Representations of Marginalized Populations in French WWI Literature: Muted Voices (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) 1666916366, 9781666916362

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Representations of Marginalized Populations in French WWI Literature

AFTER THE EMPIRE: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France Series Editor Valérie K. Orlando, University of Maryland Advisory Board Robert Bernasconi, Memphis University; Claire H. Griffiths, University of Chester, UK; Alec Hargreaves, Florida State University; Chima Korieh, Rowan University; Mildred Mortimer, University of Colorado, Boulder; Obioma Nnaemeka, Indiana University; Alison Rice, University of Notre Dame; Kamal Salhi, University of Leeds; Tracy D. Sharpley-Whiting, Vanderbilt University; Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, Tulane University Recent Titles Representations of Marginalized Populations in French WWI Literature: Muted Voices by Kathy Comfort Reimagining Resistance in Gisèle Pineau’s Works edited by Lisa Connell and Delphine Gras Abdellah Taïa’s Queer Migrations: Non-places, Affect, and Temporalities by Denis Provencher and Siham Bouamer Global Revolutionary Aesthetics and Politics after Paris ‘68 by Martin Munro, William Cloonan, Barry Falk, and Christian Weber Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market: Ferment on the Fringes by Vivan I. Steemers Ethnic Minority Women’s Writing in France: Publishing Practices and Identity Formation (1998–2005) by Claire Mouflard Theory, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Francophone World: Filiations Past and Future by Rajeshwari S. Vallury Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation by Kathy Comfort Paris and the Marginalized Author: Treachery, Alienation, Queerness, and Exile by Valérie K. Orlando and Pamela A. Pears French Orientalist Literature in Algeria, 1845–1882: Colonial Hauntings by Sage Goellner Corporeal Archipelagos: Writing the Body in Francophone Oceanian Women’s Literature by Julia Frengs Spaces of Creation: Transculturality and Feminine Expression in Francophone Literature by Allison Connolly Women Writers of Gabon: Literature and Herstory by Cheryl Toman

Backwoodsmen as Ecocritical Motif in French Canadian Literature: Connecting Worlds in the Wilds by Anne Rehill Intertextual Weaving in the Work of Linda Lê: Imagining the Ideal Reader by Alexandra Kurmann Front Cover Iconography and Algerian Women’s Writing: Heuristic Implications of the Recto-Verso Effect by Pamela A. Pears

Representations of Marginalized Populations in French WWI Literature Muted Voices Kathy Comfort

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www​.rowman​.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on File Names: Comfort, Kathy, 1962- author.   Title: Representations of marginalized populations in French WWI literature     : muted voices / Kathy Comfort.   Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, 2023. | Series: After the empire :     the Francophone world and postcolonial France | Includes bibliographical     references and index.  Identifiers: LCCN 2023039470 (print) | LCCN 2023039471 (ebook) | ISBN     9781666916362 (cloth) | ISBN 9781666916379 (ebook)   Subjects: LCSH: French literature--20th century--History and criticism. |     World War, 1914-1918--Literature and the war. | Marginality, Social, in     literature. | Psychic trauma in literature. | LCGFT: Literary criticism.  Classification: LCC PQ307.W3 C66 2023  (print) | LCC PQ307.W3  (ebook) |     DDC 840.9/00912--dc23/eng/20231010  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039470 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039471 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Acknowledgments ix Introduction

1

Chapter 1: Psychosomatic Symptomatology as Character Development in Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 Chapter 2: Through a Woman’s Eyes: Colette’s War Reporting

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Chapter 3: Colonial Boots on the Ground: Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté 73 Chapter 4: Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée: A Prose Collage Chapter 5: Exorcising Guilt in Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts Conclusion

91 123

153

Bibliography Index



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175

About the Author



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Acknowledgments

I am forever grateful to so many people who have helped me with this book. First, I would like to thank the Office of the Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation at the University of Arkansas for awarding me an Arts and Humanities Seed Funding Grant to help this project get off the ground. Holly Buchanan at Lexington Books has provided the guidance and encouragement I needed to bring this project to fruition. I would not be here without the love and indulgence of my family, who are always there when I need to laugh, vent, or simply talk. My biggest thanks of all go to my dearest friend, Hope Christiansen without whom this book would not exist. Despite her recent personal challenges, she has always provided invaluable feedback, proofreading, and moral support. Through it all, she has been a model for grace, determination, and kindness. Permission to reprint previously published material has been granted for the following chapters: Chapter 1: “Physiological Metaphors of Psychological Suffering in Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14.” L’Érudit Franco-Espagnol 16 (2022): 3–16. Chapter 2: “The Real Poilus: Colette’s War Dogs.” Modern and Contemporary France 28, no. 1 (2020): 87–98.

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Introduction

More than one hundred years after the armistice in November 1918, World War I continues to intrigue researchers and the public at large on both sides of the Atlantic. Asked by a reporter from the network France 24 in 2013 why the centennial observance of the Armistice had aroused such interest in France, historian Nicolas Offenstadt replied that the country is “still feeling the consequences in almost every aspect of our lives. For ordinary people, memories of the war remain strong, anchored as they are in narratives of millions of French families” (quoted in Todd 2013). Indeed, historians Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker theorize that the unflagging interest in the Great War in France is a result of unfinished national mourning (Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker 2014, 13). Literature and film have played an important role in the public perception of the Great War because, as Pierre Schontjes asserts, “à côté des histoires individuelles de parents, longtemps racontées dans les familles, ce sont les fictions qui déterminent encore dans une très large mesure notre vision de la Grande Guerre” [“apart from the individual stories of relatives, which have been told in families for years, it is the fictional accounts that to a large extent continue to determine our view of the Great War”]1 (Schontjes 2009, 47).2 Since 1914, an untold number of novels and memoirs of the Great War have appeared in print and countless cinematic works have been released.3 By all accounts, then, there is no dearth of artistic representations of World War I. In this study, I examine the way in which seven authors portray World War I: Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 (1935), Colette’s Les Heures longues: 1914–1917 (1917) and La Chambre éclairée (1921), Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté (1926), Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée (1946), and Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts (1923). Each of these authors experienced the Great War firsthand, but their works are by no means strictly factual retellings of the events they witnessed. Instead, these are fictionalized literary accounts that convey the authors’ respective views of the war. I see these works as diverse “fronts” of the war that include, but are not restricted to, the military one. These fronts, at once physical and psychological, add nuance to the traditional dichotomy of military front and the home front. 1

2

Introduction

The front in Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 is the occupied territory of northern France, with annexes in Belgium and in the forced labor camps in Germany. One of the few novels to shed light on the lives of civilians in the occupied Nord, the work is set in the fictional city of Herlem, which Van der Meersch situates mere meters from the battlefield. An epic narrative à la Zola based on the author’s childhood under the German occupation, Invasion 14 offers us insight into the suffering and deprivation noncombatants endured, including shortages of food, fuel, and medicine. Van der Meersch finds inspiration for the development of his characters in the novels of Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola, in particular their use of the precepts of physiognomy. Allusions to protagonists from La Comédie humaine and Les Rougon-Macquart further establish the debt the author of Invasion 14 owes to the nineteenth-century French realist novel. Colette’s front consists of the space inhabited by women, children, and animals in World War I. Her journalistic essays, initially published in the French national newspapers, then brought together in Les Heures longues and La Chambre éclairée, enrich our understanding of life in France during the Great War by chronicling the way that it impacted noncombatants. Her reporting from the town of Verdun as the battle raged just steps away and her essays on love in wartime remind us of the emotional and psychological challenges to which civilians and poilus4 alike were subjected. Starvation and disease were rampant in the towns near the war zone, and the residents living near the front lines were also under constant threat of forced labor, deportation, rape, and execution. Women who were impregnated because of a sexual assault by enemy troops were left to abort their unwanted pregnancy or to raise a child referred to at the time as “l’enfant du barbare” [“child of the barbarian”]. These essays are especially timely because the stories Colette tells find their twenty-first-century equivalent in war-torn Ukraine. Bakary Diallo’s memoir Force-Bonté is one of the rare firsthand accounts by a former tirailleur sénégalais, that is, a member of the French West African colonial troops who served in the Great War. Diallo recounts his experiences through the prism of pulaaku, the value system of his native Peuhl culture that prescribes the individual’s interactions with others. The tirailleurs’ front figuratively stretches from the battlefields of the western front to the camps in southern France where they spent winters and, finally, to civilian life in Paris. Of particular interest are Diallo’s observations on the reception the French military authorities and civilians reserved for the tirailleurs. This perspective affords us a more subtle portrayal of the tirailleurs, who were often reduced to racist tropes in the literature and newspaper reports of the time. Diallo enhances his narrative with metaphors inspired by his time as a shepherd in

Introduction

3

Senegal, displaying an artistry that was later confirmed by his poetry, which he wrote in Pulaar and then translated into French. The front that Cendrars represents in La Main coupée is as expansive as Diallo’s, for it encompasses the second-line trenches, the countryside surrounding the battlefields, and interwar Paris. Managing to create a respectful portrait of his comrades while also delivering a scathing critique of career military officers, Cendrars emphasizes la petite guerre dans la grande [“the little war in the big one”], namely, the often-unauthorized small-scale military operations that exist outside of those choreographed by military tacticians. His opposition to the glorification of the war means that combat largely remains at the margins of his narrative, which is also the case for the works examined in the other chapters. Cendrars uses the cubist technique of collage, specifically, an upended chronology, not simply to underscore the narrator’s mental state but to depict the chaos of combat. In Le Réveil des morts, Dorgelès zooms in on the front delineated by the newly reopened Red Zone, parts of the countryside bordering battlefields that were so contaminated by the detritus of war as to be uninhabitable to this day. He shows us the hardships faced by returning veterans who seek to reintegrate into society as well as by those the residents who returned to reclaim their homes in the devastated region. Le Réveil des morts is at once a call to arms for veterans’ rights and an exposé of the rampant corruption during the restoration of the countryside and villages abutting the former battlefields. The psychological effects of war are front and center in Dorgelès’s novel, culminating in a nightmare featuring poilus rising from their battlefield graves to exact revenge on those who wronged them. The best-known French World War I novels tend to be those written by and focusing on male combatants, the majority of whom were white French men from the middle or upper classes, to the near exclusion of divergent perspectives. Set at the front, the typical novel in the genre concentrates on military engagement while also focusing on the camaraderie of the trenches. The writer and literary critic Jean Norton Cru, a former poilu, compiled a list of World War I novels he deemed authentic based on his personal research into the events the novels recounted. His Témoins: Essai d’analyse et de critique des souvenirs des combattants édités en français de 1915 à 1928 [Witnesses: Criticism and Analysis of Combatant Memoirs Edited in French from 1915 to 1928] reveals a preference for historically accurate works recounting the combat experience of French infantrymen with little embellishment or artistry. Cru’s evaluative criteria determined the expectations of generations of historians, literary critics, and the public regarding World War I novels. The genre includes a number of texts detailing the formative events that transform a young civilian into a warrior. One prominent example is Dorgelès’s first novel, Les Croix de bois [Wooden Crosses], published in

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Introduction

1919, four years before Le Réveil des morts. Dorgelès’s novel is the comingof-age story of the protagonist-narrator Jacques Larcher. Representative of the conventional novel on the Great War, Les Croix de bois emphasizes friendships forged among the poilus while at the same time reminding readers of the horrors of the trenches. Perhaps the most famous French novel set on the western front, and a touchstone of sorts for the genre, is Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu [Under Fire]. First published in 1916, the anti-war novel offers up a devastating account of the cataclysm of modern warfare. Catharine Savage Brosman argues that Le Feu’s gritty characters and frequently unsettling descriptions are a carryover of Émile Zola’s naturalistic novels. Like Zola, Barbusse had an eye for detail, his goal in part to accurately preserve for posterity the hell on earth that he lived through. “Henri Barbusse, sometimes called the Zola of the trenches,” Brosman explains, “echoed his great predecessor’s descriptions of the mines in Germinal. But the war, more violent, ghastly, and immense than even Zola’s floods, mines, and Paris Commune, required pushing the boundaries of naturalism even further” (Brosman 2005, 170). There is no shortage of disturbing scenes in Le Feu. In one, Barbusse the narrator breaks the news to Corporal Marchal of a death in their unit: “Le petit Godefroy, tu le connais? le milieu du corps emporté; il s’est vidé de sang sur place, en un instant, comme un baquet qu’on renverse: petit comme il était, c’était extraordinaire tout le sang qu’il avait; il a fait un ruisseau d’au moins cinquante mètres dans la tranchée” [“Little Godefroy, you know him? The middle of his body was blown away; he bled out on the spot, in a second, like a basin you knock over: it was crazy the amount of blood the little guy had; it made a stream at least fifty meters long in the trench”] (Barbusse 2007, 54). Similarly, the first-person narrator of Maurice Genevoix’s novel Les Éparges, which takes its title from a small town in the Meuse (1923), brought together with four other novels under the title Ceux de 14 [The Men of 1914] (1949), describes in graphic detail the death of one of his underlings as he tries to lead his squadron to safety: “J’en ai un qui reçoit une balle derrière le crâne, au moment où il va franchir une clôture en fil de fer; il tombe sur le fil et reste là, cassé en deux, les pieds à terre, la tête et les bras pendant de l’autre côté” [“I had one who was hit behind his skull by a bullet just as he was going to climb over a fence; he fell on the wire and remained there, broken in two, his feet on the ground and his head and arms hanging on the other side”] (Genevoix 2013, book 1, chap. 4). These two brief examples, typical of the conventional French World War I novel, stand in direct contrast with the novels I examine. In short, they provide a baseline of sorts for analyzing novels treating those on the margins of history. Le Feu, Ceux de 14, and other famous World War I novels are almost exclusively focused on combat experience, with little if any mention of

Introduction

5

marginalized groups who were also directly impacted by the war. Literary narratives chronicling the stories of noncombatants or combatants of color tend to be overlooked by the public and by literary scholars. Civilians are often simply mentioned in passing, an example of “local color,” as in Jean Giraudoux’s Lectures pour une ombre [Readings for a Shadow] (1917), when he describes the pleasure of being greeted at the train station by grateful Alsatians after months deprived of female companionship. But we gain no insight into these woman’s stories in this passage for they are little more than eroticized objects, not individuals with their own experiences of war. Women’s voices in general, along with those of children, colonial troops, disabled veterans, and former combatants returning to civilian society are not often a part of the conventional World War I novel. In an effort to decolonize the French World War I literary canon, historian Margaret Higonnet proposes “[reversing] the telescope” to look more broadly at war narratives in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Great War’s impact” (Higonnet, 2018, 222). Advocating for a reversal of the “Eurocentric focus of our literary histories” Higonnet proposes “focusing on a particular moment whose temporal fuzziness and global extension demand conceptual rethinking, and . . . by testing that rethinking against examples from the ‘periphery,’ or from far-flung locations in a common event” (Higonnet, 2018, 221). Building on Higonnet’s method of “decentering” the masculine focus of the World War I narrative, I bring attention to those whose voices have not been heard as much as they should be. The novels under scrutiny here delve into the experiences of individuals and groups from the “periphery,” to borrow Higonnet’s term, that is, members of groups not ordinarily a part of the broader discussion of literary depictions of World War I. At first glance, the works presented in the coming chapters appear to have little in common beyond their placement at the periphery of the French World War I novel. However, I contend that each may be read as a trauma testimony. Trauma, Michelle Balaev asserts, “refers to a person’s emotional response to an overwhelming event that disrupts previous ideas of an individual’s sense of self and the standards by which one evaluates society” (Balaev 2008, 150). Balaev further notes that, in fictionalized accounts of trauma, the protagonist typically undergoes a personal trauma but “also functions to represent an event that was experienced by a group of people, either historically based or prospectively imagined” (Balaev 2008, 156). Time and place are certainly key elements in the trauma narrative, as is, perhaps less intuitively, culture, since, as Balaev puts it, “if trauma is represented in relation to the intersection of personal and political identities and experiences, then the individual experiences in the novel are often the result of larger cultural forces” (Balaev 2008, 156). Indeed, a close reading confirms that the way characters react to trauma is determined by their marginality rather than simply their

6

Introduction

personalities. Balaev’s point echoes the Zolian determination which is central to my reading of Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 and which also comes into play in Cendrars’s La Main coupée. World War I, as we have seen, is seared into France’s collective memory even though it took place over a hundred years ago. The seeming freshness of the memory of the conflict in France appears to be an exception since, according to psychiatrist Judith Herman, “the knowledge of horrible events periodically intrudes into public awareness but is rarely retained for long. Denial, repression, and dissociation operate on a social as well as an individual level” (Herman 1997, 2). By all accounts, the authors whose works I analyze in this study understood the importance of preserving stories of the non-poilus impacted by the Great War. For those writers who based their works on their own experiences, Diallo and Dorgelès in particular, literary creation may be seen, at least in part, as a therapeutic exercise. Herman has observed that her trauma patients progress through three stages in the healing process, “establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection between survivors and their community” (Herman 1997, 3). Literary testimonies of trauma are, of course, primarily concerned with the final two stages. To be sure, “establishing safety” may be understood as emotional as well as physical, that is, one must feel that others will not judge or deny one’s experiences before sharing one’s trauma. In a modest way, the present project contributes to the goal of reconnecting the fragments of World War I survivors by bringing together the narratives that shed light on what those on the periphery endured, in effect, re-centering war narratives to include the muted voices. Despite the wide-ranging literary influences among the pieces I have brought together here, each author privileges nature in their depiction of the Great War. Nature imagery, along with figurative language and other rhetorical devices, such as a jumbled chronology, take the place of graphic descriptions of violence. Like Zola in the Rougon-Macquart, Van der Meersch trains his gaze on the human tragedy of war, leaving little room for descriptions of the environment. Colette, widely appreciated for her lyrical descriptions of nature in her fictional works, endows her journalistic essays with the same type of imagery. Cendrars offers us a view of nature transformed by war as well as prose “snapshots” of those with whom he formed the friendships that defined him as a man. Nature is an integral part of La Main coupée, a backdrop of sorts for the narrative but also a casualty of war. Cendrars’s choice of title foreshadows a recounting of bodily mutilation that never happens. Finally, Jacques le Vaudoyer, the protagonist of Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts, affords us insight into the environment as a victim of trauma, a representation that is ahead of its time.

Introduction

7

Place is a corollary of sorts to the use of nature imagery in trauma narratives. More than simply a geographical setting, place in trauma novels is, as Balaev puts it, both a “physical location of experience” and an “entity that organizes memories, feelings, and meaning at the level of the physical environment” (Balaev 2008, 161). In Colette’s essays, nature serves as artistic inspiration as well as a refuge from the violence of war, a use that harkens back to the French romantics. In Force-Bonté, place has a sociohistorical aspect because the narrator is fighting to defend the land of the colonizer. Although he finds evidence of the République’s humanistic values, he is nonetheless confronted with racism in the French army as well as in civilian life. Destroying the boundaries of time and space, Cendrars shifts between past and present and changes locales from the trenches to interwar Paris. Though disorienting, his technique resembles the racing thoughts that manifest during a panic attack, one of the symptoms of trauma. By contrast, Dorgelès shows us the destruction wrought by modern warfare, with its immense firepower and toxic chemicals. Humans in Le Réveil are both a part of nature and a danger to it. Literary historian Michèle Touret observes that literature frees the veteran from the silence imposed on him by allowing him to convey “une parole personnelle fragile et incertaine car perdue dans un événement global qui échappe à la compréhension” [“a voice that is fragile and personal because it is lost in a global event that escapes comprehension”] (Touret 2010, 103). This is true for all the authors in this study, former combatants and civilians alike, because they present their respective fronts according to their artistic sensibilities. A close reading of the seven works in this study shows us the interconnections between these disparate authors, particularly their use of nature imagery and intertextuality. These texts on the periphery of French World War I novels afford us a broader view of the genre’s diversity. NOTES 1. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this book are my own. 2. Henri Barbusse’s Under Fire, one of the most celebrated novels of World War I, was published in 1916, before the end of the conflict. Roland Dorgelès’s Wooden Crosses (1919), Robert Graves’s Good-Bye To All That (1929), Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (1929), Jean Giono’s To The Slaughterhouse (1930), and Gabriel Chevallier’s Fear (1930) are just a handful of the myriad works that make up the World War I literary canon. What is more, this brief list includes only American, English, and French works; countless others equally worthy of inclusion were published by former combatants from virtually all Allied and Axis countries. In the years leading up to the centenary marking the end of World War I in 2018, there was a flurry of new and reissued works on the Great War, including Philippe Claudel’s By A Slow

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Introduction

River (2005), Karen Gettert Shoemaker’s The Meaning Of Names (2014), Daniel Mason’s The Winter Soldier (2018), Pierre Echenoz’s 1914: A Novel (2014), Pierre Lemaître’s See You Up There (2014), Anna Hope’s Wake (2014), Jean-Christophe Rufin’s Le Collier rouge (2015), Andrea Molecini’s Not All Bastards Are from Vienna (2011), Thierry Bourcy, La Côte 512: Une enquête de Célestin Louise, flic et soldat dans la guerre de 14–18 [Hill 512: An Investigation by Célestin Louis, Cop and Solider in World War I] (2016). 3. The first version of Abel Gance’s seminal film J’Accuse (1919, 1938), discussed further in chapter 5 of this study, was filmed during the war and featured active-duty poilus as extras. A number of novels were made into films in the decades after the war, such as All’s Quiet on the Western Front (1930), based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, and Wooden Crosses (1932), the film adaptation of Roland Dorgelès’s 1919 novel. Other notable feature films include War Horse (2011), The Water Diviner (2014), See You Up There (2017), Journey’s End (2018), The War Below (2021). Finally, the streaming service Netflix released a remake of All’s Quiet on the Western Front in fall 2022, which won four Academy Awards. 4. Poilu [“hairy one”] is the term used for a French infantryman serving at the front lines in World War I. They were so named because they went for long periods without shaving.

