39:3 2010

LISE J AILLANT

A Masterpiece Ripped from Oblivion: Rediscovered Manuscripts and the Memory of the Holocaust in Contemporary France
"The past, framed by the memory mode, has a value. In our society, it has a market value," argues the historian Henry Rousso in The Haunting Past (1998).^ The French obsession with Vichy has certainly created a demand for novels, testimonies, documentaries, and films exploring the ambiguides of the Occupadon.^ However, as for aH markets, the producers need to innovate in order to avoid exhausdng their consumers' interest. In September 2004, Denol released Suite franaise, an incomplete novel by a writer that few had ever heard of, Irne Nmirovsky. Although Nmirovsky enjoyed a reladve popularity during the interwar years, she since had been forgotten. Suite franaise was presented as her last writings before being arrested as a stateless Jew and deported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1942. It received enthusiasdc reviews, won die presdgious Prix Renaudot, and was translated into EngHsh in 2006. Nmirovsky was still working on Suite franaise, conceived as a five-part novel, when she was arrested. The pubHshed version consists of two noveHas portraying Hfe in France from June 1940,
1. Henry Rousso, iui hantise dupasse: Entretien avec Philippe Petit (Paris: Textuel, 1998), 33. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this essay are mitie. 2. See Henr>' Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (London: Harvard UP, 1991).

360

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObUvion

as Nazi forces prepare to invade Paris, to July 1941, when some of the occupying troops leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union. The work's original preface by Myriam Anissimov describes Nmirovsky's association with the anti-Semitic right, detas not included in the EngUsh language version. At the end of the volume, a series of appendices present Nmirovsky's notes as weU as a selection of letters. This correspondence shows her material difficulties at a time when some Jews were forbidden to pubUsh^ and had their bank accounts frozen. It also contains letters that her husband Michel Epstein wrote after her arrest, desperately appeaUng for her release. The fictional part of the book (which does not mention the situation of Jews) was therefore completed by an emotional account of Nmirovsky's hopeless situation. A paraUel story augments her Uterary creation: the story of the preservation of the book. Indeed, the preface emphasizes the "miraculous" discovery of the manuscript."* Preserved in a suitcase that Nmirovsky's young daughter transported from one hiding place to another, the manuscript hasfinaUybeen rediscovered after decades of obUvion. FoUowing the international success of Suite franaise, another rediscovered manuscript was pubUshed in January 2008. Hlne Berr's journal was marketed as the poignant day writings of a young Jewish woman in occupied Paris. A student of EngUsh Uterature at the Sorbonne, Berr came from an upper middle-class background. UnUke Nmirovsky, her famuy had been French for generations, and she seemed barely aware of her Jewish identity before being targeted by the anti-Jewish laws. After the invasion of France, both Nmirovsky and Berr remained in the Occupied Zone. Berr stayed in Paris with her parents, whereas Nmirovsky and her famuy sought refuge in Issy-l'vque, a viUage in Burgundy. Berr was arrested two years after Nmirovsky and died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945. As in the case of Suite franaise, the
3. In September 1940, the Otto List excluded some Jewish writers from publication. A second Otto List appeared in July 1942. Nmirovsky's name does not appear on either list; however, "her books seem to have been taken off the market" several months before the second Otto List. Jonathan M. Weiss, Irne Nmirovsky: Her Life and Works (Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007), 117. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Weiss. 4. Myriam Anissimov, preface to Suitefranaise, by Irne Nmirovsky (Paris: Denol 2004), 23.

Lisejalant

361

rediscovery of Berr's journal became the focus of sensationaUzed media coverage. An EngUsh translation was prompdy scheduled and released at the end of 2008. In this essay, I wl argue that backstories and artifacts are as important as content widi regard to the popularity of these rediscovered writings. As AUce Kaplan puts it, "how would Suite franaise have been received without the tragic backstory? Are we capable of reading fiction anymore without being told somediing poignant, or sensational, or gratifying about the author?"^ It is striking that so many reviewers have compared Suite franaisea work of fiction that does not mention tiie situation of Jewsto Anne Frank's diary'^ and, more recendy, Berr's journal.'^ In fact, as the historian Rod Kedward states. Suitefranaise has been framed as a true account of wartime France rather than a fictional work.^ More problematicaUy stul, it has been subsumed under the category of Holocaust-related books, Uke Berr's journal. It is important to stress that Nmirovsky and Berr had radicaUy different purposes for their writings: The former created a novel that she hoped to get pubUshed, whe the latter wrote a personal account for her fianc. But this essay is concerned with the contemporary reception of Suitefranaise and Berr's journal, which have bodi been set in the context of the Holocaust. The text itself cannot be isolated from its packaging and marketing, on the one hand, and from its reception, on the other. If rediscovered manuscripts are indeed "masterpieces ripped from obUvion,"' why had they been
5. Alice Kaplan, "Love in the Ruins," The Nation, May 29, 2006, http://www.thenation.com/article/love-ruins (accessed November 1, 2010). 6. "IJke Anne Frank, Irne Nmirovsky was unaware of neither her circumstance nor the growing probabilit)' that she might not survive." Sharon Dilworth, "'Suite Franaise' by Irne Nmirovsky," Pittsburgh Post-Ca^tte, AprU 30, 2006, http://www.postgazette.com/pg/06120/685692-148.stm (accessed November 1, 2010). 7. Carmen Callil compares Berr's diary to Suitefranaise and to Anne Frank's journal in ""We Must Not Forget,"' The Guaran, November 8, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/ books/2008/nov/08/ournal-helene-berr-review (accessed November 1,2010). Hereafter cited parenthetically as Callil. 8. Rod Kedward, The Pursuit of Reality: The Nmirovsky Effect (Reading: U of Reading P, 2008), 6-7. 9. Chatto and Windus chose "a masterpiece . . . ripped from oblivion {U Monde)" for the blurb of the 2006 edition of Suite franaise.

