A Winter's Journal Read online

  Emmanuel Bove 1898-1945

  EMMANUEL BOVE

  A WINTER'S JOURNAL

  (1931)

  TRANSLATED

  NATHALIE FAVRE-GILLY

  AFTERWORD

  KEITH BOTSFORD

  THE MARLBORO PRESS / NORTHWESTERN

  EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

  The Marlboro Press/Northwestern Northwestern University Press Evanston, Illinois

  Originally published in French in 1931 under the title Journal écrit en hiver by Émile-Paul Frères. English translation published by arrangement with Flammarion, Paris. English translation copyright © 1998 by Nathalie Favre-Gilly. Afterword copyright © 1998 by Keith Botsford. Published 1998 by The Marlboro Press/Northwestern. All rights reserved.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 0-8101-6046-3 (cloth) ISBN 0-8101-6047-1 (paper)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Bove, Emmanuel, 1898-

  [Journal écrit en hiver. English]

  A winters journal / Emmanuel Bove ; translated by Nathalie Favre-Gilly ; afterword by Keith Botsford.

  CONTENTS

  WINTER'S JOURNAL

  Afterword

  i

  On the "Disappeared" in General

  ii

  Evasion by Choice, Life, and Work

  iii

  Journal écrit en hiver, A Brief Exploration

  iv

  How Important Is Bove?

  winter's journal

  October 7th

  Madeleine likes to pretend she's unaware that people say complimentary things about her. If you tell her that one of her friends finds her beautiful, she'll react with surprise and appear incapable of believing such a thing could be true, in spite of the fact she just heard it from someone else the day before. She has no fear her interlocutor might suspect her surprise isn't genuine, and even goes so far as to ask for details with apparently complete sincerity. It happened again today. Jacques Imbault came to see us this evening. In the course of the conversation, he told my wife that he had seen her photograph in a magazine. "I didn't know," he added ironically, "that you had been engaged as a model." Jacques Imbault thinks he is terribly inventive, and to ensure others realize this about himself there are certain words he uses constantly, one of which is "engage." A few days ago, for instance, I happened to meet him near the coat check at a theater. I had misplaced my check, and he noticed me lingering there waiting for all the coats to have been claimed so that I could then collect my own property. As I was waiting rather absentmindedly, as though it were my job to ensure that the service ran smoothly, he said to me with a laugh: "My word, the management has engaged you as a security guard!"

  In spite of the fact that Madeleine had shown me the magazine only yesterday, railing against the photographers and even threatening to sue the publisher—though not, however, without betraying a certain satisfaction—she pretended to be surprised. "Do tell, Jacques, what magazine was it? We'll have to get a copy right away." Most outrageous of all was that, having asked our friend a great number of questions, she suddenly remembered everything. That sudden recovery of memory was what I found most ridiculous. Acting astonished when a friend tells you he's heard of some generous thing you did is just about excusable, but to recall a moment later that you did indeed perform such an action is intolerable. Madeleine, however, feels that once the pleasure of reviewing remarks made about her has passed, there is no reason to continue with the pretense of ignorance. She then owns up, never suspecting for a moment that her interlocutor might find this sudden about-face strange. If there is one thing my wife seems to think impossible, it is that anyone might guess what she's thinking. Blatant though her insinuations might be, it will never cross her mind that her motives might be transparent. In this respect, we are opposites. Whereas I always take great care to weigh my words carefully, lest I appear self-serving, petty, or overly vain, Madeleine thinks she conceals her hand so well that she can allow herself to make the most incredible about-face without running the slightest risk. When—after having apparently forgotten the fact—she suddenly remembered today that her photograph had indeed appeared in a weekly magazine, it never occurred to her that Jacques might think she'd remembered it all along. What I find most distressing is that when I try to correct her, when I try to show her how this sort of behavior invites irony, she becomes angry, as though all I see are her reprehensible traits. She accuses me of being jealous, of thinking that the world is wicked, never for a second perceiving the truth in my observations, nor the profound love which is at the heart of my desire that she not be the laughingstock of our friends. She doesn't understand I'm only trying to protect her. Instead, she thinks that I go out of my way to discover faults in her which no one else has noticed.

  October 12th

  As a child, I was afraid of everything, which irritated my mother, one of whose excellent principles was that one should never raise one's hand against a child. Having never struck me, she could not understand why I was so fearful. She found it all the more disagreeable because such exaggerated fearfulness could lead others to believe that she did in fact strike me. "Come now, don't act so fearful, my child. Everyone thinks that you're being tortured." But as a result of hearing myself criticized for being afraid, I came to dread being afraid, which made me doubly timid and liable to burst into tears for a mere nothing. Although I wasn't even conscious of this, deep within myself it seemed to me that tears were like a hedge that served to conceal everything. Those tears, however, were what made my mother lose her temper. Instead of being accused of being afraid of everything, I came to be criticized for crying as though I were unhappy, when in fact it was fear that left me in such a desperate state. A mere nothing made me tremble, and those mere nothings never came from the outside; they all came from within me. If I happened to knock something over, I would immediately think I'd committed some unpardonable offense. If I forgot to kiss my father, I no longer dared appear before him. At every moment it seemed to me that I had done something reprehensible for which he was going to punish me, even though I had never been punished. I was paralyzed by my fear of being punished, of being lectured. It sometimes even happened that, while playing with children of my own age, I would forget myself to the point of laughing and running about, then suddenly recall some insignificant misdemeanor, dirt on my shirt or a scrape on my leg, as a result of which I would tremble with fear that I would be punished for having dirtied myself or fallen down. As I grew older, this anxiety increased rather than disappearing.