Chapter 1

Psychosomatic Symptomatology as Character Development in Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14

I choose to open my book with an examination of Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 because it depicts a front that, while not a direct part of military operations, was nonetheless an integral part of the war. Published in 1935 and a contender for the Prix Goncourt that same year, Invasion 14 is one of the rare French literary works that focuses on noncombatants and their struggle in the German-occupied Nord between October 1914 and October 1918. In Invasion 14, Van der Meersch creates a multitude of parallel and occasionally intersecting storylines of farmers, factory workers, merchants, prisoners of war, resistance members, and even a Catholic priest—essentially those that Annette Becker has dubbed the “oubliés de la Grande Guerre” [“the forgotten of the Great War”] (Becker 2012, 14)—to convey the diversity of civilian experiences. For decades, historian James E. Connolly asserts, the occupation had been virtually forgotten except in Belgium and northeast France (Connolly 2018, 17–18). But as Connolly also notes, since the 1980s, much fine scholarship on the noncombatant experience has been published, chief among them Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, Becker’s Les Cicatrices Rouges 14–18: France et Belgique occupées [Red Scars 14–18: Occupied France and Belgium], Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau’s La Guerre des enfants [Children’s War], and L’Enfant de l’ennemi [The Enemy’s Child], Philippe Nivet’s La France occupée: 1914–1918 [Occupied France: 1914–1918]. All have proven equally invaluable to my analysis of Van der Meersch’s work. While historians acknowledge Invasion 14 as an important chronicle of World War I, the novel tends to be less widely known among literary scholars. Very much in the tradition of the nineteenth-century French realist novel in its 9

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Chapter 1

scope and its subject, it may be understood as a continuation of the attempt by the likes of Honoré de Balzac and Émile Zola “to see the invisible, know the unknowable, and narrate that which is beyond the limits of narration” (Rivers 1994, 7). Zola’s influence is evident in the novel’s epic scope and naturalistic representation of life during the occupation, an influence Van der Meersch himself repeatedly recognized (Newsome, 2016, 11). I see Van der Meersch’s novel as an interdiscursive fabric composed of allusions to the works that make up La Comédie humaine and Les Rougon-Macquart.1 The examples of intertextuality I present in this discussion serve to highlight a central theme of Van der Meersch’s novel, namely, that of the personal loss and privation the civilian population endured under German military occupation. Building on Mary Barbier’s observation that Van der Meersch uses the body as a “moyen d’expression de l’âme” [“means of expressing the soul”] (Barbier 2007, 80), I will argue that the symptoms with which Invasion 14’s characters present are more than simply evidence of the suffering the civilian population endured during the occupation. They are the means by which Van der Meersch develops the novel’s main characters. A close reading reveals that Van der Meersch brings his characters to life through a subtle code combining symptoms of psychosomatic illness with the precepts of physiognomy, thereby creating a veritable primer for interpreting the physical signs of psychological distress. Born in Roubaix in 1907, Van der Meersch was a resident of the city for the duration of the German occupation. Much as one would expect, that experience left its mark on the impressionable child. Indeed, the trauma Van der Meersch recounts in Invasion 14 is one shared with his characters. In “Pourquoi j’ai écrit Invasion 14,” he acknowledges that “ces heures d’agonie, je puis bien dire que je les ai vécues moi-même. L’atmosphère, l’ambiance, je la portais en moi” [“I can in fact say that I lived myself these hours of agony. The atmosphere, the ambiance, I carried it in me”] (Van der Meersch 2007, 60–61). In order to expand his vision of the occupation and go beyond what he himself lived through, Van der Meersch conducted interviews with other survivors and reviewed archival records in order to accurately represent the period. We must remember, however, that Invasion 14 is above all a literary piece and not a documentary. Van der Meersch, like all artists, modifies the historical record for the sake of his narrative. In other words, Marc Dujardin puts it, “S’il fut un témoin, on ne peut pas le considérer comme un miroir” [“Although he was a witness, we cannot consider him to be a mirror”] (quoted in Spanneut 1985, 84). Dujardin’s caveat supports, in my mind, Newsome’s suggestion that Invasion 14 may best be termed a work of “fictional truth” (Newsome 2016, 15). Above all, it is a literary narrative of trauma. Van der Meersch is the author of thirteen novels—most of which were written between 1932 and 1943—and four major nonfiction works. He enjoyed critical and popular success beginning with his first novel, La

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Maison dans la dune [The House on the Dune] (1932). That novel, dealing with tobacco smugglers in the Nord and Belgium and based on a case from his short-lived career as a lawyer, has been adapted for the screen three times, most recently in 1988. Van der Meersch was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1936 for L’Empreinte de Dieu [Hath Not the Potter] and the grand prix de l’Académie française [the Grand Prize of the French Academy] in 1943 for Corps et âmes [Bodies and Souls]. Most of his novels are set in and around his hometown of Roubaix and feature working-class characters. One notable example is his trilogy La Pauvre fille [The Poor Girl] (1934–1955), which was inspired by his wife Thérèze’s hardscrabble life. Raised by atheist parents, Van der Meersch converted to Catholicism as an adult, an experience he recounted in L’Élu [The Dynamite Factory] (1937). Spirituality is a central theme of many of his novels, but his views were at times provocative. La Petite Sainte-Thérèse [Little Saint Theresa] (1947), Newsome notes, made clergy “bristle,” because Van der Meersch portrayed Saint Theresa of Lisieux “as a flawed individual whose saintliness lay not in a form of holy perfection but in acknowledgement of her weaknesses, and who was thus redeemed primarily by faith in God’s grace rather than faith, hope, and charity” (Newsome 2016, 22). This same willingness to challenge conventional perceptions is evident in Van der Meersch’s evenhanded portrayal of the German occupiers in Invasion 14 (Didelot 1932, 4). Christian Morzewski observes that, in recent years, Van der Meersch’s body of work—which he characterizes as a “régionalisme misérabiliste” [“pitiful regionalism”] (8)—pales in comparison to that of contemporaries such as Albert Camus, André Malraux, and François Mauriac. Morzewski further states that the views Van der Meersch expressed in the novels, in particular those on women’s place in society and on homosexuality, may be unacceptable in the eyes of today’s readers (Morzewski 2007, 6). This explains in part why, for some critics, Invasion 14 has aged better than most of Van der Meersch’s work. Favorably reviewed by critics at the time of its publication, the novel was nonetheless considered too violent and too dark by some readers. The critical early reception may be, quite simply, because the novel was published just seventeen years after the armistice; the psychic wounds were still too fresh. In short, Invasion 14 challenges what Winter has described as the “traditional” approach to war that was “distilled from a set of what may be called ‘traditional values’—classical, romantic, or religious images and ideas widely disseminated in both elite and popular culture before and during the war” (Winter 2014, 6). Winter’s observations remind us of the public’s expectations of how the war was to be represented, that is, as a heroic defense of France by the poilus in the trenches. The civilians in the occupied Nord were kept on the margins of the narrative.

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Invasion 14 has much in common with the French realist novels, in particular the way in which characters are presented. Like Balzac before him, Van der Meersch applied the principles of physiognomy as set forth by Johann Kaspar Lavater. Moreau de la Sarthe’s translation of Essai sur la physiognomonie, destiné à faire connoître l’homme et à le faire aimer [Essay on Physiognomy] (1806–1809) was popular among scholars and artists in France through much of the nineteenth century (Percival 2005, 17). Balzac and George Sand were two of Lavater’s enthusiasts; each owned a copy of his Essai sur la physiognomie (Rivers 1994, 105). What is more, Graeme Tytler observes that, pseudoscience or not, Lavater’s theories provide novelists with the means to describe a protagonist’s inner self with an economy of words since “each part of the body contains the character and essence of the whole, and there is no incongruity between the separate parts. This is confirmed by the unique physical appearance of each human being” (Tytler 1982, 66–67). This is precisely the principle on which Van der Meersch constructs his characters. For readers, of course, the challenge lies in being able to decipher the physiognomic code since, as Orsolya Tóth observes, “the description of a character is judged in a different way, along different expectations by a reader who is familiar (or was re-familiarized) with the ideas of physiognomy” (Tóth 2019, 37). Interpreting Van der Meersch’s physiognomic indicators reveals a new layer of meaning of the novel and a better appreciation for the author’s artistry. Whereas physiognomy is at best a pseudoscience, psychosomatic illness has long been recognized as a medical phenomenon, beginning with the physicians of ancient Greece. Historian Edward Shorter submits that the term “psychosomatic” may be applied to “any illness in which physical symptoms, produced by the action of the unconscious mind, are defined by the individual as evidence of organic disease, and for which medical help is sought” (Shorter 1992, x). Shorter’s definition holds true for the main characters of Invasion 14 who develop psychosomatic illnesses as a result of the trauma of living under enemy occupation. The maladies I scrutinize here are psychosomatic in that, as Lilian R. Furst says, they are “the translation of [psychological] distress into a physical symptom or symptoms, that is, its projection into the body as paralysis, deafness, blindness, muteness, or such lesser symptoms as headaches, palpitations, or gastrointestinal disturbances” (Furst 2002, 11). Van der Meersch finds inspiration for his psychosomatic “case histories” in the novels of Balzac and Zola. Balzac’s Le Lys dans la vallée [The Lily of the Valley], for instance, includes the character of monsieur de Mortsauf, who presents with what would today be termed conversion symptoms. In Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, moreover, the family matriarch, Adélaïde Rougon, suffers from hysteria, the quintessential psychosomatic malady that is the

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source of hereditary infirmity in her heirs. Newsome notes that while both Zola and Van der Meersch were keenly interested in the way in which the environment influences individuals, the latter delves more deeply into the characters’ psychology than his predecessor (Newsome 2016, 23). Van der Meersch sets up the interdependence between mind and body, the foundation upon which Invasion 14 is constructed, which he then uses to expose the devastating impact of war on civilians. Epic in scope, Invasion 14 shows the impact of the occupation of the Nord on individuals from various socioeconomic backgrounds. With dozens of characters, it is often difficult to keep track of the relationships between them. In the interest of clarity, I will provide a quick overview of the families whose case studies I will present. Berthe, a widowed innkeeper, is the matriarch of the Sennevillier clan. She has three adult children: Mark, a priest who is sent to a German work camp; Lise, who lives with Berthe and helps her run the inn; Jean, killed early in the war; and Jean’s widow, Fannie, who enters into a relationship with Paul, a German soldier billeted at her home. Jean and Fannie have a son, Pierre, and Fannie has a child with Paul. Fannie’s controversial relationship with the German soldier leads to confrontations with her sister-in-law Lise and with an angry mob. The Lacombe family is headed by the collaborationist mayor of Herlem, Hector. Hector’s daughter Estelle, married to a poilu at the front, has a series of one-night stands with German soldiers. When she becomes pregnant by one, she induces an abortion. Her teenage sister Judith, who is involved with an older German officer named Albrecht, takes the blame for the aborted fetus, and is disowned by her family. After he leaves Herlem, Albrecht “gives” Judith to some fellow Germans, leading her to become a prostitute catering to the occupiers. Judith uses her influence with the occupiers to do good, supplying her family and community with necessities that are otherwise impossible to obtain. Jealous because of Berthe’s successful business, Hector tries to ruin the Sennevillier family by besmirching Lise’s reputation and by putting her name on a list of those to be sent to forced labor camps. Félicie Laubigier is a single mother from Roubaix with two sons, Alain and Camille, and a daughter, Jacqueline. Alain, part of a smuggling ring, is arrested by the Germans and sent to a forced-labor camp near the front. Understanding the threat under which they live, Félicie sends Jacqueline and Camille out of the occupied area. The two children are taken in by the elderly Madame Endive in Lyon, returning home only when Roubaix is liberated in 1918. The Duydts, refugees from Belgium, are the victims of hereditary and social circumstances exacerbated by the occupation. Étienne, the eldest son, a gold trafficker, is murdered by the associates of his younger brother, Isidore (aka Zidore). Zidore, a boxer, is a friend of Alain Laubigier, whom he met while in jail after one of his arrests. Samuel, the patriarch of the Fontcroix family, is a coal merchant who is estranged

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from his wife Édith, with whom he has precocious daughter, Antoinette. Samuel’s brother Gaspard, who suffers from a congenital spinal malady, lives with their sister, Joséphine Mouraud, her husband Henri, and their daughter Annie. Annie selflessly helps those less fortunate than herself, most notably for this discussion, her uncle Gaspard. Finally, Gaspard’s friend Jean-Louis Feuillebois is a retired schoolteacher who dies of grief after learning that his only child was killed at the front. I have chosen to examine these characters because they best illustrate Van der Meersch’s borrowing of novelistic techniques from Balzac and Zola to develop his characters. In Invasion 14, place, the occupied Nord, is inextricably linked to the trauma the characters endure. The civilian front that Van der Meersch presents may be divided into several smaller ones, the first of which is that of parents. Félicie Laubigier, whose son Alain smuggles black-market items from Belgium, provides a quick tutorial for understanding how psychological pain imprints on the body in Invasion 14. Félicie’s fear for her son’s safety manifests in a trancelike state that is reminiscent of hysterical paralysis. This is the same affliction suffered by the matriarch of Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. Félicie presents with an ashen, drawn face and beaten-down look, physiological evidence of the accumulated effects of psychological wounding. The combined strain of food and fuel shortages, living under German occupation, and watching her younger son develop friendships with questionable individuals slowly wears her down, leaving her so weak that she cannot get out of bed. Félicie is kept alive by German soldiers, an example of Van der Meersch’s balanced treatment of the occupier. Krems, a cook billeted at the Laubigiers’ home, brings food from the mess hall to sustain Félicie. Unfortunately, he commits suicide after a furlough in Germany, so great was his sorrow at again being separated from his family. Both Krems and Félicie fall prey to their anxiety about their children, which ultimately destroys their bodies and souls. Félicie, however, is cured when Alain returns home from forced labor in Germany. Because the woman’s cure comes with the return of her son, we have proof in her case of the interdependence of the mind and the body. This is in fact the case for many of the main characters in Invasion 14. The former grocery store owner Gaspard Fontcroix suffers from a rare degenerative spinal cord disease that slowly robs him of his sight. Gaspard is essentially the sole inhabitant of his corner of the civilian front because he is socially isolated. Like that of Félicie, his story is a study of Van der Meersch’s use of bodily indicators to signal psychological disturbance. His affliction suggests that his very foundation—emotional as well as physiological—is compromised. Tellingly, “spinal irritation” was one among the many manifestations of psychosomatic illness recognized by health professionals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Shorter 35). That symptom calls to mind the work of nineteenth-century French neurologist

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and anatomical pathologist Jean-Martin Charcot, one of the founders of modern neurology. Charcot documented cases of hysterical blindness, which he deemed a manifestation of “la grande hystérie” [“grand hysteria”] (King 1993, 10). The link Charcot established between blindness and psychological imbalance allows us to interpret Gaspard’s vision loss as a psychosomatic affliction. On the surface, his blindness clearly symbolizes his obliviousness to anything other than a cure for his illness. His disability has a social impact as well, for it shuts him off from the rest of the world, leaving him alone with his obsessive thoughts. His isolation in turn exacerbates his physiological pain. The mind-body association is confirmed by Gaspard’s progression to full-blown psychosis when he learns of his friend Feuillebois’s death. Alternating between bickering with invisible friends and withdrawing from social interactions, he eventually develops a new set of physiological symptoms: “Il souffrit d’intoxications, d’anthrax, de maux de reins” (Van der Meersch 2014, 254) [“he suffered from poisoning, anthrax, kidney troubles”]. The “poisoning” was not the result of ingesting a noxious substance or infection with Bacillus anthracis but rather the product of his fragile psyche, of which “anthrax” is the dermatological manifestation. Cutaneous anthrax—the least virulent form in humans—presents as a boil-like lesion. Anthrax here, however, likely refers to dermatitis—that is, an unspecified skin irritation— the psychosomatic illness par excellence since, as Philip D. Shenefelt and Debrah A. Shenefelt put it, “the skin is a great projection screen onto which physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual aspects of the person are constantly made visible” (Shenefelt and Shenefelt 2014, 208). In this way, Gaspard’s psychological pain erupts through his skin. Gaspard’s physical suffering increases in direct proportion to his worries about his financial situation, which take a visible toll on him (Van der Meersch 2014, 254). The narrator of Invasion 14 uses the verb “ronger” [“to gnaw”], echoing the description of Gaspard’s crumbling spine that threatens his bodily integrity. Because he is deprived of physiological and emotional sustenance, Gaspard is eventually reduced to an animal-like state. At one point, the odor of food cooking on the stove causes him to salivate like a hungry dog, an indication that his survival instinct has taken over. As his psychological crisis worsens, his “douleur envahissante” [“overwhelming pain”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 257) registers in his face. After he suffers a psychotic break, his family has him committed to an asylum where his verbal incoherence eclipses his physiological symptoms. Perhaps the most fully developed manifestation of the mind-body association in Invasion 14 is its use as an allegory, the foundational examples of which are those of parents separated from their children during the war. In Gaspard’s friend Feuillebois we see how Van der Meersch borrows Balzac’s use of physiognomy to portray the character’s emotional distress after losing

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his son. Feuillebois’s portrait is essentially a case study in how parents grieve the loss of an adult child. Audoin-Rouzeau’s research on parents who lost a child in the war provides us with the framework for interpreting Feuillebois’s psychological decline: le combat signe globalement la mort des jeunes hommes: à ce titre, la guerre inverse de façon dramatique l’ordre habituel de succession des générations. En temps normal, cette cassure de la filiation, dont on sait l’importance centrale au sein de toutes les sociétés humaines, constitue un choc psychique d’une gravité exceptionnelle. [combat signs a death warrant for young men: in this respect, war reverses in dramatic fashion the usual order of the succession of generations. In normal times, this broken line of descent, so vital to all human societies, constitutes an exceptionally serious psychological shock]. (Audoin-Rouzeau 2014)

The loss of a child is particularly traumatic because it starkly displays the upending of the natural order. Aging parents are especially traumatized by the loss of an adult child, according to Marc-Louis Bourgeois, and exhibit “un deuil chronique avec perturbations psychiques, somatiques, etc.” [“chronic mourning in the form of psychic and somatic disturbances”] (Bourgeois 1996, 17). This, as we shall see, is the pattern that Feuillebois follows. Feuillebois is a teacher and patriot who models for his students a personal doctrine based on patriotism and revenge that he formulated during the Franco-Prussian war. He occupies a civilian front of parents with children at war. At the start of the Great War, he was “un grand gaillard bilieux, le teint olivâtre, la carrure imposante . . . les biceps écartés du corps, comme un athlète qui s’avance dans l’arène” [“a bad-tempered, strapping fellow with an olive complexion and an imposing physique. . . . He held his biceps away from his body like an athlete advancing in an arena”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 238). Feuillebois’s confident, athletic bearing is emphasized, foreshadowing his dramatic corporeal decline. A closer examination, however, reveals the less prominent but no less important markers of psychological disturbance. “Bilieux” [“bilious”] is a qualifier originating in Hippocrates’s theory of temperaments, which signifies that an individual’s liver, or yellow bile, prevails over the other three bodily humors (blood, phlegm, and black bile), leading to an irritable, pessimistic, or bitter nature. Feuillebois’s olive complexion reinforces the reference to his irritability, since the adjective “bilieux” also refers to a yellowish-green color. The psychological trauma he receives produces a different imbalance which transforms his personality. Feuillebois’s value system and his confidence in his homeland sustain him when his only child is drafted at the start of the war. Several months pass with no news from his son; however, his faith shaken, his inner torment soon begins to register in his body and accelerated aging. The weight of his suffering is

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evident in his bent body and his stagger as well as in a general wasting. When after a long absence he reappears, his friends can read the cause in his face. Seeing his premature aging, his friends conclude that he “avait dû recevoir le coup de grâce” [“he must have received the coup de grâce”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 252). Feuillebois’s flaccid cheeks and the deep lines etched on his face are proof of his inner torment and resignation. The narrator plays up the effect of emotional stress on the man’s body with the finality of the allusion to the shot to the head used to end a mortally wounded soldier’s agony; the military reference also provides a link to the son lost on the battlefield. It is through the physiological signs that the members of Feuillebois’s entourage learn the news of his son’s death. No verbal confirmation is pronounced or, for that matter, necessary. We find the literary blueprint for Feuillebois’s description in Balzac’s Père Goriot [Old Goriot] also known as “le Christ de la paternité” [“the Christ of paternity”]. Both authors create portraits of broken fathers whose pain is etched on their faces. As Goriot sells off his belongings to pay his daughters’ debts, his visage betrays his anguish, becoming a barometer of sorts for his psychological decline. What is more, Balzac and Van der Meersch both underscore the physiological change in their respective characters by referencing their newly loose-fitting clothes. Like Goriot, Feuillebois is a man decaying from the inside out, his grief becoming externalized in his physiological deterioration. Tellingly, too, Feuillebois’s dull eyes—the proverbial mirror of his soul—point to his extinguished life force. The grieving father’s silence is significant as well, the absence of any verbal expression of psychological pain a direct indication of the magnitude of the loss. When the former teacher is with his friends, he is uncharacteristically detached and uncommunicative, his silence a direct indication of his imminent death for, like Goriot, he turns inward, giving in to the grief that eats away at him. In his memoir Trente mille jours [Thirty Thousand Days], Maurice Genevoix offers a portrait of the grieving father of one of his comrades killed in action during World War I: “Le père, entre ses rares paroles, laissait ses yeux vaguer au loin. . . . Et soudain ses mâchoires se crispaient, j’en voyais les muscles frémir” [“The father, between his rare comments, let his eyes wander in the distance. . . . And suddenly his jaws tensed, I saw their muscles quiver”] (Genevoix 1980, 196). Genevoix’s description underscores the father’s emotional detachment and silence, the two symptoms exhibited by Feuillebois after receiving the news of his son’s death, which suggests that Van der Meersch was attuned to the signs of human suffering as much as he was inspired by Balzac’s portrait of Goriot. Feuillebois’s paternal suffering has a symbolic meaning as well, since it parallels not only that of millions of French parents who lost children in the four-year war but all who lost a loved one. In short, Feuillebois’s personal loss and grief are a microcosm of that of the population of Northern France

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under German occupation. Van der Meersch’s sensitivity to parental loss is one of the defining characteristics of the novel as well as one of the more developed narrative threads. The description of Feuillebois resonates in the observation by Charles Delesalle, the mayor of Lille in October 1917, who praises the “dignité exemplaire” [“exemplary dignity”] of the residents but declares that, after three years of occupation, the city’s residents are literally wasting away (quoted in Trochon 1922, 191). Delesalle’s contemporaneous remarks show that, if Van der Meersch’s technique for developing Feuillebois’s portrait is based in the literary canon, the descriptions accurately portray the suffering of the citizens. In this way, Feuillebois’ suffering mirrors the Darwinian struggle in which the inhabitants of occupied France were engaged during the German occupation. In effect, Gaspard is a symbol for the thousands of civilians who lived through the trauma of four years of occupation. Like Félicie and Feuillebois, the widow Berthe Sennevilliers also has a story of parental loss but with a different outcome, which means her front is distinct from those of the other two. Whereas the devastating news of his son’s death leads to Feuillebois’s demise, Berthe endures repeated trauma during the occupation but ultimately survives. Berthe’s portrait is more direct than that of Feuillebois since it relies less on metaphor and physiognomy and more on gestural indicators. With Berthe, the focus is on the trajectory of her grieving rather than on the physiological signs of suffering. Jean, her son, is killed early in the war, leaving her and her daughter Lise vulnerable to attacks by business rivals such as Hector Lacombe, mayor of Herlem and German collaborator. Lacombe is responsible for the German army’s commandeering the Sennevilliers’s inn, which the soldiers billeted there repeatedly pillage. The narrator makes it clear that, as women living alone with enemy troops billeted at their residence, Berthe and Lise are vulnerable to sexual violence. Historian Emmanuel Debruyne cautions that, while it is true that most war rapes occurred in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, it is not clear how many were actually committed (Debruyne 2018, 116). But for those living under German occupation who were denied access to reliable information and among whom false rumors spread, the concern remained (Nivet 2011, 21–22). As Debruyne puts it, “le caractère limité du [viol] n’empêche pas qu’il soit perçu comme une menace majeure de l’autre côté des tranchées, là où la population n’est pas en contact direct avec l’ennemi” [“the limited character of (rape) does not prevent it from being perceived as a great danger on the other side of the trenches, where the female population was not in direct contact with the enemy”] (Debruyne 2018, 116). In effect, Berthe and Lise represent a sizeable segment of the population of occupied France who were potential targets of enemy troops. Colette takes up this sensitive subject in her war essays that I discuss in chapter 2. Her writing on “les enfants du