362

A Masterpiece Ripped from Oblivion

forgotten in the first place? How can we account for their delayed publication? First, we will examine the changing value of writings by deported Jews in relation to the memory of World War Two. How did these writings, first preserved in a domestic environment, come to be shared witii specialized institutions and then with mainstream publishers? Second, we wiH focus on the published texts, marketed as moving Holocaust stories. "Hidden Away in Families' Chests of Drawers" _ Few commentators have noted that Suite franaise and Berr's diar}^ existed in handwritten and typed versions well before their publication. Instead, the focus has been on the discovery of manuscripts unearthed after decades of preservation in the domestic sphere.'O According to the historian Rene Poznanski, Jewish primary sources that offer an account of the French Occupation are scarce, but "more are probably hidden away in families' chests of drawers."" Unlike East European Jews, who were often forced to live in ghettos, French Jews had greater opportunities to interact widi gentiles. Thus, Berr gave die pages of her diary at regular intervals to the family's cook, with instructions to pass them on to her fianc, Jean Morawiecki, in case she would be arrested.'^ Similarly, in Apru 1942, Nmirovsky entrusted her most precious writings to the care of Andr Sabatier, her friend and editor at Albin Michel. According to her biographers Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt, these "manuscripts, journals, and drafts"
10. As one journalist points out: "After decades of privacy, the famy [of Hlne Berr] finally made the decision to publish Hlne's writing as a book (a development oddly parallel to the publication . . . of Suite franaise, a novel written by Jewish author Irne Nmirovsky during the Nazi occupadon of France, smuggled out by famy, and just pubHshed now)." Marjorie Kehe, "The Journal of Hlne Berr," The Christian Sdence Monitor, November 11, 2008, http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2008/ 1111/ die-journal-of-helene-berr (accessed November 1, 2010). 11. Rene Poznanski, Jews in France during Wortd War II, trans. Nathan Bracher (Hanover: Brandeis UP, 2001), xix. Hereafter cited parenthedcally as Poznanski. 12. Mariette Job, "A Stolen Life," \n joumat, by Hlne Berr, trans. David Bellos (London: MacLehose P, 2008), 270-71. Berr's text hereafter cited parenthetically as joumat, MacLehose.

Lise Jalant

363

remained in Albin Michel's offices unt 2005, when they were deposited at the Institut Mmoires de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC).i3 This deposit also contained a typed copy of Suite franaise}"" The original manuscript preserved in a suitcase was therefore not the only extant version. However, most reviewers have focused on the extraordinary survival of the manuscript, suggesting that, had the suitcase been lost, a masterpiece would have disappeared. In his biography of Nmirovsky, Weiss observes that the typescript contains "major differences" from the manuscript: "Some chapters are eliminated, some are entirely rewritten. There are handwritten corrections in the margins, in both Irene's and her husband's handwriting" (xi). But for Denise Epstein, the manuscript seemed more faithful to her mother's intent. ^^ T"he version pubUshed by Denol, therefore, was based on the notebook rather than on the typed copy. Indeed, the physical aspect of these rediscovered manuscripts has been an essential part of the media coverage. That Nmirovsky wrote Suite franaise in tiny letters, fearing she was running out of ink and paper, testifies to her difficult material conditions. Moreover, Berr's journal is constituted of more than a hundred pages that the famy's employee could easy hide. In his study of Holocaust diaries, the literary crific James Young maintains that "even if narrative cannot document events, or constitute perfect/c/uality, it can document the zfAiality of writer and text. . . . In some cases, die diaries' physical materialityas scraps of paper, pieces of wood, or torn handbulsmay even lend these texts the evidentiary authority repeated attestations from within the narrative cannot."^'' The materiality of the manuscripts bears wimess to the privations
13. Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Denhardt, La vie d'Irne Nmirovsky (Paris: Grasset/Denol, 2007), 403. 14. Olivier Corpet and Garrett White, eds.. Woman ofUtters: Irne Nmimvsky andSuite franaise (New York: Five Ties, 2008), 39. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Corpet and White. 15. Epstein even refused to allow the mistakes in the manuscript to be corrected: "I wanted them to be the last authentic words from our mother straight out of the suitcase!"
Denise Epstein, Survivre et vivre: Entretiens avec Clmence Boulouque (Paris: Denol, 2008), 140. 16. James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narratives and Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990), 37.

364

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObHvion

of war, thus lending authority to the narradves. It is hardly surprising that Epstein views the handwritten version of Suite franaise as more "authendc" dian the typed copy. After the war, the possessions of the deportees were returned to their famiHes. Berr's journal was typed and circulated within the famy, with the original manuscript going to Morawiecki." Nmirovsky's suitcase, which had been deposited with a notary, was handed back to her daughters at dieir legal majority (Corpet and White, 35). To explain the delayed pubHcadons of both texts, most commentators have stressed dieir sendmental value together widi privacy concerns. Mariette Job, Berr's niece, divulges that the manuscript was difficult to read, especiaHy for those who were closest to Berr: "For years he [Morawieckx] could only read the typed copy because her handwridng 'emphasised the cruelty' of her absence and was Hke a frozen hand reaching out to bim" (Grice). As one reviewer put it, "the famHy (at least some of its members) was not ready for die text to become pubHc: too painful, too indmate."'^ Similar factors have been advanced to explain why Suite franaise remained unpubHshed undl 2004. In a recent interview, Epstein states that she and her sister, EHsabeth GHle, thought that the notebook containing Suite franaise "was a personal diary," an idea that "held [diem] back for a long dme" (Corpet and White, 41). The manuscript was associated with hurtfiol memories, Hke any other possessions that belonged to the deceased. Interesfingly, Epstein also notes that she and GiHe were reluctant to pubHsh an incomplete novel that their mother would have probably edited (Corpet and White, 43). Yet, die incompleteness of the novel has rarely been discussed. According to the writer Pierre AssouHne, in the 1980s GHle told him about her mother's last novel, which was stiH in a suitcase that she had not dared to

