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Suite française (Irène Némirovsky)
Encyclopedia
Suite française is the title of a planned sequence of five novels by Irène Némirovsky
, a French
writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Pithiviers
and then Auschwitz, where she allegedly died of typhus
, but was actually sent to the gas chambers by the Nazi regime. The notebook containing the two novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998. They were published in a single volume entitled Suite française in 2004.
in the period following June 1940, the month in which the invading German army rapidly defeated the defending French; Paris
and northern France immediately came under German occupation on June 14. The first novel, Tempête en juin ("Storm in June") depicts the flight of citizens from Paris
in the hours preceding the German advance and in the days following it. The second, Dolce ("Sweet"), shows life in a small French country town, Bussy (in the suburbs just east of Paris), in the first, strangely peaceful, months of the German occupation. These first two novels seem able to exist independently from each other on first reading. The links between them are rather tenuous; as Némirovsky observes in her notebook, it is the history, and not the characters, that unite them.
The third novel, Captivité ("Captivity"), for which Némirovsky left a bare plot outline, would have shown the coalescing of a resistance, with some characters introduced in Tempête en juin and Dolce now under arrest and under threat of death, in Paris. The fourth and fifth novels would perhaps have been called Batailles ("Battles") and La Paix ("Peace"), but these exist only as titles in Némirovsky's notebook, against which she had placed question marks. Nothing can be said about the storylines of Batailles and La Paix. To quote Némirovsky's notes, they are "in limbo, and what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens."
The Péricands are making for Nîmes
, where they have property. They reach the city, but in the course of the journey Charlotte Péricand's senile father-in-law is left behind (forgotten!) while her second son, Hubert, runs away to join the army and shares in its collapse. Her elder son, Philippe, is a priest and is shepherding a party of orphans, who eventually kill him (in a death scene perhaps in need of revision, Némirovsky comments in her notebook, because it is melo [melodramatic]). Gabriel Corte, a well-known writer, flees with his current mistress and makes for Vichy
where he may or may not find refuge and employment. Charles Langelet, an aesthete, flees alone in his car, filching petrol from too-trusting acquaintances in order to get as far as the Loire
; he returns to Paris and is killed, accidentally and memorably.
Maurice and Jeanne Michaud, minor employees at a bank, are instructed to go to Tours
though deprived at the last minute of the transport promised by their employer. Their son, Jean-Marie, is with the army, and they have no word of his fate. They cannot get to Tours and eventually return to Paris, jobless and almost resourceless, but destined to survive. Jean-Marie is in fact wounded; he is being tended by the Sabarie family at their small farm near Bussy, where he is nursed back to health by Madeleine, the Sabaries' foster daughter. At the end of the novel, as postal services are restored, Jean-Marie is able to contact his family and return to Paris. The Michauds, alone among major characters, grow in moral stature as chaos spreads.
The major storyline concerns Lucile Angellier, whose unfaithful husband is a prisoner of war. She lives, uneasily, with her mother-in-law. Theirs being the best house in the village, it is where the German commander, Bruno von Falk, an accomplished musician, is billeted. Unwillingly Lucile finds herself falling in love with him. In this and several parallel strands, the novel explores the deep, perhaps unbridgeable, differences, and the perhaps superficial sympathies, between military Germans and rural French.
The lesser storyline concerns the family of Benoît Sabarie, a prisoner of war who escapes from German captivity, returns home to the family farm near Bussy, marries his fiancée Madeleine, and believes (with some justification) that she still pines for Jean-Marie Michaud, whom she nursed during his recovery. Jealous by nature, Benoît also believes that Madeleine risks being seduced by the German interpreter, Bonnet, who is billeted in their house. Caught poaching, arrested for possessing a gun, Benoît struggles free and shoots Bonnet dead. (In her notebook, Némirovsky mentions a possible revision where Bonnet is wounded, not killed.)
The novel's two storylines come together when, at Madeleine's request, Lucile conceals Benoît in her house: it is widely assumed that Bruno's presence in the house, and his liking for Lucile personally, will protect her against searches. The need to conceal Benoît brings Lucile and her mother-in-law closer; it drives her apart from Bruno, though he never knows why.
