Post on 21-Apr-2023
Nabil 1
Dina Nabil Abdel-
Rahman
World Literature
Spring 2015
War quakes in Irène Némirovsky's Suite
Française
Being one of the earliest fictional works written
about World War II, as assumed by many literary critics,
Suite Française is a posthumous work, written in 1942 by
Irène Némirovsky, a French writer of Russian - Jewish
origin. The novel had never been heard of before 2004,
which dates its publishing in French, and soon became a
worldly bestseller after being translated into English in
2006. Though it has been locked up for nearly sixty
years, Suite Française is regarded as a chief success
presented to the twenty first-century reader, because of
the interesting back story of its creation. The novel was
planned to be a "roman-fleuve" or a novel sequence of
five parts. However, in 1942, and after finishing only
two parts of the sequence, Némirovsky was arrested
according to Nazi laws during the German occupation of
France and sent to the Auschwitz where she passed away.
Her two novels were written in a microscopic handwriting
and kept with Denise Epstein, her elder daughter. Denis
never thought of reading that manuscript thinking it
could be a diary too heartbreaking to read. However,
Nabil 2deciding to donate her mother's papers to the French
archive, she discovered what the manuscript contains.
Depicting the first year of the German occupation, Suite
Française displays different contemplations about exile and
fear caused by war and its role in quaking social bases
from a modern and a contemporary perspectives.
Irène Némirovsky wrote Suite Française during the war,
that is to say the novel illustrates war catastrophes as
they were taking place around the author. The novel is
divided into three parts: Tempête en juin, or The Storm in June,
Dolce, or Sweet, and scratches of her diaries to plot the
rest of the sequence. Each of these parts could be read
separately, but also they intersect at some points. The
first part, named Tempête en juin, revolves around the story
of five Parisian groups in the great "Exodus" during the
first Paris bombing. "The Storm in June is not a story of
political tumult of the defeat, but a portrayal
remarkably well composed of varied behaviour and emotions
of morally very different characters" (my translation,
Grégoire 40). Their fates are traced as each group
decides to escape the bombing, seeking shelter in the
countryside or the outskirts. "What Némirovsky saw was
the behaviour of the French during the occupation and it
is her description of individuals of many socioeconomic
levels and political loyalties that is so compelling
today" (Weiss xi). Those levels intersect and are
intertwined: the Péricands, a bourgeois family, Gabriel
Nabil 3Corte, an author and a member of the privileged Academie
Française, and his mistress, Florence, M. Cobin, a mean
banker, the Michauds, a middle-class family, Charles
Langelet, a haughty collector of fine ceramics, and the
Sabaries, a farm family.
The second part, named Dolce focuses on the
Angelliers living in Bussy, which was occupied by the
Germans. A young wife, Lucile Angellier, whose unfaithful
husband was taken as a war prisoner, falls in love with,
Bruno von Falk, a refined German soldier. The last part
traces the destiny of some characters mentioned in
previous parts and also some future plans for writing the
rest of the sequence. This part enables the reader to
explore the author's mind, eventually having some sort of
metafiction. "The fact that the author of Suite Française was
deported to Auschwitz gave the book an Ann Frank type of
urgency" (mentioned in Weiss xi). Living at the same time
of German occupation authorizes information and facts
provided by the author. Tolstoy, for instance, wrote
about The French invasion of Russia in 1812, but about
half a century later in 1869 in his War and Peace. "The
only difference being that she [Némirovsky] had no way
back … [she works] upon burning lava" (Philipponnat 408).
Events, thus, are described so freshly, as the novel
delves into trauma and tumult the French people, as
individuals and as human beings, experience. "This is no
memoir; it is self-consciously a work of fiction" (Weiss
Nabil 4xiii) which presents a metaphor of human defeat in war
times without concentrating on a specific ethnic group.