17. Elizabeth Grice, "How the Diaries of Hlne Berr, the 'Anne Frank of France,' Came to Be Published," Daily Telegraph, October 29, 2008, http://www.telegtaph.co.uk/ culture/books/3562700/How-the-diaries-of-Helene-Berr-the-Anne-Frank-of-France-cameto-be-published.html (accessed November 1,2010). Hereafter cited parenthetically as Grice. 18. Nathalie Levisalles, "La vie brve," Ubration, December 20, 2007, http://www.liberation.fr/livres/0101118148-la-vie-breve (accessed November 1,2010). Hereafter cited parenthetically as Levisalles.

Lise JaiUant

365

open.'' Of course, both Epstein and Gle knew about the manuscript's existence weU before the 1980s.20 Rather than an unfinished novel, reviewers have often perceived Suitefranaise as a diary Unked to painful memories. In the immediate postwar period, Albin Michel and the famuy were probably aU the more reluctant to release an incomplete work because Nmirovsky's other novels did not seU weU. Nicholas Hewitt's remarks on the ecUpse of Louis-Ferdinand CUne's Uterary reputation after 1945 could equaUy be appUed to Nmirovsky: "T'o the readers of the 1950s, he may have appeared to belong to a Uterar}^ generation that ended with the Liberation, appearing mannered and outdated in the post war era. . . . The Liberation marked an important cultural dividing Une, which would remain in place for decades."-' Nmirovsky's style certainly seemed outdated after 1945. Albin Michel released only three previously unpubUshed works after the Liberation: a biography of Anton Chekhov, La vie de Tchkhov (1946) and two novels written just before her deportationLes
biens de ce monde (1947) and Les feux de l'automne (1957). A 1946

rdition of Le pion sur l'chiquier contains no preface or information about Nmirovsky, apart from a Ust of her pubUshed works. However, the biography of Chekhov includes a foreword by Jean-Jacques Bernard, the son of the famous playwright Tristan Bernard and a writer himself. Jean-Jacques Bernard had been sent to the camp of RoyaUieu-Compigne in December 1941 and was released in March 1942. In 1944, Albin Michel pubUshed his account of the camp.22 In his foreword, Bernard extensively comments on Nmirovsky's tragic fate: "Born in the East, Irene
19. Pierre Assouline, "La revanche posthume d'Irne Nmirovsky," La rpublique des ivres, http://passouline.blog.lemonde.fr/2007/10/16/la-revanche-posthume-direne-nemirovsky (accessed December 12, 2010). 20. Angela Kershaw, Before Auschwitz Irne Nmirovsky and the CulturalI-^ndscape of InterWar France (New York: Roudedge, 2010), 1. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Before Auschwitz 21. Nicholas Hewitt, "Cline: The Success of the Monstre Sacr m Postwar France," Substance 32.3 (2003): 36. 22. Jean-Jacques Bernard, Le camp de la mort lente (Paris: Albin Michel, 1944).

366

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObUvion

Nmirovsky went back to the East to die."^^ Colored by Bernard's own experience of anti-Semitic persecution, this foreword focuses on Nmirovsky as a victim of Nazi brutaUty, rather than on the actual content of the bookChekhov's Ufe and work. In fact, there was not enough demand for Holocaust-related books after 1945. The histodan Annette Wieviorka points out that, although many deportees' writings were pubUshed in France immediately after the war, this mass testimony came to an end very quickly. Unlike World War One veterans who could count on a vast market of andens combattants, the deportees had difficulties finding enough readers for their memoirs.^'* Bernard's Le camp de la mort lente (1944) was not reedited until 2006, and Nmirovsky was soon forgotten. Indeed, in aU the studies pubUshed before 2000 that I have consulted, Nmirovsky is never mentioned.^s As Angela Kershaw puts it, even feminist critics of the "second wave" had no reason to become interested in novels characterized by "traditionaUst representations of gender roles and the lack of any obvious narrative experimentation or self-refiexivity" {Before Auschwitz 186). Grasset and Albin Michel reedited some of Nmirovsky's novels in the 1980s and 1990s, without much success.2<5 Moreover, Weiss notes that "from 1937 until 2006 (with the exception of a biography of Anton Chekhov, translated in 1950), no works by Irne Nmirovsky have appeared in EngUsh" (9). In 1992, Gille pubUshed Le mirador {The watchtower), a fictionaUzed memoir of her mother. It was reprinted in 2000, along with
23. Jean-Jacques Bernard, foreword to A Ufe of Chekhov, by Irne Nmirovsky, trans. Erik de Mauny (London: Grey Walls, 1950), 6. 24. Annette Wieviorka, Dportation et gnode: Entre la mmoire et l'oubli (Paris: Pion, 1992), 168. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Dportation. 25. Wieviorka does mention the Frenay Commission, which shortly after the war, was in charge of tracing famous people who had been deportedincluding Maurice Halbwachs and Nmirovsky {Dportation, 49). But Wieviorka later notes that "there were no major writers among the deportees" (168), and she does not examine Nmirovsky's case. 26. After reediting David Golder in 1967, Grasset introduced Nmirovsky in its collection Us cahiers rouges ^xh Le a/(1985 and 1993), David Golder {y^iG), hes mouches d'automne (1988) and L'affaire Courilof{\990). Albin Michel reedited Us chiens et les loups (1988), L vin de la solitude (1988), La vie de Tchkhov (1989), and U proie (1992). Gallimard also reedited L'enfant prodige (1992).