After an astonishing and powerful scene in which German troops celebrate the first anniversary of their entry into Paris, Dolce ends in July 1941, when, far across Europe, Germany begins its invasion of the Soviet Union
. The troops occupying Bussy are posted to the Eastern Front
. Both Lucile and Bruno fear that he will not survive. She has no difficulty in persuading him to give her a travel document and petrol coupon which (unknown to him) will enable her to drive Benoît to a new refuge.
The title of Dolce, like that of the whole sequence, intentionally recalls musical terminology: dolce means "sweet" or "soft" in musicians' Italian. This title is truthful but also ironic. Bitter emotions exist under the surface, and a far less peaceful sequel was to follow.
In Paris, both Benoît and Jean-Marie Michaud are eventually denounced and arrested and, in prison, meet Hubert. Jean-Marie is pardoned by the Germans when Lucile contacts Bruno von Falk on his behalf. Benoît and his friends organize an escape and release Jean-Marie and Hubert. Jean-Marie and Lucile meet and fall in love. But after learning that she is still in love with Bruno, he leaves to fight against the Germans and dies heroically. On the Eastern Front, Bruno is also killed. Lucile loses both her French and German beloveds.
In a second storyline, the writer Gabriel Corte, a relatively minor and unsympathetic character in Tempête en juin, emerges as a propagandist and politician, initially collaborating with the Germans, later, perhaps, disaffected. Benoît dies brutally and full of hope.
, and is remarkable as a historical novel sequence written during the very period that it depicts, transformed far beyond the level of a journal of events such as might be expected to emerge from the personal turmoil and tragedy Némirovsky experienced.
Ironically, her elder daughter, Denise, kept the notebook containing the manuscript of Suite Française for fifty years without reading it, believing that it would indeed be a journal or diary too painful to read. In the late 1990s, however, having made arrangements to donate her mother's papers to a French archive, Denise decided to examine the notebook first. At last discovering what it contained, she instead had it published in France, where it became a bestseller
in 2004.
Suite française won the Prix Renaudot
for 2004. This is the first time that the prize has been awarded posthumously.
in 2006, but no plans for production have been released.
reported the book had an average score of 95 out of 100, based on 19 reviews.
's 1943 novel Yellow Tapers for Paris
and Irène Némirovsky
's Suite Française which was written at about the same time, but not discovered until 1998. There is no suggestion of plagiarism
-- Némirovsky had been murdered before Marshall's novel was published and no one saw Némirovsky's work before its 1998 discovery. Both works have major characters who work in finance: Marshall's protagonist
is an accountant
while Némirovsky's work has several characters who work for a bank
. Both books were written during and/or immediately after the events in question, but show significant reflection; they are not autobiographical works, but fiction featuring invented characters. The stories cover the leadup to the Nazi invasion
and its immediate aftermath, but the events of the respective stories are much different. Marshall's ends before the occupation
, while Némirovsky's has significant portions devoted to it.
"Dolce," the second part of Suite Française, is also similar to Le Silence de la Mer
, a novella by the French author Vercors (pseudonym of Jean Bruller
). Both stories deal with a German officer, who in civilian life was a composer, who is quartered in the house of a young French woman. Both Suite Française, and Le Silence de la Mer were finished in early 1942.
A reviewer, Paul La Farge, notes:
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...
, a French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
writer of Ukrainian Jewish origin. In July 1942, having just completed the first two of the series, Némirovsky was arrested as a Jew and detained at Pithiviers
Pithiviers
Pithiviers is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France. It is twinned with Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, England....
and then Auschwitz, where she allegedly died of typhus
Typhus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
, but was actually sent to the gas chambers by the Nazi regime. The notebook containing the two novels was preserved by her daughters but not examined until 1998. They were published in a single volume entitled Suite française in 2004.
Background
The sequence was to portray life in FranceFrance
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in the period following June 1940, the month in which the invading German army rapidly defeated the defending French; Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
and northern France immediately came under German occupation on June 14. The first novel, Tempête en juin ("Storm in June") depicts the flight of citizens from Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in the hours preceding the German advance and in the days following it. The second, Dolce ("Sweet"), shows life in a small French country town, Bussy (in the suburbs just east of Paris), in the first, strangely peaceful, months of the German occupation. These first two novels seem able to exist independently from each other on first reading. The links between them are rather tenuous; as Némirovsky observes in her notebook, it is the history, and not the characters, that unite them.
