Suite Francaise
"Suite Francaise" is an important novel written by Irene Nemirovsky, a Russian-born Jewess who moved to France with her family in 1919 at the age of 16, to escape the depradations of the Bolsheviks. Her father had been an extremely wealthy banker in Russia, who managed to survive in France on the remains of his fortune. Her novel, written in 1940, describes the Fall of France to the Germans, the flight of most of the population from Paris before it was captured, and the German occupation of a small village in central France. As such it is an intensely French and beautifully conceived account, as amazing for the manner in which the work was finally published as for the novel itself.
Irene was estranged from her mother, who seems not to have loved her. It is interesting how such terrible personal emotional suffering often produces such creativity. She was a precocious novelist and made a hit with her first major novel, "David Golder" in 1929 at the age of 26. Her writing showed surprising maturity and discipline. She married Michel Epstein, a banker, and they lived a comfortable and sophisticated existence. They identified fully as French and hardly considered themselves Jewish. They had two daughters.
In 1939, seeing the oncoming catastrophe, Irene and her two daughters converted to Catholicism and moved to a small village in central France. However, although the girls were born in France and were French citizens, neither of their parents adopted French citizenship, and remained stateless foreigners living in France. This proved to be their undoing, first Irene was arrested in July, 1942, by which time she had written (by hand) two books of an intended five on the situation in France. They were intended to include what happened subsequently, but she never lived to see it, she was murdered in Auschwitz within a month of her arrest.
Her husband and she appeared to be naieve about their fate. Her husband wrote many letters to French and German authorities pointing out her fame (which was why she was arrested), trying to get her released, he even offered to exchange himself for her. But, this campaign only hastened his arrest by drawing attention to himself and he was sent to the French Concentration camp at Drancy where he died.
The two daughters were saved by their non-Jewish governess, who was a friend of the family. She was given a stipend by Irene's publisher to support the girls, and she changed their name to her own. When the French police came to arrest them (yes, they arrested children too, even though they were French and Catholic), she hid them and moved them many times. During these moves the youngest daughter took her mother's notebooks in her case and shlapped them around France with her. She thought they contained a diary.
It was only well after the War that she re-discovered the notebooks, and before giving them to an archive she decided to transcribe them. On doing so she realized that they constituted an almost complete novel. It was finally published in France in 2004, 63 years after it had been written. The book consists of two sections, "Storm in June" telling of the exodus from Paris, and "Dolce" telling of the occupation, both as experienced by Irene herself. It is written in a classical style, with elaborate descriptions of trees, flowers, weather and people's appearance.
The novel has been a great success in France. But, even though there is no doubt that Irene Nemirovsky was an accomplished and mature novelist, there is something lacking in this work. We should not be so critical because of the conditions under which it was written and because she never had the opportunity to go back and revise it, but nevertheless in my opinion it lacks depth.
The characters she chooses are ciphers, typical poor, rich, or bourgeois. She wanted to show how the situation affected ordinary people, but by choosing ordinary people, who were basically shallow and worried about their own petty conditions, she loses the drama associated with deeper and more active people.
As an example, one villager who escaped from imprisonment as a French soldier by killing German guards, is upset that the German officer billeted in his home is showing too much attention to his wife. So when he is being arrested for illegally hiding a rifle he shoots the officer. But, this happens "off stage" and is decribed by someone else. It's as if the author deliberately wants to avoid any "cheap" action.
Another troublesome aspect of this work is that the German soldiers are shown in a very sympathetic light, as victims of circumstance. Yes, they fought, and defeated the French forces, but they don't brag about it. They treat the French in a civilized and reasonable manner. They engage in love affairs with the French girls, and all this is accepted as quite natural. No doubt this is actually how it was in the small French villages, the French rationalized their collaboration.
In showing the actual selfishness and corruption of all the French classes, Irene strips bare the concept of French opposition to the Germans. In this novel there are no brave French resistance fighters, and there is also nothing about Jews. There is no apparent concern for the fate of the Jews, that Irene herself was to share, even though she clearly thought of herself as more French than Jewish. In that respect she apparently lacked a hold on reality.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I'll call the "Zelig factor" after the 1983 movie "Zelig" by Woody Allen. Zelig is a character played by Allen who completely identifies with the people around him, he even begins to look like them. Although it is not explicitly stated that Zelig is Jewish, given Woody Allen's Jewish self-loathing, it's obvious. So Jews are nothing themselves, except when they adopt the culture and identity of their surroundings. That is precisely what Allen has done, what many German Jews did, and apparently what Nemirovsky did. Because she thought of herself as French she thought this would protect her, just as if she were in fact French. It allowed her to produce an intensely French novel, but it could not save her.