Lisejaillant

367

a release of Nmirovsky's selected short stories. GiUe, who had been working as an editor and translator before her premature death in 1996, was instrumental in the rehabilitation of her mother. Her position in the publishing business not only ensured publicity to her work, but also put her in contact with an institution that could "rip her mother out of oblivion": the IMEC, an organization in charge of preserving and publicizing the manuscripts of modern and contemporary writers.^^ Indeed, institutions have played the role of the middleman between the family and mainstream publishers and between the private and the public sphere. The director of the IMEC energetically advocated for the publication of Suite franaise and later organized an exhibition of the manuscript and suitcase in partnership with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York (Corpet and White, 42).^^ Likewise, the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) was instrumental in the publication of Berr's journal. In 2002, Mariette Job went to the Mmorial de la Shoah^where the CDJC is housed-^with the intention of making her aunt's manuscript available to researchers, and thus Berr's journal was displayed in the permanent exhibition. In 2008, the diary was published by Tallandier, an imprint with close links to the Mmorial de la Shoah.^' This institution has continued to publicize the journal by recendy organizing a special exhibition on Berr's tragic life.3'' Moreover, an archivist from the CDJC gave a speech when the City of Paris decided to rename a library after Berr.^'
27. Olivier Corpet, director and cofounder of the IMEC, writes: "I wish especially to remember Elisabeth Gille, Denise Epstein's sister, thanks to whom I first met Denise and came to know the work of Irne Nmirovsky" (Corpet and White, 159). 28. Nmirovsky's manuscript was displayed as part of a temporary exhibidon at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (September 24, 2008-August 30, 2009). 29. Michel Laffitte's juif dans ta France attemande was published in 2006 by Tallandier with the support of the Fondadon pour la Mmoire de la Shoah (a trust that funds 80 percent of the Mmorial de la Shoah's budget). In Februar)' 2007, the Mmorial organized a launch evening for Laffitte's book, attended byjob and members of the Berr family. Following this evening. Job persuaded her family to agree to the publication of the journal, and contacts were made with Tallandier (Levisalles). 30. "Hlne Berr: Une vie confisque," Mmorial de la Shoah, November 10, 2009March31,2010. 31. Karen Taeb, "Intervendon de Karen Taeb relative la dnomination Hlne Berr la bibliothque Picpus" (speech. Croupe PSRCA Paris, Apr 1, 2010),

368

A Masterpiece Ripped from Oblivion

It is striking that both Nmirovsky's and Berr's manuscripts have been displayed in Holocaust museums. Peter Novick suggests that Holocaust remnants are invested with a religious aura: "The fetishized objects" are displayed "Mke so many fragments of the True Cross or shin bones of saints."-'^ The permanent exhibition at the Mmorial de la Shoah thus presents selected parts of Berr's manuscript, including her reaction after wearing the Yeow Star for the first time, as we as her quote from Wliam Shakespeare's Macbeth"Horror! Horror! Horror!" (2.3.64)that constitutes the last words of the published version and reportedly the last entry of her journal (262). These pages are displayed along with a smiling picture of Berr and a penknife. A notice inside the museum display case explains that "according to the testimony of other inmates, Hlne exchanged her bread for a pocket knife to cut needles in wooden boards to knit, by pulling threads out of thin covers." Morawiecki then gave the knife to Job. This narration of extreme destitution and suffering, therefore, is juxtaposed to a stor)' of familial transmission. As Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer note in their study of Holocaust traces, "such remnants carry memory traces from the past. . . but they also embody the very process of its transmission."^^ The exhibition frames the memory embodied by these "testimonial objects" with a narrative of pain and martyrdom. The aura of the original manuscript also extends to the objects and persons closely associated with it. Thus, the suitcase that contained the manuscript o Suitefranaise has become, in Epstein's words, "a cult object," a reliquary at the center of the exhibition organized in New York (Corpet and White, 35). Of course, the suitcase is a potent symbol of departure, separation, and uprooting. The Random House edition covers of Suitefranaise picture a suitcase next to a couple seemingly on the verge of being separated.
http://www.groupe-psrga-paris.fr/intervention-de-karen-taieb-relative-a-la-denominationhelene-berr-a-la-bibliotheque-picpus.html (accessed December 12, 2010). 32. Peter Novick, The Holocaust and Collective Memory: The American Experience (London: Bloomsbury, 1999), 11. It should be noted that manuscripts are exhibited in any exhibition dedicated to a writer. However, the fact that Berr's and Nmirovsky's manuscripts have been displayed in Holocaust museums frames them not only as literary masterpieces but also as Holocaust remnants. 33. Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer, "Testimonial Objects: Memory, Gender, and Transmission," Poetics Today 27.2 (2006): 355, emphasis in original.

Lise JaHlant

369

The cover of the EngHsh language edidon of Weiss's biography of Nmirovsky also shows a suitcase, which seems to have been abandoned on a cobblestone street.^"* Moreover, Young gives the example of the arfifacts displayed at the Auschwitz museum: "Great bins . . . hold the suitcases of vicdms, who were ordered to write their names and birthdates on them before their deportafion to the camp. They appear now as self-inscribed epitaphs."-'^ The suitcase can symboHze the eternit)' of memor)^ through fiHadon and heritage. Thus, Epstein gave her mother's suitcase to her own daughter, "who had nothing that had belonged to her grandparents" (Corpet and White, 35). Here, the suitcase carries not only material possessions, but also the memory of Nmirovsky from one generadon to the next. Epstein, who says her father entrusted her with the care of the suitcase, presents herself as the guardian of this heritage. Similarly, Eva Hoffman has written about the legacy left by her Holocaust-survivor parents: "I was the designated carrier for the cargo of awesome knowledge transferred to me by my parents, and its burden had to be transported carefuHy, with aH the iterated accounts HteraHy intact."^*" Entrusted with the duty to "carry" their parents' legacy, the second generafion is transfigured into guardians of memory, whose voice is carried by Jewish insdtudons. Indeed, both the CDJC and the Museum of Jewish Heritage offer a framework through which to read the manuscripts. Berr and Nmirovsky's writings are presented as "Holocaust stories," as tragic tales left by Jewish women before their exterminafion (Corpet and White, 15). However, this labeling is highly problem-