It is war, no doubt, which is the common theme in
the two parts of the novel; however, Némirovsky ceases to
act as a mere recorder of events occurring around her. On
the contrary, she contemplates beyond events and horror
she saw with her own eyes, reshapes them in a rather
fictitious aroma and gives them explanations and builds
potential consequences. Along with horror, the earth
seemingly trembles; "the metaphor of the tremble of the
earth is hence excellent to depict the slump rupture
which knocked the French's life in May – June 1940"
(Hoffman 39). This earthquake, in this regard, implies
the kind of awakening, war causes to that nation. The
novel starts with the feeling of distrust between the
government and the French people who seems not to believe
what the government says, "bombs had fallen on Paris ...
Yet everyone remained calm. Even though the reports were
terrible, no one believed them ... “We don’t understand
what’s happening,” people said" (Némirovsky 3). It seems
a common phenomenon when a nation is at the verge of
defeat; the government starts either lying or hiding
truths. "The trauma before the first defeats goes very
wickedly... For example, the censorship succeeded in
displaying notifications of eight - days catastrophe …
during which the French were anesthetic by the silence of
the State’s major and the brain–stuffing press" (my
Nabil 5translation, Cremieux - Brilhac 542). It was, thus, a
catastrophe to discover that the masterpieces in the
Louver were not removed to a proper protected place in
Brittany.
Némirovsky does not only stop at laying the theme of
distrust between the individuals and the government, but
she also takes this distrust a step further. Young men
were envying those who were on the front; a perfect
example for this type is Hubert Péricand who feels
ashamed until he could flee to the front. The narrator
says:
He was lost in thought, vividly imagining
scenes of battle and victory. He was a Boy
Scout. He and his friends would form a group of
volunteers, sharpshooters who would defend
their country to the end... He and his friends:
a small group bound by honour and loyalty. They
would fight; they would fight all night long;
they would save their bombed-out, burning
Paris. What an exciting, wonderful life!
(Némirovsky )
Nevertheless, it was a great shock when he went there and
was faced with the disastrous situation in the
battlefield: no patrols, bridges are bombed, roads are
cut and no enough weapons. Despite his courage, he could
Nabil 6not stand fighting in an unequal battle, so he had to
retreat. The writer sheds light on the second generation
and its attitude towards the older generation embodied in
the government and family. Full of contempt and hatred
towards everybody around him, Hupert realizes that there
will be lies and fraud stories to be created in order to
hide the gloomy catastrophic truth about the war.
Being focused on the lives of the individuals, their
emotions and thoughts, Suite Française is crowded with scenes
about trauma, fear and uproar. The five groups presented
in the novel vary in the way they behave to such turmoil
according to their social strata. The conditions are the
same: lack of food, patrol, means of transportation and
shelter, but war profoundly contributes in revealing the
best or the worst in the human being. Charlotte Pericand,
the daughter –in - law, plays the role of the mother and
the father, takes care of the whole family, and shares
food with other people's children. However, because she
was extremely overloaded with responsibility, she
unintentionally forgot taking her old father – in- law
with her while escaping the bombing. As a "good
Frenchwoman", she endures news about the death of her
elder son Philippe, and finally could protect her family.
The mean M. Corbin favours taking his mistress in the car
to taking his faithful employees, the Michauds, who had
to escape Paris to Orleans on feet. M. Corbin eventually
has frequent quarrels with his mistress and finally
Nabil 7abandons her. On the other hand, the Michauds prove to be
the best example of a couple who survives the trauma side
by side though their son, Jean-Marie, was lost in war.
Greed and self-profit is displayed in Gabriel
Corte’s character; he is concerned only about who is
going to publish him after his publisher's flee to
England. Being haughty as part of the Academie Française,
Corte disgusts the miserable sight of the poor; the
narrator says: "Gabriel could see the face of an old
prostitute with painted eyes, messy orange hair ... She
stared at him long and hard while chewing on a bit of
bread. He … murmured “such hideous faces!” Overcome, he
turned round to face inside the car and closed his eyes"
(Némirovsky 38). Being an author, his attitude towards
mundane people does not give a proper image of the
genuine author who is supposed to empathize with people
about whom he writes. He regards food as a demarcation
between classes, so he does not accept any sort of food.
