Parole vraie, parole vide: des Bienveillantes aux exécuteurs par Élise Lamy-Rested

Abstract

layers of interpretation and influence within works of literature. For his contribution, Houppermans examines networks of meaning in Proust’s novel created by the crosspollination of proper names and by the myriad transformations of the notions of frais and genre. Sandra Cheilan’s enlightening study identifies the episode of the“bonbons inventés par Siraudin” in Huysmans’s À rebours as “l’hypotexte” (85) of the iconic madeleine scene of involuntary memory. She artfully follows the transformation that Des Esseintes’s candies undergo in the Recherche, underscoring their “dimension métapoétique”(94) that links writing and intimacy, narration and the life of the mind, and ultimately, creation and memory. For his part, Bruno Viard analyses the Proustian narrator’s rejection of love and everyday life at the end of the novel and his“saut dans l’Art pur”(98).Viard suggests that the protagonist’s childhood experiences of alternating jealousy and boredom with his mother, together with his gradual forgetting of the “valeurs vitales” (107) embodied by his grandmother, become, in the mind of the mature narrator, characteristics of human existence in general, thereby rendering literature more satisfying and authentic than ordinary life. Edward Bizub outlines a current debate surrounding the Recherche, as to whether it exemplifies principles of neuroscience or those of psychoanalysis, whereas Mauricio R. Narváez focuses on the esthetic and narratological role of l’escalier in the novel. In a fascinating comparison , Sabine van Wesemael deftly presents the works of Michel Houellebecq as a “commentaire méta-discursif” on Proust’s “récit de vie” in the Recherche (144). She accentuates the authors’ shared objectives, such as their exposure of the vanity of human ambitions,their banalization of transgression,and their depiction of the impossibility of communication, especially in matters of love. She throws light as well on their many differences, for instance, their opposing conceptions of the moi social and the moi profond, in addition to the ways in which their language and literary style reflect their respective optimism or pessimism about the human condition. The volume concludes with its customary comptes rendus, this time including issues of the Bulletin Marcel Proust and the Bulletin d’informations proustiennes on the centenary of the publication of Du côté de chez Swann. Brandeis University (MA) Hollie Markland Harder Lamy-Rested, Élise. Parole vraie, parole vide: des Bienveillantes aux exécuteurs. Paris: Garnier, 2014. ISBN 978-2-8124-2042-9. Pp. 182. 26 a. How can an ordinary person become a genocidal killer? Or, to broaden the perspective ,“comment tout un peuple [...] peut-il en venir à accepter de mettre en œuvre les moyens pour exterminer un second?” (30). These are the fundamental questions Élise Lamy-Rested seeks to answer by considering Jonathan Littell’s Les bienveillantes, a fictional autobiography of a former SS officer. Published in 2006, the novel brought overnight fame for its author and raised a considerable controversy. In this regard, 238 FRENCH REVIEW 90.4 Reviews 239 Lamy-Rested’s essay can be seen as an attempt at bringing the debate to a close. Her purpose is to“signer l’échec du projet théorique de Littell, qui n’est pas pour autant un échec littéraire”(101). The central issue to be considered is to know what exactly does the“je”of the narrator stand for. In this regard, Littell’s fictional account suffers from an unsolvable contradiction: on the one hand, the SS officer is an individual psyche that is an integral, organic part of a specific State apparatus; on the other, according to a second thesis implicit in the novel:“les génocides ont la même cause et les ‘bourreaux ’ parlent d’une seule voix”(105). Consequently, Lamy-Rested seeks to develop a new conceptual model, a third thesis that would reconcile the “anthropo-psychological ” explanatory model with the socio-political and historically contextualized approach. Her study proceeds on the basis of several well-known precedents that include Stanley Milgram’s experiments as well as three studies of genocide: Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (2007), Harald Welzer’s Täter: Wie aus ganz normalen Menschen Massenmörder werden (2005), and...