Caïn et Abel: Rivalité et responsabilité by Véronique Léonard-Roques

Abstract

502 Reviews the livesof theiroffspring,even ifthese descendants know nothing of them.Chapter 5 then turns to evaluate this theory in relation toCharlotte Delbo's Holocaust testi mony Spectres, mes compagnons, positing Delbo's text as a work haunted by secrets the author cannot know, for they are inherited from those around her. Despite the consistent quality of each chapter,Davis's reading inChapter 7 ofDerrida as a variety ofmelancholic, blocking and protesting against the normal process ofmourning as an ethical obligation to the deceased other, stands out as a particular high point. Its power stems asmuch from itsclose reading ofChaquefois unique, lafin dumonde and Beliers as from itsexploration ofDerrida's impossible endeavour. Colin Davis's Haunted Subjects is essential reading foranyone researching ghosts literal,metaphorical, theoretical, and literary. It also holds a broader interest for scholars of theory, identity,and twentieth-century culture in general. It is intricate, innovative, compelling and will, I suspect, rapidly become seminal. SWANSEA UNIVERSITY KATE GRIFFITHS Cain etAbel: rivalite et responsabilite. By VERONIQUE LEONARD-RoQUES. (Figures et Mythes) Monaco: Editions du Rocher. 2007. 285 pp. EI8. ISBN 978-2-268 06175-7. Just as most accidents happen in the home, so most violence is intrafamilial. Cain and Abel aremuch more than two individuals. They stand forany formof brotherly enmity,whether in the family, the neighbourhood, or in themisnamed civil wars (Wars of theRoses, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Iraq). Thus, theirarchetypal story is forever topical. As its setting embraces the firstcity after the firstgarden, italso cor ralsGreen hobby-horses. Veronique Leonard-Roques notes that theGenesis account is virtually devoid of psychological motivation. Her book centres on the verymany post-Genesis writers who have rushed to fillthatgap. Raising Cain (and prostrating him) has been amajor divertimento, or recycling-plant, for millennia and all over the place. Our fascinationwith its inherentdrama seems toderive fromour insatiable lust forpolarities, forbinary oppositions. Genesis offersus the first murderer, and the first city-planner. In theoriginating hotchpotch, then, theBible kicks off in ambivalence, holey narrative. The supposedly all-loving God practises inexplicable favouritism. The verymark set on the guilty Cain is ambiguous: a stigma, but also a buffer-state against his being killed in turn. In today's terms,he was tagged but declared bullet proof. God has itboth ways (but 'c'est sonmetier'). All these anomalies have incited writers toembroider theirown variants on the central text. The antagonisms include: the farmervs the shepherd/cattleman (familiar tous from Westerns), technology vs nature, insurgent against conservative, and sedentary con trastedwith nomadic. In the film East ofEden, every right-minded cinema-goer surely roots for the brooding Caleb (his being James Dean helps) in his violent punching of his priggish siblingAaron, complacently confident of divine favour.Over history, Cain and Abel have taken turns at being thevillain or thevictim, though Cain prob ably comes offbest overall. Itwas mainly a Romantic topos (boosted principally by Byron and Nerval) tomake themurderous Cain the hero, rebel, exile, genius, and in so doing to invert the biblical myth. Indeed theRomantic urge was to present him as better than his unjust Maker. Leonard-Roques points to theparodic rewriteof the myth inTournier's 'La Famille Adam' (in Le Coq de bruyere). Tournier then twists again (as he does every summer) inLe Roi des aulnes, where the dubious hero, Abel Tiffauges, symbolizes thewandering Jews and gypsies imprisoned then slaughtered by the Cain-like Nazis, locked in their ideology of Blut und Boden. At this novel's apotheosis, however, thewarring halves of Cain and Abel are reunified in the pro tagonist. In 'La Famille Adam', Cain eventually represents an avatar of theOriginal MLR, I03.2, 2008 503 Oneness (the Platonic Androgyne), melding the best ofmale and female elements. Comparably, forCamus inLe Premier Homme, themythic split is made to lead to the reconciliation of enemies (in this case, Arabs and colons). A common leitmotif is theantithesis of theblack or brown Cain and thepure-white Abel. One tradition, illustrated byHugo, posits Cain as the son of Satan, and harps on the eye of conscience hounding him everywhere likeBig Brother. A furtherem broidering is to see the twomen as twins or doubles. Yet another plays 'Cherchez la femme', and holds that thebrothers were fightingover awoman, sometimes...