Not to mention, he turns into an uncivilized person even
cannibalistic in his procure for food; he never hesitates
in bribing the employees in the hotel to get a better
room and food which were never available. Money thus,
seems worthless as well as any social position, for war
stripped everyone of any sort of power. The irony in war
circumstances is that war brings together all oppositions
in one time and space. The rich meet the poor, they
either share or contempt each other, generations meet and
Nabil 8clash against each other. Thus, fake socioeconomic
borders which have long separated them are eliminated to
put all of them on one road to face one destiny.
The never-ending conflict between the poor and
the rich is lucidly illustrated in the Sabaries' village,
Bussy. The Viscountess de Montmort holds a mass in the
church asking the poor villagers to donate their savings
to the poor soldiers on the front. The whole scene is
very ironic for the moment the Viscountess gives her
speech, the German soldiers reside in her castle, and her
husband, the Mayor, was preparing a party on their
honour. When she gave that speech, the farmers' wives
were in rage, Cecile Sabarie says:
It’s hurtful to see you with your houses and
having everything you want and then to hear you
cry poverty. Come on, everyone knows you
villagers have everything. You hear me?
Everything! You think we don’t know you’re
getting all the meat? You buy up all the
coupons. Everybody knows it. You pay a hundred
for each meat coupon. If you’ve got money, you
want for nothing, that’s for sure, while we
poor people… (Némirovsky 197)
Hypocrisy, thus, is one of the dark stains the war
intends to reveal. War, by no means, is a dreadful
Nabil 9horrific period in the history of any nation, but it,
like an earthquake, shakes the society to the core,
provoking the best and the worst of it. For that reason,
Némirovsky calls the first part “Storm in June”, the
summer is the peak of heat which indicates the hardships
of war, but to be associated with a storm is another
indication of the turmoil imposed on people; not to
mention that the war, historically speaking took place in
June.
A calmer tone appears in the shift to the second
part, named Dolce. As it takes place ten moths later after
the invasion, in the spring, the part revolves around
love relationship between Lucile Angellier and the German
soldier residing in their house. The significance of
using the spring as the appropriate time for such a
relationship to sprout and bloom is a sagacious choice by
Némirovsky. This part provides much of contemplation on
war and the creation of the enemy. The writer evokes the
most dialectic question: "What is more important, the
individual or the society?" especially in war time. Bruno
says: "War is a collaborative act par excellence… We,
Germans, believe in the communal spirit … it comes before
everything" (224). It is true that the author shows the
German brutality in war during the village occupation,
such as changing French clock time to match the German
one, murdering the innocents, imprisoning men and
stealing savings of the villagers, but this is only a
Nabil 10superficial piece of the truth. Némirovsky delves deep
inside the German soldiers' psychology, as she shows the
human side of the enemies.
Despite the fact that they are invaders, German
soldiers suffer in a different way, as they have no will
of their own. Bruno says: "we look forward to our leave
so much! We count the days. We hope. And then we get
there and we realize we don't speak the same language any
more" (202). Four years ago, Bruno got married, and for
four years too, he has been a soldier, and could rarely
see his wife. He feels abandoned from the common sense of
time, "he has no age. He is as old as the most ancient
events on earth: Cain murdering Abel…Here I am locked up
in … a tomb in a country cemetery" (223). Though they
take thousand prisoners, soldiers are imprisoned too.
Soldiers have to obey the orders just like chess pieces,
and not to think too much about what is right or wrong,
otherwise obeying orders would be a tough matter. Bruno
says: "it is not our fault if we upset them sometimes,
we're just following orders; we're soldiers" (276).
Moreover, a soldier has to neglect any sense of self
interest, Bruno, for instance, was a musician, but war
and music do not go together. Eventually, the character
of the soldier ends up distorted; as he is deprived of
his family, real job and identity. Therefore, when the
Germans knew about canceling their vacation and new
Nabil 11plans, instead, for invading the Soviet Union, it was
like pushing them for committing suicide.