The third novel, Captivité ("Captivity"), for which Némirovsky left a bare plot outline, would have shown the coalescing of a resistance, with some characters introduced in Tempête en juin and Dolce now under arrest and under threat of death, in Paris. The fourth and fifth novels would perhaps have been called Batailles ("Battles") and La Paix ("Peace"), but these exist only as titles in Némirovsky's notebook, against which she had placed question marks. Nothing can be said about the storylines of Batailles and La Paix. To quote Némirovsky's notes, they are "in limbo, and what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens."
Tempête en juin: Storm in June
The narrative follows several groups of characters who encounter one another rarely if at all. All are impelled to flee from Paris in advance of the impending German entry into the city. As transport and distribution collapse under German bombardment, all have to change their plans and nearly all lose their veneer of civilization.The Péricands are making for Nîmes
Nîmes
Nîmes is the capital of the Gard department in the Languedoc-Roussillon region in southern France. Nîmes has a rich history, dating back to the Roman Empire, and is a popular tourist destination.-History:...
, where they have property. They reach the city, but in the course of the journey Charlotte Péricand's senile father-in-law is left behind (forgotten!) while her second son, Hubert, runs away to join the army and shares in its collapse. Her elder son, Philippe, is a priest and is shepherding a party of orphans, who eventually kill him (in a death scene perhaps in need of revision, Némirovsky comments in her notebook, because it is melo [melodramatic]). Gabriel Corte, a well-known writer, flees with his current mistress and makes for Vichy
Vichy
Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...
where he may or may not find refuge and employment. Charles Langelet, an aesthete, flees alone in his car, filching petrol from too-trusting acquaintances in order to get as far as the Loire
Loire
Loire is an administrative department in the east-central part of France occupying the River Loire's upper reaches.-History:Loire was created in 1793 when after just 3½ years the young Rhône-et-Loire department was split into two. This was a response to counter-Revolutionary activities in Lyon...
; he returns to Paris and is killed, accidentally and memorably.
Maurice and Jeanne Michaud, minor employees at a bank, are instructed to go to Tours
Tours
Tours is a city in central France, the capital of the Indre-et-Loire department.It is located on the lower reaches of the river Loire, between Orléans and the Atlantic coast. Touraine, the region around Tours, is known for its wines, the alleged perfection of its local spoken French, and for the...
though deprived at the last minute of the transport promised by their employer. Their son, Jean-Marie, is with the army, and they have no word of his fate. They cannot get to Tours and eventually return to Paris, jobless and almost resourceless, but destined to survive. Jean-Marie is in fact wounded; he is being tended by the Sabarie family at their small farm near Bussy, where he is nursed back to health by Madeleine, the Sabaries' foster daughter. At the end of the novel, as postal services are restored, Jean-Marie is able to contact his family and return to Paris. The Michauds, alone among major characters, grow in moral stature as chaos spreads.
Dolce: Sweet
The small town of Bussy and its neighbouring farms are the scene throughout. The German occupation seems sweetly peaceful, but there is no doubt over the balance of power: the Germans get whatever they ask for, official notices promise the death penalty for those who disobey their regulations, and French collaborators, including the Péricands, make their own settlement with their German overlords.The major storyline concerns Lucile Angellier, whose unfaithful husband is a prisoner of war. She lives, uneasily, with her mother-in-law. Theirs being the best house in the village, it is where the German commander, Bruno von Falk, an accomplished musician, is billeted. Unwillingly Lucile finds herself falling in love with him. In this and several parallel strands, the novel explores the deep, perhaps unbridgeable, differences, and the perhaps superficial sympathies, between military Germans and rural French.
The lesser storyline concerns the family of Benoît Sabarie, a prisoner of war who escapes from German captivity, returns home to the family farm near Bussy, marries his fiancée Madeleine, and believes (with some justification) that she still pines for Jean-Marie Michaud, whom she nursed during his recovery. Jealous by nature, Benoît also believes that Madeleine risks being seduced by the German interpreter, Bonnet, who is billeted in their house. Caught poaching, arrested for possessing a gun, Benoît struggles free and shoots Bonnet dead. (In her notebook, Némirovsky mentions a possible revision where Bonnet is wounded, not killed.)
