Person:

Suleiman, Susan

Critics generally agree that Beauvoir's novel Les Mandarins, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1954, is an important work of historical fiction, chronicling the lives and loves of left-wing intellectuals in Paris during the years following World War II. In this essay I argue that Les Mandarins is as much about the war as about the postwar, and that its meaning for contemporary readers was deeply linked (even if not in a fully recognized way) to memories of the troubled period of the Occupation. I develop the concept of “ambivalent memory,” as it refers in particular to two of the most problematic aspects of that period: the role of the Vichy government in the persecution of Jews, and the ambiguities and disagreements concerning the Resistance. More generally, the novel raises questions about memory and its inevitable obverse, forgetting. It is from our own contemporary perspective, heavily informed by concerns over memory and World War II, that this aspect of Les Mandarins comes to the fore.

Purporting to be the first-person narrative of a former SS officer writing many years after World War II, Jonathan Littell's Les bienveillantes, published in France in 2006, became the biggest best seller of the year and won the most prestigious French literary prize, the Prix Goncourt. The author, an American, wrote the book in French. Many critics praised the novel, comparing it to War and Peace and other masterpieces, while others were quite hostile. In this essay I argue that Les bienveillantes accomplishes a rare, indeed a totally original, feat: representing a Nazi perpetrator as a reliable historical—and even moral—witness of the Holocaust. Whether one admires Les bienveillantes or loathes it depends largely on how one responds to this improbable combination of perpetrator and reliable witness. One problematic aspect of the novel is its use of the Oresteia theme: by making his protagonist a matricide, does Littell weaken his effectiveness as a historical witness?

French Global: A New Approach from Literary History, published in September 2011 by Columbia University Press, offers an innovative new look at the breadth of literary expression in French. Focusing on writers from all over the world, French Global's twenty-nine essays discuss works that span some 1200 years of literary history. Co-editors Christie McDonald (Smith Professor of French Language and Literature, Harvard University) and Susan Rubin Suleiman (C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France, Harvard University) attended the “Idea of France” conference and led a public discussion around their volume. David Pettersen (Assistant Professor of French, University of Pittsburgh) caught up with them afterwards to talk more about their project.