bookrblog

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Saturday, July 14th, 2007 | French Literature | No Comments

In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor of Elle magazine, had a stroke which left him completely paralysed apart from one eye. By blinking while the listener recited the alphabet, he was able to communicate and write this short memoir. He was a father of two young children, and he lived only a few days after the publication of this book. It’s full of longing, full of hope, both angry and humorous, and extremely human.

He writes about one perfect day he shared with his children; writes about the day that his stroke occurred; writes about the history of the hospital, about how he feels about his carers, about the things he imagines as well as the things he experiences. He was only forty-three, and he lived less than a year after his stroke, but this book isn’t a book of grief but a book of life.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Sunday, November 19th, 2006 | French Literature | No Comments

This classic by Victor Hugo is incredibly rich in detail and in characterisation. It’s a really good story, too. He does an interesting job of mocking the present by using the past, which is clever, and while he occasionally goes off onto great tangents about architecture, the story moves along most of the time at a pretty good pace.

His characters are fascinating – the bell-ringer, the gypsy-girl, the poet, the military man, the saint, the archdeacon, the little boy who eats the cake that the saint’s supposed to eat. I was glad there was a chapter devoted to what actually happened to the cake! The most important character is the cathedral itself, and Hugo gives plenty of detail about its structure and its history, as well as giving it a vital role in the plot, as saviour and as instigator, too, of some terrible things – after all, it was from the cathedral that the archdeacon saw Esmeralda, which sealed his fate, hers, Quasimodo’s as well.

He’s a really powerful writer, moving easily between satirical humour and pathos, using his detailed language to build a wonderful portrait of a particular time and place. He’s peopled an entire city, created a Paris which is really recognisable. This is why it’s such a classic, because no matter when it’s read, a place comes instantly alive.

Candide

Wednesday, November 1st, 2006 | French Literature | No Comments

You never know with classics whether they’re going to be good or deadly dull, which is why I’ve never read Voltaire before. But it’s good stuff. Entertaining, very funny, extremely readable and thought-provoking, too. The humour lies in the juxtaposition between style and substance, form and content; it’s written almost like a fairy-tale or fable, but it’s talking about very shocking things. Rape, murder, the fallible church, and all the ways in which people can die or be hurt, either by nature or by man.

It’s considered a key text for the Enlightenment, because of the way it illustrates the main theories of the day. There’s rationalism, there’s Rousseau’s noble savage, there’s optimism, there’s dualism, there’s all the major philosophies of that time – in fact it’s like a mini Sophie’s World. Voltaire doesn’t only mock them, but he provides real pathos in the voices of those who are attempting to live through such suffering while being told that the suffering is good. I really love the old woman who cries that it’s insane the way we refuse to put down the burden which torments us, when it’s so easy to lay it down forever – the burden of living.

Voltaire also makes clear that it’s not only suffering– earthquakes, wars, the Spanish Inquisition – but it’s also our own participation in creating suffering that we’re unable to avoid. Candide, the innocent boy who wants to believe in a good world and in man’s goodness, ends up causing all sorts of havoc, including murder, without any intention of doing such things at all. The currency of good intentions is worthless.

The little fable, which is a journey, which is a riddle, ends with a riddle. Candide’s last line – “we must also cultivate our garden” – could be (and I’m sure has been) explained a thousand different ways. I like to think that there’s some sense of hopefulness; that perhaps the only way to find any meaning at all is in creating it oneself.

Suite Française

Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006 | French Literature | No Comments

This story by Irène Nèmirovsky is about the beginning of the occupation of France by the Nazis. It’s about the beginning, because the author and her husband were arrested midway and murdered in Auschwitz. She’d planned it to have five parts, the last one entitled Peace. Those parts weren’t written, but in this edition her notes for the rest of the book are included, plus letters about the book, including her last scribbled note to her children, handed to a passer-by at a railway station.

This is an interesting read because it’s by someone who was there, and it’s a very well-written, often touching, often amusing story. The first section – Storm in June – covers the invasion of Paris, and different kinds of people fleeing north. It’s all from the perspective of ordinary people caught up in the petty aspects of life. There’s even a chapter from the perspective of a cat. People die foolishly, others get left behind; patriotism is vague but food and shelter for a single night – an empty chair – are the real things.

The second section, which I found more interesting, is called Dolce. It’s about a village having to accept the occupying forces living amongst them for months at a time. Again it’s from a number of points of view, always the minor people, the ordinary people who have to get on with life. But at the same time it isn’t innocuous; beside the propaganda posters of the soldiers handing out jam sandwiches to the kids is another poster warning people to stay inside at night, on pain of death. There’s the constant sense of “after the war” with no idea of what that would mean, and the growing idea of collaboration.

This isn’t a finished piece of work – I found the style slightly mannered, although perhaps that’s just the translation. There’s no conclusion, and especially in the first section little sense of the story moving strongly forward. But the characters are drawn clearly and the background detailed exquisitely. There’s the constant reminder of the men having disappeared off somewhere out of the grasp of all those wives and mothers; the constant sense of uncertainty, of having to lead a life which has no purpose or meaning any longer. And the underlying sadness of knowing the author herself never saw the end of the story.

I’ve been reading or watching lots of points of view of the same war recently – watching Changi, about the Australians in the Japanese prison camp, watching The Battle of Britain, about the Blitz and the RAF air battles. It seems a long time ago rather than just fifty years; it seems strange that there are still a lot of people living who remember that time. Not just because it’s so incredible, in the sense of incomprehensible, but also because you’d think we’d all be scarred by it, because it was just so terrible. A time when the whole world was filled with people trying to kill one another, faster and more efficiently than the other side. I suppose the world is still filled with people like that, but despite all this reading and watching, I still can’t really believe it.