  When I reached the age of fifteen, my father decided to send me to boarding school to temper my character and prepare me to fend for myself in life. The morning came when he himself accompanied me to Oloron. Preparations had been made the day before. While my mother had rushed about, afraid she was forgetting something, a feeling of isolation had been creeping over me, for nothing breeds greater loneliness than when the people we love replace the reality of an imminent separation with obligations, preparations, and duties, however much these are dictated by love. Watching my mother come and go, I thought: "Why pay so much attention to things and so little to me?" From time to time, seeing I was doing nothing, she would reprimand me gently. She had made these same reprimands so often in the past, but always with the added threat, "You'll see how you'll change when you're at Oloron," that I was unable, that evening, to stop myself from thinking that if I was being shown any affection at all, it was only because this was my last day. There is a certain sadness, when abandoning one home for another, in watching rooms being stripped bare, furniture from different parts of the house assembled haphazardly, an object we hold dear slipped hurriedly, for want of space, into an indifferent trunk. A distressing sense of being ou
t of one's element is born of all the commotion, of the suddenly deserted apartment with the next one yet to be occupied. But when everything is staying behind and we alone are leaving, when our possessions are being gathered from various parts of the house where, once they've been removed, their absence won't be felt, and we sense that as soon as were far away life will go on without us just as it did in the past, that feeling of sadness is even greater. I was doing nothing, but that night, when I went to bed alone in my room—where nothing remained on the table and in the wardrobes—I felt so unhappy that I began to cry. With my head hidden beneath the sheets, I cried noiselessly, paying no attention to the tears which, in other circumstances, I would have tried to wipe away. As I abandoned myself this way, taking care only to make no noise—which was in fact a delicious stimulant—I experienced a sort of joyful despair. I was thinking about nothing at all, and when, from time to time, I felt myself beginning to calm down, I would think, "I'm going to be so unhappy," and would immediately begin sobbing again even harder. Then, suddenly, I heard the door of my room open. I opened my eyes. Through the sheets I saw a pale yellow light, and I immediately felt such a sense of shame at being discovered that I lay there as though paralyzed, as a result of which I simulated sleep without even thinking about it, with the extravagant hope that all would pass unnoticed. My body, which was betraying me by twitching convulsively beneath the covers, was soon drenched in sweat. And then I heard my father's voice above me. I can still recall how it filled me with that strange fear of being finished off one feels when one has fallen and a crowd gathers around to try and help. His voice was gentle: "You mustn't cry this way, Louis, you're a big boy now. What would your friends think, if they could see you?" As befits an excessively indulgent man, it pleased my father to appear to prefer that his child conduct himself well with his friends rather than with him.

  Just then, I experienced a strange sensation which I must mention here, for it reveals something about my personality. Upon hearing his words, my blood suddenly ran cold. As a child, one of my peculiar preoccupations was to ask myself constantly how others could know what I'd been doing. I was hiding beneath the covers and yet my father knew I was crying. I was staggered by this, just as I was when, having made a detour on my way home from school, my father would tell me, without at all seeming to have made a discovery, but simply because he knew that children liked to take this route because of certain shops they passed along the way: "Louis, you know I don't like you to take that street on your way home." I would be struck dumb that he could have guessed. And I was forever being surprised by similar divinations. Although my face had been hidden from him that evening, by telling me not to cry my father had done it yet again. This was the very thing I couldn't bear. My reddened eyelids trembling in the light, my cheeks still damp, I sat up and said in one breath, "I’m not crying ... I'm not crying ... " "But there's nothing wrong with crying," replied my father. "You can cry. I'm not reproaching you."

  All of that is over now. And yet, I'm still not a man like other men, even if I act as they do as in everyday circumstances. I no longer fear losing my freedom. In spite of this, only a few years ago, before I was married, I was still getting involved with women I scarcely knew, in the way that young men do. Despite my age, I have no prudence, no experience. I know that I seem somewhat backward, that I'm like a child, and that I'm probably accumulating the worst possible vices for my old age. Am I to blame? Should I hold someone responsible for this state, my poor father perhaps, who tried everything he could to make me into a man ready to face the world, to do battle, even going so far as to force me to spend an hour a day working with a carpenter while I was studying for my bachelor's degree?

