Témoignage et fiction: les récits de rescapés dans la littérature de langue française (1945–2000) by Marie Bornand (review)

Abstract

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 257 wider social and political factors into account. Huysmans was not alone in the culture of his time in finding the figureofthe Virgin so compelling, and the reasons forthis go much deeper than accidents of familial upbringing. Nevertheless, Ziegler's extensive analyses, including his particularly welcome attention to lesser-known works such as Un dilemme and La Retraite de Monsieur Bougran, exploit the textual richness and complexity of Huysmans's oeuvre and make for illuminating reading. Birkbeck, University of London Brendan King Temoignage etfiction: les recitsde rescapes dans la litteraturede langue francaise (ig4$2000 ). By Marie Born and. Geneva: Droz. 2004. 256 pp. SwF 49.15; ?33.29. ISBN 2-600-00951-5. In the latterhalf ofthe twentieth century,in the wake ofthe Holocaust and the Second World War, the question of how literature can bear witness to seemingly unthinkable atrocities has remained vital. Temoignage etfiction explores how testimony has been negotiated via literary and fictional texts and attempts to locate these works within twentieth-century French literature and thought. The subtitle is perhaps misleading: the focus here is firmlyon the figure of the witness, rather than that of the 'survivor'. Marie Bornand divides her corpus into two broad categories or periods: a 'firstge? neration' of texts written by survivors who themselves experienced deportation first hand and a 'second generation' of texts which recount events less directly and often through the medium of fiction. The question of how literature can describe atrocities recurs through the analysis of both 'generations' of texts, leading to the unsurprising conclusion that invention is necessarily part of the 'truth' a written testimony can tell. The merits of this study lie in the range of French-language texts covered, from canonical writers such as Camus and Duras to much lesser-known writers such as Sylviane Roche and Esther Orner. Bornand does not restrict her analysis to texts relating to Holocaust narratives (although they are perhaps inevitably accorded most space within the book) but also discusses recent novels written in the light of totalitarian regimes (Kristof, Volodine, for example). The impressive range of texts included has its downside: the short space devoted to each sometimes results in a slightly superficial or limited textual analysis. Furthermore, there is no direct comparison of textual representations of the Holocaust or Nazi concentration camps with other historical atrocities, which might have been interesting (if fraught). Where Bornand's study is most compelling is in its account of the figure of the witness, ultimately displaced from both writer and text and cast onto the (unsuspecting) reader. Her model of the testimony enacted through the readerly encounter finds suggestive echoes in contemporary notions of testimony as performative exchange or encounter. The theorization of the position of the reader as witness within this literature of testimony does, however, require further careful elucidation. To conclude, as Bornand does, that a reader wrong-footed by textual ambiguity becomes a 'victim', 'traumatised by the text' (p. 225), seems to point to a troubling equation between the reader and the survivor and would need further evidence and justification at the very least in the context of a literature motivated by lived trauma. None the less, the interpretation of these literary testimonies as part of late twentieth-century French literary tradition is extremely welcome and this study will no doubt be of interest to many. University of Newcastle upon Tyne Kathryn Robson ...