Anne Hébert: Les Fous de Bassan (1982)

Mathieu Galey, who is briefly quoted on the back cover of this edition, is quite correct when he states that the reader thinks of a northern version of William Faulkner in Anne Hébert's Les Fous de Bassan, where the sound and the fury are hidden deep within the language.

This novel is set in Québec, although not the Québec of French speakers but of a small essentially self-contained (and fictional) American community that originally escaped from the United States during the War of Independence.

The book is in six sections told by five voices: the Reverend Nicolas in 1982; Stevens Brown in letters to Michael (or Mic) Hotchkiss in 1936; the fifteen-year-old Nora Atkins up until her murder in 1936; Stevens's 'retarded' brother Percival (and a few others) in 1936; the seventeen-year-old Olivia, who died in 1936, and who now speaks as a ghost; and Stevens Brown to Hotchkiss again but this time in 1982.

The title Les Fous de Bassan might initially suggest madmen, and certainly there is more than a little madness in the main male characters here, but 'fou de Bassan' is French for the gannet seabird; although the French word doesn't have the same gluttonous overtones of the English word 'gannet', it is difficult to imagine that Hébert was unaware of this second English meaning and didn't intend an oblique reference to Stevens's sexual hunger.

Several critics have compared the book to a crime novel, and there are certainly aspects of this in here, which is in a sense like a jigsaw, or even an onion gradually unpeeling its constituent parts. From the cover of this edition, it at least appears quite obvious who the murderer of the girls in 1936 is, although one of the things which drives the reader on is the possibility that there may be some unreliable narrating.

Another key driver is the language itself, which is a kind of dreamlike poetry that fills the senses, and the readers themselves become 'fous de Bassan', diving in, feeding on it, and coming out of each experience open-mouthed.

In the end, it's the PS in the final letter to Mic that chills: that Stevens was acquitted because the court considered that a confession had been extorted from him.

ADDENDUM: This book is translated into English as The Shadow of the Wind, and it would be very good indeed if it went even a small way towards translating the atmosphere of Hébert's dazzling novel.

My other Hébert posts:

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Anne Hébert in Québec city
Anne Hébert in Paris

Literary Features, 6th through the 5th arrondissement, Paris, France: Literary Île-de-France #32

26 rue Servandoni, near the Jardin du Luxembourg, is where Southern writer William Faulkner lived in the autumn of 1925.

'ICI A VÉCU

À L'AUTOMNE 1925

WILLIAM FAULKNER

1897 — 1962

ÉCRIVAIN AMÉRICAIN

PRIX NOBEL DE LITTÉRATURE 1949'

Gabriel Marcel lived at 21 rue de Tournon for forty years, from 1933 until his death in 1973.

'GABRIEL MARCEL

PHILOSOPHE ET DRAMATURGE

1889 - 1973

A VÉCU DANS CETTE MAISON

DE 1933 JUSQU'À LA FIN

DE SA VIE'

Almost opposite this, 18 rue de Tournon is where the Austrian writer Joseph Roth lived from 1937 to 1939.

'ICI A RÉSIDÉ DE 1937 À 1939

LE CÉLÈBRE ÉCRIVAIN AUTRICHIEN

JOSEPH ROTH

HOMMAGE DE SES AMIS AUTRICHIENS'

Hôtel Fontaines du Luxembourg, 4 rue de Vaugirard, where Paul Verlaine stayed from March 1889 to December 1894.

'De mars 1889 à décembre 1894 le poète Paul Verlaine a fréquenté cet hôtel.'

Verlaine later moved to what is now called La Maison de Verlaine at 39 rue Descartes, where he died in 1896, and where his friends erected a plaque:

'Dans cette maison est mort

le 8 janvier 1896 le poète

Paul VERLAINE

né à Metz le 30 mars 1844

Hommage des amis de VERLAINE

29 juin 1919'

Next to La Maison Verlaine, at 37 rue Descartes, is where the Japanese writer Kunio Tsuji lived from 1980 to 1999.