34. It should be noted that many books on the Holocaust,fictionaland nonfictional, feature suitcases on their cover. See, for instance, Lillian Boraks-Nemetz's young adult novel about a Polish gid who escapes the Warsaw ghetto during Wodd War Two, The Old
Brown Suitcase: A Teenager's Story of War and Peace (Vancouver: Ronsdale, 2008). 35. James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New

Haven:YaleUP, 1993), 133. 36. Eva Hoifmin, After Such Knowledge (London: Seeker and Warburg, 2004), 14. Lisa Appignanesi, whose parents survived persecutions in wartime Poland, also writes: "My parents and their friends only talked of their great good luck. If the baggage they carried with them was weighty with loss, they were still prepared to trade it in for the future." Using the Dead (London: Vintage, 2000), 21.

370

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObUvion

atic. Can the term "Holocaust" quaUfy Suite franaise and Berr's journal, texts written before what became known as the Holocaust? PubUshing and Marketing Holocaust Stories Despite a career that spans from 1929 to 1942, Nmirovsky has become inseparable from the Holocaust. Even Kershaw, whose book attempts to study Nmirovsky "before Auschwitz," contends that it is "both important and valuable to recognize Nmirovsky's identity as an Occupation writer, as a Holocaust writer, and as a Uterary success of the twenty-first century" {Before Auschwitz 171). UnUke the authors Primo Levi or EUe Wiesel, Nmirovsky survived only one month at Auschwitz and has left no written account of the Nazi camp. Moreover, there is no reference to Jews and antiSemitic persecution in Suitefranaise. According to the critic Christopher Lloyd, Nmirovsky's own "stigmatized condition" was too painful to contemplate: "Writing about invented characters seen with a sort of amused disdain aUowed her temporary to escape her own sense of entrapment."^'^ Furthermore, Weiss suggests that during the war, Nmirovsky was "trying to have her cultural identity [as a French writer] recognized as a national identity" and concentrated on characters who had been French for generations (172). The label "Holocaust writer" is aU the more problematic since Nmirovsky had a complex relationship with her Jewishness and wrote for right-wing, anti-Semitic periodicals in the 1930s and 1940s. Kershaw contends that EngUsh and American readers have found those issues more puzzUng than the French have. For instance, Ruth FrankUn's violent attack against Nmirovsky in January 2008 finds no paraUel in the French press.^^ Although Kershaw's point is perfectly vaUd for the mainstream press in France, I would add that the French Jewish community has shown a far more ambiguous attitude toward Nmirovsky. On the one hand, Epstein, who defines herself as a post-Shoah Jew, has
37. Christopher Lloyd, "Irene Nmirovsky's Suite franaise and the Crisis of Rights and Identity," Contemporary French Civilisation S'i .2 (2007): 168. 38. Ruth Franklin, "Scandale Franaise: The Nasty Truth about a New Literary Heroine," The New Republic, January 30, 2008, http://www.tnr.com/article/books/ scandale-franaise (accessed November 1, 2010).

Lisejalant

371

repeatedly observed that her mother was not the only Jewish writer to pubUsh in right-wing journals (Corpet and White, 46). Epstein remembers her mother as a Jewish victim, Uke the organizers of the New York exhibition who claim that "Nmirovsky's sense of herself as a Jew and the way she behaved under exceptional circumstances may have had ambiguous elements, but there was no ambiguity in the way she was perceived by her enemies or in the nature of her tiltimate fate" (15). In short, "Nmirovsky's story is indisputably a Holocaust story" (15). On the other hand, many French Jews have voiced their unease toward Nmirovsky and her works. For instance, the Museum of Art and History of Judaism in Paris has refused to host the successful exhibition initiay opened in New York. In 2008, its director justified her decision by accusing Nmirovsky of selfhatred {detestation soi) .^' Since other museums shared the same reticence, the exhibition of the manuscript and suitcase has so far never been shown in France. In fact, Nmirovsky's aeged anti-Semitism does not seem to have been discussed before Myriam Anissimov's preface to the French edition of Suite franaise. As Kershaw points out, "the fact that Myriam Anissimov, herself a Jewish writer and the child of Holocaust survivors, wrote the preface defines the text in terms of Jewish memory" {Before Auschwitz 188)."* The preface and the appendices set the text in the context of the persecution of the Jews, while the novel itself remains suent on the Jews' situation. Indeed, the paratext tends to subsurne the novel under the Holocaust diary genre. In the absence of a real diary, the notes and letters give an account of Nmirovsky's difficulties, week after week, month after month. Nmirovsky's letters form a "compassionate t"''^ with the readers, who are incited to share the author's
39. Franois Dufay, "L'offense faite Irne," L'express, September 18, 2008, http://www.lexpress.fr/culture/livre/l-offense-faite-a-irene_823047.html (accessed November 1,2010). 40. In 1985, Myriam Anissimov inter\'iewed Epstein and Gille for Grasset's rerelease of some of Nmirovsky's works and then wrote a lengthy article in the newspaper U matin (Corpet and White, 43). She was also instrumental in the publication of Suite franaise (44). 4L Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, trans. ]axed Stark (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2006), 143.