The novel's two storylines come together when, at Madeleine's request, Lucile conceals Benoît in her house: it is widely assumed that Bruno's presence in the house, and his liking for Lucile personally, will protect her against searches. The need to conceal Benoît brings Lucile and her mother-in-law closer; it drives her apart from Bruno, though he never knows why.
After an astonishing and powerful scene in which German troops celebrate the first anniversary of their entry into Paris, Dolce ends in July 1941, when, far across Europe, Germany begins its invasion of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. The troops occupying Bussy are posted to the Eastern Front
Eastern Front (World War II)
The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...
. Both Lucile and Bruno fear that he will not survive. She has no difficulty in persuading him to give her a travel document and petrol coupon which (unknown to him) will enable her to drive Benoît to a new refuge.
The title of Dolce, like that of the whole sequence, intentionally recalls musical terminology: dolce means "sweet" or "soft" in musicians' Italian. This title is truthful but also ironic. Bitter emotions exist under the surface, and a far less peaceful sequel was to follow.
Captivité: Captivity
The plot of Némirovsky's third novel exists as a plot outline, with some contradictions, in her notebook. Benoît has "friends" (the nascent Communist resistance) in Paris. Lucile drives him to the city, where he is concealed by the Michauds, whom the Angelliers met briefly in Tempête en juin.In Paris, both Benoît and Jean-Marie Michaud are eventually denounced and arrested and, in prison, meet Hubert. Jean-Marie is pardoned by the Germans when Lucile contacts Bruno von Falk on his behalf. Benoît and his friends organize an escape and release Jean-Marie and Hubert. Jean-Marie and Lucile meet and fall in love. But after learning that she is still in love with Bruno, he leaves to fight against the Germans and dies heroically. On the Eastern Front, Bruno is also killed. Lucile loses both her French and German beloveds.
In a second storyline, the writer Gabriel Corte, a relatively minor and unsympathetic character in Tempête en juin, emerges as a propagandist and politician, initially collaborating with the Germans, later, perhaps, disaffected. Benoît dies brutally and full of hope.
The manuscript and its rediscovery
Suite française, so far as it was completed, was written in microscopic handwriting in a single notebook; Tempête and Dolce together filled 140 pages, corresponding to 516 published pages. It was possibly the earliest work of literary fiction about World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and is remarkable as a historical novel sequence written during the very period that it depicts, transformed far beyond the level of a journal of events such as might be expected to emerge from the personal turmoil and tragedy Némirovsky experienced.
Ironically, her elder daughter, Denise, kept the notebook containing the manuscript of Suite Française for fifty years without reading it, believing that it would indeed be a journal or diary too painful to read. In the late 1990s, however, having made arrangements to donate her mother's papers to a French archive, Denise decided to examine the notebook first. At last discovering what it contained, she instead had it published in France, where it became a bestseller
Bestseller
A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on lists of currently top selling titles that are based on publishing industry and book trade figures and published by newspapers, magazines, or bookstore chains. Some lists are broken down into classifications and...
in 2004.
French publication
Suite française was published by Denoël, Paris, in 2004. ISBN 2207256456; pocket edition (Folio) ISBN 207033676X. The edition includes a preface by Myriam Anissimov, notes by Némirovsky about the revision and planned continuation of the sequence, and correspondence between Némirovsky herself, her husband Michel Epstein, her publisher Albin Michel and others in the period before and after her deportation.Suite française won the Prix Renaudot
Prix Renaudot
The Prix Théophraste-Renaudot or Prix Renaudot is a French literary award which was created in 1926 by ten art critics awaiting the results of the deliberation of the jury of the Prix Goncourt....
for 2004. This is the first time that the prize has been awarded posthumously.
Translations
An English translation by Sandra Smith was published by Chatto & Windus, London, 2004, and by Knopf, New York, in 2006. ISBN 1400044731.Film rights
The film rights to Suite Française were purchased by UniversalNBC Universal
NBCUniversal Media, LLC is a media and entertainment company engaged in the production and marketing of entertainment, news, and information products and services to a global customer base...
in 2006, but no plans for production have been released.
