Tempête par J.M.G. Le Clézio

Abstract

in chapter two: he is seventeen, in Berlin with a traveling circus, fresh from the Baltic provinces. It is just before the Great War. Makarius’s physique is distinguishing: he is tall and lanky, yet a force emanates from him. He becomes more and more successful at interpreting the macabre, “l’esthétique dépouillée, celle des cris et du désespoir de l’homme seul devant la machine, la ville tentaculaire, la guerre et l’aliénation capitaliste” (65). He perfects his career through observation. Even as he is recruited into the war, every gesture he observes is recorded for future use. The author alternates chapters to develop the life of Makarius, and to have him discussed in his life by a painter friend, and an engraver who wishes to immortalize Makarius in etchings, especially his danse macabre for which the mime is renowned. Otto Gorz and Carlos Schulz talk of the role of exile, despair, imprisonment and language on the body of work personified by Makarius. The reader learns that the mime has gone from being shell-shocked in World War I to becoming a performer in 1920s decadent Berlin. The engraver Schulz journeys to Brazil, Germany, and to other parts of his native Italy to research his subject, encountering information on the philosophers, countesses, Herculean dwarves, seductive gypsy girls, pathologists, and more, whose lives have in some way been touched by Makarius. Schulz discovers the importance of religion, politics, and ideology on the programs presented by Makarius. The definitions of what constitutes art and the artist are discussed in depth. Although Makarius has been inspired by Chaplin, as well as Russian and German cinema, the climate of 1930s Germany is not conducive to artists. Makarius loses his freedom, is imprisoned, and beaten in a concentration camp. The lives of Schulz the engraver and Makarius the interpreter of the danse macabre become inextricably entwined. Because of what he discovers in the life of Makarius, Schultz is able to create his most powerful and original etchings:“Aussi, vivant de façon vicariante les aventures qu’il concevait pour le mime, Carlos assouvissait ses propres désirs d’aventure sans devoir sortir de son atelier”(368). Makarius’s escape from the camp does not bring with it the hoped for relief. The pain of remembered humiliation leads to drink. The final experience of attempted revenge on the Fascists, his participation in the Spanish Civil War, takes him completely out of action. He exists for another dozen years, but does he really? There is no coming back from witnessing so much horror. Kokis’s novel is a long, slow, well-researched read by a polyglot, filled with authentic details related to engraving, war, politics, or performers of the time. It is certainly worth the effort. Santa Rosa Alliance Française (CA) Davida Brautman Le Clézio, J.M.G. Tempête. Paris: Gallimard, 2014. ISBN 978-2-07-014535-5. Pp. 240. 19,50 a. Two independent and intense stories take place in this volume: the first one on the island of Udo in Japan and the second—for the most part—in the suburbs of Paris. 224 FRENCH REVIEW 88.4 Reviews 225 They recount the lives of two adolescent girls, June and Rachel, whose quest to find their identity is complicated by the burden of traumatic family experience. It is a quest that also demands that the young girls come to terms with displacement and exile, two of the favorite topics of Le Clézio. In Tempête—whose title is given to the book— June, a fatherless young girl, is profoundly shaped by her mother’s life and by her relationship with Monsieur Kyo, another narrator, a “foreigner” as she calls him, who has landed on the island in an effort to escape his own traumatic and tempestuous past. In Une femme sans identité, Rachel, an orphan girl, is struggling with her own identity in the absence of official papers and most importantly, of a family. Rachel is trapped in the projects of Paris without any point of reference, material or psychological , and without anyone to turn to. The two young women are profoundly affected by their...