Irene was estranged from her mother, who seems not to have loved her. It is interesting how such terrible personal emotional suffering often produces such creativity. She was a precocious novelist and made a hit with her first major novel, "David Golder" in 1929 at the age of 26. Her writing showed surprising maturity and discipline. She married Michel Epstein, a banker, and they lived a comfortable and sophisticated existence. They identified fully as French and hardly considered themselves Jewish. They had two daughters.
In 1939, seeing the oncoming catastrophe, Irene and her two daughters converted to Catholicism and moved to a small village in central France. However, although the girls were born in France and were French citizens, neither of their parents adopted French citizenship, and remained stateless foreigners living in France. This proved to be their undoing, first Irene was arrested in July, 1942, by which time she had written (by hand) two books of an intended five on the situation in France. They were intended to include what happened subsequently, but she never lived to see it, she was murdered in Auschwitz within a month of her arrest.
Her husband and she appeared to be naieve about their fate. Her husband wrote many letters to French and German authorities pointing out her fame (which was why she was arrested), trying to get her released, he even offered to exchange himself for her. But, this campaign only hastened his arrest by drawing attention to himself and he was sent to the French Concentration camp at Drancy where he died.
The two daughters were saved by their non-Jewish governess, who was a friend of the family. She was given a stipend by Irene's publisher to support the girls, and she changed their name to her own. When the French police came to arrest them (yes, they arrested children too, even though they were French and Catholic), she hid them and moved them many times. During these moves the youngest daughter took her mother's notebooks in her case and shlapped them around France with her. She thought they contained a diary.
It was only well after the War that she re-discovered the notebooks, and before giving them to an archive she decided to transcribe them. On doing so she realized that they constituted an almost complete novel. It was finally published in France in 2004, 63 years after it had been written. The book consists of two sections, "Storm in June" telling of the exodus from Paris, and "Dolce" telling of the occupation, both as experienced by Irene herself. It is written in a classical style, with elaborate descriptions of trees, flowers, weather and people's appearance.
The novel has been a great success in France. But, even though there is no doubt that Irene Nemirovsky was an accomplished and mature novelist, there is something lacking in this work. We should not be so critical because of the conditions under which it was written and because she never had the opportunity to go back and revise it, but nevertheless in my opinion it lacks depth.
The characters she chooses are ciphers, typical poor, rich, or bourgeois. She wanted to show how the situation affected ordinary people, but by choosing ordinary people, who were basically shallow and worried about their own petty conditions, she loses the drama associated with deeper and more active people.
As an example, one villager who escaped from imprisonment as a French soldier by killing German guards, is upset that the German officer billeted in his home is showing too much attention to his wife. So when he is being arrested for illegally hiding a rifle he shoots the officer. But, this happens "off stage" and is decribed by someone else. It's as if the author deliberately wants to avoid any "cheap" action.
Another troublesome aspect of this work is that the German soldiers are shown in a very sympathetic light, as victims of circumstance. Yes, they fought, and defeated the French forces, but they don't brag about it. They treat the French in a civilized and reasonable manner. They engage in love affairs with the French girls, and all this is accepted as quite natural. No doubt this is actually how it was in the small French villages, the French rationalized their collaboration.
In showing the actual selfishness and corruption of all the French classes, Irene strips bare the concept of French opposition to the Germans. In this novel there are no brave French resistance fighters, and there is also nothing about Jews. There is no apparent concern for the fate of the Jews, that Irene herself was to share, even though she clearly thought of herself as more French than Jewish. In that respect she apparently lacked a hold on reality.
There is an interesting phenomenon that I'll call the "Zelig factor" after the 1983 movie "Zelig" by Woody Allen. Zelig is a character played by Allen who completely identifies with the people around him, he even begins to look like them. Although it is not explicitly stated that Zelig is Jewish, given Woody Allen's Jewish self-loathing, it's obvious. So Jews are nothing themselves, except when they adopt the culture and identity of their surroundings. That is precisely what Allen has done, what many German Jews did, and apparently what Nemirovsky did. Because she thought of herself as French she thought this would protect her, just as if she were in fact French. It allowed her to produce an intensely French novel, but it could not save her.
posted by Jack Cohen at 6:07 PM
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