Not only does Némirovsky reveal the invaders'
psychology during war times, but she also focuses on the
invaded's psychology during occupation. Occupation is
different from war, for in occupation, the invaders stay
for a long time with the invaded, reside in their houses,
eat their food, kiss their children and play with them.
Despite the French’s preconceptions about the Germans as
cruel and heartless, this image, in due course, has
changed, for people start looking at them as normal human
beings. Lucile fell in a dilemma between being a good
French wife and falling in love with a German enemy. In
the most private moments of love between her and Bruno,
she cannot forget he is a foreigner. However, her
relationship with Bruno is not a mere love but a matter
of proofing her hazy existence. The narrator says: "This
friendship between herself and the German, this dark
secret, an entire universe hidden in the heart of the
hostile house… Finally she felt she was a human being,
proud and free. She wouldn’t allow anyone to intrude into
her personal world"( ). Through this relationship, she
could escape the shell of her mother- in – law's watching
eye and her husband's unfaithfulness. However, people's
watching eyes imposed her to use Bruno's love to her for
the sake of protecting the French farmers and their
savings.
Nabil 12
Delving inside the characters’ psyche necessitates a
whole-seen- eye perspective. Némirovsky, thus, employs a
third-person omniscient narrator, who thoroughly
penetrates the characters' inner feelings and provides a
rather panoramic view point of war scenes. "It's not a
historical novel in the usual sense, for it was written
at the very time the history it recounted was unfolding"
(Suleiman 9). However, it is a fictional work built on
factual bases. Thus, in "a story like this, strongly
anchored in history, the traditional marks (dates,
references to historical characters, and to precise
military periods) are nearly absent" (my translation,
Grégoire 38). Such a narrator provides the reader with a
broader view better than the one given by any of the busy
escaping characters. Though this narration seems
traditional, Némirovsky employs a modern technique to
suit fragmentation previously introduced, that is to say
stream of consciousness.
Madame Angellier, for instance, brings back her
memories with her imprisoned son, Gaston, as triggered by
the German soldier's footsteps, while she locked herself
in her room. The narrator says: "It was neither delirium
nor first signs of madness … she would remember certain
words her son had said, certain intonations in his voice
a gesture he made with his chubby little hands when he
was a baby" (Némirovsky 241). Nevertheless, this
Nabil 13technique is not restricted to trigger past memories but
also opens gates of imagining possible future events.
Madame Angellier imagines her son’s return, the narrator
says: "during these first moments, Lucile faded away and
Gaston belonged to her and her alone … She would make him
a good lunch, run his bath, tell him immediately about
his affairs: "You know I took good care of them. You
remember that piece of land you wanted … I bought it,
it's yours" (Némirovsky 243). Time ceases to be a solid
linear block, but it keeps moving forwards and backwards,
as if all events reach the zero point where all tenses
are on equal foot.
Asserting that time is non-linear the way it moves,
Némirovsky uses another technique to enhance this
fragmentation resulted in stream of consciousness.
Némirovsky uses a reversed Proustian memory or the
Proustian Madeleine. In Marcel Proust's, the French
novelist, À la recherche du temps perdu, the narrator's past
memories are provoked in the famous Madeleine scene,
"where one bite of the tea – soaked pastry sends Proust's
narrator into a reverie of flowing memories from his past
in Combray" (Mahar 205). Némirovsky turns this technique
upside down, for scenes of war along with shortage of
food call forth gastronomic commemoration. Gabriel Corte
loses his appetite at the visions of poor dirty people,
whom he calls "the ugliness, the vulgarity, the horrible
crudeness of these people!”. Therefore, he firstly
Nabil 14refused to eat sandwiches they had brought for the road,
he says: "I cannot eat…I don't think I could swallow a
single mouthful now. Did you see that horrible old woman
beside us with her birdcage and blood stained bandage?"
