Andrew Oliver (review)

Abstract

MLRy 100.2, 2005 507 Obermann: derniere version. By Etienne Pivert de Senancour. Ed. by Beatrice Didier. (Textes de litterature moderne et contemporaine, 48) Paris: Champion. 2003. 489PP- ISBN 2-7453-0451-8. Beatrice Didier, whose earliest contributions to Senancour studies appeared under the name of Le Gall all but half a century ago, continues to present the results of devoted scholarship. On this occasion she offersObermann in its final form. The no? velist was, characteristically enough, addicted to rewriting, even altering the spelling of his title to indicate the pronunciation he preferred. Senancour was always in search of the ideal formulation to encapsulate his sensibility and his responses to the natural world. Towards the end of his life he took a copy of the 1840 revised version of his novel and made a number of further alterations for an edition of his complete works that was never brought out. The changes confirmed tendencies already apparent in the 1840 text. They involved 'aussi bien [. . .] l'attenuationde l'antichristianismeque l'epuration du style' (p. 47). In the literary references too modifications were made, reflectingno doubt changes in the author's opinions as well as the tastes of a new ge? neration. As Didier recorded the variants in her thesis, LTmaginaire chez Senancour (2 vols (Paris: Corti, 1966), 11,536-50), this new edition does not come unannounced. All the same, it is very welcome. Few will dissent from Didier when she asserts that the 1804 Oberman, of which her Livre de Poche edition appeared in 1984, and the present 'ultime version' both have a validity of their own and merit individual study in their integrity.Whether all will follow her more general comments on traditional editing is, however, doubtful. 'La naissance de la genetique moderne', she declares, 'a remis en cause le principe de hierarchie.' Since a text must be regarded as 'en perpetuelle genese', there is no justification for attributing special authority to any particular version of it. Computers can display on their screens all the differentversions 'simultanement'. Consequently, 'le texte devient une sorte de "mobile" que le lecteur construit a son gre' (pp. 44-45). Perhaps. But can readers really take in simultaneously multiple formulations without situating them at least in some provisional context? And in their inescapable picking and choosing are they to have no surer guide than whim? Didier provides a helpful, wide-ranging introduction, and to Senancour's own two sets of notes she adds some explanations at the foot of the page. She also quotes variants at the end ofthe volume. All this extra material, valuable though it is, makes demands on readers. Runningheads would have been helpful. The rich bibliography is the key to a vast amount of material, but is spoilt by careless drafting.The omission of the pagination ofjournal articles is especially regrettable. None the less, this edition of Obermann will be of considerable interest to old friends of Senancour and help to win him the new ones he deserves. University of East Anglia Christopher Smith Reflexions sur Vautoreflexivite balzacienne. Ed. by Andrew Oliver and Stephane Vachon. Toronto: Centre d'etudes du xixe siecle Joseph Sable. 2002. 196 pp. $can29-95. ISBN 0-7727-8909-8. In order to substantiate the editors' claim that 'Balzac situe toujours inlassablement le lecteur face a l'acte meme de la representation' (p. 9), the twelve contributors to this volume show how the intertextual and intergeneric features of Balzac's writing create a critical distance between both form and content and enonciation and reader. Considerations of very differentkinds of intertext such as Adolphe forBeatrix and La Muse du departement (Aline Mura) and Scott, Cooper, the Judith myth, and Sterne for Le Dernier Chouan (Michael Tilby) show Balzac creating his own self-conscious fictions 508 Reviews with a critical relationship to his predecessors, to the genres they represent, and to the status of his own texts. Ellenore is both model and counter-model forBalzac's critique of historical realism; faire inevitably involves a measure of contre(-)faire in the sense of both distortion and disavowal. As a result, a number of other Balzacian texts critique the values they supposedly endorse, from the gold standard in Melmoth reconcilie...