'L'écrivain japonais

Kunio Tsuji

a séjourné

dans cet immeuble

de 1980 à 1999'

The area around the Sorbonne is steeped in literature, as in this poem by Yves Bonnefoy on a wall in rue Descartes, illustrated by the drawing of the tree by Pierre Alechinsky. I'm not in the business of translating literature as translation so often reduces, truncates, distorts, even misses the point completely. At best, perhaps, trying to convey the spirit of a work, it gives a reasonable idea of what the author is saying.

Here, Bonnefoy represents the tree as a symbol, a force of light against darkness, the natural world, something soaring, something much bigger than itself, something beyond the dirt of the street: all this he addresses, literally, to the man in the street in two verses. The third verse he addresses to the philospher, telling him or her of the power of freedom that the tree possesses, an ability to render his or her thoughts more positive.

'Passant,
regarde ce grand arbre
            et à travers lui
il peut suffire.

Car même déchiré, souillé
            l'arbre des rues,
c'est toute la nature,
            tout le ciel,
l'oiseau s'y pose,
            s'y bouge, le soleil
y dit le même espoir malgré
            la mort.

Philosophe,
as-tu chance d'avoir l'arbre
            dans la rue,
tes pensées seront moins ardues,
            tes yeux plus libres,
tes mains plus désireuses
            de moins de nuit.'

France loves its philosophers, and here's Le Descartes, a brasserie/café bar with students sitting outside, on the corner of rue du Cardinal Lemoine and rue Thouin.

At 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine is a shop called 'Under Hemingway's'. The plaque states that Ernest Hemingway lived on the third floor of the building with his wife Hadley from January 1922 until August 1923. It goes on to say that he especially loved this area, where his pared-down style of writing was born. He was on good terms with his neighbors, particularly the patron of the bal-musette. The plaque concludes with a quotation from Hemingway's love story to Paris, A Moveable Feast, where he writes that his youth there was poor but happy.

'De janvier 1922 à août 1923 a vécu, au troisième étage de cet immeuble, avec Hadley, son épouse, l'écrivain américain

Ernest HEMINGWAY

1899 — 1961

Le quartier, qu'il aimait par-dessus tout, fut le véritable lieu de naissance de son oeuvre et de son style dépouillé qui le caractérise. Cet Américain à Paris entretenait des relations familières avec ses voisins, notamment le patron du bal-musette attenant.

"Tel était le Paris de notre jeunesse, au temps au où nous étions très pauvres et très heureux."

Ernest Hemingway (Paris est une fête)

 

Valery Larbaud lived for almost twenty years at 71 rue Cardinal Lemoine , and welcomed James Joyce, who finished Ulysses here.

'Valery LARBAUD

(1881 - 1957)

Poète, romancier,

essayiste, traducteur

vécut ici de 1919 à 1937'

'James JOYCE

(1882 — 1941)

écrivain brittanique

d'origine irlandaise

accueilli par Valery Larbaud,

a achevé ici son roman "Ulysses",

ouvrage majeur de la littérature

du vingtième siècle.'

 

At the north side of the Panthéon (blog post to come later) is a statue of playwright Pierre Corneille (1606—84).

And at the south side, a statue of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—78).

Off the boulevard St-Michel, a hundred meters or so from the Sorbonne, is a statue of Auguste Comte.

Hôtel des 3 Colleges has an impressive way of boasting about its visitors.

This elaborate plaque, including a representation of Gabriel García Marquéz's head, annouces that the Columbian Nobel prize winner wrote the novel No Letter for the Colonel here in 1959.

And this plaque, that the Hungarian poet Miklós Radnóti lived there in 1939.

'Miklós Radnóti 1909 — 1944 poète hongrois habita cette maison en 1939.

"...des poètes entiers, la liberté te clament. Ainsi dans Paris, ses chants d'aujourd'hui'.

