A forgotten novel of the Resistance: Pierre Courtade's Elseneur

(Paris: Le Bibliothèque française, 1949.) All page references are to this edition and are included in the text in the form (:212), etc. I should like at this point to record my thanks to Professor David Walker and Professor Richard Griffiths who spared time in a busy schedule to read this article in an earlier form.

Les Circonstances (Paris: La Bibliothèque française, 1946); Jimmy (Paris: Les Éditeurs français réunis, 1951); La Rivière noire (Paris: Les Éditeurs français réunis, 1953); Les Animaux supérieurs (Paris: Julliard, 1956); La Place rouge (Paris: Julliard, 1961).

11 April 1962. Reproduced in Roger Vailland, Écrits intimes (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 679-81. Vailland had criticized Courtade's novel for being too firmly grounded in ordinariness and lacking in tragic dimension. Ibid., 669-70.

Professor David Walker has reminded me that in 1931 André Gide remarked to Julien Green that Hamlet's education in Wittenberg had exacerbated the tendency to uncertainty and inaction already prevalent in his character. 'Au retour d'Allemagne, il ne peut plus agir; il ratiocine. Je tiens la métaphysique allemande pour responsable de ses irrésolutions' (Journal, 1889-1939. Paris: Pléiade, Gallimard, 1951: 106). Whether this interpretation was filtered through to Courtade by Guéhenno I have not been able to discover. It is likely, however, that he was aware of the public debate between Gide and Guéhenno as it was carried on especially in the pages of Europe, Marianne and Vendredi, the last of which Courtade read regularly. For an account of the debate see Paul Phocas, Gide et Guéhenno, polémiquement (Rennes: Coll. Interférences, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 1987). Phocas does not mention Hamlet.

Louis Loucheur (1872-1931) became minister for industrial reconstruction after the war. Eventually, after a period of crisis in the building industry, the loi Loucheur was passed in 1928 officially recognizing a scheme of cheap government loans to people wishing to build their own houses.

Horn does not, however, appear to have experience of war and armed combat: 'il n'avait jamais vu un cadavre et n'avait respiré l'odeur de la poudre qu'à la chasse ou aux manœuvres' (:226).

The fact that Karl is the germanic form of Charles, his father's name, may also be intended to indicate the degree of infiltration.

It is possible that in the character of Perceval Courtade is making a reference to Michel Mohrt whose essay Les Intellectuels devant la defaite de 1870-71 (Paris: Gallimard, 1942) condemned democracy as it had developed during the nineteenth century and fundamentally weakened France.

Note as well the description of his leaving the aircraft: 'Le difficile était de ne pas manquer les marches tout en gardent les yeux fixés sur la délégation. Question d'habitude, d'entraînement même. Il s'y était exercé dans le privé' (:20).

Behind the presentation of Haeling probably lies Pierre Hervé, Courtade's close friend at the Lycée Lakanal who was already a youth member of the PCF. Hervé was one of the most revolutionary and idealistic proponents of communism after the Liberation but eventually clashed with the Party and was expelled after the publication of his La Révolution et les fétiches (Paris: La Table ronde, 1956). Courtade also portrays him far less sympathetically in the character of Cazaux in La Place rouge.

This is another and especially strong echo of Nizan whose perception of death as a form of total capitulation to an oppressive capitalist system is expressed most powerfully in his novel Le Cheval de Troie (1935).

In all of Courtade's published work and in private letters and diaries, water, especially in the form of the sea and lakes, often symbolizes a means of escape (see Camus again) from the constraints and drudgery of everyday life and of possible ultimate self-fulfilment. It may equally be associated with death.

Op. cit., Oeuvres complètes (Lausanne: Éditions Rencontre, 1967), Vol. V, 134. See too a letter to Pierre Berger (November 1951) in which Vailland, discussing his novel Un jeune homme seul, talks of the need to bring about 'une situation nouvelle radicalement, ou en langage dialectique qualitativement différente de la situation initiale', Écrits intimes, 445.

See pages 40-4 of Elseneur in particular.

Op. cit. (Paris: Collection 10/18, 1970), 165.

See especially his essay 'Une littérature responsable', Vendredi, 8 November 1935.

Op. cit. (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), 410.