372

A Masterpiece Ripped from Oblivion

growing despair and fear of deportation with the hindsight of her terrible fate. This retrospective reading is confirmed by a note from the translator: "Irne Nmirovsky died at Auschwitz on 17 August 1942, a fact which makes the correspondence that follows this date even more poignant."''2 We are therefore invited to read Michel Epstein's desperate attempts to obtain his wife's liberation knowing she has already died. This hindsight frames our reading in terms of tragedy, in the classic sense of a character who vainly struggles against fate. This is precisely the function of the appendices: The constant references to the dates act as a shortening of timewe know that Nmirovsky does not have long to Uve, we know that her husband struggles vainly intensifying the emotion of the reading. Instead of a novel on the French Occupation, we are given to read a "Holocaust story": the story of a brilliant writer unable to escape her tragic destiny. The success of Suite franaise in Britain and the United States seems to have surpassed aU expectations for a work in translation. As Kershaw notes, "the novel entered The Bookseller's Top 20 original fiction chart at number 13 in the week ending 4 March 2006. It remained there until the week ending 20 May, hitting its highest position (number 2) in the week ending 1 April."''^ Moreover, the French editions have sold more than 582,000 copies since 2004.'*'' It seems doubtful that Suitefranaise would have become such a bestseller without the skillful marketing campaign. But many reviewers have also emphasized the uterary quality of Nmirovsky's last novel. Despite the absence of persecuted Jews, Suitefranaise does not shy away from violence and injustice. The first chapter, entitied "War," describes the terror of an air raid in Paris: "StiU at some distance, great guns were firing; they drew nearer, and every window shuddered in reply. In hot rooms with blacked-out windows, children were born, and their cries made the women forget
42. Irne Nmirovsky, Suitefranaise, trans. Sandra Smith (New York: Knopf: 2006), 377. Hereafter cited parenthedcally as SF, Knopf. 43. Angela Kershaw, "Sociology of Literature, Sociologj' of Translation: The Recepdon of Irne Nmirovsky's Suitefranaise in France and Britain," Transtation Studies 3.1 (2010): 6. 44. The Denol hardback edidon and the Folio paperback edition have sold more than 334,000 copies since September 2004 for the former, and more than 248,000 copies since March 2005 for the latter. Edistat, http://www.edistat.com/ (accessed April 10,2010).

Lisejaiant

373

the sound of sirens and war" {SF, Knopf, 4). Although the English translation does not convey the same mannered style"des chambres
chaudes o on avait calfeutr lesfentres afin qu'aucune lumire ne filtrt au-

dehors"is translated as the more efficient "hot rooms with blackedout windows"the antagonisms between destruction and horror on the one side, and life and beauty on the other, give a sense of a civilization in chaos. Considering tbat SuitefianaisevjAS published in the United States a few months after the 2005 urban riots in France, it is hardly surprising that The New York Times chose this extract to ulustrate a review enfided "As France Burned.'"*^ Like Suite franaise, Berr's journal has been marketed as a tragic Holocaust story, with Berr often compared with Anne Frank, who also died at Bergen-Belsen in 1945. The photo on the cover of the English language edition shows a smiling young woman at the top, contrasting with a picture of German troops at the bottom. This coage frames our reading of the diary, suggesting a conflict between good and ev, between a defenseless girl and an army of brutes. The parael with Anne Frank is particularly obvious in the French edition, with the insert of photos and extracts referring to happy moments. The vocabulary conveys a sense of a young woman fu of life: "irreal beauty of this summer day at Aubergenvle," "I feel enchanted," "everyone was happy.'"*"^ Therefore, many commentators have defined the diary as "an uplifting book" (Ca). The comparison with Anne Frank's diary is enlightening, considering that Otto Frank and the first pubUshers edited the diary "to create a girl who was in many ways the perfect 'victim.' Not only was she young and female, but also 'innocent,'"
45. Paul Gray, "As France Burned," The New York Times, April 9, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/books/review/09gray.html?ex=1302235200& en=efa79839c42f4089&ei=5088 (accessed November 1,2010). Hereafter cited parenthetically as Gray. The image of France burning was a leitmotif in the English-speaking press in late 2005. See Doug Ireland, "Why Is France Burning?" The Nation, November 9,2005, http://www.thenation.com/article/why-france-buming (accessed November 1,2010); or David Ignatius, "Why France Is Burning," The Washington Post, November 9, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/ll/08/ AR2005110801106.html (accessed November 1, 2010). 46. Hlne Berr,J)n;a/(Paris: Tallandier, 2008), insert. Hereafter dted parenthetically as Journal, Tallandier.

374

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObHvion

maintains Tim Cole.'*^ Although Berr's original manuscript is not available to researchers, I was able to consult a scanned copy at the CDJC. This digital copy shows few correcfions or crossing-outs. It is almost idendcal to the pubHshed version. It seems that the TaHandier edidon was, as Mariette Job claims, an unedited copy of the original. But as the manuscript is composed of separate pages, it is impossible to be sure that the version available for pubHcadon represents aH of Berr's wrifings during the Occupafion. A close reading of the journal shows us a complex young woman, far from the image of a "perfect 'vicfim.'" The first part of the diary reads as the naive confession of a marriageable girl. Her Hfe seems untouched by the war, as she leads the leisurely Hfe of a privileged Parisian student. A change occurs in June 1942 when she is forced to wear the yeHow star.^^ In this frequendy quoted extract, she teHs of her sense of humiHafion: "This morning I went out with Maman. In the street two boys pointed at us and said: 'Eh? You seen that? Jew.' Otherwise things went normaHy. . . . I set off again for the Sorbonne. Another working-class woman smiled at me on the mtro. It brought tears to my eyes" {Joumal, MacLehose, 54). For this upper middle-class young woman, wearing the yeHow star is conceived of as an exclusion from her comfortable social background. Meedng with friends at the Sorbonne, she describes their embarrassment and her own "crucifixion": "I suffered there, in the sunHt Sorbonne courtyard, among my comrades" {Joumal, MacLehose, 56). The Chrisfian references are omnipresent in the journal,'*^ which refiects her lack of self-consciousness as a Jew. Like Anne Frank, Berr seems barely aware of her Jewish idendty before being sfigmafized by the anfi-Semific laws. As MargaretAnne Hutton argues, "this imposifion of idenfity" "served to strengthen, and in some case create, an imagined
47. Tim Cole, Selling the Holocaust (New York: Roudedge, 1999), 29. 48. "Ordinance no. eight from the German military command in France was signed on May 29, 1942, and announced on June 1. It ordered all Jews over the age of six to have a Jewish star sewn solidly to their clothing" (Poznanski, 238). 49. For instance, "the great law of Christ saying that all men are brothers and all should share and relieve the suffering of their feUow-men was ignored" {Journal, MacLehose, 260). 50. Margaret-Anne Hutton, Testimony from the Na^ Camps: French Women's Voices

