French literature 1950–2000: An Anthology Edited by Sharad Chandra French literature 1950–2000: An Anthology Edited by Sharad Chandra 1 Preface Compiling this anthology has been a great delight for me in spite of the arduous task of making selections—of authors and of excerpts, since in literature it is never easy to decide whom to keep, whom to leave out; then, to use the excerpt from what work which ones to leave out. Nevertheless, the choice had to be made. I have finally been able to select, fifty–six authors which, in my view, score over others in merit, in literary significance, as also in best illustrating the trends and tendencies of the period under study. The number or length of the excerpt(s) is in no way, indicative of the literary distinction of a particular author, rather of a characteristic trait or a singuliar peculiarity of the work contributing to a current concept or introducing a new feature. A major hurdle in the way was of locating and acquiring English translations of selected works— since, in order to save time as well as to avoid complications of buying translation rights, I decided to use only the existing translations. This limitation did slightly restrict my field but has not, in any way, impaired the comprehensively of the presentation of French literature from 1950 to the end of the century. To make the anthology as complete as possible, interesting information on exotic literary practices like ‘Oulipo’, names of French Nobel laureates, the long list of French literary Prizes, and a chronology of Socio-political events of the period has been provided in the Appendix. Before closing I may add that since I have concentrated specifically on French (and not Francophone) writers, and creative (not critical) literature I had to skip immortals like Roland Barthes, E.M. Cioran, Levi-Strauss and many others, just as I had to leave out most prominent and popular names like Leopold Senghor and Aime Cesaire who have left a significant body of work behind. Senghor was even elected to the Adademie francaise in 1963, yet is not referred to as a French, but a Senegalese poet. Some very brilliant voices have emerged in the field of poetry as well as of fiction at the cusp of the century, to treat whom justifiably would require a separate volume. This anthology is not a manual or a reference book but a compendium to provide its readers foretaste of a rich literature and stimulus to explore more of that territory. I do hope it proves successful in its aim. NOIDA March 23rd. 2014 Sharad Chandra 2 Thanks & Acknowledgements I am deeply indebted to Marielle Morin and Judith Oriol for their valuable suggestions in the selection of the authors, and acknowledge, most sincerely, the unfailing and untiring assistance accorded to me by each and every member of the AFD (Alliance Francaise de Delhi) library in locating and acquiring the huge inventory of books I needed to consult, in the absence of which, it would not have been possible to put this anthology together. My grateful thanks to Mr. S. Padmnabhan, Assistant Librarian of the Sahitya Akademi library for hunting out books not available elsewhere with a rare sense of commitment. 3 Contents Preface 2 Thanks & Acknowledgments 3 Introduction 6 Jules Supervielle (1884 – 1960) 18 Francois Mauriac (1885-1970) 22 Louise Aragon (1887-1982) 26 Saint-John Perse (1887-1975) 32 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand (1894- 1961) 36 Jean Giono (1895-1970) 47 Albert Cohen (1895- 1981) 53 Henri De Montherlant (1896-1972) 58 Francis Ponge (1899-1988) 62 Henri Michaux (1899-1984) 67 Nathalie Sarraute (1900-1999) 73 Andre Malraux (1901-1976) 79 Michel Leiris (1901-1990) 82 Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1990) 86 Jean Tardieu (1903-1995) 91 Georges Joseph Christian Simenon (1903 – 1989) 97 Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) 101 Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) 105 Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) 113 Jacques Prevert (1907-1977) 121 Rene Char (1907-1988) 128 Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) 133 Jean Anouilh (1910-1987) 139 Julien Gracq (1910- 2007) 144 Jean Genet (1910-1986) 151 Eugene Ionesco (1912-1994) 155 Albert Camus (1913-1960) 166 Claude Simon (1913-2005) 171 Romain Gary (de son vrai nom Roman Kacew 1914-1980) 176 Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) 180 Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922-2008) 184 Yves Bonnefoy (Born 1923) 189 Andre Du Bouchet (1924-2003) 195 Michel Tournier (Born 1924) 199 Philippe Jacottet (Born 1925- ) 204 Michel Butor (1926--) 208 Jacques Dupin (1927-2012) 213 Jacques Reda (1929) 218 Michel Deguy (1930) 222 Jacques Roubaud (born 1932) 227 Françoise Sagan (1935 – 2004) 231 Georges Perec (1936-1982) 234 4 Anne-Marie Albaich (1937) 241 Helen Cixous (1937) 247 Annie Ernaux (1940) 252 Jean-Marie Gustag Le Clezio (1940) 256 Tahar Ben Jelloun (1944) 261 Daniel Pennac (1944) 264 Patrick Modiano (1945) 267 Pierre Michon (born 28 March 1945) 271 Jean Echenoz (1947) 274 Bernard-Marie Koltes (1948-1989) 278 Amin Maalouf (1949) 281 Michel Houellebecq (1958) 285 Atiq Rahimi (1962) 290 Amelie Nothomp (1967) 295 Selected Bibliography for Further Reading Authors’ Index Appendices A Note on the Oulipo 299 French Nobel Prize Laureates 301 Major literary prizes awarded in France 302 Important Socio-political, and Literary Dates 303 Acknowledgements & Permissions 308 5 1 Introduction I The Background Before the pessimism of the 1920s set in, a brief period of optimism (roughly from 1890 to 1914) reigned in France which is popularly known as ‘the belle époque’. It constituted an exhilarating period of economic prosperity and progress. People living during this time were materially confident and culturally optimistic. Inventions like the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the cinema enlivened and speeded up modern life. Art of any genre prospered like never before. There was tremendous expansion in literary output and the ever-faster pace of experimentation with new means of expression. Both Marxism and Freudianism made a deep imprint on literature of the period, as on all the arts. While the two world wars gravely lacerated France the technological revolution confronted the current generation with an altogether new world. The result of such profound socio-economic and political change led to a continuous questioning of all moral, intellectual, and artistic traditions: from impressionism to Art Nouveau and cubism, and from romantic to political and socio-critical literature. The poems of Guillaume Apollinaire characteristically reflect the giddy dilation of the times: society’s distaste for the outmoded styles like naturalism, and its enthusiasm for the new and exciting, namely, the Eiffel Tower, cubism, the joyful life of cabarets and music halls. He made bold experiments in form and style, eliminating punctuation and juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images. Following his lead Alfred Jarry published the extravagant farce of Ubu roi (1896; in English Ubu King, 1951) and Paul Claudel challenged the established conventions of drama in his densely packed poetic plays. Alain-Fournier’s novel, Le Grand meaulnes (1913; in English The Wanderer,1928) put forth a poetic and mysterious denial of the limitations placed on the human imagination by the realists and naturalists, and the philosopher Henri Bergson peremptorily rejected the naturalist view that human destiny is shaped by predetermined factors and suggested that people have free will and limitless creative energy. The advent of war in 1914 destroyed this buoyancy of spirit and engendered a vast body of literature in varying voices: pro-war rallying cries, expressions of shock, sorrow, and sympathy; pacifist and journalistic description. In 1919, after the armistice, began a period of philosophical, moral, and political stock-taking which in due course, produced its own rich crop of essays and treatises. In the literary field it generated even more radical tendencies. The Dada movement which had begun in a café in Switzerland in 1916 had travelled to Paris by 1920, but by 1924 the poets around Paul Eluard, Andre Breton, Louis Aragon, and Robert Desnos, heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud’s notion of the unconscious, modified it into Surrealism. In literature and in the 6 visual arts the surrealists tried to reveal the workings of the unconscious mind. They now championed the writers—Arthur Rimbaud, Lautreamont, Baudelaire, and Raymond Roussel—whom they previously saw as radical; and promoted an anti-bourgeois philosophy, particularly with regards to sex and politics, which would later lead most of them to join the communist party. Other writers associated with surrealism include Jean Cocteau, Rene Crevel, Jacques Prevert, Jules Supervielle, Benjamin Peret, Philippe Soupault, Pierre Reverdy, Antonin Artaud who revolutionized the theatre, Henri Michaux and Rene Char. Symbolism continued to serve as an inspiration without stifling new departures. Paul Claudel, notable as both dramatist and poet, injected a mystical Catholicism into his masterpiece, Five Great Odes (1904-1910; Eng. trans., 1967). Paul Valéry became famous for delicate poems that were at once meditative, musical, and rich in imagery. Guillaume Apollinaire deliberately aimed for modernity in his poetry, which was full of whimsical surprises. He not only coined the term surrealist but also produced the first surrealist play, Les Mamelles des Tiresias in 1918 (Eng. The Breasts of Tiresias,1961). Under the leadership of the movement's theorist, André Breton, surrealism aimed for a complete revolution in poetry and the visual arts. It considered exploration of the subconscious as the deepest source of poetry. A rejuvenator of poetic imagination, surrealism launched, among others, the poet and novelist Louis Aragon, although after 1930 he found more inspiration in his Marxist beliefs. The surrealist movement continued to be a major force in experimental writing until the Second World War. This technique was particularly well suited for poetry and theatre although Breton, Aragon and Cocteau wrote longer prose works as well, such as Breton's novel, Nadja (1928).