(Némirovsky 38) Then he recounts memories of best food,
"two years before, in Austria, he had eaten fresh trout
near a small river …Their flesh, beneath the bluish,
pearly skin, had been as pink as a small child's" (54).
Nevertheless, one has to be sceptical about those
memories, for "we bend the facts to suit our story"
(Lehrer 82). Corte, in order to reach the food image in
his mind, has to bribe hotel employees to get refined
food and room, not to mention he scorns people around him
and blocks his ears to protect his memory image from
getting disturbed by the reluctant sound of their
munching.
“Suite Française” as a title is not an original one
of the type for it was previously introduced as Französische
Suiten or French Suites, musical six suites composed by the
German musical composor Johann Sebastian Bach. The suite,
as defined in The Harvard Dictionary of Music, is "a series of
disparate instrumental movements with some element of
unity, most often to be performed as a single world"
(Randel 848). As a paratext, the title has sagacious
indication meant by no co-incidence. Némirovsky "wanted
to give it [her novel] a sonata form, or else make it
look like a symphony in four movements: slow followed by
Nabil 15a fugue; allegro in a different but similar tone; adagio,
and to end a series of quick dances" (Philipponnat 411-
412). However, this fragmentation, as a sign of modern
novel, is not scattered in the air, for those fragments
are unified by a common theme which is war and its
outcomes, and sometimes repetitive characters, such as
the Angellier and the Michauds combine the two parts.
Appendixes provided in the last part in her diaries
reveal other connections she intended to do, such as "the
murder of Bruno", the German soldier in Russia, which is
to be placed in part four, and so on.
Another literary implementation of the use of
"suite", as a musical form is in laying the polarity of
the individuality and collectivity. Némirovsky "compared
her characters to the instrumental solo in a symphony,
and the crowd scenes to the choruses that dive breadth
and contrast to the plot" (Philipponnat 413). Short lived
moments of love revealing stand in a stark contrast with
long lived months of fear. To enhance such contrast, the
rhythm of narration differs according to the scene. For
example, in the farewell meeting between Madeleine, the
farm girl and the injured Jean-Marie Michaud, whom she
took care of, she says: "But you're going away," she said
and finally, without the strength to hold back her tears,
she let them fall down her cheeks and said in a voice
choking with emotion, "I can't stand the thought of you
leaving, I can't" (Némirovsky 159). On the contrary, the
Nabil 16rhythm hastens in war scenes, Charlotte Péricand during
running "had no stockings, just red slippers on her bare
feet, but gritting her teeth, arms tight round the baby,
who wasn't crying but whose eyes were rolling wildly with
fear… the sky above seemed filled with countless planes
flying back and forth with their evil buzzing, like
hornets (87)."Here is the one unanimous meaning of the
war: Germans, French, Jews, men have only one mortal
enemy, the History that crushes them" (Philipponnat 413).
Hence, it seems very ironic as this polarity is embedded
within a novel whose title is similar to the German's
musical masterpiece.
Music, hence, is a common motif which appears
stylistically in the two parts through verifying the
rhythm of the narration. However, music appears as an
apparent motif which enables the characters to shatter
all borders between nations, cultures and languages.
Bruno was a musician before being a soldier. In the
famous piano scene, he plays the piano while Lucile
listens. Teaching her how to play and compose music, he
plays various musical pieces to melt the ice between her
as an invaded French woman, and him, as an invader German
soldier. Music also enables both of them to overcome
feeling of exile. "The theme of exile, which is rather an
"exterior" exile, on the road of the exodus… or
"interior" in the closed city, provokes miscommunication,
the withdrawal of the individual himself" (my
Nabil 17translation, Grégoire 45). Music connects Bruno with his
country and past life in Germany through relating the
pieces he plays with beautiful woods and meadows in
Germany. Similarly, music sustains him to overcome
feeling of miscommunication between him and Lucile. Music
is a common language among nations, for it breaks borders
and hostility, enemies bear within their hearts.