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barbare” [“the children of the barbarian”] was a part of a national debate in spring 1915. Berthe meets the economic hardship and emotional anguish with stoicism. Whereas a number of other Herlem residents give in and collaborate with the occupiers in order to survive, the Sennevilliers women refuse to comply. There is a sense of purpose and patriotism in the women’s resistance that sets them apart from their neighbors. Hoping to break their spirit, Lacombe steps up the pressure on the Sennevilliers, adding Lise to the list of potential workers for the Germans as well as to a list of women to be expelled to France for being of loose morals and for frequenting the enemy. The authenticity of Lacombe’s targeting of the younger Sennevilliers woman in furtherance of his own interests is borne out by official documents and personal journals kept by residents of the Nord during World War I. At the time, because there was no penalty for false reporting, turning in women of allegedly ill repute was a way to ruin a rival’s reputation and social standing (Debruyne 2018, 84). The German occupiers kept records on those suspected of being infected with venereal disease since the infections posed a threat to the troops and, by extension, to the army’s preparedness. The German military authorities in France during the Great War closely monitored the rate of sexually transmitted diseases—the most common was gonorrhea (Debruyne 2018, 392)—among the troops as well as among the women they frequented. In addition to biweekly medical visits for “les princesses” [“the princesses,” an ironic term for prostitutes], German soldiers who were suffering from sexually transmitted diseases were sent to treatment camps (Debruyne 2018, 299–400). Any woman whose name appeared on French public health ledgers was assumed to be a prostitute and thus subject to an immediate medical examination. Failure to comply resulted in arrest by local authorities on behalf of the Sittenpolizei (Vice unit of the German police) (Debruyne 2018, 87). The women whose names appeared on the list of prostitutes were denied food and fuel rations, which exacerbated the precarity of their situation (Le Naour 2002, 125). The journal of one Dr. Monier provides insight into how authorities segregated women deemed to be “de mauvaise mœurs” [“of loose morals”]: “À Maubeuge, 1 474 femmes furent internées dans un lazaret spécialisé dans les maladies vénériennes, familièrement nommé par les habitants ‘parc à poules’” [“In Maubeuge, 1,474 women were confined in a special quarantine station that specialized in venereal diseases, familiarly called ‘hen houses’”] (quoted in Nivet 2011, 283–84). The use of the word “poule” [“hen”]—a slang term for prostitute—underscores the dehumanization of women who became ill because of having been forced to sell their bodies to survive or simply having given in to a human impulse. Another resident of the Nord, Jean Marquiset, describes a local detention center in a diary entry from May 1915. Representing the women housed there as wild animals, Marquiset

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documents the numbering and labeling of the women, a procedure that treats them as commodities and virtually erases their identities (Marquiset 1919, 93). The historical record thus establishes that Lacombe’s denunciation of Lise poses life-threatening consequences beyond sullying her reputation. Nonetheless, despite the humiliation the Sennevilliers women are subjected to, they carry themselves with aplomb. It is through a comparison of Berthe’s reaction to losing a son with Feuillebois’s that the difference in techniques Van der Meersch used to develop the characters is most evident. After nearly a year without news from Jean, Berthe learns that he had died in the early days of the war. The portrayal of her reaction diverges from that of Feuillebois in that it is a more explicit, direct exposition of her psychological trauma that does not involve the decoding of physiological indicators. Berthe passively accepts her son’s death in part because she is aware that having had no news from him for so long does not bode well. Expecting the worst becomes a defense mechanism for her, or at least a reaction dictated by her experience as a civilian in occupied territory because it has primed her for the devastating notification. She stops only long enough to wipe her eyes, then returns to her chores. Berthe’s pain and resignation are expressed through her movements, a corollary of sorts to the physiognomic descriptions of Feuillebois. If Feuillebois represses his grief over his son’s death—a repression that leads to his premature death—Berthe allows herself to mourn without giving in to her despair. Because she does not repress her feelings, it is logical that the Sennevilliers family matriarch does not suffer from psychosomatic illness. The portrayal of Berthe’s resistance to psychological trauma is underscored by the narrator’s juxtaposition of her family’s strength of character and integrity with their neighbors’ cooperation with the enemy. The women’s integrity becomes a liability, their refusal to collaborate leading to their isolation from the community. Mother and daughter possess an honor code of sorts, which the narrator establishes through the description of what they choose not to do. Compelled to sacrifice her values and reputation to warm her sick daughter, Berthe finally gives in to her survival instinct. When the opportunity to steal some lumps of coal presents itself outside the food distribution center, she rationalizes the behavior she had previously despised. The description of Berthe’s wavering conviction is conveyed through indirect style, which gives us insight into her thought processes. When she has no other options, she rationalizes violating her own moral code: “Voler les Boches, c’est pain bénit. Et que de souffrances endurées par leur faute! Et la carrière dévastée, l’auberge en ruine . . . Et Jean qui était mort . . . Faire comme les autres, comme tout le monde . . . ” [“Stealing from the Krauts is consecrated bread. And how much suffering endured because of them! And her career devastated, the inn in ruin . . . And Jean who was dead . . . Do what the others do,

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what everyone else does”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 136). This internal focus stands in marked contrast to that of Feuillebois’s description, in which the character’s psychic disturbance is externalized through somatic symptoms. Caught red-handed stealing coal, Berthe is sentenced to two weeks without rations. Strikingly, the shame of being labeled a thief devastates her more than the lack of food and warmth, her loss of integrity adding to the anguish caused by the loss of her son and of her material support. There is no tit-for-tat rationalization for the Sennevilliers. Instead, mother and daughter insist on maintaining their integrity and good name even if it means extreme hardship. Historian Sophie De Schaepdrijver’s assertion that during World War I, “the occupations profoundly influenced how the occupied saw, judged and—frequently—condemned one another, often along dimensions of class, gender or ethnicity” (De Schaepdrijver 2013, 2). In the case of Berthe and Lise, the condemnation springs from their status and their integrity before the war but also from their vulnerability as women. Repeatedly punished for their morality and dignity, their business destroyed by the occupiers, the Sennevilliers are reduced, like countless others, to lining up to receive the meagre rations distributed by the city. The scene depicting the food lines, rivaling the best of Zola’s crowd scenes, gives us a wide-angle view of the despair in the occupied territory, reminding us that Berthe and Lise were not unique in their suffering: “Les faces étaient maigres et pâles. La faim et la souffrance avaient dématérialisé les visages. On se fût cru au milieu d’un peuple d’ascètes” [“The faces were skinny and pale. Hunger and suffering had wasted away their features. One would have believed oneself to be among a group of ascetics”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 135). The visible signs of disease are etched onto the bodies, accompanied by the coughing, wheezing, and groans from the crowd. To those who know how to “read” the body, these are the signs of malnutrition and exposure to the elements. In chapter 2, we will see that Colette references the malnutrition and effects of the cold in her war essays but does not provide the stark detail that Van der Meersch does in Invasion 14. Future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, working as an engineer in England when the war broke out, founded in October 1914 the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), which sent food to seven million Belgians and two and a half million French residents of the Nord.2 At the time, Hoover characterized occupied France as “a vast concentration camp in which all aspects of economic life are entirely suspended” (quoted in Ezard 1999). In a memorandum to British Foreign Minister Eustace Percy dated 5 April 1916, Hoover reported that little animal protein was available in Lille and Roubaix, although he noted that one shop was selling dog meat. He concluded his bleak report by expressing his belief that a faithful representation of the catastrophic situation and his organization’s status as the only advocate for

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those living in appalling conditions (Gay and Fisher 1929). The dire situation in German-occupied France and Belgium constituted a humanitarian disaster that was compounded by the respective governments’ inability to respond. One year later, in April 1917, Hoover reported a further deterioration in food security in the region, offering Charleville as an example. In September 1916, 48% of the city’s residents were only able to pay for their own food with credit extended by the city, 38% were dependent on what local government agencies could provide, and 14% were entirely dependent on charitable donations (Gay and Fisher 1929). The granular detail of Berthe and Lise’s situation, with the occasional exposition of the larger community, means that we lose sight of the scale of the humanitarian crisis and view their situation as exceptional. When read against contemporary reports such as Hoover’s, however, Invasion 14—and especially the story of Berthe and Lise—emerges as a faithful chronicle of food shortages in the Nord. Berthe’s portrait is fleshed out by indications of the way other characters interact with her, above all the occupying forces with whom they had refused to collaborate. The enemy troops take pity on the Sennevilliers women, leaving them leftovers from their meals outside their door at night. Ironically, the invaders are able to do what the residents of Herlem are incapable of, namely, empathize with the mother and daughter. Not only do the occupiers see and understand the women’s plight, but they also act on their behalf when Berthe is no longer able to provide for her daughter. Berthe comes to realize that most of the German soldiers are victims as well, mere pawns manipulated by politicians and generals. That realization allows her to develop personal relationships with the young soldiers who occupy the family’s inn. Thanks to their lack of exposure to war, the newly conscripted are still able to see civilians as people and to feel compassion for them, which fosters a solidarity of sorts between the recently arrived occupiers and the outcast Sennevilliers women. This episode, along with others in the novel depicting the humanity of individual German soldiers, was one of the reasons the residents of the Nord were critical of Invasion 14 when it was first published in 1935 (Newsome 2016, 15–16). Van der Meersch restores the humanity of the enemy troops and civilians through a nuanced depiction of their interactions. The benevolence of the German troops in Invasion 14 is not a fictional embellishment, even if at times it appears to be idealized. Newspaper articles from the time document numerous examples of occupiers helping—most often against official directives—the occupied. According to Nivet, “à Bourgogne (Marne), qui n’est pas ravitaillé par la CRB [Commission for Relief in Belgium] jusqu’en avril 1916, les habitants profitent des vivres des Allemands, qui partagent volontiers avec les civils” [“in Bourgogne (Marne), which did not receive food from the CRB until April 1916, the inhabitants benefitted from the rations from the Germans, who gladly shared them

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with the civilians”] (Nivet 2011, 167). By the time they are transferred, the young soldiers in Invasion 14 are a part of Berthe’s family, essentially surrogate sons and brothers. In L’Écrivain de Lubine: Journal de guerre d’une femme dans les Vosges occupées (1914–1918) [Writer from Lubine: War Journal of a Woman in the Occupied Vosges (1914–1918], Clémence MartinFroment, like the fictional Berthe, expressed affection for the soldiers with whom she became acquainted, as evidenced by an entry dated 13 September 1915: “Tous ceux que nous avons logés chez nous nous ont quittés en très bons camarades, je dirais même familiarisés, et nous serions infiniment désolés qu’il leur arrive malheur” [“All of those we accommodated in our home left us as good friends, I would even say familiarized, and we would be totally devasted if something bad happened to them”] (Martin-Froment 2010, 153). Invasion 14’s Berthe does not forget what happened during the occupation even if she develops close relationships with certain German soldiers. During the last bombing raid of Herlem, Berthe tells Lise that the war will never be over because of the loss of her son. Berthe stands in contrast with Feuillebois because of her fortitude and her resistance to those who would destroy her. She forgives the invaders—at least the ones the age of her late son—but will live with the psychological pain and trauma of her loss for the rest of her life. It is also significant that, if Van der Meersch gives Berthe a voice, he does not provide one to Feuillebois. Whereas the grieving father’s feelings are transmitted through physiological symptoms that the reader must decipher, Berthe’s emotional pain is communicated directly to the reader. As a result, hers is the stronger presence in the narrative. Feuillebois’s character development is to a certain extent an exercise in style, a pastiche of Balzac’s Goriot, while Berthe’s represents the millions of women in occupied France who withstood the hardship of war. She is a symbol of France itself, which emerged battered but not broken from four years of occupation. Although Balzac’s Le Père Goriot clearly provided a model for Van der Meersch’s Feuillebois, Zola’s influence on Van der Meersch is evident in the novel’s epic scope and naturalistic representation of life during the occupation. Newsome observes that while both authors were keenly interested in the way in which the environment influences individuals, Van der Meersch delves more deeply into the characters’ psychology than his predecessor (Newsome 2016, 20–21). Mary Melliez adds nuance to Newsome’s characterization when she observes that “Zola décrit ses personnages de l’extérieur alors que Van der Meersch lui vit avec le personnage” [“Zola describes his characters from the outside whereas Van der Meersch lives with the character”] (Melliez 2010). While it is true that Zola did not directly study Lavater’s theories in his extensive preparation of his novels, he and Van der Meersch share with the theologian / physiognomist “the goal of ordering our knowledge of life

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through correlations between that which is immediately accessible to us . . . and that which is beyond the immediate field of our own vision of experience” (Rivers 1994, 176–77). Invasion 14’s naturalistic presentation of the body is tempered by a spiritual one, which prompts Pierre de Boisdeffre to dub Van der Meersch a “Christian Zola” (quoted in Newsome 2016, 20–21). Indeed, the determinism one finds in the Rougon-Macquart series is attenuated in Invasion 14 by an exploration of the characters’ inner lives. It must be said that Van der Meersch, who rediscovered Catholicism at the age of twenty-nine, has a relatively negative view of the body. Luc Rasson argues that Invasion 14, along with Van der Meersch’s other novels, illustrates the author’s belief that it is through suffering that individuals may find grace (Rasson 2007, 90). One example of that belief is the case of Gaspard’s niece, Antoinette Fontcroix, who undergoes a transformation from a sexually precocious adolescent to a Christian martyr. Indeed, the foundational principle of Van der Meersch’s character development is that the body in pain indicates the nature and degree of a given character’s inner torment. For many readers, Van der Meersch’s adoption of Zola’s determinism, summarized by Hippolyte Taine’s “la race, le milieu, le moment” [“race, milieu, moment”] is likely to be evident, although it must be said that in Invasion 14, the milieu and the moment predominate. The underpinnings of the Zolian intertext in Van der Meersch’s novel lie, appropriately enough, in Adélaïde Rougon, often referred to as Tante Dide or simply Dide, the source of the hereditary defect that plagues her descendants. It is in the first volume of the Rougon-Macquart, La Fortune des Rougon [The Fortune of the Rougons] that we meet the family matriarch, whose unconventional lifestyle raises eyebrows among her family members and her neighbors. Dide exhibits odd behavior for much of her life and, after giving birth to her first child, she experiences an escalation in what the novel’s narrator characterizes as epileptiform seizures. The tragedies that she endures take their toll since, by the age of forty-two, her mannerisms and incoherent babbling have given her the appearance of a doddering old woman. We find a World War I equivalent of Tante Dide in the character of Fannie Senevilliers, who, like Zola’s character, is widowed with a son. Her section of the civilian front is that of women who are in romantic relationships with the occupier. Fannie takes up with a forty-something German soldier, Paul, who is billeted at her home. For all intents and purposes, Paul replaces Jean as the head of the household in the same way that Macquart replaces Rougon in La Fortune des Rougon. The narrator of Invasion 14 portrays the connection between Fannie and Paul as a natural occurrence that evolves into a conjugal relationship. Much like Tante Dide, Fannie makes no effort to hide her relationship, although she reveals her shame when she cuts off all contact with her family and friends. Eventually, Fannie faces the consequences of her choices

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when Jean’s sister Lise confronts her about her infidelity to her late husband and the effect her behavior has on the rest of the family. Lise calls Fannie a “Fille à Boche” [“Kraut’s woman”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 300), which was commonly used to refer to women who fraternized with the enemy. It is all the more demeaning in Fannie’s case because she is a war widow. If Fannie’s unconventional (for the time) lifestyle echoes that of Adélaïde Rougon, her “punishment” by her community is inspired by a scene in Zola’s Germinal which, like Invasion 14, takes place in the Nord. In Zola’s novel, the women miners who are part of the strike target Cécile Grégoire, the daughter of one of the shareholders of the Montsou mine. Cécile’s clothing, perfume, and soft skin are the antithesis of the tattered rags, rancid body odor, and irritated skin of the miners. The horde attempts to degrade the young woman by literally stripping her of the trappings of her privilege. This mob scene is one segment of the larger class struggle that is at the heart of Germinal. For the enraged crowd, Cécile represents the rich who profit by enslaving the working class. Van der Meersch stages a similar drama in Invasion 14, substituting the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie with that of resisters and collaborators. Like Cécile, Fannie is singled out on the streets of Herlem because she represents all those who collaborate with the oppressors, although of course her collaboration is with the foreign occupiers instead of the industrialists. Fully aware that Fannie is pregnant with the child of her German lover, the crowd surrounds her, shouting the same slur that Lise used, “Fille à Boche.” Lapidated as punishment for her sin like the adulterous women in the Bible, Fannie escapes the mob to give birth surrounded by the German soldiers living on her property. Like Cécile, Fannie’s salvation comes from those who ensure her privilege. Delivering her baby with the help of the occupying forces is at once proof of her status as a “Fille à Boche” and another example of Van der Meersch’s humanizing of the enemy. Van der Meersch again looks to Tante Dide for inspiration to portray Fannie’s postpartum depression, the symptomatology of which includes indifference to her newborn, anorexia, and dissociation. The trauma of losing her husband and being ostracized from her community likely contributed to her fragile mental state. Dide experiences the same psychological symptoms as Fannie, and both are prone to self-destructive tendencies. The intertextuality between La Fortune des Rougon and Invasion 14 is evident in Fannie’s manner of death, which is precisely the manner figuring in Dide’s suicidal ideation, drowning. Although Dide never acts on her impulse, Fannie gives in to hers. She disappears one day, only to be found by a young boy skating on a frozen pond who sees through the ice Fannie’s blond hair seemingly still flowing in the current, an allusion to Shakespeare’s Ophelia. What stands out in the final image of Fannie is her peaceful expression, which demonstrates that the suffering of the occupation can only be relieved through death.

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In 1926, the social worker Suzanne Serin conducted a study of suicide in the aftermath of World War I, concluding that, contrary to popular belief, most cases were not caused by mental illness. Instead, the patients who committed suicide did so in response to the grief they experienced after the death of a child, a partner, or other close contact (Thomas 2009, 83). Historian Annette Becker has shown the extent to which the French population was affected by personal loss during World War I. In all, 1.3 million Frenchmen were killed, which means that the figure of 39 million mourners is likely a fair estimate of the number of loved ones left grieving at the end of the war (Smith, Becker, and Audoin-Rouzeau 2003, 71). The case of Fannie Sennevilliers thus represents those of countless other French civilians who were left despondent by their losses. It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that for Dide as well as Fannie, the source of their illnesses lies in the feminine condition. The parallels between Van der Meersch’s depiction of the mind-body connection in Invasion 14 and that of Zola’s in the Rougon-Macquart are legion. Balzac and Hippolyte Taine were two important influences on Zola’s career as a novelist. Indeed, Zola’s study of Taine’s writings led to his famous declaration that “l’œuvre d’art est un coin de la nature, vu à travers un tempérament” [“a work of art is nature seen through a temperament”] (Zola 1893, 234). The original formula refers to the way artists’ temperaments impact their writing but, as Mitterand explains, “Taine enrichit ce modèle théorique, en convainquant le jeune écrivain [Zola] de transposer dans la création romanesque la méthode même de la critique moderne, fondée sur l’analyse exacte des déterminations biologiques (la ‘race’), historiques (le ‘moment’) et sociales (le ‘milieu’)” [“Taine enriches this theoretical model by convincing the young writer [Zola] to transpose into the novel’s creation the very method of modern criticism founded on the precise analysis of biological determination (‘race’), historical determination (‘moment’) and social determination (‘milieu’)] (Mitterand 1998). Van der Meersch borrows from Zola’s determinism theory to portray those characters for whom the occupation of the Nord constitutes the moment in Taine’s formula. For the characters in Invasion 14, like those in the Rougon-Macquart, the combined effect of the three elements Taine lays out determines their fate. In addition to the literary-historical influence, the psychosomatic and physiognomic descriptions in Invasion 14 may be attributed to Van der Meersch’s long-standing interest in the mind-body connection which culminated in the writing of Corps et âmes, a showcasing of the work of physician Paul Carton, a practitioner of naturopathy. An alternative medicine that grew out of nineteenth-century vitalism, naturopathy centers on the promotion of “the healing power of nature,” and advocacy of “treat[ing] the whole person” (“About” 2021). In reviewing Corps et âmes, physician Roger Vercel maintains that the author integrated the theory of degeneration as set forth

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in the work of Bénédicte Morel and Valentin Magnan, alienists whose works profoundly influenced Zola (Vercel 1997, 272). Julien Schwarz and Burkhart Brücker explain that Morel “attributed the progressive degradation of the human genome to social cause (with regard to the proletarian class), intoxications (mainly alcohol abuse), or ‘congenital’ and ‘acquired’ defects, all of which lead to damages to the offspring that can be observed in the phenotype of the next generation” (Schwarz and Brücker 2016). Zola’s use of Morel’s theory in developing the main characters of Rougon-Marcquart is, of course, the foundation of the series. Van der Meersch, I will argue, followed Zola’s literary blueprint by employing the tenets of the theory of degeneration to create the character of Zidore Duydt. Eighteen-year-old Isidore Duydt (aka Zidore) and his thirty-year-old hunchback brother, Étienne (aka le Boscot, “the Hunchback”) demonstrate the way in which physiological signs point to moral corruption. He occupies a dark corner of the civilian front, that of underground activity. Étienne, the eldest child in the family, brings Zidore in to his lucrative gold-trafficking operations with the occupiers, which sets in motion his downward spiral. Described as small and mishappen with a pallid complexion, his physical appearance transmits his moral deficiency to the reader. What stands out in the initial description of Étienne is his resemblance to a rat, an animal often associated with evil. Van der Meersch provides us with a physiognomic description, the signs of which confirm Étienne’s unsavory character, namely his misshapen body, his large, skeletal hands, and his excessively thin limbs. “Débile” [“mentally challenged” or “frail”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 61) stands out in his description because it designates both his physical and moral degeneracy. The fact that le Boscot suffers from heart, stomach, and lung ailments, moreover, confirms the physical signs of his moral corruption. There is a symbolic meaning to these ailments as well since the heart is the seat of emotions while gastrointestinal problems are often the symptom of stress and psychological imbalance. His sunken eyes and bony hands, which call to mind a skeleton, have the narrative function of foreshadowing his death. At the same time, Étienne projects a strong physical presence, suggesting that his strength of will eclipses his physiological defects. The Duydt brothers share a genetic endowment that determines not only their physical attributes but their personalities as well. Their father, who would fit perfectly in the Rougon-Macquart, is a Belgian miner displaced by the war who sets up a black-market business in a shack. He brutalizes his family members, forcing his children to steal and providing them with an apprenticeship in crime. Zidore manages to leave behind his toxic father but not his violent nature, since he ends up literally fighting back against the older man and becoming a boxer in amateur fights. Disadvantaged by his socioeconomic situation, Zidore nonetheless makes the best of the genetic hand he has

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been dealt. Short and stocky with a nervous nature, he has an intimidating deportment, which serves him well in the sinister bars he patronizes. His dual nature—at once “nerveux” and “râblé” [“vulnerable” and “tough”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 179)—dominates his initial description. “Nerveux” is particularly striking since it echoes the hereditary defect of the Rougon-Macquart, which establishes that Zidore’s genetic makeup contributes to his fate. The young man cannot, however, escape his milieu because he is reduced to living off the grid with other resisters and petty thieves who manage to survive by stealing from the occupiers. The last element in Taine’s formula, the moment, seals Zidore’s fate. The narrator of Invasion 14 explains that the young man and others of his generation had to adjust to a new, dangerous life, starting out as heroes but ending up as pitiful, morally bankrupt individuals. Zidore’s situation, then, is a microcosm of that of the traumatized generation that lived through the German occupation during World War I. It is Zidore’s association with the criminal element that triggers his psychological affliction, for his association with unsavory individuals “l’avait gangrené” [“had corrupted him”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 196). “Gangrener” is used repeatedly to describe the influence Zidore’s milieu has on him. This verb, ordinarily used to describe tissue death and decomposition in a living organism, draws attention to the mind-body connection in the young man’s case history, specifically his eroding morality. Zidore’s missteps continue when he falls in love with Georgina, a heavy-drinking prostitute twice his age who predicates their relationship on his material support. Georgina becomes the young man’s “morale” [“morality”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 205), further evidence of his psychological erosion. Zidore is vulnerable to manipulation because of his fear that Georgina will leave him and because of the debt he owes to a member of his entourage, La Citrouille. Desperate to find money to keep Georgina in the manner to which she is accustomed, Zidore becomes involved with three criminal associates who force him to set up his older brother Étienne in order to rob him of his gold: Otto, a deserter from the German army, la Citrouille, and Le Roux. Le Roux is the ringleader, his red hair a tip-off to his malevolent nature because of the color’s traditional association with the devil. There are no other physical descriptions of Le Roux because his sobriquet conveys all that the reader needs to know. La Citrouille, whose plump body and round face resemble a pumpkin, demonstrates that Van der Meersch does not limit his physiognomic allusions to the animal kingdom. La Citrouille has no real personality, which conveys his status as a follower. It is Le Roux, a Machiavellian character (Barbier 79), who finishes off Le Boscot, his cruelty confirming the malevolent nature that his red hair signals. Zidore’s delivering his brother to his murderers in exchange for a cut of his gold stash echoes Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Christ for thirty pieces of silver. Victim of his “nervous” nature, Zidore

