Rien pour demain par Bruno Remaury

Abstract

Reviewed by: Rien pour demain par Bruno Remaury Joseph A. Reiter Remaury, Bruno. Rien pour demain. José Corti, 2020. ISBN 978-2-7143-1234-1. Pp. 174. Remaury, anthropologist, professor, editor, and fashion historian, has constructed a narrative that challenges categorization. It begins like a traditional World War I novel: four young Frenchmen off to the front, passing through destroyed villages and trying to survive the horror of trench warfare. Their story is continued in short episodes over the course of the book. After the first twenty pages their tale is interrupted, and multiple literary genres come into play: social history, scientific writing, essay, reportage, prose poem, art theory, and more. The digressions and transitions are sometimes seamless and other times jarring; the associations at times logical and other times random. The author employed this structure in his 2019 Le Monde horizontal, awarded a Prix Wepler, precisely for its innovative composition. That text treated the topic of the evolution of mankind's vision of the world moving from the celestial to the terrestrial. Rien pour demain takes up the mystery of time. Is it cyclical or linear? Infinite or finite? Slow or rapid? And so on. Fascinating speculations and musings are presented. The reader, too, meets a host of historic figures in addition to the author's creations: Nicolas Poussin, whose allegorical 1635 painting of the seasons, Dance to the Music of Time, depicts (according to Remaury) the conception of time until the Renaissance, "un monde qui tournait calmement au rythme des astres, de la fortune et des saisons, ronde des destins, sable qui s'écoule, bulles de savon" (30); Arthur Eddington, philosopher of science, popularizer of the theory of relativity and time's arrow, "cette flèche du temps, et qu'on l'appelle événement, devenir, progrès ou modernité ne change rien à l'affaire" (36); Louis Renault, who introduces the assembly line in France and whose vehicles launch the contemporary view of time, "Vitesse. Progrès. Monde glisse et glacé. Monde pressé" (66). We also find Daguerre, Monet, Baudelaire, the astronomer Herschel, the last empress of China, futurist artists, Chronos, and even Alice in Wonderland. Proust, however, deserved more than only being mentioned once in passing. Many of the episodes are very effective: the failed 1913 Renault factory strike, survival in the trenches, imperial etiquette in the Forbidden City, a character's fascination for crowds and flânerie, and the recurring attention to photography, "qui à ses débuts avait pour vocation de fixer le présent et qui était devenue très vite le théâtre de la mémoire" (100). The title of the book is the first element of the Dadaist mantra: "Rien pour demain, rien pour hier, tout pour aujourd'hui." The last pages of the book present Peter Pan, who has conquered time, who is "le visage même de la modernité […] il refuse le temps qui passe […] il ne veut pas vieillir […] il est amnésique, comme elle, il vit tout ramassé dans un point unique, celui d'un éternel présent" (150). Remaury's book is a collage that engages, instructs, amuses, and at times will puzzle the reader. Its structural inventiveness, wealth of information, and evocative prose do merit a reader's time. [End Page 239] Joseph A. Reiter Phillips Exeter Academy (NH), emeritus Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French