  This need to have what others have, to imitate, this willingness to assume that because someone is doing something then everyone except me is doing it: clearly these are the traits of a young man. Holidays, for example, are torture for me. I'm tempted by everything, and yet feel that I'm deprived of everything because I can only do one thing. It never occurs to me that all the people I envy, all the people I see, are in exactly the same situation I'm in and that they, too, can only do one thing at a time. As a group, they make me think they're doing everything. And it's true, they are doing everything, but only because there are thousands of them. But instead of selecting one of them and observing him alone, watching attentively to discover how similar we are, I have yet to progress past the point of watching them all.

  But let's go back to what my life has been. When I look at young people today, I'm astonished at how precocious they are. Perhaps that's because I see them as a group rather than observing them individually. I'm struck by how lively they are, by how strong they seem, and above all by how orderly they appear to be. When I think back to how I was at eighteen, at twenty, and even at twenty-five, I sometimes turn bright red with shame. Occasionally I ask men my age if they remember their childhoods, their younger days, and when one of them raises a hand heavenward as though recalling how foolish he was, I feel a great sense of relief. But for every man who raises that hand to the skies, there are countless others who seem to regret the qualities they once possessed! Yes, when I look back on the young man I was, I wonder what miracle occurred which made it possible for me to possess some semblance of intelligence today, by what miracle I managed to avoid any catastrophes. At twenty, I knew nothing of life, nor was I even seeking to know anything. I was moved by the most insignificant of events. In my eyes, evil did not exist. I moved through life as though I were eternal, as though death would never find me. Defending myself against someone struck me as an extraordinarily base thing to do. This attitude stayed with me for a very long time. Arguing, haggling, doubting the pronouncements of insignificant people, these were all things I long found impossible. I was made to have no artifice, to trust in everyone. I thought neither of loving nor of being loved. I was still this way at an age when most young men already had their first mistress. Then, bit by bit, I grew tougher. If I dreamed of getting married and setting up my own household, it was more out of the need I felt to emulate my father and exercise authority over a family, as he did, than from any authentic desire of my own to do so. My vision of a family was so deeply ingrained in my mind that, for years and years, I found it impossible to believe this was a goal I could ever attain. In the models I imagined, some element I had enjoyed in my own childhood was always lacking. I would try, for example, to compare my future friends to those my parents had always had. Mine always seemed somehow less stable. Everything that belonged to me resonated with a less substantial sound than that which belonged to my parents. And what could be more typical of a young man than this unwillingness to believe in the present, this belief that the past was both better and more important, this inability to understand that my father's friend M. Guizot, for example, had not been any dearer to him than Etienne, the friend of whom I'm very fond, would be to my wife and me?

  October 13th

  As Madeleine complained of having a migraine after dinner, I asked whether she'd mind if I went to see André Mercier and his wife. "Go where you like, dear boy," she replied. I know it doesn't make my wife at all unhappy when I go out at night this way. To arouse her jealousy, however, I'll go so far as to pretend I'm terribly pleased to be going out, hoping to elicit at least an angry word from her, anything to show she isn't utterly indifferent to me. With time, however, she has come to believe I have no deep feelings for her, and what irritates me and makes me exaggerate my attitude all the more is that, far from holding this against me, she seems utterly resigned. But let's leave my worries aside. M. Mercier is a decent fellow, a tradesman I've grown friendly with, although I'm usually rather unsociable. It's wrong of me to admit this or boast about it, but I have very few friends, and a rather amusing situation has arisen between Mercier and myself. Although we are very solicitous with one another, whenever we meet we confess we don't trust anyone, and neither one of us ever dares ask the other whether our friendship is the exception to this rule.
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br />   I had been at the Merciers only a few minutes when Maud Bringer arrived. Ten years ago, this young woman was an absolutely delicious creature. Picture a beautiful young girl, full of freshness, imagination, and charm, moving through life without ever noticing the attention she attracted. Although compliments and tributes rained down upon her, she paid no attention to them. Oblivious to the world around her, all she did was radiate inner grace. At that time we were very much in love, and if I happened to hurt her in some way, it never even occurred to her to hold it against me. Nor did it ever cross her mind to give more of her attention to the many young people who gravitated to her. There was something deeply moving about this young girl, who could have made me the unhappiest of men at the drop of a hat, but was so unaware of her power that it was she herself, in fact, who suffered at my hands.

  At the time, my jealousy was something hellish. The most insignificant of details provoked it, and although I was conscious of it, I made no attempt to control it. I reproached Maud for everything, for talking to her father, for going out with her brother, for uttering a man's first name, for knowing that my cousin had quarreled with a friend or was lucky at any game he turned his hand to, for admiring poets, or painters. I renewed my attacks constantly. I needed only hear her say that she liked something, flowers, or a town, for me to loathe it and criticize it relentlessly, for weeks on end, awaiting the deliverance that came when she yielded and ceased liking those flowers or that town. She accepted my jealousy as a proof of my love. I was terrified she would discover that I had been equally tyrannical with women who meant nothing to me. With extraordinary patience, she put up with my whims, with the most ludicrous of my desires, and when, after a fit of temper, I would remember what she'd said to placate me, I would marvel at such a surfeit of wisdom and indulgence.