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becomes violently ill as he leaves the crime scene. The mind-body association here is clear; vomiting is the physiological reaction to his dastardly act, a prime example of emotions becoming externalized in a graphic manner. With Le Boscot’s murder, the final component in Taine’s theory, the moment, has been activated and the final act of Zidore’s life has begun. The distraught young man engages in self-destructive behavior, drinking heavily—his alcohol dependence is reminiscent of that of Gervaise Macquart in Zola’s L’Assommoir—and spending his ill-gotten gains as a way to assuage his guilt. Zola’s influence is unmistakable in Van der Meersch’s portrayal, in particular the use of the word “organism” to refer to Zidore’s body. The young man is reduced to the sum of his biological components, leaving him unable to determine his own fate. Zidore’s physical decline is a sign that, despite his lucidity, he is psychologically damaged by his role in his brother’s death. He feverishly reviews his entire life and comes to realize that his obsession with Georgina is what precipitated his decline. Disgusted that he killed his own brother for the woman he now despises, he takes his anger out on her. His abuse of Georgina confirms the role of heredity in his fate since, like his father before him, he commits domestic violence. As his mental state deteriorates, his alcohol-fueled hallucinations begin to take on Étienne’s aspect, in particular his dark eyes set in his sallow complexion in which the younger brother sees his brother’s curse. Zidore’s psychological decline is accompanied by a precipitation in his physical decomposition, for in the span of several weeks, the ordinarily confident boxer becomes jumpy, exhibiting a catlike skittishness. He is unable to unburden himself to anyone, least of all to his sister Léonie, his usual confidante, because he is certain that his appearance will betray him. Nor can he go to Étienne’s funeral because he is convinced that others would be able to “read” his culpability on his face. In other words, Zidore’s guilt has become externalized. By the time the police track him down his appearance has become skeletal, his cheeks sunken and his skin ashen. This description of Zidore builds on the details of his crime: his skull evokes Étienne’s corpse while his golden stubble calls to mind the precious metal for which his brother died. One of the arresting officers kicks him to death, reducing his face to mush and symbolically erasing his identity and his very humanity. Zidore’s final thoughts go to Étienne, who materializes before him one last time with an expression of pity and mercy. This last image is ambiguous, the benevolent hallucination implying that if Zidore’s sin has been expiated, his psychological suffering has not been entirely relieved even as he takes his last breath. The depiction of Zidore’s culpability and self-loathing may be understood as an homage to Zola’s first major novel, Thérèse Raquin, in which the title character’s lover Laurent drowns her husband, Camille. Like Zidore, Laurent

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has hallucinations of his victim as he appeared on a slab in the morgue. An artist, Laurent must give up his vocation after the murder because his guilt makes its way into his paintings in the form of Camille’s rictus grin. In both novels, the apparition of the victim and his silent condemnation of his murderer constitute the embodiment of a tortured conscience, the hallucinations of the decaying bodies essentially golems of guilt. With the character of Zidore, Van der Meersch shows us, as Zola does with Laurent, how psychological trauma may be discerned through physiological signs. One final homage to Zola in Invasion 14 is evident in the portrayal of the sexual partners which is founded on Taine’s formula, “la race, le milieu, le moment.” These relationships, primarily determined by the moment, illustrate the role of instinct/sex drive in humans. They are also a study in power differentials in the occupied territories of France during World War I. Research conducted by historians such as Nivet, Debruyne, and Audoin-Rouzeau has demonstrated that the circumstances surrounding sexual relationships between occupier and occupied are complex, running the gamut from coerced relationships to consensual and from prostitution to romantic pairings. What all the various configurations have in common, Debruyne explains, is that “les partenaires sont à la fois séparés par la guerre—ils sont ennemis—et unis par elle—ils ne se seraient pas rencontrés si elle n’avait pas eu lieu” [“the partners are at once separated by the war—they are enemies—and united by it—they would not have met if it had not taken place”] (Debruyne 2018, 25). Even if both parties are willing participants, there is a power imbalance on several levels, those of men over women, soldier over civilian, and occupier over occupied (Debruyne, 26). Building on the case of Fannie Sennevilliers discussed earlier in this chapter, Judith Lacombe provides further insight into the complexity of the relationships between French women and German soldiers. Fannie’s liaison with the cultural affairs officer Albrecht illustrates the fraught relationships between civilians and occupying forces. As we shall see, the religious terminology Van der Meersch uses to depict the young woman’s experience adds nuance to her portrait. Albrecht is billeted in the Lacombe family home and, soon after a brief flirtation, enters into an intimate relationship with Judith. Their first sexual encounter is not consensual, since the young woman, trying to resist Albrecht’s advances, is overpowered. The quasi-militaristic vocabulary Van der Meersch uses, “défense [“defense”], “s’évader” [“to escape”], and “tenue” [“held”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 30), conveys the young woman’s fear while the short sentences communicate Albrecht’s aggression. More an assault than a seduction, the act exemplifies the power imbalance between them. There is an ambiguity in the encounter that is heightened by the “sweet nothings” Albrecht whispers in Judith’s ear immediately after the sexual act. The placement of “apaisé” [“calmed”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 30) at the start of the

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sentence drives home the point that the murmurings are less an expression of affection than an articulation of sexual gratification. The fact that Albrecht’s crooning causes Judith psychological pain may be attributed in part to the young woman’s inability to understand his native tongue. More importantly, the sexual assault underscores the power differential between them: he is the German occupier and she is a subjugated French citizen, which also mirrors the invasion of France by enemy forces. The young woman’s next gesture communicates her confusion about how to act in the moment as she clings to him in what appears to be desperation. After initially feeling revulsion, Judith goes on to embrace Albrecht as if willing herself to convey positive emotion to him. The despair she feels may be seen as a reflection of her impossible situation; she has no choice but to give in to the occupier. Before long, however, Judith is fully invested in the relationship, committing herself body and soul. Quite simply, the older man has conquered her physically and emotionally. Because of the dynamic at play—the occupier taking advantage of the occupied—there is a metaphorical interpretation as well for, as Debruyne states, sexual assault in wartime can have a bestial aspect: “Il s’agit en arrachant la virginité des jeunes filles de profaner la nation adverse, de salir sa jeunesse, sa pureté et sa fécondité, voire de souiller l’intégrité de sa race en projetant dans le ventre de ses femmes une semance ennemie” [“taking the virginity of young women by force is a question of desecrating the opposing nation, of dishonoring its youth, its purity and fecundity, indeed, of polluting its racial integrity by implanting in its women’s wombs the enemy’s seed”] (Debruyne 2018, 59). In short, Albrecht’s actions parallel the invasion of France by German troops. This is a sort of “droit du vainqueur” [“the victor’s rights”], his possession of Judith on a primitive level the spoils of war. The effect of the accumulation of the textual references to the power imbalance foreshadows the tragic end to the relationship because it means that there is necessarily a disconnect between the partners’ expectations. If Judith gives everything to Albrecht out of what the narrator calls “instinct” (Van der Meersch 2014, 31), Albrecht takes the young woman’s innocence without a second thought because what matters to him is sexual gratification. Judith acts both on impulse and on the belief that her partner understands the significance of their sexual intimacy for her. Her urges are as spiritual as they are sexual, since they entail “un besoin de se dévouer, de se donner” [“a need to devote herself, to give herself”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 31). Albrecht, however, cannot see beyond Judith’s physical passion and consequently misconstrues her desire for physical intimacy as lasciviousness, not understanding that her passion was for him and not the sexual act. This is an almost stereotypical setup for a heartbreaking end to a young woman’s first

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love affair but the fact that the two are from enemy camps also makes the situation an existential threat for Judith and for her family. Judith’s relationship with Albrecht plays out against her older sister Estelle’s fraternization with the enemy. Estelle is the temperamental and physical opposite of her sister, her false modesty belying the fact that she enjoys male companionship. Ironically, Estelle’s wantonness is precisely what Albrecht imputes to Judith, the latter finding her sister on several occasions in the barn having sex, each time with a different German soldier. Estelle’s double life contrasts with Judith’s openness about her relationship with Albrecht. Blinded by love, Judith fails to understand that her neighbors view her association with the occupier as a betrayal of her country. During World War I, relationships like Judith and Albrecht’s were of course taboo and were deemed a rejection of patriotism and societal norms in favor of individualism (Le Naour, Misères 299). Estelle’s secret, ironically, is what leads to Judith’s degradation. The moral difference between the sisters is confirmed with Estelle’s unwanted pregnancy, which she terminates on her own with unspecified drugs. The fact that Estelle’s husband is at war is an aggravating factor in the situation. The novelist Marcelle Tinayre in “Celle qui attend” [“The One Who Waits”], published in L’Écho des tranchées on 20 August 1915, gave voice to public opinion about married women whose lovers were German soldiers: “La femme qui trahit un combattant est pareille au soldat qui déserte” [“The woman who betrays a combatant is the same as a soldier who deserts”] (Tinayre 1915). Interestingly, La Lacombe, the girls’ mother, does not condemn Estelle’s frequenting of the soldiers and instead blames the men for not taking the necessary precautions. La Lacombe’s reaction echoes the sort of biological determinism—often summarized by the phrase “men will be men”—that was prevalent at the time. Estelle’s abortion puts her family at additional risk because the fetus that she has placed in a pail under her bed must be disposed of. La Lacombe’s first thought is for the soul of the unborn child, so she insists on laying it to rest in consecrated ground. This ultimately proves to be the undoing of her plan since her solution to dispose of the remains involves soliciting the aid of someone outside the family, namely the church sexton. If caught, of course, Estelle would be subject to criminal charges for her self-induced abortion. Audoin-Rouzeau tells us that in 1914, women tried for infanticide were most often either acquitted or given prison sentences of fewer than five years. These sentences were far more lenient than was the case at the beginning of the nineteenth century in France (Audoin-Rouzeau 2013, 20), suggesting that the judiciary took the circumstances of war and occupation into account. Estelle’s self-induced abortion and her treatment of the fetus as a thing to be disposed of demonstrates the vulnerability of women of child-bearing age during the occupation. The

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question of how to deal with children fathered by German soldiers was the subject of national debate early in the war. The controversy is discussed in greater detail in chapter 2, which deals with Colette’s war reporting. The decision to include the sexton in the disposal of Estelle’s aborted fetus inevitably leads to a leak of information. As mayor of Herlem, Estelle’s father Hector Lacombe discovers his surname on the list of women afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases, popularly known at the time as “les princesses” [“the princesses”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 40). Though unable to determine which of his daughters is on the list, he discovers that the young woman in question had had an abortion. He confronts his wife, demanding to know which of “tes garces de filles” [“your slut daughters”] was impregnated by a German soldier (Van der Meersch 2014, 41). The harsh use of “garces” [“sluts,” “bitches”] is remarkable in itself, but what stands out even more is his virtual disinheriting of his daughter with the use of the possessive adjective “tes” [“your”]. Lacombe’s reference to “les Boches” in the plural, moreover, underscores his contempt since it implies promiscuity (which is not inaccurate in Estelle’s case). La Lacombe allows Judith, who is single, to take the blame for her married sister. In effect, because Judith has a German lover, she becomes the ideal scapegoat for Estelle’s crime. Estelle does not object to her sister’s taking responsibility for her moral transgression nor does Judith resist being unjustly accused and banished from the family home. Judith conveys her resignation through her gestures just as Berthe does when she hears the news of her son’s death. She removes her apron “du geste d’une servante” [“with the gesture of a servant”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 43) and silently leaves the kitchen. The reference to her servile body language underscores her exclusion from her family while also foreshadowing her impending loss of social status. Not surprisingly, gender stereotypes dictate the outcome of Judith’s punishment. Judith becomes the sacrificial lamb for Estelle's sins, the way in which her father saves face in the town he governs. By contrast, Albrecht, the presumptive father in the false narrative, stays on in the Lacombe household thanks to his friendship with the mayor and the free labor he provides. Neither familial relationships nor the truth matter in this episode because public opinion is what allows Lacombe to remain in power. In a word, expediency trumps blood ties. The turning point in Judith’s situation occurs when Albrecht’s transfer definitively separates the couple. As challenging as the separation is for her, Judith maintains her influence with the Kommandantur [“Headquarters”], which means that her position on the power continuum is closer to that of occupier than occupied. As the mistress of a German officer, she is allowed to travel freely to Lille and Tourcoing to sell Goldwasser (a strong local liqueur) at a time when the movements of ordinary civilians are strictly regulated. With those earnings she can purchase much-needed items, including

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medicine, which she distributes to those in need in Herlem. Although her continued association with the occupiers inspires fear and loathing in her neighbors, Judith never uses her influence to settle scores. As one might imagine, many women who found themselves in similar situations did not have as much integrity as Van der Meersch’s character. Marie-Rose Cuveline, repatriated from the occupied Nord to France, via Haute-Savoie, in December 1916 recalled that French women involved with German soldiers were seen as a danger to the community (Le Naour 2002, 282). Judith’s position as a community leader derives from her relationship with Albrecht and the connections it allows her to establish with the Kommandantur. Ironically, that same relationship is also her Achille’s heel since it emotionally drains her and puts her at risk of retaliation. Newsome underscores the fact that if Judith essentially collaborates with the Germans, she never becomes “embochée” [“Germanified”] because she selflessly uses her connections for the good of the community (Newsome 2014, 56). Van der Meersch portrays Judith’s emotional distress after Albrecht’s departure by means of religious terminology. Her lover gone, Judith experienced an “immense expiation. Elle avait fait d’Albrecht sa divinité, l’avait comme recréé en elle, épuré, transfiguré. . . . Cette aventure où elle avait sombré, cette chute, elle avait voulu de toutes ses forces en faire une ascension afin que se réalisât quand même son idéal, les pures aspirations de sa jeunesse vers la noblesse et la beauté” [“an immense atonement. She had made Albrecht her divinity, had recreated him in herself, purified, transfigured. . . . This affair to which she had succumbed, this fall, she had tried with all her might to make into an ascension so that her ideal, her youthful, pure aspirations toward nobility and beauty might all the same be realized”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 145–46). The religious resonances stand out here with “expiation” [“expiation”], “divinité [“divinity”], “ascension” “[“ascension”], all of which point to Judith’s desire to forge a spiritual connection with Albrecht as well as to her faith in love. “Expiation” et “chute” [“fall”], meanwhile, point to the reality of her situation, that is, her fall from grace. The idealization of Albrecht, as the narrator implies, is a function of Judith’s naïveté. “Recréé” [“Recreated”] tells us that the way Judith sees Albrecht has little to do with the flesh-and-blood man. The young woman’s determination to “faire cette ascension” [“undertake that ascension”], Newsome asserts, shows her desire for “more than sensual pleasure. She wants a platonic ideal” (Newsome 2014, 56). Judith’s hopes for a spiritual connection are dashed when she receives a visit from three drunk German soldiers offering food and wine and bearing a “voucher,” signed by Albrecht, granting them permission to sleep with Judith. The realization that the man she loves is prostituting her stuns her. The narrator evokes the heights from which Judith has fallen emotionally while also

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making it clear that Albrecht is the guilty party: “Avili, il l’avilissait en même temps que lui-même” [“Debased, he degraded her at the same time as himself”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 147). The note, written in the style of a requisition form for food and shelter, is irrefutable proof as to Albrecht’s true feeling for her: “Elle eut soudain l’horrible et précis rappel de tout ce qu’elle avait fait pour cet homme, de leurs nuits, de cet amour insensé, cette adoration d’une chair méprisable où elle s’était abaissée et prostituée” [“She had the sudden and precise reminder of all that she had done for that man, of their nights together, of that foolish love, that worship of a contemptable flesh where she had humiliated and prostituted herself”] (Van der Meersch 2014, 147). “Chair méprisable” [“Contemptable flesh”] has a double significance here, the first of which is a denunciation of Albrecht, who is unworthy of Judith’s adoration. The second is a condemnation of Judith’s having given in to the temptation of the flesh with Albrecht. “Déchue” (fallen), “déchéance” (“degradation”), and “tombée des cimes” [fallen from the heights], juxtaposed with “ascension” (ascension), and “divinité” (divinity), foreshadow Judith’s ultimate fate. The narrator also uses the phrase “femelle à vendre” [“female for sale”] and, of course, “prostituée” [“prostitute”] which bring home for the reader the extent of the young woman’s debasement and emotional betrayal by the man she had idolized. Somewhat less expected, perhaps, is the reference to Albrecht’s having brought his mistress down to his level, which accentuates Judith’s honorable intentions and his perfidy. Albrecht’s treatment of Judith reflects the traditional conception of female sexuality of the time. The residents of occupied France during the Great War still maintained the traditional view of morality, specifically, the prohibition of sexual activity outside of marriage (Debruyne 392). Consequently, it mattered little if women were actually prostitutes or simply mistresses of the occupier; their sexual activity was categorically denounced (Debruyne 2018, 392–93). It is equally significant that, rather than condemning the occupying forces and nation outright, Van der Meersch places blame where it belongs— on Albrecht as an individual. Albrecht also metes out Judith’s punishment for her perceived sins, his control of her behavior part and parcel of his role as an occupier. The young woman’s body was his to do with as he pleased, including handing her over to his compatriots for their sexual gratification. Judith adapts to her situation and is able to turn it to her advantage for the duration of the war. She is able to compartmentalize her trauma and, for the remainder of the war, exploit her influence with the occupier. Judith accepts Albrecht’s judgment and opens her home and offers her body to any and all German soldiers. However, what initially seems to be a form of self-punishment in fact becomes an unconventional means of empowerment. Even with the animosity directed toward her, Judith continues to make the most of her association with the occupying forces. Although the

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community sees her as a powerful ally and welcomes her intervention on their behalf with the Germans, they do nothing to repay their debt to her. Even her estranged, hypocritical father goes to her to get a fine dropped. Nonetheless, Judith makes one influential enemy, the rural law enforcement officer, Brook, when she rebuffs his advances. The spurned suitor reproaches the prostitute for her pride and her independent nature. There is a sort of recklessness, even self-sabotage, in Judith’s actions since she antagonizes someone who potentially has power over her. Van der Meersch uses indirect style in this passage to indicate Brook’s judgment of Judith and his assumption that involvement with him, a representative of the law, would redeem and legitimize her in the community. Brook exacts his revenge by telling the German authorities that Judith does not go to required health visits. She is reduced to queuing up with street walkers for the weekly gynecological exam required by German authorities. Brook thus ensures that, even as Judith’s influence in the local community grows, she is not able to escape the source of her influence— being the mistress of a German officer—and her place in society at large—as a prostitute. Judith’s position as a collaborator makes her a target at the end of the war when the fleeing German army leaves a power vacuum that sets in motion vigilante justice against collaborators and women involved with the occupiers. At the end of World War I, retaliation against the group often took the form of forcibly shaving their heads (Debruyne 2018, 312).3 Judith is protected from acts of vengeance as long as the Germans are in Herlem, but she becomes a target when they withdraw at the end of the war. Following the retreating German army, she is exploited by the very troops that she believes will protect her. Once at the border with Germany, those with whom she had collaborated and to whom she had provided sexual favors refuse her entry. All her options exhausted, Judith returns to Herlem, where she is arrested by Brook, who carries through on the threat he had made to settle the score after his overtures were rejected. In one final mortification, Judith is dragged through the streets, jeered by the very people who went to her because of her association with the Kommandantur. This public shaming, akin to being passed from Albrecht to the three drunken soldiers, lays bare the community’s contempt that is concealed as long as Judith can be of service. Once she loses her privileged place in the community, she is rejected by those she had helped. The final scene in Judith’s storyline reveals the significance of the religious terminology that is an integral part of her portrait. Her family and neighbors having rejected her, Judith enters a convent in Lille. She takes on a Christlike quality because she takes away the sins of those who took advantage of her compassion and, above all, her influence with the occupier. To be sure, Judith’s entry into a religious community is meant to be understood as the

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opportunity for spiritual redemption, but her withdrawal from secular life serves a social purpose as well, since it provides a way for her family to restore its reputation. In the immediate aftermath of the war, the convent was one of the only safe places for women who had been in relationships with German soldiers. Their motivation for taking their religious vows after the armistice was not always clear cut; some were sincere in their belief while others, even those, the narrator of Invasion 14 concludes, who see religion as a way to avoid vengeful mobs. Although there is no textual indication of Judith’s state of mind when she enters the convent, it is nonetheless clear that the young woman is sacrificed for her youthful indiscretion and for falling in love with the wrong person. She must “disappear” because she is a reminder for her family and for her neighbors in Herlem of their conduct during the occupation. In short, she is a war martyr. Judith’s story has distinct parallels to that of the eponymous protagonist of Guy de Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif,” a prostitute who saves her fellow travelers detained in an inn by a Prussian officer. The condition of their release is Boule de Suif sleeping with the officer, but the young woman resists the Prussian’s overtures because she draws the line at sleeping with the enemy. When her traveling companions wear her down and convince her to give in to the officer’s overtures, their kindness turns to scorn. This is precisely the dynamic in Invasion 14 since the community solicits Judith’s help then turns on her when she loses her influence. The link between Maupassant and Van der Meersch is further strengthened by her resemblance to Irma, the protagonist of “Lit 29” who is raped by Prussian soldiers. She did not seek treatment for the syphilis she contracted from her rapists and prostitutes herself to the occupiers as the means to exact revenge. Much like Maupassant’s Boule de Suif, Judith serves her community in wartime by allowing the exploitation of her body by the invader. Judith and Irma thus have in common the exploitation of their sexuality to even the playing field for the civilians vis-à-vis the occupier. And like Boule de Suif, Judith’s assistance is deliberately forgotten when the military conflict and the need for her influence ends. Invasion 14, as we have seen, is based on an interdiscursive fabric composed of allusions to the works of Balzac and Émile Zola. In Balzac’s Le Père Goriot, Van der Meersch found a model for depicting the ravages of grief on the body. From Zola, he borrowed the theory of determinism that follows Taine’s la race, le milieu, le moment. Like Zola, too, Van der Meersch endeavored to create a social history of sorts by portraying the difficulties of living under enemy occupation and the adaptive behavior individuals developed. Zola declared in the preface to the first novel of the Rougon-Macquart, La Fortune des Rougon that his characters “racontent . . . le Second Empire, à l’aide de leurs drames individuels” [“tell the story of the Second Empire with the help of their individual dramas”] (Zola 1960, 8). The stories of the

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Sennevilliers, Druydt, and Lacombe families—among others—retell the history of the occupation of the Nord between 1914 and 1918. Viewing the divergent storylines as parts of a civilian front emphasizes the complexity of life in the occupied territories of France during the Great War. Its historical import notwithstanding, Invasion 14 is a significant literary work built on the foundation provided by the realist novels of the nineteenth century, a continuation of sorts of the attempts by French novelists such as Balzac and Zola to reveal psychological states and personality attributes through bodily signs. It is Van der Meersch’s artistry, in particular his use of the mind-body connection in his development of the main characters of Invasion 14, that offers us insight into the trauma the German occupation of 1914–1918 caused the civilian population of northern France. We also see a range of responses to trauma, from Berthe’s refusal to give up to Fannie’s suicide, and finally to Judith’s decision to use her connections to lessen the hardship and trauma of her family and neighbors. Chapter 2, dedicated to Colette’s war reporting, examines some of the same issues taken up by Van der Meersch in Invasion 14, in particular those that directly affect women. Colette’s pieces, perhaps best referred to as literary journalism, afford us insight into how women experienced the war. NOTES 1. I have focused in this chapter on allusions to the works of Balzac, Zola, and Maupassant, but these are by no means the only authors Van der Meersch references. There are also echoes of the works of André Gide and Stendhal in Invasion 14. 2. For a detailed discussion of Hoover’s work in Belgium and France during World War I, see Helen McPhail’s The Long Silence. 3. For more insight into the revenge exacted on women involved with German soldiers at the end of the Great War, see Jean-Yves Le Naour’s “Femmes tondues et répression des ‘femmes à boches’ en 1918.”