Ripley, Mississippi: Colonel William Falkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #14

Ripley, Mississippi, at midday Saturday is so dead that you can probably drive round the center in your sleep and come to no harm nor cause any. Venture onto the highway a few hundred yards away, though, and somewhere at least is open: yes, McDonald's is where everyone seems to hang out here. Back in the 19th century, though, Colonel William Clark Falkner – William Faulkner's great-grandfather – was involved in the re-creation of the railroad here. He was also involved in a number of other things, and probably none too popular: an attempt to shot him misfired, although he killed his would-be murderer and got off with self-defense. He became a writer, and wrote a best-selling novel – The White Rose of Memphis (1881). But his days were numbered, and ex-business partner R. J. Thurmond shot him in the street in the center of Ripley: he died the next day.

His great-grandson wanted to be a writer too, and he took his relative (as Colonel Sartoris) as a model in Sartoris (1929; repr. as Flags in the Dust, 1973), and The Unvanquished [1938].

The Colonel's grave is not difficult to find in Ripley Cemetery: with the statue on top of it it stands at 23 feet, and is a very impressive sight. On to Tennessee.

New Albany, Mississippi: William Faulkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #13

'William Faulkner. Here, September 25, 1897, was born the distinguished author, member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and recipient of the 1949 Nobel Prize in Literature.'

Although Faulkner's birthplace no longer exists, a model of it is in the Union County Museum a few houses down from the street marker.

At the back of the museum, as a tribute to Mississippi's most distinguished literary son, is a literary garden, with a large number of plants mentioned in Faulkner's work, and markers showing the appropriate quotations.

Jimson Weed. 'Here. Here's you a jimson weed. He gave me the flower.' '...Ben squatting before a small mound of earth...at either end of it an empty bottle of blue glass that once contained poison was fixed in the ground. In one was a withered stalk of jimson weed...' William Faulkner, The Sound and the fury.

Bridal Wreath/Spirea. 'About this half-moon of lawn...were bridal wreath and crepe myrtle bushes as old as time and huge as age could make them'. William Faulkner, Sartoris.

'Drusilla faced Bayard, she was quite near; again the scent of verbena in her hair seemed to have increased a hundred times as she stood holding out to me, one in each hand, two dueling pistols.' William Faulkner, The Unvanquished.

Oxford, Mississippi: William Faulkner: Literary Landmarks of the Southern United States, #12

'The Falkner House. Built in 1931 as the home of Murry and Maud Falkner, the parents of Nobel Prize winning author William Faulkner. [William had added the "u" some years previously.] The house stands on land purchased in 1898 by J. W. T. Falkner, William Faulkner's grandfather.'

William Faulkner bought Rowan Oak, which had been empty for several years, in 1930, when it was then known as 'The Bailey Place'. It was built in the 1840s by Colonel Robert Sheegog, a planter from Tennessee. Faulkner moved in with his wife Estelle and his two step-children, Malcolm and Victoria. Their daughter Jill was born a few years later. Here, the Faulkners lived until Faulkner's death in 1962.

Three views of Rowan Oak.

Faulkner's bedroom. On the mantelpiece on the other side of the room is a prominent '64', an identifying number that Faulkner wore at a horse show.

Faulkner's office has the plot of his novel A Fable written on the wall. He sometimes took the typewriter and one of the Adirondack chairs outside to work.

The library. The painting of Faulkner is by his mother Maud Butler, and the sculpture in the foreground is by the Brazilian Marnarz, a student of Jean Arp's.

Estelle's bedroom, where she painted and bird watched. Faulkner thought air conditioning unnatural, and wouldn't allow any in the house, although Estelle had some installed immediately after his funeral.

Jill's bedroom. The painting of her is also by Maud Butler.

The servants' quarters, and once home of their much loved caretaker 'Mammy Callie'.

Original detached kitchen from the 1840s, adapted by Faulkner into a smokehouse for his hams.

The 1840s barn, which Faulkner used for storage, was later rebuilt from the original wood.

The paddock and stable, built by Faulkner for his horses in the late 1950s.

Memory House on 406 University Avenue, Oxford. This was the home of John Faulkner, William Faulkner's brother, who was also a novelist, and who wrote My Brother Bill: An Affectionate Reminiscence very shortly after his brother's death.