Comfort - Refiguring Les Années Noires: literary representations of the Nazi occupation

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Refiguring Les Annes Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation, by
Kathy Comfort

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Kathy Comfort

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham Boulder New York London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN 9781498561600 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 9781498561617 (electronic)

TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

More people than I can name have helped me to write this book, simply by listening to my excited ramblings about my ideas; among those I count family, friends, colleagues, pets, and fellow conference participants. A big thank you goes Fulbright College at the University of Arkansas for the summer research stipend that was awarded at a critical time in the writing of this manuscript. Lindsey Falk at Lexington Books has been unfailingly enthusiastic about my project. I am forever grateful to dear friend, informal editor, proof-reader, and mentor Hope Christiansen, whose brilliant advice and endless encouragement pushed and dragged me to the finish line. Finally, I dedicate this book to the memory of my father, Thomas E. Comfort, who instilled in me a love of learning and a determination/desire to do my best in each and every endeavor I undertake.

Permission to reprint previously published material has been granted for the following chapters:

• Chapter 2: Jean Cayrols Les Corps trangers: Rsistancialisme Confronted. The French Review 80, no. 4 (March 2007): 84659).

• Chapter 3: Referencing Proust in Annie Guhennos Lpreuve. Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 49, no. 1 (2016): 117.

• Chapter 4: Mato Maximoffs La Septime fille: A Roma Testimony of Internment. Modern and Contemporary France 203 (August 2012): 33756. www.tandfonline.com.

• Chapter 5: Familial Inquest: Building the Case against the Father in Evelyne Le Garrecs La Rive allemande de ma mmoire. Nottingham French Studies 56, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 3551.

• Chapter 6: Relieving Pain in Marguerite Durass La Douleur, Neohelicon 42, no. 2 (2015): 55169. With Permission of Springer.

• Cayrol, Jean. Les Corps trangers. ditions du Seuil, 1959, Points, 1987.

• Cline, Louis-Ferdinand. Dun chteau lautre. Paris: Gallimard, 1976.

• Delbo, Charlotte. Spectres, mes compagnons. Paris: Berg, 1998, rdition 2013.

• Duras, Marguerite. La Douleur P.O.L diteur, 1985.

• Guhenno, Annie. Lpreuve. Paris: Grasset, 1968.

• Le Garrec, Evelyne. La Rive allemande de ma mmoire. ditions du Seuil, 1980.

• Maximoff, Mato. La Septime fille. Champigny-sur-Marne: Concordia, 1982.

The accuracy of the collective memory of Vichy France since the Liberation in 1944 has varied over the years according to the countrys political and social environment.

The sociologist Maurice Halbwachs sees memory as the product of our interactions with others, which helps to explain how rsistancialisme became a part of the national narrative:

cest dans la socit que, normalement, lhomme acquiert ses souvenirs, quil se les rappelle, quil les reconnat et les localise. [...] Les groupes dont je fais partie moffrent chaque instant les moyens de [reconstruire les souvenirs], condition que je me tourne vers eux et que jadopte au moins temporairement leurs faons de penser. [...] Cest en ce sens quil existerait une mmoire collective et des cadres sociaux de la mmoire, et cest dans la mesure o notre pense individuelle se replace dans ces cadres et participe cette mmoire quelle serait capable de se souvenir.

(it is in society that man normally acquires his memories, that he remembers them, that he recognizes them and localizes them. [...] The groups that I am a part of offer at each moment the means to [reconstruct memories], provided that I turn towards them and adopt at least temporarily their ways of thinking. [] It is in this sense that a collective memory and social framework for memory would exist, and it is to the extent that our individual memory comes back to these frameworks and participates in this memory that it would be able to remember.)

The interplay between national memory, group memory, and individual memory is especially important with regard to the Nazi Occupation of France because for decades they were separate entities. This was due at least in part to the pervasiveness of the myth of resistancialism. In effect, the memories of marginalized groupsJews, Roma, forced laborerswere suppressed by the Gaullist narrative.