France

La porte étroite

Appropriately bilious cover art.

You’re familiar with love triangles from at a hundred thousand movies and novels. But la porte étroite is a love quadrangle with God, or rather a very specific version of God, as one of the partners.

That helps make this novel seem to come not only from a different century but from another civilization. The impact of religious zealotry isn’t a common topic these days.  Alternately exasperating, entrancing, frustrating, and finally, moving, this love story explores the effects of religious fervor and burning idealism in an extended French bourgeois family. 

I read it more or less by accident. I bought the book a few years ago, maybe because James Salter recommended it. I thought I knew Gide from a couple of other novels, but it turns how I only had a shallow understanding of his work.

It wasn’t an easy read. First of all, Gide deploys unusual versions of the subjunctive tense very elegantly, but it stressed my fragile French. Secondly, the characters behave in ways that are true to the world of the story, but frustrating to experience from a distance. I’m not usually tempted to want to yell at a given person in a fictional narrative. This time, I wanted to grab a few of them by the shoulders and give them hell. Agonizing, really. 

Still, in the end, I’m happy to have read this with its beautiful passages, its unusual sensibility, its melding of Catholic zeal with romantic yearning, and, finally, its shattering ending.

Tonnerre, France

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This is a view of Tonnerre, a small town in Burgundy. You can buy escargots in the local butcher shops. You can also find Marc de Bourgogne at a wine merchant’s shop off the autoroute. It’s a shabby cousin to the very groomed and much more famous town of Chablis a few kilometers away.

Many of the houses are empty. You can peer into them and see old beams, fallen stones and the usual trash that accumulates on empty floors — empty bottles of booze and McDonald’s wrappers even here. Some stray cats, their teeth black, will check you out, looking for a handout.

But the Église St. Pierre broods over the town, the rust-red tiles of the roofs, the canals reflecting the old rose and sand colored stucco of the houses, and the inevitable geraniums in the window give the place a lot of charm. Cracks in the bricks, the skewed lace curtains at the windows. crumbling stones, rusty shutters, the still surface of the canals reflecting tangled branches — you feel age and, yeah, decay in the old town. It wears time on its sleeve. It’s imperfect, used, and worn around the edges.

Although it is beautiful, it is not quaint.

And thank God for that.

Jérôme Leroy “The dead are not dead”

Jérôme Leroy writes novels, short stories, noir, and scripts. As excellent as these are, his poetry is maybe the best part of his work (although not having read all of his output, I could be wrong.) Here’s a poem of his in English and then  in original French. Anything that sounds less than extraordinary is the fault of my translation. His latest collection is Sauf dans les chansons, published by La Table Ronde.

 

The dead are not dead.

They rent hotel rooms by the week

In small towns, in winter.

 

The dead are not dead

They look out the window

On Main Street, covered with snow

 

The dead are not dead

They’ll live in the middling hotel

Room number 15

 

The dead are not dead.

They’re charmed by the wardrobe, the mirror

And the slightly dated bathroom

 

The dead are not dead

They’re surprised to catch a glimpse of themselves as they were,

when they were young

 

The dead are not dead

They calmly unpack their bags —

Light — just the necessities

 

The dead are not dead

They are finally

Without trinkets and red tape

 

The dead are not dead

Without newspapers piling up around them

Without the just-opened letters

 

The dead are not dead

They like the crispness

Of room number 15.

 

The dead are not dead

Soon, they’ll probably go down,

Take a walk in town

 

The dead are not dead

No one will recognize them

As their steps crunch in the snow

 

The dead are not dead

Like the rasp of catarrh

Maybe a drink in this bar

 

The dead are not dead

They note the difference

Between this and Dante’s Purgatory

 

The dead are not dead

The receptionist with the coal dark eyes

Reminds them of worn out loves

 

The dead are not dead

They like the soothing purity

Of a room arranged just so.

 

The dead are not dead

Unknown, and yet so friendly

They stretch out on the double bed

 

The dead are not dead

They read the single book

Chosen especially for the trip

 

The dead are not dead

They know every page

But finally they understand it

 

The dead are not dead

The snow still falls the snow falls again

They fall silent, smiling, say to themselves

 

The dead are not dead

They rent hotel rooms by the week

In small towns, in winter.

–Jérôme Leroy

(photo  by René Burri)

In the original French:

Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d’hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils regardent par la fenêtre de la chambre
La Grand Rue sous la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont vivre dans ce deux étoiles
Chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s’amusent de l’armoire à glace
Et de la salle de bain un peu désuète
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils s’étonnent un instant de leur visage
Du temps qu’ils étaient jeunes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils défont tranquillement leurs bagages
Légers juste l’indispensable
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils sont enfin tels qu’en eux-mêmes
Sans bibelots et sans paperasse
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Sans journaux qui s’entassent
Sans lettres à peine ouvertes
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la fraicheur nette
De la chambre numéro quinze
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils vont sans doute tout à l’heure
Se promener dans la sous préfecture
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils ne sont reconnus de personne
Leurs pas font craquer la neige
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Comme le bruit d’une pleurésie
Un verre peut être dans cette brasserie
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils remarquent la différence
Avec le Purgatoire de Dante
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La réceptionniste aux yeux bistres
Leur rappelle des amours fatiguées
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils aiment la pureté reposante
De la chambre bien rangée
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Anonyme et pourtant si aimable
Ils s’allongent sur le lit double
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils lisent un livre unique
Celui choisi pour le voyage
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils en connaissent chaque page
Mais enfin ils le comprennent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
La neige tombe toujours la neige tombe encore
Ils s’étirent sourient et se disent
Les morts ne sont pas morts
Ils louent des chambres d’hôtel à la semaine
Dans des sous-préfectures hivernales.