to an acid diet. Yet the life I lead requires the giving up of earthly things that the Church, and all churches, require of their saints. Then saintliness opens, in fact, forces a door which looks out on the marvelous. And it is also recognized by the following: that it leads to Heaven by way of sin. (p. 42)
Loading...