Chapter 2

Through a Woman’s Eyes Colette’s War Reporting

Margaret H. Darrow asserts that “to explain the ups, and especially the downs, of [World War I], people turned to stories about women” (Darrow 2000, 5). Colette’s journalistic essays written between 1914 and 1918 gauge “the ups and downs” of the war and, above all, demonstrate that a deep understanding of the war comes from an awareness of perspectives beyond those of the combatant. Her reporting on World War I, first printed in periodicals such as Le Petit Parisien and Le Matin, were republished in two collections, Les Heures longues: 1914–1917 [The Long Hours: 1914–1917] (1917) and La Chambre éclairée [The Illuminated Room] (1922). Like other writers at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—most notably, Anatole France, André Gide, and Marcel Proust—Colette pursued journalism at a time when the press in France held sway. Initially, she undertook journalistic writing to earn a living after a bitter divorce from her first husband, Henry Gautier-Villars—aka “Willy”—and the resultant financial difficulties. Eventually, however, she found her columns to be a forum in which to express her opinions and hone her skills as a writer (Dubbelboer 2015, 41). She joined Le Matin just before the start of World War I, when it was one of the largest newspapers in France, second only to Le Parisien. In her column, “Le Journal de Colette,” based in part on her own life, she captures the zeitgeist of the home front with her short pieces that her editors saw as a way to appeal to the burgeoning female readership (Mesch 2013, 4). As is the case in Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14, the front that Colette depicts is for the most part a domestic one, but one that may be divided into smaller segments. And as with Invasion 14, the fronts Colette describes are those of women and children, categories that may be broken down further to women who travel to the front to be close to a lover or husband and children born of war rape. These essays remind the reader that the trauma of war touched those who were seemingly out of harm’s way. Canine 39

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combatants at the military front as well as the domestic at the front provide insight into animals in war and how they, too, are traumatized by it. Finally, Colette allows us entry into the half military, half domestic front of the injured veterans. To be sure, some of the columns appear at first glance to be “fluff” pieces, but a close reading shows that they often contain an element of social criticism or commentary on current events. Other short pieces are lyrical reflections on how humans and nature adapt to the changes war inevitably brings. These essays feature many of the same themes as Colette’s literary works—love, animals, and nature—and, taken together, may be understood as a microcosm of the women’s front during World War I. What makes Colette’s journalism a vital addition to this book is the fact that it documents the challenges faced by the noncombatant during the Great War. In her newspaper columns, she chronicled her visits to the front, a space forbidden to women during World War I, her goal to show her readers the vulnerability of women and children in war zones. Her privileging of women’s issues counters the view expressed by Corra Harris, who herself reported from the western front for The Saturday Evening Post: “What men suffer through war is written in histories . . . but what women suffer is never written” (quoted in Higonnet 2008, xx). As we shall see, the essays in Les Heures longues and La Chambre éclairée give us invaluable insight into civilian life during World War I, including women’s war efforts, children’s responses to war, and the reintegration of wounded combat veterans into society. Although strictly speaking the essays I analyze in this chapter are categorized as journalism, they contain many of the artistic devices associated with literature. If Van der Meersch looks to the realist novelists to develop his characters, Colette finds her inspiration in the romantic writers, in particular love, a connection with nature, and lyricism. Les Heures longues and La Chambre éclairée highlight the emotional impact of war on both civilians and combatants, which humanizes the civilian population in a way that the simple recitation of statistics cannot. While the front Colette covers is a largely domestic space, far from the battlefield, there are also dispatches from nearby towns such as Verdun, where she joined other women who hoped to enjoy a few fleeting moments with their husbands or lovers. Economic themes dominate Colette’s early war reporting, beginning with the transformation of the workforce. Because of the lack of able-bodied men, women, children, and the elderly had to step up to ensure that vital services were not disrupted. In “La Résurrection des vieux,” dated July 1916, Colette paints a virtual tableau for her social commentary as she documents the recruitment of retired workers to harvest the wheat: “Quel patriotique miracle les redresse, nos vieux, les tire de la nuit où ils glissaient, somnolents, poussés par l’impatience avide des jeunes! Ils s’éveillent, ressuscitent, guident les femmes, conseillent les adolescents, recouvrent l’autorité patriarcale” [“What

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a patriotic miracle straightens up our elderly, pulling them back from the night they were sliding toward, sluggish, pushed by the avid impatience of the young. They awaken, come back to life, guide the women, advise the adolescents, recover their patriarchal authority”] (Colette 1917o.). The mobilized elderly enjoy a revalidation of their knowledge and experience in service to their country. Colette clearly meant to inspire her readership by recounting their efforts by transforming what might otherwise be construed as a pathetic scene into a civilian call to arms, with farm implements standing in for military weaponry. This last image, juxtaposing the tools of the farmer that support life with armaments that kill, will find its echo in Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée, which is the subject of chapter 4. In “Apollon, Déménageur (Carnet d’une femme de mobilisé) [“Apollo, Mover (Notebook of a Soldier’s Wife)”], Colette shines a spotlight on the restricted front of the “embusqués,” that is, men of draft age fit for military service who have evaded conscription. The motley crew that Colette hires to move some furniture is composed of men too old or not fit enough to be drafted, a teen-aged apprentice, and a healthy man in his late twenties whom Colette dubs Apollon [Apollo]. As the wife of a man serving at the front, she feels that she is within her rights to confront the young man she suspects of draft evasion. Apollon reveals that he is exempted from military duty because he has seven children, which he suggests is “ma façon à moi de tourner des munitions” [“my way of shooting ammo”] (Colette 1917a). For the older man working with him—humorously, a doppelgänger for the poet Paul Verlaine— Apollon is “venimeux” [“venomous”] because he does not serve his country in its time of need. The takeaway here is that not everyone is sacrificing for the war effort, which reflects the general disdain at the time for the “embusqué” (Colette 1917a). At the same time, Apollon, hale and hearty but unwilling to defend his country, is the opposite of the retired farmers who fill in for the younger generations at war. Apollon thus represents a distinct substratum of the male population of France during the Great War, squatters of sorts on the home front, who were nearly universally reviled. In “Plomberie et Gaz” [“Plumbing and Gas”] (1921b), Colette skewers the French bureaucracy while also showing how war has impacted the services that civilians had previously taken for granted. She refers to the clerk at the utility office about her water heater connection as “Le Gaz” [“Gas”], thus designating him by the service he provides. The employee uses the shortages of manpower resulting from the war as an excuse for a lengthy wait, an all-too-frequent excuse for delayed action. Having been informed that she would have to wait a week for a service call, Colette is perturbed to hear the customer behind her in line bribing le Gaz with a pastry and, in return, receiving the promise of a next-day appointment. When the worker does finally appear, his visit overlaps with that of a plumber’s apprentice, referred

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to as “La Plomberie” [“Plumbing”]. A squabble ensues, and Gaz, insulted by Plomberie, leaves in a huff. Plomberie soon follows, petulantly declaring that he will tell his father about his poor treatment. The essay’s form calls to mind the basic structure of one of La Fontaine’s fables—albeit in prose—which consists of exposition, conflict, resolution, moral. The “types” that Le Gaz and La Plomberie represent—the state and workers, respectively—strengthens the resemblance to La Fontaine’s social critique. The essay ends with the admission that “cette anecdote est sans portée morale” [“this anecdote lacks moral significance”] (1921b). Nonetheless, the anecdote presents us with the archetypes of the lazy civil servant and the inexperienced tradesman, both symptoms of a society at war limping along without enough competent workers. The shortage of staples is another economic consequence of the war that Colette approaches in her reporting. This, too, is part of the more encompassing home front that represents the common experience of the French nation. “La Chasse aux produits allemands” [“The Hunt for German Products”] (Colette 1917f). begins with the serious concern about the availability of medication imported from Germany, such as aspirin. The actual, ironic, focus of the essay, however, is the superficiality of Parisian consumers. Based on conversations with merchants and on her own experience, which she concedes is anecdotal, she concludes that at the time of her writing in December 1914, Parisian consumers—including the author herself—were unwilling to give up German products. We saw in chapter 1 that in Invasion 14, Van der Meersch referenced the food insecurity in the occupied Nord, where residents were dependent on rations provided by the government and charitable organizations. Mass starvation was not an issue in the towns Colette visited in 1914, but the scarcity of pantry staples and inflationary prices were. In “À Verdun. Décembre–Janvier 1915” [“In Verdun. December–January 1915”] (Colette 1917b), Colette recounts her stay in the town while visiting her husband, Henry de Jouvenel des Ursines, who was serving in the nearby trenches. Speaking with a sergeant on active duty in Verdun, she learns that the quality of the poilus’ food, more so than the bullets and shells raining down on them, is their primary concern, confirming the famous quote attributed to Napoleon that “une armée marche à son estomac” [“an army marches on its stomach”]. Colette’s reporting on the food supplied to the poilus at the front is, then, if not a journalistic coup, at least a historically significant account. Understanding that priority must be given to the troops over civilians, she nonetheless emphasizes the impact of disrupted supply chains on civilians. She credits military authorities for distributing excess food to noncombatants, which likely saved lives. In short, protecting the civilian population extends beyond the battlefield.

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Among the first women journalists allowed access to the front, Colette was something of a pioneer. Her contributions to reporting on the Great War are significant, but their true power is to be found in the pieces in which a more emotional and lyric tone prevail. Nature is front and center in the essays dealing with World War I, as is often the case in her literary work as a whole. In the opening piece of Les Heures longues, “La Nouvelle. Août 1914” [“The News. August 1914”] (1917n), Colette describes how, while on vacation in St. Malo, she learned that France had declared war on Germany. Although centered on the broader home front since it was experienced by most of the nation, this is a personal reflection written within hours of the events. Colette opens with a reflection on how the declaration of war has changed the attitudes of those far from the front, for the uncertainty it brings impacts the mood of those around her. She uses nature to portray the moment she heard of the declaration of war, her gaze sweeping the coastline, then zeroes in on “les enfants en maillots rouges [qui] quittent le sable pour le goûter et remontent les rues étranglées. . . . Et du milieu de la cité tous les vacarmes jaillissent à la fois: le tocsin, le tambour, les cris de la foule, les pleurs des enfants [“the children in red swimsuits [who] were leaving the sand for their afternoon snack, and going up the crowded streets. . . . And all the sounds were rising up from the center of the town at once: the bell, the shouts from the crowd, the children’s crying”] (Colette 1917n). The calm of the sea is juxtaposed with the frantic sounds of crowds reacting to the devastating news. The use of the phrase “les rues étranglées” [“the crowded streets”], literally “the strangled streets,” is both a description of the crush of humans and a harbinger of the violence to come. What is more, the reference to children in swimsuits, followed by that of the sounds of their crying, shows that the war has already impacted their young lives. Colette goes on to describe the Brittany coastline as a dream that contrasts with how she imagines the scene in Paris, “où vit la moitié de moi-même” [“where half of myself lives”] (Colette 1917n). Her affinity for Paris notwithstanding, her reporting from the small towns near the front in northern and eastern France where the civilian population was often in peril has more of an emotional impact than those from the capital. In “Jour de l’An en Argonne” [“New Year’s Day in Argonne”] (Colette 1917l), published in 1915, Colette bears witness to the destruction wrought by modern warfare. This essay shows how the military front can impact the domestic. One formerly picturesque village, Clermont-en-Argonne, is left with “rien qu’une dentelle grossière de murs ajourés, d’arches rompues et penchantes, de portes béantes, ouvertes sur le ciel” [“nothing but a crude lace of openwork walls, broken arches, gaping doors, open to the sky”] (Colette 1917l). We will find similar images of ravaged towns in Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée, discussed in chapter 4, and in Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts, analyzed in chapter 5. Colette’s perspective

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is more emotional than those of the other two authors, perhaps because she was writing in the moment. Clermont’s pride and joy has been annihilated, the destruction marked by an absence of shelter and by the space left by the ordnance that has struck the town. While there are no descriptions of the villagers in this passage, the trauma they must have experienced may be gauged by the near-total destruction of the buildings. The unexpected metaphor of lace communicates the patterns of the bullet holes on the building’s facade in terms familiar to those with no military experience and who were far from the front. The detritus of battle is everywhere, marring the landscape as far as the eye can see: “La terre gelée dort, à demi délaissée, souffre que son repos abrite, dans un pli hâtivement creusé, ici une mitrailleuse sous son feutrage de branches, là un mort sous sa croix,—encore un mort, encore une croix, coiffée d’un képi,—plus loin des soldats, un convoi de vivres, des chevaux, des mulets” [“The frozen ground sleeps, half abandoned, tolerating that its respite shelters, in a hastily dug fold here, a machine gun under its cover of branches there, a dead man under his cross, another dead man, another cross wearing a military cap, farther away, a supply convoy, horses, mules”] (Colette 1917l). Here, Colette provides a close-up view of a sector of the battlefield, the rhythm of her sentences accelerating as she glimpses the first one, then multiple bodies and their makeshift graves. She then pans out to a large swath of the area to take in the juxtaposition of the living soldiers and horses with the movement of the military vehicles. The personification of the land shows how it has become a funerary—a repository for dead poilus—because the verb “dormir” here clearly points to the eternal sleep of death. We will find echoes of this juxtaposition of farmland and battlefield and life and death in Cendrars’s La Main coupée. In “Jour de l’an,” the living soldiers in the distance are surrounded by war, their fallen comrades constant reminders of their own likely end. War even corrupts the natural light: “De l’autre côté de la rue, les brèches d’un pan de mur encadrent, au delà de la vallée brumeuse, deux éminences inégales, qui dialoguent d’une terrible voix et ne veulent ni l’une ni l’autre se taire. La plus lointaine se voile de brouillard, mais au front de la plus distincte s’allume incessamment, visible malgré le soleil de midi, une foudroyante étoile,—la rose lueur tubulaire des canons de 120.” [“On the other side of the street, the openings in a section of wall frame, beyond the misty valley, two unequal eminences conversing in loud voices, neither one wanting to be silent. The one farthest away is obscured by the fog, but on the forehead of the more visible one a bright star is continuously lighting up, visible despite the noonday sun,—the rose-colored light of 120 mm cannons”] (Colette 1917l). The holes in the walls framing the officer and enlisted man arguing underscore the fact that Man is responsible for the destruction. The fog covers the face of one of the interlocutors, as if to represent the anonymity of the conflict while that

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of the second is lit by the cannon fire nearby. The muzzle flashes from the cannons are so intense as to rival the sun, a testament to the cataclysm that weapons of mass destruction produce. This is a snapshot of the battlefield from the poilus’ perspective. Although Paris was not as heavily impacted by war as the towns near the front, it was nonetheless the target of aerial attacks. The capital is a domestic space unto itself since it is protected by military units. “La Nuit paisible” [“Peaceful Night”] (Colette 1921a) portrays the calm after one such attack. After spending the night in an air-raid shelter with a young family, Colette appreciates the sensory experience as she emerges on the street. Evoking the gentle breeze that ruffles in the trees, she exposes the omnipresence of nature in a large metropolis: Sur le trottoir, le brusque vallon d’une entrée cochère—plus loin sur ma tête le frôlement d’une basse branche de pin—, puis, derrière une grille, des chiens bas-rouges, muets et vigilants, qui m’écoutent passer et soufflent sur mes doigts à travers les barreaux. . . . Le petit pont jeté sur la voie ferrée, l’avenue sans réverbères qui sent l’étable longtemps après le passage des troupeaux de bœufs et de moutons. [On the sidewalk, the valley of a carriage entrance appears—farther along, a low branch from a pine tree brushes my head—then, behind a metal gate, some sheepdogs, silent and vigilant, listen to me as I pass by and sniff my fingers through the bars. The little bridge spanning the train tracks, the avenue without streetlights that smells like a stable long after herds of cows and sheep have passed] (Colette 1921a)

Four of the five human senses are evoked in this excerpt: hearing, touch, smell, vision. Only taste is missing, but it is implicit here because of its role in the sense of smell, which predominates down to the notation that the dogs sniff Colette’s fingers. After her stay in the underground shelter, the natural surroundings that she had taken for granted have reawakened her senses. Nature symbolizes hope in the essay, a reminder of life without war. Animals populate her space and even inspire her metaphors, including that of an airplane as a purring animal, transforming the urban scene into a bucolic refuge. She hears sounds that she had stopped noticing, such as the owl and its owlets murmuring on a branch outside her window. Creatures of the night play a central role in the anecdote, demonstrating the ubiquity of nature even in war. Having grown deaf to the birdsongs because of their familiarity, she comes to cherish them after the violence of the previous night. The birds have a symbolic function here as well because, since ancient times, owls have been associated with wisdom and watchfulness, making them at once witnesses to the war and guardians of the civilians. Because the darkness of the neighborhood obscures vision, Colette turns her attention to sounds. She again references the reawakening of her senses with the mention of the “goût” [“taste”]

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(Colette 1921a) of the peaceful night, the one sense that is missing at the beginning of the piece. Nature at once records the violence of war while also providing comfort in its aftermath, a reminder of its pervasiveness as well as its power to heal the wounded human soul. Nature serves as the common denominator of the military and domestic fronts, but it has an artistic role as well, for it provides Colette inspiration for the portrayal of the sights and sounds of war. The smoke from the exploding shells is rendered poetically in “À Verdun. Décembre–Janvier 1915” [“Verdun. December–January 1915”] as “la chute florale des fusées éclairantes” [“the floral descent of luminescent rockets”] (Colette 1917b). In that same piece, Colette again evokes images of flora and fauna in depicting a dogfight in the sky above her. The plane is a pigeon that increases in size as it approaches her vantage point, then turns and appears to stop over the city. “Cinq bouquets blancs viennent d’éclore en couronne autour de lui, cinq pompons de fumée immaculée qui marquent, suspendus dans le ciel sans brise, le point où éclatent nos projectiles;—cinq, puis sept, et leur septuple pétarade nous parvient plus tard” [“Five white bouquets have just bloomed in a crown around it, five pompoms of perfect smoke that mark, suspended in the still sky, the point where our projectiles explode. Five, then seven, and their septuple explosions reach us later”] (Colette 1917b). The rhythm of the passage is set by the punctuation, the semicolons and dashes translating the staccato of the aircraft’s guns and the sounds of its engine. The type of plane is a “taube,” the German word for “pigeon,” which explains Colette’s reference to that specific avian species. The aircraft’s movement, like that of birds, evokes free will, its personification allowing for the attribution of its thought processes. Birds are a prominent motif not only in Colette’s essays but in the novels of Diallo and Cendrars, which will be analyzed in the next two chapters. In the description of the aerial dogfight, Colette portrays the explosion of antiaircraft fire as flowers, transforming the battle into a garden scene with a purity and stillness suggested by the adjective “immaculée” [“immaculate,” “perfect”] and the phrase “le ciel sans brise” [“the still sky”] (Colette 1917b). As we shall see in chapter 4, Blaise Cendrars, a pacifist after his military service, decried any attempt to find beauty in war, even taking his friend Apollinaire to task for his war poetry. Although she does not do so as directly as Cendrars, Colette reminds us of the violence the flowers represent. The planes “tournent, semblent fuir, reviennent soudain comme l’oiseau heurtant la vitre, et nos canons fleurissent l’azur de roses blanches” [“turn, seem to flee, then suddenly turn back like a bird hitting a window, and our cannons decorate the blue with white roses”] (Colette 1917b). The imagery here is strikingly similar to what Apollinaire creates in Calligrammes: Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre [Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War] (1918),

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which includes a poem titled “La Colombe poignardée et le jet d’eau” [“The Stabbed Dove and the Fountain”]. In Colette’s “À Verdun,” the image of the bird hitting a window is a reminder of the violence even as the antiaircraft guns firing on the plane spread roses in the sky, adding an agent to the earlier description of blooming flowers. When the bullets and flak rain down on Colette, she envisions them as hail “qui fait chanter l’eau” [“that makes the water sing”] (Colette 1917b). Mesmerized by the unexpected beauty and its resemblance to natural phenomena, she remains cognizant that these are humans engaged in aerial combat: “En regardant avec passion les hommes volants recevoir et échanger la foudre, nous oubliions les étincelles, la cendre brûlante, tombées d’une bataille de demi-dieux qui se disputent la cime des airs” [“Passionately watching the flying men receiving and exchanging fire, we forgot the sparks, the burning embers falling from a battle between demi-gods fighting over the peaks of the sky”] (Colette 1917b). Initially, the sounds of lead bullets striking the water of a pond appear melodious, but they take on a threatening quality with the addition of references to heat. “Les étincelles” [“sparks”] and “la cendre brûlante” [“burning embers”] (Colette 1917b), serve as reminder that what Colette was witnessing is real and dangerous. The fire imagery has a hellish aspect that is offset by the spiritual allusions of the heavens, specifically, the reference to the demigods, creatures born of the union of a god and a human, which reinforces the juxtaposition of heaven and earth. In effect, the divine world of nature is invaded by man and technology. This is, at a very basic level, the description of a new form of warfare, namely, aerial combat, which requires the use of metaphor to make it comprehensible to readers far from the battlefield. Along with flora, Colette features fauna, first in the form of domesticated animals. There is no question that animals were an integral part of her life and writing, a reaction to, as Juliana Schiesari might see it, the “trauma of experiencing ourselves as beings distinct from nature” (Schiesari 2012, 97). What sets Colette’s animals apart is that, instead of serving as metaphors to flesh out a portrait of a human protagonist, they are the subjects of the stories. Colette’s use of animals goes beyond establishing physiognomic equivalencies between humans and animals. Rather, she endows animals with unique personalities and “translates” their innermost thoughts and feelings. Thus, characters such as Toby-Chien, Kiki La Doucette—the two main characters in Dialogue de bêtes [Barks and Purrs] (1905)—and the other nonhuman characters that populate her fiction, tend to be better developed than most anthropomorphized creatures in fables or children’s stories. Indeed, in her fictional works, Colette deconstructs, as Schiesari puts it, the “anthropocentric and normative structures [which inscribe] animals as worthy of moral consideration” (Schiesari 2012, 96). It is worth noting that Colette’s contemporaries compared her to animals (cats, panthers, does, and ferrets) because

