“Infra-noir” un et multiple: un groupe surréaliste entre Bucarest et Paris, 1945-1947 éd. par Monique Yaari

Abstract

cœur simple or the use of argot in Les misérables—it is in elaborating how the latter two modes gain prominence over time that Proses du monde presents intriguing possibilities for rethinking the dynamic linking history, society, and the literary imagination. Starting with George Sand’s halting quest for a stylistic framework that would accommodate both the popular language of her “democratic” characters and the narrative voice of an educated écrivaine-menuisier, Proses du monde traces the evolution of novelistic style from the privileging of a common national language in the experimental novels of Zola, to the écriture blanche associated with Camus and RobbeGrillet , to the elliptical sentences of Modiano’s amnesiac narrators, to Annie Ernaux’s signature écriture plate. The chapter“Migrations”examines how stylistic choices made by twentieth-century Jewish writers like Albert Cohen and Irène Némirovsky converted the limited social capital of immigrants into cultural assets that improved their standing within an increasingly democratic civil and literary society. In contrast, the final two chapters document the eclipse of the roman engagé and the postwar rise of a formalisme triomphant, which reflected a desire for greater artistic autonomy on the part of a generation of writers reluctant to engage with a recent history marked by the horrors of the Shoah (133–34). While it contains numerous previously-published articles that can stand alone,Wolf’s challenging study deserves to be read in its entirety. It rewards the patient reader while it lays the critical groundwork for a reassessment of the longue durée of French literary history. Davidson College (NC) Carole A. Kruger Yaari, Monique, éd. “Infra-noir,” un et multiple: un groupe surréaliste entre Bucarest et Paris, 1945–1947. Berne: Peter Lang, 2014. ISBN 978-3-0343-1762-7. $74. The surrealist group of Bucharest has long remained in the shadows of the history of the avant-garde. As this illuminating volume demonstrates, this obscurity is due to the exigencies of history and an aesthetic commitment to secrecy and opacity. In her concise introduction,Yaari provides the historical context: cut off from their Parisian counterparts during the war, the group saw an intense moment of literary and artistic production between 1945 and 1947, only to disperse after the arrival of a repressive communist regime. This volume’s most valuable contribution is to bring to light that work from 1945–47, reproduced here in a substantial appendix. The reader encounters firsthand the group’s varied written and artistic oeuvre and their purposefully ambivalent relationship to language. For if the choice to write in French signaled a desire to communicate beyond Romania’s borders, these works also resist simple understanding, blurring boundaries between writer and subject, individual and group. The organization of the volume’s essays exemplifies the “un et multiple” principle. Three bookending contributions analyze the works the group signed collectively. Jonathan 248 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 249 Eburne’s opening consideration of the 1946 exhibition L’infra-noir brings into sharp focus the political dimension of the group: as he contends, their language of secrecy and conspiracy represented not just an aesthetic position but“une condition d’obscurité plus étendue”targeting power itself (34). Two closing essays on cinema and the visual arts establish important ties to André Breton’s surrealism. Régine-Mihal Friedman’s chapter on the group’s praise of the 1942 Italian film Malombra precisely links this text to surrealist fascination for cinema and the roman noir. Jacqueline ChénieuxGendron ’s analysis of “La salle nocturne,” the group’s contribution to the 1947 Exposition internationale du surréalisme, uses this experiential installation to suggest how their ultimate intent was to push the limits of surrealism’s poetic art. This desire to keep surrealism in “un état de changement et développement révolutionnaire continuel” (75) is underlined in three central essays on the group’s key members: Ghérasim Luca, Trost, and Paul Paun. Through extended (sometimes laborious) close readings and analyses of visual works, each contributor shows how the writers reinvigorated essential notions of 1930s surrealism (notably mad love, objective chance, and dreamwork). Krzysztof Fijalkowski demonstrates how, for Luca, desire becomes a motor for artistic production...