Lise JaiUant

375

Slowly awaking to her new pariah status, Berr makes the controversial choice of working for the Union Gnrale des IsraUtes de France (UGIF). This Jewish organization was created in 1941 at the initiative of Xavier VaUat, the Vichy Commissioner for Jewish Affairs (Poznanski, 132).5* As aU Jews were required to belong to it, the UGIF acted as legal intermediary between the German Occupation authorities, the Vichy government, and the Jewish population. Employees of the UGIF were, at least at the beginning, protected from arrests and deportations.^^ But this privUeged status was soon brought to an end. In November 1943, after describing the arrest of aU her coUeagues, Berr reflects on her choice of being involved in the UGIF: "People caUed us coUaborators, because those who came to see us had just had a relative arrested, and it was natural that they should react that way when they saw us sitting behind desks. . . . Why did I accept the job? To be able to do something, to come as close as I could to misfortune. We did aU we could to assist the internees" {Journal, MacLehose, 210-11). Here, Berr seems to have grown into a mature young woman who rationaUy defends her choice pf working for an ambiguous institution. She speaks as a representative of her coUeagues, many of whom have been senced by deportation. But neither the pubUsher of her journal nor the media have been wiUing to discuss this controversial choice. Instead, Berr appears as an innocent victim, who volunteered to help the chUdren of internees and even managed to rescue some of them. Indeed, Berr, who initiaUy worked as a volunteer social worker at the UGIF to assist internees and their famiUes, then became secretary of the Entr'aide Temporaire. This clandestine organization created in February 1941 helped to save some Jewish children by sending them to the free zone (Laffitte,/^ 239-40). However, Berr and her mother.
(]:.ondon: Roudedge, 2005), 177, 208. 51. For further discussion on the role of the UGIF, see Michel Laffitte, Un engrenage fatal {Paris: Liana l.xvi, 2003). 52. The first cards, which protected against arrests, were distributed to UGIF employees in the occupied zone on July 6,1942. The same day, Berr became a volunteer
for the UGIF. Michel Laffitte, Juif dans la France allemande: Institutions, dirigeants et communauts au temps de la Shoah (Paris: Tallandier, 2006), 154. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Laffitte, JAJ/^

376

A Masterpiece Ripped from ObUvion

Antoinette seem to have played only a modest role in this organization.53 j ^ jier journal, Berr does not mention any clandestine activitiesperhaps to protect her coUeagues at the Entr'aide Temporaire. Both Berr and Nmirovsky are therefore defined first by their Jewishness and second by their defenseless status as hunted women. I have shown how this Jewish labeUng is problematic, considering Berr and Nmirovsky's ambiguity toward their Jewishness.^'' Yet, members of the second generation have often memoriaUzed their parents as unambiguously Jewish. The fact that Job deposited her aunt's manuscript with the Mmorial de la Shoah has subsumed her famy's memories under the coUective memory of the "Holocaust in France." Nmirovsky and Berr are also defined by their gender, an essential part of their victimized status. Indeed, the deportation of women seems even more unbearable than the persecution of men. After Nmirovsky's arrest in July 1942, Michel Epstein was so desperate that he planned to volunteer for deportation in exchange for the release of his wife.^^ According to Rousso, "no society can accept without extraordinary transgressions an attack on the principle of fiUation."56 Whereas it was usual to see men being arrested, sent to war, or interned in prisoners of war camps, a threshold was reached in June 1942 when Jewish women and children started being arrested. Thus, the identities of Berr and Nmirovsky are constructed, in Zo Waxman's phrase, "on the basis of roles such as 'mother,' 'caregiver,' 'daughter.'"" The association with chudren is especially important: Whereas Berr
53. Antoinette Berr collected funds for the Entr'aide temporaire. But she and her daughter do not seem to have accompanied children to the free zone. See Cline Marrot, "Les enfants cachs pendant la Deuxime Guerre Mondiale" (master's thesis. Universit de Versailles Saint Quentin en YveUnes, 1998). 54. Berr and Nmirovsky did not define themselves as Jews. However, their attitudes toward Jewishness were different. Berr was not religious, but unlike Nmirovsky, she did not criticize Jews. Nmirovsky converted to Catholicism in 1939 (see Weiss, 171). 55. Epstein to Andr Sabatier, letter dated September 19, 1942, qtd. in Weiss, 166. 56. Denis M. Provencher, "Entretien avec Henr}' Rousso: Un regard actuel sur l'importance de la Shoah en France," Contemporary French Civilisation 31.2 (2007): 298. 57. Zo Vania Waxman, Writingthe Holocaust: Identity, Testimony, Representation { Oxford UP, 2006), 150.