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she flouted traditional gender roles and opposed the objectification of women (Dauphiné 1989, 206–7). It is only logical, then, that animals played a part in Colette’s journalism, in particular her profiles of military dogs published during World War I. Indeed, canine combatants act within their own fronts. These portraits express, as Reine Bienvenu notes of the characters in Colette’s Prrou, Poucette et quelques autres [Prrou, Thumbelina, And Several Others], published separately in 1913 and later integrated into Dialogues de bêtes [Creatures Great and Small], a repudiation of the limited way in which society tended to see animals. These short pieces explore the ways dogs were deployed at the front, with a special emphasis on the support they provided to the poilus. Taken together, I argue, these war essays offer a privileged view of Colette’s recognition of animals’ abilities and agency which was, at the time of her writing, still something of a radical concept. In “Dogs, History, and Agency,” Chris Pearson argues for a new research domain, that of animal history, because as he puts it, animals are more than “objects of human representation or technologies unproblematically manipulated by human agents” (Pearson 2013, 145). Dogs have been a part of warfare beginning in antiquity and continuing to the present day. The US armed forces currently deploy some 1,600 military war dogs (MWD), mainly to sniff out bombs, act as sentinels, and help rehabilitate wounded veterans (Stock 2017). During World War I, animals were a part of the armies of the Central Powers as well as the Allies, including the roughly eight million horses who were killed between 1914 and 1918. Dogs, too, provided support to soldiers on both sides; in 1917–1918, the French army alone had 15,000 canines in service (Derex, 2014, 147). Though far fewer in number than horses, dogs were more adaptable to trench warfare and, because they lived and worked in close proximity to their handlers, they were a constant presence at the front. The Allies and the Central Powers alike used dogs to perform various tasks during the Great War, including, but not limited to, installing telegraph wire, locating injured soldiers in no-man’s-land, and pulling food carts (Pearson 2013, 139). Tragically, those very skills made canine combatants more susceptible to chemical warfare. Because of the difficulty their handlers had placing the masks on their charges, many canine warriors died when overcome by the poison gas (Derex 2014, 97). Given the connection between human and canine combatants, it is not surprising that Colette chose to highlight the work that French MWDs carried out in World War I.1 The essays on canine combatants that I examine here were published at a time when war dogs were considered little more than “technology” (Pearson 2013, 129), able only to react to situational stimuli and incapable of reasoning. In his influential work, Le Chien auxiliaire de la police: manuel de dressage applicable au chien de défense du particulier et au chien du garde-chasse [The Police Dog: Training Manual For the Personal Guard Dog And For

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the Hunting and Watch Dog] (1907), Gaston De Wael argued that if dogs lacked reason as we understand it, they nonetheless possessed memory, which allowed them to apply knowledge gleaned from previous experiences (De Wael 1907, 10). What is more, De Wael’s British contemporary Lt. Col. Edwin Hautenville Richardson attributed the most trainable dogs’ motivation to two of their innate characteristics, namely, their wish to please their master and the knowledge that, when they perform the behavior their master asks of them, they will be rewarded (Frankel). De Wael and Richardson understood that the most important element in establishing a bond between man and dog is trust, which is only possible in an environment free of cruelty and abuse (Frankel 2014). These influential trainers recognized that the canine skill set is uniquely adapted to the battlefront since dogs are less likely to lose their way in the dark, are able to run faster than humans, fit into smaller spaces, and avoid hazards like barbed wire (Frankel 2014). In “Le Refuge: 13 avril 1915” [“The Refuge: 13 April 1915”] Colette recounts a visit to an animal shelter partially destroyed by a bomb. Among the survivors are “quelques chiens à collier et à médailles d’identité qui semblent représenter, parmi soixante vagabonds sans maîtres et sans licou, une aristocratie d’abandonnés” [“several dogs with collars and tags that seem to represent, among sixty vagabonds with no harness or master, an aristocracy of abandoned dogs”] (Colette 1917p). It is the behavior of these “aristocratic” strays—the companions of soldiers sent to the front—that distinguishes them from other abandoned dogs, namely, their unwavering focus on the bell hung from the door that will signal the return of their masters. In her characteristic style, Colette draws her reader in with the intimation that these dogs need more than food, water, and shelter. The metonymic expression in which the bell represents the return of the soldier alludes to the animals’ emotional need to be reunited with their human companion. This is more than an attempt to tug at readers’ heartstrings, however, because in the trenches, man and beast were by necessity attuned to each other’s slightest movements and sounds. Jean-Michel Derex’s discussion of the “animal geography” of the World War I trenches shows just how integrated war dogs were within the ranks of the poilus. Sentry dogs, with their keen sense of smell and hearing, complemented the work of the human guards. Trained to growl softly when they sensed danger, they provided their human counterparts precious seconds in case of an attack (Derex 2014, 102). In short, the handler must know a dog well enough to be able to understand its individual way of communicating. During Colette’s tour, the kennel attendants recount the dogs’ war stories and, in the process, define the relationship the animals have to their absent masters. One resident who is in constant motion captures Colette’s attention, a war dog who was wounded on the battlefield next to his master, but who

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was left behind when the soldier was sent back to the front. She describes the little mutt as “anxieux” [“anxious”] (Colette 1917p), which suggests that the animal is experiencing separation anxiety, a common enough affliction among dogs who have bonded with a human. The anthropomorphism here is unmistakable but should not be taken in a negative sense because, as Schiesari argues, “to speak outside anthropomorphism may be as impossible as the claim to step outside culture to reach a pure state of nature. Moreover, there are not the intersubjective processes of projection and introjection part of the human process of affection, attachment, and cognition” (Schiesari 2012, 14). In effect, the anthropomorphism in Colette’s essay encourages us to view the animal in the same way we would a shell-shocked soldier in a hospital. The reader’s sympathy for the dog grows as Colette sketches his physical form. Bright eyed and energetic despite only having three legs, he exhibits all the signs of a happy dog. However, the animal’s body, scarred by shrapnel, along with his obvious loyalty to his absent master, confirms his status as a combatant. If the burned fur and shattered paw were not enough to peg him as a “mutilé de guerre” [“disabled veteran”] (Colette 1917p), he also presents with telltale signs of anxiety in dogs, such as agitation, shaking, and panting, physiological symptoms undoubtedly brought on by his separation from his master and from the job he was trained to do. The phrase “ce petit martyr frétillant” [“this wiggly little martyr”] (Colette 1917p), moreover, evokes that malady which during World War I was referred to as shell shock, the symptoms of which included “fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing” (Jones). The wounded and traumatized dogs have a segment of the larger front in which the MWD works. Colette continued to raise awareness about war dogs in a column titled “Chiens sanitaires: Mai 1915” [“Ambulance Dogs: May 1915”] (Colette 1917h), which deals with a training camp for canine warriors near Saint-Cloud, where she observed a group of a half dozen dogs who would become part of the French and British armed forces. From the outset, we see the training from the dog’s perspective: “les chiens, eux, ne jouent pas. Ils travaillent. Ils ont la foi, ils délirent de l’envie de servir” [“they dogs do not play. They work. they have faith, they go crazy from the desire to serve”] (Colette 1917h). The reference to “the dogs” could easily be replaced with “the soldiers” because the description centers on their dedication to the task. The essay opens with the simulation of a battle scenario in which the participants have been spotted by an enemy patrol. Turco, a briard, serves as an ambassador of sorts for Colette. Her mention of the Red Cross vest followed directly by the animal’s physical portrait alerts us to the fact that he is a rescuer first and a dog second. Turco’s mission in the simulation is simple enough, according to his handler: delivering a letter to the team hidden behind a hedge. The human handler knows the dog’s skills and respects him in the same way a sergeant

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treats a soldier under his command. Turco quickly and stealthily completes the task, the enjoyment he receives from his work evident in his movements. By all accounts, this is a working dog fulfilling his vocation and whose status as a first responder is validated by the Red Cross. The animal’s sole reward is simply pleasing his handler. Cognizant of the temptation on the part of the reader to view this essay as little more than a “fluff” piece, an anthropomorphic portrait that reduces Turco to a human stand-in, Colette emphasizes that Turco and other dogs like him, working tirelessly to complete their mission, can mean the difference between life and death to a wounded poilu. Turco is given the title “brancardier à quatre pattes” [“four-legged stretcher-bearer”] (Colette 1917h), which shows that he is an animal performing a vital function using his own specific skill set. This demonstrates Pearson’s assertion that “the militarized dog . . . was not a product of humans imposing their intentions on an animal object. Instead, it was a mixture of human and canine abilities . . . that allowed dogs to shape the conduct of war, however slightly, by carrying messages and seeking out the injured on the battlefield” (Pearson 2013, 142). Colette makes it clear that Turco is not an inferior substitute for a human. Instead, it is his keen sense of smell and his acute vision—senses far more developed in dogs than in humans—that allow him to come quickly to the aid of the wounded. The image of the canine rescuer transmitting his vitality to the injured soldier underscores the fact that the animal can, indeed, save lives. Although all the military war dogs were exceptional animals, Turco, a “superdog” of sorts, stands out because of his capacity for higher levels of thought and his ability to adapt to his environment. After just a few weeks, he masters his training and learns to improvise: “Le képi, le mouchoir manquent-ils au blessé? le chien invente, arrache un bout de capote, ronge le ceinturon, fouille les poches, pour rapporter sa pièce à conviction. Il raisonne, il tire des conclusions” [“The wounded soldier does not have a hat or a handkerchief? the dog invents, rips a bit of his (the trainer’s) coat, rummages through his pockets to bring back his evidence. He reasons, he draws conclusions”] (Colette 1917h). This canine portrait is an endorsement for viewing animals as individuals with agency, as evidenced by the verbs “invente” [“invents”], “raisonne” [“reasons”], and “tire des conclusions” [“draws conclusions”] (Colette 1917h). Rather than painting all members of a given species or breed with the same brush, Colette emphasizes that the success of a MWD depends on the animal’s temperament and intelligence and not on its breed. Choosing an individual dog based on its temperament, a fairly novel idea at the time, is an example of what Schiesari calls Colette’s use of self-reflective anthropomorphism. More a part of the author’s world view rather than a quirky idea, according to Schiesari, the concept “[displays] an intersubjectivity that does not deny the radical uniqueness of each species”

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(Schiesari 2012, 114). It is human nature to see ourselves in animals and to identify with them but, Schiesari insists, we must “[remain] fully aware that such anthropomorphic projections are indeed human derived, fictions of our own desires and fears, and not necessarily the ‘truth’ about the animal ‘in itself’” (Schiesari 2012, 115). This is precisely what Colette aims to do in her portraits of war dogs, for she gives precedence to their abilities and, in doing so, places Turco’s intelligence and natural ability, rather than what his handler has taught him, front and center. The human is thus relegated to a secondary role, that is, the handler is the tool for the dog and not the other way around. In “Les Chiens sanitaires: Mai 1915” [“Ambulance Dogs: May 1915”] (Colette 1917h), Colette recognizes the sacrifice that untold numbers of canines made to the war effort in terms ordinarily reserved for human combatants: “Chiens, nos compagnons dans la guerre et dans la paix, chiens, de qui la confiance humaine exige et reçoit tout, chiens, c’est pour notre édification que je veux dire le beau destin de Pick, chien sanitaire fameux. Il servit son pays et ses frères soldats, et mourut glorieusement, le flanc percé d’une balle allemande” [“Dogs, our companions in war and in peace, dogs from whom humans demand and receive everything, it is for our edification that I want to tell the beautiful destiny of Pick, a famous ambulance dog. He served his country and his fellow soldiers, died gloriously, his flank pierced by a German bullet”] (Colette 1917h). What stands out here are the phrases “ses frères soldats” [“his fellow brothers”] and “mourut glorieusement” [“died gloriously”] (Colette 1917h), which give Pick equal billing with the poilus since his death is described in the same heroic terms as those of human combatants. This is an example of necessary anthropomorphism, the purpose of which is, according to Eugenio Bolognaro, “to bring [the animal] within the compass of human concerns. Anthropomorphisation in this case is not an appropriation but rather the minimal and necessary step for the recognition of an otherness which we would otherwise be unable to perceive at all” (Bolognaro 2009, 111). The recognition of that otherness, I contend, is precisely Colette’s goal in writing about canine combatants. Pearson asserts that MWDs on the western front in World War I “acted with a degree of purpose and intentionality in nonhuman ways, which their human trainers and handlers mobilized in an attempt to support the war” (Pearson 2013, 140) The dogs’ agency is the focus of Colette’s essay “Les Chiens sanitaires: Hiver 1913/1914” [“Ambulance Dogs: Winter 1913/1914”] (Colette 1916b), in which she profiles two dogs: Polo, a Bouvier des Flandres, and Nelly, a German shepherd. Polo exhibits the determination and intelligence necessary for locating the wounded and summoning help. He thrives in his training, delivering to his handler the hat that serves as evidence of a wounded soldier, impervious to the cold and his wounded paw. Colette uses the verb “exulter” [“to rejoice”] (Colette 1916b), thereby imputing a

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human emotion to the animal while also pointing to his single-mindedness in completing the mission despite his obvious physical discomfort. “Fauve” [“animal”], “poils” [“fur”], and “patte” [“paw”] (Colette 1916b), remind us that this is a dog, albeit a highly trained one. Nelly evinces the same sense of pride in her task as Polo has in his when she delivers a piece of cheese that she found on the man she was to save in training. She overcomes the impulse to devour the bit of food and delivers it intact to her handler. Like Turco, Nelly exhibits a humanlike ability to improvise and a remarkable ability to remain on task. The tempting bit of cheese is also “sacré” [“sacred”] (Colette 1916b), which conveys Nelly’s understanding of the seriousness of her task. Of course, “sacré” also has a religious connotation, so its inclusion invites the comparison to the host that represents the body of Christ. In this way, cheese is the transubstantiation of the wounded soldier. At the heart of most of Colette’s MWD portraits are animal emotions, a topic that remains a subject of debate to this day. Those who discount the view that animals are sentient beings hold tight to the belief that humans are superior to the rest of the animal kingdom. Believing that animals experience emotions, then, narrows the gap between humans and “lesser” beings (Schiesari 2012, 13). Colette argues for the acceptance of the emotional intelligence of dogs by delving into the camaraderie between soldier and dog, a relationship that stems from her belief that animals in her own life constitute “[un] jardin secret, [un] refuge” [“[a] secret garden, [a] refuge”] (Dauphiné 1989, 207). In “Le Refuge” [“The Shelter”] (Colette 1917p), we meet Linda, a “senior” spaniel portrayed in decidedly human terms. The shelter worker explains in a low voice, as if the dog might hear her, that they believe her master to be dead. The dog’s “regard humain” [“human gaze”] (Colette 1917p), accentuated by her handler’s assumption that the animal is able to understand what she is saying, encourages the reader to identify with the animal’s emotions. Colette, attuned to canine body language, understands that Linda’s listlessness is the externalization of her resignation while also noting that the dog trembles each time she hears the doorbell ring. In addition to endowing the dog with human feelings, Colette attributes to her a sense of time: “[Linda] se garde de tourner les yeux tout de suite vers la porte, parce qu’elle veut espérer, une seconde de plus, le miracle, le retour de celui qu’elle ne reverra plus” [“(Linda) is careful not to immediately turn her eyes toward the door, because she wants to hope, for one more second, for the miracle, the return of the one she will never see again”] (Colette 1917p). Animal behaviorists theorize that dogs understand time in terms of routine, that is, they can read signs in humans that signal that something the animals value is about to happen, such as being fed or going for a walk. Along with the behavioral cues that humans display, dogs likely rely on natural markers—such as the position of the sun or even the presence and strength of

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scents—to gauge time. However, it is not at all clear if dogs comprehend the difference between, say, three hours and three weeks. Bienvenu points to a similar temporal awareness in Colette’s portraits in Prrou, Poucette et quelques autres: “l’animal se voit doté d’une pensée quasi-humaine dans la mesure où il peut concevoir la durée mais en revanche celle-ci n’excède pas pour lui sa propre existence; il n’imagine pas un temps dont il soit absent” [“Animals must be endowed with quasi-human thoughts insofar as they can understand duration; that said, that does not surpass for them their own existence; they cannot imagine a time from which they are absent” (Bienvenu 1987, 144). However, the duration of the absence would seem to be less of an issue for Linda than the bell’s Pavlovian effect. Whereas the dog in Pavlov’s famous experiment salivated at the sound of a bell because of conditioned response, Linda trembles when it rings. Her physiological reaction thus registers her awareness that the jingling might signal the arrival of her master. Having disappointed her so many times before, the bell now has a negative connotation for her. As a result, her conditioned response is that of resignation. Linda’s story shows that dogs can suffer trauma that they can only communicate to those who understand the external signs with which they present. It is ironic that Colette used the knowledge gleaned from Pavlov’s research in “Le Refuge” to describe Linda’s reaction to the bell because she denounces the cruelty of the Russian scientist’s work elsewhere. “La Salivation psychique” [“Psychological Salivation”], published in 1916 in La Paix chez les bêtes [Cats, Dogs, and I] (1916b), describes Pavlov’s new laboratory equipped with isolation rooms and advanced technology, then denounces the experiments conducted therein: C’est bien terrible, un savant lâché, en liberté, à travers le monde. Nous savons qu’il est nécessaire, ce gaspillage de forces, de temps, de trouvailles mécaniques, d’électricité, de bâtiments spéciaux, autour d’une idée. Mais celle-ci est génératrice d’images saugrenues ou pénibles, et ne fait pas fleurir en nous, nous commun des mortels, l’enthousiasme des découvertes rayonnantes à qui l’on jette, en sacrifice presque joyeux, des hommes et des bêtes vivantes. Ne songeons pas trop longuement aux “dressages” du docteur Pavlov et de ses nombreux élèves: nous finirions par trouver, par comparaison, que les vivisecteurs ne sont pas de si méchantes gens. [It is really terrible, a scientist set free into the world. We know that it is necessary, this waste of energy, of time, of mechanical, electrical discoveries, special buildings, because of an idea. But that generates absurd or painful images, and does not inspire in us, mere mortals, the enthusiasm of brilliant discoveries to which are thrown, in an almost joyous sacrifice, men and living animals. Let’s not think too much about Dr. Pavlov’s “training” and his numerous pupils: we would end up finding, in comparison, that vivisectors are not such evil people after all] (Colette 1916b]

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The role reversal here is striking because ordinarily a dog on the loose is perceived as a danger. Colette reduces Pavlov’s research to savage behavior by the implication that he is a threat to humans and animals alike. Researchers are of course considered seekers of knowledge, but Colette warns us about the dangers of unbridled scientific experimentation by implying that cruelty to animals in the name of science could potentially lead down a slippery slope to human torture. Her stance against animal experimentation presages the animal rights movement, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Indeed, the last sentences in “La Salivation psychique” cited above are strikingly similar to the group’s mission statement, which reads in part: “PETA operates under the simple principle that animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment” (PETA 2023). PETA activists notwithstanding, putting animals on equal footing with humans remains controversial today, in part because, as Schiesari notes, “to be close to beasts is to be suspicious to humans, not only to choose otherness of species over them but to be other to them, to be dissimilar to those with whom one is supposed to be similar” (Schiesari 2012, 60). We find an example of a human who has a close relationship to an animal in “La Chienne” [“The Female Dog”] (Colette 1917g), the story of a sergeant who left his dog, Vorace, in the care of his lover, Jeannine. The short story explores the emotional link between man and beast by introducing a woman into their relationship. Having left Vorace in the care of Jeannine when he was deployed, the sergeant goes to visit them when he is on leave. Although Jeannine is not at home when he arrives, “il fut quand même accueilli par des cris, chevrotants de surprise et de joie, étreint, mouillé de baisers: Vorace, sa chienne de berger, la chienne qu’il avait confiée à sa jeune amie, l’enveloppa comme une flamme, et le lécha d’une langue pâlie par l’émotion” [“he was all the same greeted by cries made tremulous by surprise and joy, hugged, drenched with kisses: Vorace, his shepherd, the dog he had left in the care of his young friend, enveloped him like a flame, and licked him with a tongue pale with emotion”] (Colette 1917g). The mix of human emotion and canine gestures creates a visual that any dog owner would surely recognize. “Une flamme” [“a flame”] (Colette 1917g), moreover, puts a trope familiar in depictions of passionate human relationships to good use in characterizing the connection between the soldier and the dog. As the housekeeper makes excuses for her absent employer and ingratiates herself to the sergeant, the dog stands next to him, shivering with emotion. “Il rit de la voir si ressemblante à lui-même, grise, bleue et bourrue” [“He laughed seeing her looking so much like himself, gray, blue, and gruff”] (Colette 1917g). The dog’s resemblance to the man reinforces the depth of a bond that is expressed through the animal’s silent but shivering response to his arrival. At the same time, the dog’s loving gaze reminds the soldier of his

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mistress, who is “gaie,—un peu trop jeune, souvent trop gaie” [“cheery—a little too young, often too cheery”] (Colette 1917g), which again demonstrates the depth of his attachment to the dog. The repetition of the adverb “trop” [“too”] before “jeune” [“young”] and “gaie” [“cheery”] however, presages what happens next. After dinner, the sergeant browses the bookshelves and discovers a photo of his mistress, taken, he realizes, when he was at the front in Arras, the first sign that something is amiss. When on a walk with Vorace later that evening, she leads him to a house which, he deduces from her reaction, she has previously visited. The dog seemingly confirms with a yip the suspicion her master voices to her, namely, that Jeannine is in the house at that moment. Certain that he has been betrayed, the sergeant returns to his lover’s house with Vorace. Packing his bags, he notices the dog’s anxiety and reassures her that she will be going with him this time and will no longer have to endure the young woman’s betrayals. “Ton âme n’est pas faite pour d’autres secrets que les miens” [“Your soul is not made for secrets other than mine”] (Colette 1917g). The sergeant understands that the dog’s devotion cannot be shaken, because she is loyal only to him. The essay concludes with the sergeant expressing sentiments ordinarily reserved for a human lover: “Ton âme . . . Ton âme de chienne . . . Ta belle âme” [“Your soul . . . your dog’s soul . . . your beautiful soul”] (Colette 1917g). Vorace’s devotion to her master is deeper than Jeannine’s, whose presence in the story is negligible. In effect, the woman’s infidelity is subordinated to the dog’s unconditional love. By endowing Vorace with human attributes, Colette makes her—and not a human lover—the symbol of the civilian population awaiting the return of a loved one from the front. With these essays, Colette normalizes the human-canine relationship. Above all, a close reading of these brief portraits of World War I canine combatants shows the depth of Colette’s thoughts on the intellectual potential and emotional intelligence of dogs, thus promoting the renowned animal lover to the status of animal rights advocate. Colette is known for her examination of relationships, so it is not surprising that her essays on World War I deal with the absence and loss of romantic partners, a major source of trauma for civilians and combatants alike. This is the more expected incarnation of the home front, since it entails the relationships that the poilus maintain while away from the military zone. Indeed, as Paula Dumont states, the primary effect of war on women’s lives was being alone, separated from the men they love (Dumont 2012, 68). Before World War I, Colette created a fictional friend named Valentine as the means by which to present her views on contemporary society. The character’s function, Diana Holmes notes, is “to establish a contrast between [Colette’s] free and easy lifestyle and libertarian morality . . . and the restrictive, frequently hypocritical codes of the dominant class” (Holmes 1991, 56). To that end, Colette makes Valentine relatable by attributing to her the kinds of problems