Critical reception
The book received very good reviews from critics. The review aggregator MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
reported the book had an average score of 95 out of 100, based on 19 reviews.
Similarities between Suite Française and other novels
Some readers have noticed similarities between Bruce MarshallBruce Marshall
Lieutenant-Colonel Claude Cunningham Bruce Marshall, known as Bruce Marshall was a prolific Scottish writer who wrote fiction and non-fiction books on a wide range of topics and genres. His first book, A Thief in the Night came out in 1918, possibly self-published...
's 1943 novel Yellow Tapers for Paris
Yellow Tapers for Paris
-Plot summary :The crushing 1940 defeat of France is the subject of this novel. Marshall implies that France lost its soul and was itself more responsible for its defeat than Germany....
and Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...
's Suite Française which was written at about the same time, but not discovered until 1998. There is no suggestion of plagiarism
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is defined in dictionaries as the "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication" of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous...
-- Némirovsky had been murdered before Marshall's novel was published and no one saw Némirovsky's work before its 1998 discovery. Both works have major characters who work in finance: Marshall's protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
is an accountant
Accountant
An accountant is a practitioner of accountancy or accounting , which is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about financial information that helps managers, investors, tax authorities and others make decisions about allocating resources.The Big Four auditors are the largest...
while Némirovsky's work has several characters who work for a bank
Bank
A bank is a financial institution that serves as a financial intermediary. The term "bank" may refer to one of several related types of entities:...
. Both books were written during and/or immediately after the events in question, but show significant reflection; they are not autobiographical works, but fiction featuring invented characters. The stories cover the leadup to the Nazi invasion
Battle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
and its immediate aftermath, but the events of the respective stories are much different. Marshall's ends before the occupation
Occupation
Occupation may refer to:*Job , a regular activity performed for payment, that occupies one's time**Employment, a person under service of another by hire**Career, a course through life**Profession, a vocation founded upon specialized training...
, while Némirovsky's has significant portions devoted to it.
"Dolce," the second part of Suite Française, is also similar to Le Silence de la Mer
Le Silence de la mer
Le Silence de la mer is a novel written in early 1942 by Jean Bruller under the pseudonym Vercors. It was published secretly in Nazi-occupied Paris...
, a novella by the French author Vercors (pseudonym of Jean Bruller
Jean Bruller
Jean Marcel Bruller was a French writer and illustrator who co-founded Les Éditions de Minuit with Pierre de Lescure and Yvonne Paraf. During the World War II occupation of northern France he joined the Resistance and his texts were published under the pseudonym Vercors.Several of his novels have...
). Both stories deal with a German officer, who in civilian life was a composer, who is quartered in the house of a young French woman. Both Suite Française, and Le Silence de la Mer were finished in early 1942.
Controversy: Was Némirovsky an anti-semite?
Several reviewers and commentators have raised questions regarding Némirovsky's attitude toward Jews, her generally negative depiction of Jews in her writing and her use of anti-semitic publications in advancing her career. A review of her work published in The New Republic states:
Némirovsky was the very definition of a self-hating Jew. Does that sound too strong? Well, here is a Jewish writer who owed her success in France entre deux guerres in no small measure to her ability to pander to the forces of reaction, to the fascist right. Némirovsky's stories of corrupt Jews-- some of them even have hooked noses, no less!--appeared in right-wing periodicals and won her the friendship of her editors, many of whom held positions of power in extreme-right political circles. When the racial laws in 1940 and 1941 cut off her ability to publish, she turned to those connections to seek special favors for herself, and even went so far as to write a personal plea to Marshal Pétain.
A reviewer, Paul La Farge, notes:
Némirovsky's "discomfort" with respect to her own identity mars David Golder, and clouds Suite Française, despite the fact that not a single Jew appears in the novel, nor a single concentration camp. For all its immediacy, Suite Française is a curiously apolitical novel.
External links
- Irène Némirovsky website informally linked with the French publishers of Suite française
- "As France Burned": review of the English translation of Suite Française by Paul Gray, New York Times Book Review, 9 April 2006
- Excerpt from Suite Francaise