Therefore, after that scene, Lucile’s relationship with
Bruno develops to express mere love and passion.
Némirovsky was accused by many critics to be a
unique sort of an anti-Semitic writer; she was a Jew
herself, but never depicts Jews and their Jewish Question
in her novel. The novel "depicts not a single Jewish
character, while the author herself endured the
indignities of wearing the Jewish star" (Mahar 200).
However, this accusation is not accurate, for it was
noted that the actual persecution of the Jews in the
Vichy government did not start before 1941. Also,
Némirovsky does not look forward to being a Jewish
patriot. On the contrary and as previously stated, "this
novel is wholly focused on the way "ordinary French
people" responded to the first year of German occupation,
there was no real call to focus on Jews" (Suleiman 33).
Nevertheless, Némirovsky employs motifs strongly attached
to the Jewish history and wove them with the techniques
of the novel. The story of the "Exodus", found in the Old
Testament, is similarly employed through the frequent
Nabil 18repetition of the word "exodus" all over the novel.
Clémence Boulouque, the French critic and writer, calls
Suite Française "an intense story of exodus" (mentioned in
Grégoire 37). People, to some extent, are aware of their
destiny to migrate; the narrator says about Maurice
Michaud: "he knew there had been exoduses throughout
history. How many people had died on this land, dripping
with blood, fleeing the enemy, leaving cities in flames,
clutching their children to their hearts" (Némirovsky
44). "The exodus, in this book … is characterized by a
radical upheaval …of people's behaviour, judgments and
values: through the reflection of… the impression of
unreality which prevails within the spirit of the
majority" (my translation, Grégoire 37). Exodus along
with metaphors of earthquakes reveals a strong necessity
for change and new beginnings, as the society has
previously proved being socially and economically
cracked.
All in all, Suite Française is a posthumous work by the
Holocaust victim, Irène Némirovsky, which provides a
lava-like narrative of World War II. Stating that the
novel is not a memoir, the novel portrays the interior
psychological disputes within both the invaders and the
invaded. Therefore, third-person narration is the most
appropriate point of view, as it gives a panoramic vision
which suits war circumstances. Many techniques are
employed to enrich the narration, such as stream of
Nabil 19consciousness and musical rhythm. “Exodus” is a lucid
motif which accompanies all characters as they all escape
the bombing. Finally, though being accused of anti-
Semitism, Némirovsky presents characters as pure
individuals who would survive for all ages regardless
their ethnic or racial origins.
Works Cited:
Cremieux-Brilhac, Jean-Louis. Les Français de l'an 1940. (2
vol.). Vol.1. La guerre: oui ou non?. Gallimard. Paris.
1990.
Grégoire, Vincent. “Le « séisme » de mai-juin 1940 dans
"Suite française" d'Irène Némirovsky”. Dalhousie French
Studies. Vol. 96. Fall 2011. Dalhousie University.
Hoffmann, Stanley. “The Trauma of 1940: A Disaster and
its Traces”. Historical Reflections / Réflexions Historiques. Vol.
22, No. 1, The French Defeat of 1940: Reassessments.
Barghahn Books.Winter 1996.
Lehrer, Jonah. Proust Was a Neuroscientist. Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt, Sep 1, 2008. U.S.
Nabil 20
Mahar, Cheleen. Cuisine and Symbolic Capital: Food in Film and
Literature. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, May 11, 2010.
Némirovsky, Irène. Suite Française. Knopf Doubleday Press.
Philipponnat, Olivier. Patrick Lienhardt. The Life of Irène
Némirovsky. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 2010.
Randel, Don Michael. The Harvard Dictionary of Music. Harvard
University Press.
Sulieman, Susan Rubin. "Irène Némirovsky and the
"Jewish Question" in Interwar France". Yale French Studies.
No. 121. Literature and History: Around "Suite
française" and "Les Bienveillantes". 2012. Yale
University.
Weiss, Jonathan M. Irène Némirovsky: Her Life and Works. 2007.
Stanford University Press. California.