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her readers experience. The woman fulfills this role in the essays dealing with affairs of the heart, teaching by example, fictional, to be sure, how war affects long-married couples. In “Les Lettres” [“Letters”] (Colette 1917m), dated December 1914, Valentine’s anxiety over her husband’s absence manifests in behavioral changes and sudden mood swings. The war makes the woman realize that her marriage was not as emotionless as she had thought; she did not expect to be thinking about her husband and obsessively reading and rereading his letters as if trying to conjure him up. Valentine’s habit of carrying her husband’s letters with her everywhere, along with her fluctuating emotions, is proof of a (re-)awakening of her love. In this way, Valentine personifies La Rochefoucaud’s maxim 276, “L’Absence diminue les médiocres passions, et augmente les grandes, comme le vent éteint les bougies et allume le feu” [“Absence extinguishes small passions and increases great ones, as the wind will blow out a candle, and blow in a fire”] (La Rochefoucaud 1871). Valentine’s rekindled love for her husband does not, however, mean she has insight into the subjects of his letters, which are often filled with questions and advice about domestic matters despite her attempts to engage him in talk about his life at the front. In “Les Lettres,” we learn that she is hurt that her spouse avoids all mention of war because she assumes that he would want to share his experiences with her. In one missive, her husband makes what she feels is an odd request, that she send him carpet samples because he is worried about damage to their bedroom floor caused by a leak. Colette provides a code for interpreting the love language that many women, represented here by Valentine, might misinterpret as mental instability. As Valentine’s husband fights the enemy, Colette explains, “il voit le précieux et minuscule noyau de sa patrie: la chambre conjugale, la lampe, la commode ventrue—et le tapis taché” [“he sees the precious, tiny core of his homeland: the marital bedroom, the lamp, the chest of drawers—and the stained carpet”] (1917m). The essay conveys the message of the importance of reading between the lines in loved ones’ letters. Simply put, love is expressed in many ways, including in an obsession with repairs to the family home. How women cope with the stress of separation from loved ones at the front is a prominent theme of Colette’s journalistic writing during World War I. Valentine incarnates the legions of women hoping for a “sign” about their absent loved one. In “Présages” [“Intuition”] (Colette 1921c), Colette recounts the mania of trying to divine when the war will end from signs in the environment or from the folksy wisdom of farmers. In sync with nature, Colette is able to interpret the true significance of a plant’s transformation that Valentine believes to be meaningful. The latter projects her emotions and hopes onto the changes she observes in nature in a way reminiscent of the language of flowers popular in nineteenth-century France. The code consists of choosing flowers and their placement in a bouquet to convey a message to

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the recipient. Valentine’s obsession with signs links nature to the affairs of the heart, two of the more prominent themes in Colette’s writing in general. The attempt to divine one’s future through signs in nature is one way of coping with the uncertainty that war inevitably creates for loved ones. As a newspaper columnist, Colette received letters from her readers, including from soldiers at the front. Her essay “Une Réponse” [“A Response”] (Colette 1921d) features a letter from a twenty-three-year-old sergeant who wants to get married and her reply to him. The anonymous correspondent is stationed at the military front but hoping to become part of a domestic one with a fiancée or wife. Envious of his comrades who receive mail from wives and girlfriends, he is reduced to living vicariously through their romantic ups and downs. He concludes his letter with a plea to Colette for help finding a girlfriend. The young man hopes to experience love before he dies, his appeal to Colette all the more urgent because he is at the front. Her intent in publishing the letter is to give a human face to the poilus in the trenches, but it may also be seen as a corollary of sorts to the phenomenon of les marraines de guerre [“war godmothers”] who, according to historian Susan Grayzel, would correspond and send packages to soldiers in order to support them from a distance (Grayzel 1997, 70). Newspapers from the time played the role of matchmakers, introducing poilus to women interested in contributing to the war effort by corresponding with them. Colette’s journalistic pieces document the relationships between marraines and filleuls [“godsons”] by sharing representative letters from both actors. Bakary Diallo, whose novel Force-Bonté is the subject of chapter 3, writes about the marraines who “adopted” him during his lengthy rehabilitation. As part of her reply to the sergeant, Colette publishes a letter she received from a twenty-five-year-old unmarried woman who complains that she would like to find an eligible veteran but that the war widows are outmaneuvering her. She offers numerous examples of soldiers who marry widows, even widows who are much older. Colette takes her correspondent to task by citing a conversation about such relationships that she overheard in the Metro. At first glance, the inclusion of the anecdote appears sexist because it implies that younger, more modern women are not subservient enough; only war widows know how to keep a man happy. However, a second example, drawn from a member of Colette’s social circle, explains why disabled veterans might need a woman who caters to their needs; quite simply, they are mature and know what marital love entails. During World War I, marriage to a disabled veteran was considered a way for French women to express their patriotism. Françoise Thébaud observes that much was made in contemporary newspapers about young women staying true to their promise and marrying their wounded fiancés (Thébaud 1994, 198). Colette implies that the younger, never-married women seek to establish a relationship with the wounded veterans because of

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what it brings, namely, cachet. Although being the wife of a disabled veteran implies sacrifice, the young women do not know how to run a household, let alone care for an invalid, because they in all likelihood lack the maturity and selfless love of a war widow. Trauma comes into play in these situations as well since soldiers often return from the front with PTSD. Being a witness to or even target of an individual’s uncontrolled behavior makes one prone to secondary PTSD, which, while the source is different, manifests in the same way as the primary PTSD. Colette draws from her own love life to discuss the sacrifices women make in the name of love. This is an example of the author’s private front representing those women who find ways to circumvent military regulations to be with their loved ones. “À Verdun. Décembre–Janvier 1915” [“In Verdun. December–January 1915”] (Colette 1917b), Colette recounts joining other women temporarily taking up residence in the town to be near their husbands and lovers. Because the French military authorities forbade these conjugal visits, the women were forced to hide, only daring to venture out at night: “j’ai heurté, sans la voir, une des prisonnières volontaires que cache Verdun, une de ces épouses cloîtrées, voilées, qui respirait l’air de la nuit. On connaît ici ces amoureuses, retournées à une vie orientale; si on les nomme tout bas, on ne les trahit guère” [“I bumped into, without seeing her, one of the voluntary prisoners that Verdun hides, one of those cloistered, veiled spouses who breathe in the night air. These enamored women who have returned to an oriental life are known here; if you speak of them in hushed tones, they are scarcely betrayed”] (Colette 1917b). “Prisonnière volontaires” [“voluntary prisoners”] is an evocative oxymoron that captures the women’s precarious situation while also calling to mind soldiers who voluntarily enlisted to defend their country. These women share a mission with the poilus in that they flock to the front of their own volition to support their loved ones. The adjectives “cloîtrées” [“cloistered”] and “voilées” [“veiled”] reference nuns, thus conveying to readers not only the women’s self-imposed isolation but the sacredness of their undertaking. The reference to their return to “une vie orientale” [“an oriental life”] alludes to Gérard de Nerval’s Scènes de la vie orientale (Journey to the Orient), specifically the opening chapter that deals with the mysterious veiled women of Cairo. Colette recounts her own experience as a “cloistered wife,” referring to herself obliquely in the third person: “On en cite une qui depuis sept mois n’a pas franchi le seuil de sa geôle, ni vu un visage humain, hormis celui qu’elle aime. On dit qu’elle écrit, au loin, qu’elle est la plus heureuse des femmes” [“They cite one of them who, for seven months, has not crossed the threshold of her cell, nor seen a human face, except for that of the man she loves. They say she writes, far away, that she is the happiest of women”] (Colette 1917b). The most isolated of all, Colette is nonetheless content to remain in her “cell” doing what she

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enjoys and seeing the man she loves when circumstances permit. Seizing the moment is crucial for her since Henry is in constant danger of losing life and limb in the trenches. Colette’s portraits of the wounded soldiers she meets in military hospitals are especially interesting given her status as the wife of a poilu since these men represent the reality of war. At once a part of the military and domestic front, this front functions as a transitional space for the wounded veterans. “La Tête” [“The Head”] (Colette 1917q) introduces us to a gravely wounded soldier who recounts his experience on the battlefield. After a barrage of enemy fire, the man wakes up in a pool of water, not realizing how badly he is wounded until he catches sight of part of his tongue and his teeth in the puddle. In dire need of medical attention, he covers twelve kilometers on foot to the nearest aid station, refusing multiple offers of transport from ambulances that pass him on the road because he believes that he is not seriously injured. Despite his heroism, his pain renders the man desperate enough to request that the commanding officer at the medical aid station lend him a revolver with which to kill himself. Ultimately, he is sent to the hospital where Colette met him. The man holds his own, but is tortured by the smell of food served to other patients whose jaws and teeth were still intact: “Il soupire caninement au passage des escalopes odorantes et des pommes de terre frites: son gros appétit campagnard méprise la nourriture liquide, la seule que lui permette son affreuse blessure” [“He sighs like a dog, as the fragrant cutlets and french fries go by: his big country boy appetite despises liquid nourishment, the only one that his hideous wound allows him”] (Colette 1917q). What stands out here is the adverb “caninement” (“like a dog”), which underscores how his wound dehumanizes him. Nonetheless, his hearty appetite, which alludes to his personality and strength, points to a will to live. Colette’s intent is to underscore the man’s resilience and bravery in the aftermath of traumatic wounding. As we shall see in chapter 3, Bakary Diallo offers a personal account of facial wounds in his memoir Force-Bonté that is similar to this essay. Colette’s graphic portrait of the horrifically disfigured poilu is an early representation of what would become the “face” of the wounded World War I veteran. Katherine Feo notes that the static nature of war on the western front meant that soldiers were more likely to be wounded and that their injuries were likely to be above their shoulders because “the act of peeking over trench embankments left the face and neck especially vulnerable to enemy fire and shell explosions at ground level” (Feo 2007, 19). During and after the Great War, prosthetics and customized masks were designed to better reintegrate into civilian life those with catastrophic facial injuries. The prevalence of head wounds during the Great War led to further development of the fields of maxillofacial surgery and aesthetic surgery. Although the public

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did not have access to photos of the horrific injuries, medical professionals from the time painstakingly documented the damage incurred in the trenches, producing countless before-and-after photographic comparisons. Treatment was prioritized for soldiers with facial injuries because, as Sander Gilman puts it, “‘passing’ is not becoming ‘invisible’ but becoming differently visible—being seen as a member of a group within which one wanted or needs to identify” (Gilman 2001, xxi). The normalization of disabled veterans in society is precisely Colette’s intent in writing about the men she met in the army hospitals. Colette’s journalism provided the public—and continues to provide researchers today—insight into the care wounded veterans received during World War I. Her purpose in these essays is to chronicle the long, painful recovery many veterans faced on the front that was the hospital. In “Blessés: L’Aube” [“Wounded: Dawn”], dated 10 October 1914, she recounts her meetings with patients who are unable to rest peacefully at night. One man, his arm in a cast, struggles to find a comfortable position while his comrade in a neighboring bed, who has severe jaw and eye injuries, exclaims intermittently “‘oh!’ avec l’accent de l’effarement, du scandale” [“‘oh!’ in a frightened, scandalized tone”] (Colette 1917b). It is at night that the men drop their guard and, in their sleep, express the suffering that they suppress out of pride during the day. Colette emphasizes the will to live the convalescing poilus—even the most seriously wounded—display, as witnessed by their interest in food and their flirting with female visitors. The essays she devotes to the disabled combat veterans serve an almost propagandistic purpose. They call to mind the posters common during the period emphasizing the role that the wounded veterans play in society and in the economy. Sofia Papastamkou sees an ambiguity in the message conveyed by the images of the wounded, namely, the need for government campaigns to aid the reentry of veterans into civilian life (Papastamkou 2011, 52), which I contend is also present in Colette’s writing. Legislation was passed in France in 1924 guaranteeing disability payments, medical care, prosthetics, occupational therapy, and employment to disabled veterans. However, foreign nationals who fought for France, such as Blaise Cendrars, the subject of chapter 4, did not qualify for such benefits (Papastamkou 2011, 53). The discussion of Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts in chapter 5 delves more deeply into the lingering trauma that often complicated the former poilus’ reintegration into civilian life. Colette privileges human relationships in her essays written during World War I, looking to those around her for inspiration, including her own daughter Colette, nicknamed Bel-Gazou, who was eighteen months old in 1914. War pervades all aspects of civilian life, changing the perceptions of everyone down to the youngest civilians. Indeed, because of their age and their perceived isolation from the “real” world, children had their own area

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within the domestic front. Their view of war was of course shaped by what they learned from listening to adult conversations and their nonverbal clues. It is not surprising, given the proximity of war to children, that Colette should choose to write about the way in which the war affected the behavior of her daughter. Historians such as Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau have in recent years turned their attention to the militarization of children and young adults during the Great War, studying the propaganda aimed at them. He observes that some playacting took on a darker form during the war (Colette does not mention any such games, however): “violents, rudes et, il faut bien l’avouer, souvent cruels” [“violent, crude and, it must be admitted, often cruel”] (Audoin-Rouzeau 2013, 237–38). What is more, accounts of minors lying about their age to enter military service captured the public’s imagination and led to a number of articles on the “enfant-héros” [“child-hero”] in the national press (Pignot 2012, 175–76). Toymakers capitalized on the war, producing miniature versions of weapons, tanks, and soldiers’ uniforms. Rubber soldiers, coloring books, and war-themed primers were also popular (Pignot 2012, 77). Manon Pignot refers to the integration of the war into school curricula as “la mobilisation enfantine” [“the mobilization of children”] (Pignot 2012, 76). While younger children often did not write of their own accord about incidents in their lives or the emotions they experience in the same way that adults and adolescents might, French archives contain examples of drawings and brief writing assignments completed by schoolchildren (Gillis and Short 2014). In “Jour de l’an en Argonne (1915)” [“New Year’s Day in the Argonne (1915)”], Colette describes an angelic child erasing a model sentence on a slate that students recopied in practicing their penmanship: “Mourir pour la patrie, c’est le sort le plus beau, le plus digne d’envie” [“Dying for the homeland is the most beautiful destiny and the most deserving of wishes”] (Colette 1917l). The juxtaposition of innocence and violence in the excerpt captures the unique climate in which children grew up. School was a means by which to inculcate patriotism in the youngest members of society and parents and teachers demanded sacrifice appropriate to their age (Pignot 2012, 77). In effect, many children were groomed for war at school. The anecdotes featuring Colette’s daughter confirm that learning about the war was not confined to the classroom. Her essays about her daughter, Colette, nicknamed Bel-Gazou, chronicle the way the young girl internalized the war. The essay “Bel-Gazou et la guerre” [“Bel-Gazou and the War”], dated 24 January 1915, gives us an introduction to the psychological effects of war on children who live far from the front. The piece opens with an elderly woman in the Bois de Boulogne declaring that the children are happy because they do not know about the war. Using a technique characteristic of her journalistic essays, Colette provides the counterpoint to that statement in the body of the essay, in this case by demonstrating that, despite her tender

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age, Bel-Gazou watches an airplane pass overhead then disappear. The toddler claims that it is a German plane, a Taub, “et elle ajoute à titre de simple renseignement: Boum. Fusil” [“and she adds as an example a simple piece of information: Boum. Gun”] (Colette 1917c). The reference to the noise made by guns shows that the toddler is cognizant of the war. Even at her tender age, she knows the word for the type of aircraft she believes it to be, a Taub (the German word for pigeon), and that such a plane poses a threat to safety. When the old lady tells her it is a French plane, the child sings her version of the national anthem, although she garbles the lyrics, showing a precocious understanding of the link between war and patriotism. Next, she calls out to a disabled veteran feeding bread to ducks with his one good hand: “Soldat! Soldat!” [“Soldier! Soldier!”] (1917c), which elicits an embarrassed laugh from the man. The young girl innocently greeting the soldier and his reluctance to be acknowledged because of his disability was played out throughout France during and after the war. Bakary Diallo, whose Force-Bonté is examined in chapter 3, recounts having experienced a similar episode on a city bus. On the one hand, Bel-Gazou’s lack of “filter” allows her to call attention to the unassuming soldier. On the other hand, the wounded veteran demonstrates without speaking his desire to avoid the public’s intrusive gaze. Colette, able to read the man’s awkwardness, sweeps the child away in her “char” (1917c), a word that straddles the worlds of children and adults as well as the military and home fronts because it means both “stroller” and “tank.” We learn in the same essay that the war had overshadowed two thirds of Bel-Gazou’s young life, which has been marked by numerous trips through a country at war. This is in part because Colette, not known for her maternal instinct, left Bel-Gazou in the care of an English nanny for most of the year. Having lived near troops yet still far from the front, Bel-Gazou has a rudimentary understanding not only of military terms but mannerisms. In mimicking the actions of the soldiers she has seen, she turns to face east, the direction of the danger. Bel-Gazou is inspired to surveille those around her—mainly adults—, imitating the gestures and approximating the speech patterns of the representatives of the military with whom she has come in contact.2 Able to distinguish the military vehicles speeding through the streets of Paris, she raises her arms like a traffic policeman to protect her entourage: “Auto, auto, tension, tension! Et elle ajoute un ‘Ah! là là’ . . . qu’on peut aisément traduire par ‘Si je ne vous avais pas prévenus, ils vous aplatissaient comme une galette!” [“Car, car, look out, look out! And she added an ‘oh man’ that could easily be translated by ‘If I hadn’t warned you, they would have flattened you like a pancake!’”] (Colette 1917c). The essay ends with a description of the child’s room covered with maps of Europe on which she points to places where she believes her father and uncle to be, comically locating them in far-flung places nowhere near the front. Her shaky

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grasp of geography notwithstanding, the toddler demonstrates an understanding beyond her years, namely, that the war has numerous fronts. Above all, Audoin-Rouzeau would likely see the tracking of family members as proof of how war influenced the creative activity of children, which “met en évidence toute la force de l’aspiration enfantine au bonheur personnel” [“puts into evidence the entire force of a child’s yearning for happiness”] (Audoin-Rouzeau 2013, 248). The final humorous yet poignant paragraph of “Bel-Gazou et la guerre” brings home the extent of the war’s influence on the young psyche. Colette asserts that, in the case of Bel-Gazou, “c’est le soir que cette jeune guerrière, roulée dans un châle, une pipe de sucre aux dents, le balai du foyer tout armé en travers des genoux, imite le mieux, assise sur un siège de porcelaine et le front chargé de soucis,—les grognards de la territoriale qui gardent les portes du Bois” [“It is in the evening that this young warrior, wrapped in a shawl, a candy pipe between her teeth, the household broom fully loaded across her knees, sitting on a porcelain seat, her brow furrowed, best imitates the army reservists who guard the gates of the Bois de Boulogne”] (Colette 1917c). The image is comical because of the child’s position on the toilet, armed with her “weapon,” a broom. Her stance mimics that of the soldiers in her neighborhood but also the reality of the poilus on the western front, who by 1915 were dug into the trenches fighting a stationary war in which advances were measured in centimeters. Children, of course, imitate the words and actions of adults, behavior that takes on a special meaning during wartime. The toddler’s imitation of the soldiers she has met may be seen as a testimony to their importance in her life. Although Bel-Gazou remains in the safety of the home front, far from the fighting, she still interprets seemingly ordinary events through the prism of war, even co-opting its specialized vocabulary. In “Bel-Gazou et la vie chère” [“Bel-Gazou and Expensive Life”], dated summer 1917, Colette recalls telling her bathing-suit-clad daughter that she looks like Little Red Riding Hood bringing food to her ill grandmother. In response, the child insists that the mayor be alerted so that he can requisition the foodstuffs: “je vous réqui . . . réqui . . . réquisitionne votre galette! On prend pas la farine pour faire la galette pendant la guerre! Et vous payerez mille sous! Et c’est comme ça!” [“I requi . . . requi . . . requisition your pancake! We don’t take flour to make a pancake during the war! And you will pay a thousand cents! And that’s the way it is!”] (Colette 1917d). Not only does Bel-Gazou produce the word “requisition,” albeit haltingly, but she understands its meaning. What is more, she is aware of the necessity of rationing flour. The child is skeptical when her mother tells her that there was no war when the fairytale took place because the evidence is everywhere, coloring her view of the world. As a result, she cannot conceive of a time without it. Colette assumes that Bel-Gazou’s

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awareness of the war means a loss of innocence. However, it turns out that the war has not extinguished the child’s creativity. Bel-Gazou returns to the world of make-believe when, at bedtime, she tells her mother the story of a rat prince who visits her at night (shades of E. T. A Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and the Mouse King). As alarming as it may sound to an adult, she is not afraid of the imaginary rodent; rather, she wants to ensure that the creature will continue to visit her. The toddler again adopts the role of protector, but this time she protects her mother from the worry that her daughter is growing up too fast. Bel-Gazou’s active imagination integrates other aspects of a country at war, including embellishing her family history with war-related details. In “Fantômes,” Colette walks in on her daughter writing a letter to her imaginary eight-year-old brother named Louis Tragomar who lives in England and works in a munitions factory. She also has an imaginary sister who is a prisoner of war in Germany. Bel-Gazou acknowledges that her sister’s fate is sad but reminds her mother, “c’est la guerre” [“that’s war”] (Colette 1917k). The particulars about her imaginary siblings show an understanding of the basics of war, specifically, the need to manufacture weapons and the taking of prisoners. Bel-Gazou’s conclusion establishes the extent to which war has permeated her psyche since war is the only reality she has known in her short life. Margaret R. Higonnet notes that during World War I, “propaganda and fiction intertwined the shell shock of the adult and the trauma of the child. The juxtaposition of the child and the soldier is one of the prime tropes of the period” (Higonnet 2008, 187). Although by all accounts Bel-Gazou is not traumatized, it is clear that war has left an imprint on her psyche. “Conte de Bel-Gazou à sa poupée” [“Bel-Gazou’s Story For Her Doll”] (1917i) is one final example of how war shapes the child’s worldview. Bel-Gazou creates a dialogue between a chicken, Kikine, and Jesus Christ about the eggs that the fowl loses to Pauline, the girl’s governess. The tragedy, as Bel-Gazou sees it, is that Pauline sells Kikine’s unhatched offspring to make a profit. Jesus’s solution is to do away with war, a response that is certainly plausible given His teachings. The economic maturity of the toddler is impressive because not only is she aware of the impact of war on the price of eggs and milk, but she understands the basics of haggling, skills she has picked up by listening to adults’ conversations. Jesus’s support of an exploited chicken is one expression of the idea of community solidarity that was important to civilians in France during the Great War. To be sure, the war was a life-changing event for many French children. However, Pignot notes that evidence suggests that unless children were impacted directly through the loss of a loved one or personal injury, World War I was not “en soi une expérience traumatique” [“in itself a traumatic experience”] (Pignot 2012, 86).