Lise Jaillant

377

"saved children," Nmirovsky had two young girls who were left behind after their mother's deportation.^^ Similarly, Anne Frank is memorialized as a daughter and as an innocent child victim. The success of rediscovered manuscripts is due not only to the revival of interest for female victims of the Holocaust and to the active role of the second generation, but also to the way published versions have been positioned within the uterary field. Pierre Bourdieu has famously distinguished between the "field of largescale production," profit-motivated cultural production, and the "field of restricted production," in which a work of art is defined by aesthetic and intellectual characteristics as opposed to commercial ones.^' Drawing on Bourdieu, Kershaw contends that Nmirovsky can be located around the midpoint of the axis that opposes the two fields (Before Auschwit;^ 28). A commerciaUy successful writer whose novels were serialized in mass market reviews, Nmirovsky was also viewed as a writer of serious fiction. Nmirovsky's position in the French literary field of the 1930s is paralleled by her current position in the global field of cultural productionmore than sixty years after her death. On the one hand. Suite franaise aims at an inteUectual audience eager for symboUc capital and, on the otiier, to a mass audience wiUing to buy a tragic Holocaust story. Random House issued the novel under two imprints, Chatto and Windus in the United Kingdom and Knopf in North America. Botii are literary publishing houses weU known for tiieir finely translated fiction. Furthermore, the Knopf version is printed on quality paper with trimmed pages, using a type designed by "Pierre Simon Fournier lefeune," who published "his Manueltypographique"in 1764 and 1766 {SF, Knopf, colophon). The retention of the Frenchin the tide as weU as in the colophongives prestige to Nmirovsky's last writings. Most importantiy, the endpapers reproduce the tiny handwriting of Nmirovsky's manuscript. The published version, therefore, draws

58. Appendix II of ..W//rafawe includes several postwar letters fromJulieDumot, the guardian of the two girls, asking Albin Michel for money. Once again, the tragic backstory is incorporated into the book. 59. Pierre Bourdieu, The Fietd ofCutturat Production: Essays on Art and Literature, trans. Randal Johnson (New York: Columbia UP, 1993), 53. Hereafter cited parenthetically as Bourdieu.

378

A Masterpiece Ripped from Oblivion

on die aura of the manuscript and on the backstory of the rediscovered suitcase.'^'' The New York r//;??'j-acknowledges this uneasy combination of a literary work of fiction with a sensational background story: "From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the back story of Suite franaise is irrelevant to the true business of criticism. But most readers don't view books from such Olympian heights, and neither, for that matter, do most critics. . . . In truth. Suitefranaise can stand up to the most rigorous and objective analysis, whe a knowledge of its history heightens the wonder and awe of'reading it" (Gray). Here, the journalist states that the literary work can impose itself through its unique aesthetic qualities (what Bourdieu cas the "work-of-artas-fetish" [258]) and that the backstory is simply an interesting, but unessential, addition to an exceptional work. Hlne Berr's journal occupies a simar positioning, halfway on the axis opposing symbolic capital (recognition of die literary qualities by a restricted audience) to temporal capital and mass-scale success. The French edition contains a preface by Patrick Modiano, a renowned literary writer whose novels often highlight the ambiguities of the Occupation. Modiano emphasizes the literary talent of Berr: "She was deeply infiuenced by English poetry and literature, and she would undoubtedly have become as delicate a writer as Kadierine Mansfield" {Journal, Taandier, 8).^! Of course, nobody can know what Berr would have become had she survived the war. In her journal, she shows admiration for writers such as Paul Valry, but she never expresses any ambition to publish her work. In fact, presenting Berr as an exceptional writer participates in die "'charismatic' ideology which is the ultimate basis of belief in the value of a work of art" (Bourdieu, 76). As in the case oi Suite franaise, tiie story of the discovery of Berr's journal has contributed to the mass-scale success of the book. As far as writing is concerned, the young Hlne Berr had little in common with the experienced woman of letters that was Irne
60. The Denol edition also reproduces a page of Nmirovsky's manuscript. Similarly, the Tallandier edition of Berr's journal contains a facsimile of her diary. 61. In the preface to the English version, d:ie translator David Bellos also notes that Berr "wrote with a clear-headed, elegant and heartrendingly beautiful account of a descent to hell" (Journal, MacLehose, 5).

Lisejalant

379

Nmirovsky in the early 1940s. Yet, in the twenty-first century, their final wridngs have been posidoned as Holocaust-related booksappeaHng both to a highbrow audience and the mass market. Without the fascinadng story of these manuscripts ripped from obHvion, it is doubtful that either Suite franaise or Berr's journal would have met with the same success. In January 2009, the French pubHsher Stock reedited the journal of JacqueHne MesnH-Amar, a Parisian Jewish woman who wrote about her despair after the arrest and deportafion of her husband. This reedidon contains a preface by Pierre AssouHne, who occupies a similar posifion in the Hterary field as Modiano.i^^ ^g t^g ^^^ ^j^j first been pubHshed in 1957 (without success), there was no backstory of a rediscovered manuscript. Despite the presfigious imprint and the preface by a renowned writer, die new edifion of MesnHAmar's diary was a reladve failure.^^ SimHarly, the absence of a sensadonal backstor)^ might explain why the reedidons of Nmirovsky's novels in the 1980s and 1990s did not meet a large audience. The acfive role of the second generafion was enough to get Nmirovsky back into printbut insufficient to ensure mass-market appeal. In other words. Suite franaise and Berr's journal exemplify the importance of paratextual elements in the producdon of internafional bestseHers.
University of British Columbia Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

62. Like Modiano, Assouline is published by Gallimard, and he has written about World War Two in France. 63. Around six thousand copies of Jacqueline Mesnil-Amar's diary have been sold since January 2009. This should be compared to the success of Hlne Berr's joumal: The Tallandier edition has sold approximately 93,000 copies since January 2008, and the paperback edition, around 51,000 copies since May 2009. These figures are for the French editions only. Edistat, http://www.edistat.com/ (accessed April 10, 2010).

Copyright of Clio is the property of Purdue University (for "Clio") on behalf of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne Campus and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.