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Bel-Gazou’s idyllic childhood provides a marked contrast to that of the “enfants barbares” [“barbarian children”], also referred to as “enfants de boches” [“children of Krauts”], who were French children fathered by German soldiers. These children, ostracized even by those who sympathize with them, occupy a marginalized part of the domestic zone. Beginning with the German invasion of France in August 1914 and continuing for the duration of the war, French newspapers regularly published articles about sexual assaults committed by the enemy troops, which contributed to an already inflammatory image of the occupier, especially those condemning German atrocities. According to David Welch, the aim of propaganda was “to pin war guilt on the enemy, [then] make the enemy appear savage, barbaric, and inhumane” (Welch 2014). Indeed, John Horne and Alan Kramer write that rapes were the principal form of “German atrocities” (Horne and Kramer 2001, 197). Despite its incendiary nature, press coverage from the time was likely fairly accurate; historians today find evidence to suggest that the rape of French and Belgian woman by German soldiers was likely more widespread than the official numbers would suggest (Rivière 2012, 184). Accounts of sexual violence against civilians by enemy soldiers are of course not unique to the Great War; references to war rape are found as far back as the writings of Homer and Herodotus. Even today, media accounts of the sexual assault of civilian women in war zones are disturbingly common; one recent example is that of the systematic rape of minority Yazidi women in Iraq by members of ISIS. Pamela DeLargy reminds us that for millennia, war rape was viewed as “an unfortunate but inevitable phenomenon not worthy of much attention” (DeLargy 2012, 55). It was not until the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War was enacted in 1949 that rape was deemed a crime under international law (Willis 2006–2007, 236). Tuba Inal explains that: rape was thought to be inevitable because the biological nature of men and women made it virtually impossible, in the eyes of the states, to prevent it, especially in war. Therefore, not wanting to commit to a prohibition that was bound to be violated by their armed forces, states made sure that they would not be accused of the violation of international laws. (Inal 2013, 91)

To put it more succinctly, authorities tended to give more thought to the political effects of war rape than to its victims. Rape is used as a tool of psychological warfare against civilian populations, but it is also seen as an attack on the masculinity of the soldiers defending them, a way of “disempowering them” (Cohn 2013, 11). What is more, women are often symbols of countries—the French Republic’s Marianne is one such example—so it is not surprising that propagandists during the Great

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War were quick to exploit the “idea of France as a woman raped” (Harris 1993, 172). The rape of French women was conflated with the military assault on France itself, making it an effective terror tactic against women and a psychological attack against the French army. DeLargy emphasizes that rape is an attack on an entire community: because in a patrilinear society the ethnic identity of a child is determined by the ethnicity of the father, a child fathered by an attacker from another group will belong to the attacker’s group, not the mother’s, so that pregnancy creates a social and cultural crisis for the whole community. In such cultural systems, any child born of rape by the enemy is not only a constant reminder of the humiliation of the community, but is also, by paternity, “an enemy in the house.” (DeLargy 2012, 64)

The war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s is a prime example of the use of rape to attempt to carry out ethnic cleansing and genocide. Reports of Serbian soldiers raping Bosnian Muslim women were commonplace during that conflict. From the war in Ukraine, ongoing at this writing, the number of reports of Russian troops sexually assaulting Ukrainian women is staggering. Systemic rape as a means for genocide is, and continues to be, a tragic possibility for women in war zones. Where there is rape, there is of course the possibility of pregnancy. Some newspapers from the time estimated that as many as 10,000 children were born of rape by German soldiers in France during the Great War, although in recent years, historians have put the number at between 1,000 and 5,000 (Rivière 2012, 185). The fixation on the children fathered by the enemy may be explained by that fact that in the early twentieth century, France’s population was shrinking even as Germany’s was expanding. Ruth Harris pinpoints the source of the anxiety in the “intense discussion of race, blood and territoriality at the moment of near-defeat and encapsulated fears about French impotence in the face of German power” (Harris 1993, 175). In the winter of 1915, a debate emerged in France over the best way to deal with pregnancies resulting from the rape of women by German soldiers. This heated national debate about “les enfants barbares” [“barbarian children”] played out in the press and among elected officials. On the one hand, there were those who, like French senator Louis Martin, put forward the idea that a woman who became pregnant as the result of rape by an enemy soldier should be allowed to abort the fetus without fear of criminal penalty (Harris 1993, 191). For those in favor of abortion in cases of war rape, it was a question of stopping the “barbaric infiltration” that threatened the French family, “the primary unit of civilization” (Harris 1993, 204). On the other side of the debate were those who took a maternalist stance that preached the forgiveness of Germany

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and the acceptance of “les enfants barbares” (Harris 1993, 195). For those who adhered to a maternalist position, it was a question of keeping France “morally pure and [refusing] to respond to the barbarian’s crime with another ‘crime’ [i.e., that of abortion]” (Harris 1993, 205). Given the taboo subject of sexual violence, it is not surprising that rape victims at the time hesitated to speak out about their experience. It is in this highly charged context that Colette wrote “L’Enfant de l’ennemi” [“The Enemy’s Child”], which was published on 24 March 1915. In “L’Enfant de l’ennemi,” Colette tackles the issue of war rape through a metonymic reference to a fictional fetus representing those children conceived during the initial invasion in August 1914. First addressing those who would intervene directly to counsel the women raped by the enemy, she then argues that women who are pregnant with their rapist’s child do not need advice, but rather material aid. Give the women what they need, she implored politicians, then trust them to do the right thing. Colette stresses that society should unconditionally support the women dealing with the tragic situation: “Il [l’enfant] va bientôt paraître au jour. Encore enfermé, palpitant à peine, il est déjà présent” [“He (the child) is going to be born soon. Still enclosed, scarcely pulsating, he is already present”] (Colette 1917j). The emphasis here is the transition between the innocence of a baby about to be born and the public reaction to it as registered in newspapers: “Des journaux ont appelé, sur lui, tantôt la mansuétude et tantôt l’exécration. Les uns l’ont nommé ‘l’innocent,’ et nous ont fait de lui une peinture bien gênante, entre une mère pardonnée et un soldat français miséricordieux” [“Some newspapers have sometimes called for indulgence, sometimes damnation. Some have called him ‘the innocent,’ and have painted an uncomfortable picture of him for us between a forgiven mother and a forgiving French soldier”] (Colette 1917j). This was the solution envisioned by maternalists, a scenario in which the perpetrator is left out of the equation; only the victim, “pardonnée” [“forgiven”] as if she were guilty herself, and the French soldier, with his largess, are mentioned. By means of the image of the “soldat français miséricordieux” [“the forgiving French soldier”] (Colette 1917j), Colette invokes those who fight for the motherland, confident that they would be supportive of their loved ones brutalized by the enemy. Through that optic, pregnancies resulting from war rape become not simply an individual issue but a national one as well. One cannot help but imagine the mothers’ prolonged trauma in this scenario, for not only would they have to face the condemnation for having an unwed child, they would be raising the child of the invader. Those on the other side of the debate were much less charitable toward “les enfants barbares.” In his 1915 publication, La Loi du mâle: À propos de l’enfant du barbare [The Law of the Male: Concerning the Child of the Barbarian], Paul Rabier argued in favor of abortion because he believed that

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the mother would inevitably come to hate the child born of violence. Abortion in these cases, he reasoned, was the best solution for society, for the child, and for the mother. In short, Rabier viewed abortion as a consequence of war that called for drastic measures (Rabier 1915, 4). Colette gives voice to Rabier’s viewpoint, though not entirely objectively: “on l’a traité [l’enfant] aussi d’ivraie empoisonnée, de crime vivant, et on l’a voué à l’obscur assassinat” [he has also been treated like a poisoned grain, a living crime, and has been destined for a dark murder”] (Colette 1917j). The image of “d’ivraie empoisonnée” [“poisoned grain”], dehumanizes the woman and her baby, reducing the rape victim to the property of a man—one tainted by the invading army. The child, on the other hand, is portrayed as undesirable, a menace to its mother and to its nation. “Crime vivant” [“Living crime”], points to the fact that the circumstances of the child’s birth will not be easily forgotten, that he or she will forever be flesh-and-blood evidence of violence against their mother. Finally, “l’obscur assassinat” [“dark murder”] as substitute phrasing for abortion is worth noting because it suggests that the woman carrying the enemy’s child puts her own desire for vengeance and forgetting ahead of human life. Despite her outspokenness on the controversial issue, Colette takes a surprisingly conservative, maternalist, position. Clearly placing her faith in the woman’s ability to “choose life,” she advises against pressuring the victim one way or another: “Elle souffre, mais l’optimisme dévolu à la femelle alourdie d’un précieux poids humain combat sa souffrance, plaide pour l’enfant qui tressaille et dote la mère d’un instinct de plus: celui de ne pas penser trop, de ne pas dessiner l’avenir en traits noirs et nets” [“She is suffering, but the optimism reserved for the female heavy with a precious human weight combats her suffering, defends the child, and endows the mother with an additional instinct: that of not thinking too much, of not planning the future out in distinct black lines”] (Colette 1917j). The use of “female” here is jolting because it reduces the woman to an animal, thus providing a stark contrast to the essay’s previous paragraph in which Colette invokes the women’s ability—and right—to make her own decisions. The argument that nature will guide the woman by triggering her maternal instinct is admittedly an optimistic one to make about a victim of sexual assault. Colette suggests that “la plus vindicative, celle même qui s’éveille, la nuit, en maudissant le prisonnier impérieux de ses flancs, n’a pas besoin qu’on l’éclaire. Il se peut qu’elle attende, furieuse et épouvantée, l’intrus, le monstre qu’il faudra, sinon écraser au premier cri, du moins proscrire” [“The most vindictive, the very one who awakens in the middle of the night cursing the imperious prisoner in her belly, does not need to be enlightened. It is possible that, furious and frightened, she is waiting for the intruder, the monster that will have to be crushed at its first cry, or at least banished”] (Colette 1917j). The image of

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the fetus as an overbearing prisoner is at once a reminder of the strain of carrying a child and the added stress of carrying the physical reminder of rape. “L’intrus” [“the intruder”] continues the idea that this is an unwanted, unforeseen situation, thus bringing home the reality that this is not a child conceived in love but rather in an act of sexual violence. Colette’s call for compassion echoes the writing of Mme de Jon Van Beeke Donk, who asked rhetorically in a newspaper column in La Française on 27 February 1915 if “these innocents were going to be born with helmets on their heads and iron in their fists? They are babies, quite naked and fragile like all newborns” (quoted in Harris 1993, 201). Promoting the view of “les enfants barbares” as helpless newborns and not as an extension of the enemy was surely a difficult task in a country heavily influenced by anti-German propaganda. In the popular imagination, the Germans would endow their French offspring with their perceived violent nature. It would, then, threaten France’s very soul. Arguing along the same lines as Mme de Jon Van Beeke Donk and perhaps guided by her own experience as a mother, Colette concludes “L’Enfant de l’ennemi” by asserting that the woman pregnant as the result of a war rape will be moved by a maternal instinct once the baby is born and that she will understand once and for all that, “le ‘monstre’ est seulement un nouveau-né, rien qu’un nouveau-né avide de vivre, un nouveau-né avec ses yeux vagues, son duvet d’argent, ses mains gaufrées et soyeuses comme la fleur du pavot qui vient de déchirer son calice” [“the ‘monster’ is nothing but a newborn eager to live, a newborn with his unfocused eyes, his silver down, his wrinkled and silky hands like a poppy flower that has just torn its calyx”] (Colette 1917j. “Monstre” [“Monster”] captures at once the mother’s feelings about the life she is carrying within her and the judgment of society toward her. No longer just a French citizen, she is the incubator of the enemy’s spawn. Colette argues that whatever the circumstances of a child’s conception and no matter who the father is, it is a human being. Her use of flower imagery is a somewhat ham-handed way to advocate forgetting the violence in which the child was conceived and viewing the impending birth as a miracle of nature. In the essay’s final sentence, she advocates for compassion for the mother-to-be and her child. Colette underscores that giving birth should be viewed as a natural act and not a source of shame: “Laissez faire les femmes. Ne dites rien. . . . Silence” [“Let the women decide. Don’t say anything. Quiet.”] (Colette 1917j). Colette firmly asserts her opinion that women will make the “right” choice and give birth to “barbarian children” who will in turn be accepted by society. For today’s reader, the evocation of maternal love as a cure-all seems woefully misguided. Yet despite the simplistic response, the very fact that Colette entered the fray at all with an essay in a popular periodical is a testament to both her clout and her fearlessness in tackling women’s issues.

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Colette’s reporting on the civilian experience in war underscores the fact that military conflict is not confined to the battlefield nor is its impact solely felt by the combatants. There is some overlap with the subdivisions of the domestic front that Van der Meersch portrayed in Invasion 14, but above all, we find a more granular depiction of the subdivisions of the domestic front regarding women and children. Colette reminds us that war transforms not only the way we see the world but our relationships with others. What Michelle Balaev observes about the trauma novel is true for Colette’s war writing: “The trauma novel demonstrates how a traumatic event disrupts attachments between self and others by challenging fundamental assumptions about moral laws and social relationships that are themselves connected to specific environments” (Balaev 2008, 150). As is the case with Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14, in Colette’s war writing, the center of attention is on the lives and relationships of those away from the military front. Colette’s World War I journalism resembles her literary works in that they are lyrical, often poetic pieces featuring subjects dear to her heart. Nature occupies a significant portion of the essays examined in this chapter, inspiring metaphors and providing a juxtaposition with the violence of war. Her lyricism and interest in nature finds its echo in the representation of the tirailleurs sénégalais in the works of Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté, the subject of chapter 3. NOTES 1. The role of animals in the Great War has been the subject of several motion pictures in recent years, beginning with Steven Spielberg’s War Horse (2011). Likewise, the movie Sgt. Stubby, released in 2018, tells the story of another World War I canine hero. Sergeant Stubby became the mascot of the 102nd Infantry regiment in the trenches at Chemin des Dames and was credited with capturing a German spy. A decorated veteran, he became a prominent figure in popular culture and an honorary member of the American Red Cross, the American Legion, and the YMCA. The canine combatant’s fearlessness during shelling and his acute hearing proved to skeptics that dogs had a place in the US armed forces. In chapter 4, which deals with Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée, we will learn about the other animals poilus kept as pets and mascots in the trenches. 2. It is interesting to note that Simone de Beauvoir, in Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée (Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter) (1958), recalls her fervent patriotism as a child, which she attributes to her father having been drafted into the army. She destroyed her sister’s German-made doll, placed Allied flags in flowerpots, and pretended to be a Zouave hero: “It doesn’t take much for a child to become the sedulous ape” (Beauvoir 1959, 30).

Chapter 3

Colonial Boots on the Ground Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté

In this chapter, I continue my efforts to decentralize the French World War I narrative by analyzing Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté (1926), one of the few memoirs written by a tirailleur sénégalais [Senegalese rifleman]1 who saw action in World War I. Published at the height of the popularity of World War I novels and memoirs in Europe as well as that of “la Vogue nègre” [“the Negro wave”—the obsession with all things African] (Robb 3)—Force-Bonté is, in the words of David Murphy, a work of “proto-Senegalese literature” (“Birth” 49) because it predates Senegal’s existence as a sovereign country.2 The memoir follows the author’s trajectory from life as a shepherd in Senegal to service in the colonial army, first in Morocco and then in the trenches of Northern France. Something of a failure at his family trade, herding, he saw the French colonial army as the last chance to make something of himself. Many of the episodes in Force-Bonté may be deemed trauma narratives and certainly have the potential, as Michelle Balaev might see it, “[to disrupt] attachments between self and others by challenging fundamental assumptions about moral laws and social relationships that are themselves connected to specific environments” (Balaev 2008, 150). However, Diallo’s narrator does not find his “moral laws and social relationships” jeopardized. To the contrary, he finds them validated by the ideals of the French Republique even in the face of the trauma of racism. His is a story of resistance to trauma. Force-Bonté covers three fronts, the first of which is his basic training for tirailleurs recruits. As is the case for many conscripts around the world, Bakary must adjust to military the rules and regulations. His tendency to daydream and shut out the outside world, which ruined his career as a shepherd, put him at odds with his supervisors. His infractions, including being late to roll call and practicing writing on a newly whitewashed wall, earn Diallo several days in the brig. These missteps, in today’s terms, “teaching moments,” are part of his personal and professional development. In effect, 73

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Bakary’s time in basic training is something of a coming-of age episode, since he begins his transformation from a hapless teen into a full-fledged soldier. The colonial army brought together men from dozens of ethnic groups from their West African colonies—nearly thirty-six ethnic groups from Senegal alone—which impeded communication among the recruits. It is at this first front that Diallo learns a rudimentary form of French and a smattering of other regional languages, most notably Wolof. His exposure to the military administration shapes his personal philosophy which, as we shall see, is founded in his native Peuhl culture. His intake corporal, Mamadou Racine, informs him that the French army sees all troops, regardless of their racial or ethnic differences, as equals. Bakary makes a connection between fluency in spoken and written French and the acquisition of the ideals of the République. Language, to his mind, is inextricably linked to the humanistic values he admires and that he strives to put into practice. The second front, set in Morocco, where Diallo’s unit is deployed for three years between 1911 and 1914 as part of a mission to quash an insurgent rebellion in the French colony, shows the narrator’s deepening appreciation for language. To be sure, his military training is enhanced by the mentorship the veteran troops provide him, but what stands out are the narrator’s musings about human nature and the importance of communication. A prelude of sorts to his participation on the western front, the Moroccan campaign provides him combat experience in the rugged terrain of the Atlas Mountains. But in his downtime in Fez and Casablanca, he seeks out opportunities to learn about a new culture and language, which give him a new perspective on the human experience. The first two fronts in Force-Bonté offer a baseline of sorts by which to gauge the development of Bakary’s worldview. The formative experiences of his late adolescence determine in part how he assimilates cultural differences and, above all, his understanding of the human animal. The western front is where he participates in some of the most intense fighting of the war, where he is grievously wounded, and where he convalesces after his combat injuries end his military career. This prolonged exposure to values his friends and acquaintances model validate his admiration for the French Republic. Without money to support himself and deprived of the pension he had been promised, he works for a time in southern France, then returns to Paris where ostensibly there are more opportunities for him. This final front is where Diallo’s faith in the humanistic values of the French Republic is tested, saved only by the kindness of the civilians who helped him in his time of need. Diallo does not detail his combat experience in Force-Bonté and instead centers his narrative on the nature of interpersonal relationships and on the humanistic values of the French Republic, with particular emphasis on equality. Indeed, Diallo’s narrative is laser-focused on what all humans

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have in common rather than on the superficial differences that separate us. Force-Bonté offers a firsthand account of the tirailleurs’ time in France during World War I. Myron Echenberg argues that the tirailleurs are vital to a comprehensive understanding of French colonialism because “[ils] ont offert, plus que tout autre groupe social, non pas une caricature mais un miroir du colonialisme et ils en ont ratifié les contradictions les plus profondes” [“they offered, more than any other social group, not a caricature but a mirror of colonialism and they have corroborated its deepest contradictions”) (Diallo 1985, 24). These contradictions, evident in Force-Bonté, are largely absent from official records. Often dismissed because of what some have perceived as unabashed admiration for France and for colonial rule, Force-Bonté nonetheless has continued to draw critical scrutiny in recent years, to wit, the fine scholarly contributions by Cullen Goldblatt and Eloise Brière. Goldblatt (“Imperialist”), Brière (“Reconstructing”), along with Bernard Mouralis (L’Illusion) and Xavier Garnier (“Texte/Terrain”), have all challenged the assertion that Diallo was an apologist for the colonization of West African. Brière, for one, emphasizes that “the work’s title reveals the contradictory forces at work as the autobiographical character searches for assimilation while attempting to locate himself within the new framework of the French Empire and its metropole” (Brière 2002, 442). Building on this recent scholarship, I look at the way in which Diallo’s native Peuhl culture formed his values and, by extension, his memoir. The Peuhl, also known as the Fulani, the world’s largest nomadic population, live primarily in West and Central Africa. Traditionally a pastoral people, they adhere to pulaaku, a code of conduct structured around five qualities—each of which is also an Islamically prescribed behavior—which defines what it means to be Peuhl: semteende (shame, modesty, respect for others), laddabu (mutual respect), munyal (tolerance, self-control, discipline, prudence, and patience) endam (kindness, charity), and ngoru (courage) (Ver Eecke 1988, 303–4). Each of these elements is present in Diallo’s narrative, making Force-Bonté a primer of sorts of pulaaku. Failing to consider Diallo’s native Peuhl culture, I contend, may have led to misinterpretations of his message. In a first movement, I highlight the elements of pulakku found in Force-Bonté, establishing how it determines his philosophical stance. Examining the work through the lens of pulaaku, I argue, allows for a better understanding his perspective and intent. In a second movement, I examine the way Diallo uses metaphorical language in Force-Bonté. The experiences of the 140,000 tirailleurs sénégalais who fought for France in the Great War have until recently have largely been overlooked, in part because many of these infantrymen were illiterate and left no written trace: no correspondence, diaries, or any other personal papers (Michel 2008,

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88). Even in official accounts, the colonial troops scarcely have a presence. Historian Jean-Yves Le Naour asserts that “les tirailleurs sont souvent des objets, des sujets et non de véritables acteurs. On parle d’eux, on leur prête des sentiments, mais au fond, ces soldats sont muets car leur parole n’existe pas ou peu dans les archives” [“the tirailleurs are often objects, subjects, and not actors. They are spoken about, feelings are attributed to them, but when it comes down to it, these soldiers are mute because their words do not exist, or are barely present, in the archives”] (Le Naour 2018, 295). One of the reasons the colonial troops’ contributions to the Great War—including those of the tirailleurs—have been underreported, according to Santu Das, is the fact that “in India, Senegal or Vietnam, there is nothing like the [British] Imperial War Museum; when a returned soldier or village headman died, a whole library vanished.” Because of the scarcity of memoirs by French colonial troops and the absence of these troops in popular depictions of World War I, the public was largely unaware of the importance of their contribution to the war effort (Robb 2021, 35). Recent events have brought the colonial troops back into the public eye. In January 2023, the surviving tirailleurs who fought in World War II, only granted citizenship in 2016, were finally able to receive their pensions without having to live in France for six months each year, a hardship for the ageing veterans (Rushworth 2023). “Tirailleurs” (“Father and Soldier”), a feature film starring Omar Sy, was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2022 and released in France on January 4, 2023. Coincidentally, Sy’s character, named Bakary Diallo, is a Senegalese shepherd who enlists in the colonial troops to be near his newly conscripted son. The film is a work of historical fiction—the character’s name and his trade (herdsman, the main occupation of the Peuhl) are the only connections to the author of Force-Bonté. Sy, whose father is from Senegal and his mother from Mauritania, speaks Pular in the film. In an interview with France Info during the Cannes festival, Sy explains the significance of the movie that he acted in and produced: Le peul, c’est mon histoire, c’est la langue de mes parents. J’ai été élevé à travers cette langue-là. . . . C’est aussi un bout de l’histoire de France. On n’a pas la même mémoire, mais on a la même Histoire. La vôtre, la mienne, se complètent pour faire l’Histoire. . . . Aujourd’hui, il faut se rappeler d’eux et les mettre à leur place de héros. C’est un travail qui complète celui des historiens. [Pular is my history, it’s the language of my parents. I was raised in that language. . . . It’s also a piece of France’s history. We do not have the same memory, but we have the same History. Yours, mine, they complement each other and make History. . . . Today, we must remember them and put them in their place as heroes. This is work that complements that of historians.] (France Info 2022)

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The tirailleurs, who often had minimal training and limited proficiency in French, were frequently sent to “hot spots” during World War I. As a result, many ended up as cannon fodder, put into exceedingly dangerous situations at the front because of French military leaders’ belief in the racial stereotype of “warlike” West Africans. According to Jean-Loup Saletes, the colonial troops were often simple farmers thrown into situations beyond their comprehension (Saletes 2011, 135). George Robb hypothesizes that as many as one third of all able-bodied adult males in Senegal were drafted into the French colonial army in World War I (Robb 2021, 14). In all, an estimated 30,000 of the 183,000 West African tirailleurs deployed to France were killed in the trenches, went missing, or succumbed to diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, while another 35,000 were wounded (Sow 2018, 59). The West African troops sent to defend France during the Great War were subject to racial prejudice and stereotypes. Saletes emphasizes that the tirailleur was considered by many Europeans to be a “grand enfant, naïf, tendrement niais et dévoué” [“a big child, naïve, tenderly stupid and devoted”] and thus “viscéralement fidèle et reconnaissant à ‘Madame la France’” [“deeply devoted and grateful to ‘Madam France’”] (Saletes 2011, 38). In the early twentieth century, it was still commonly believed—even among the French military hierarchy and administrative personnel—that Africans were “biologically inferior to Europeans” and that “their ‘savage’ nature, which was the hallmark of their ‘retarded’ development, offended all ‘civilized’ conventions” (Lunn 1999, 158). In the late 1970s, Joe Lunn interviewed an elderly World War I tirailleur, Doudou Ndao, who recalled that “the French thought we were cannibals [even though] we never ate anyone” (Lunn 1999, 158). The popular press of the time, according to Robb, was still influenced by nineteenth-century race theory, which held that non-Europeans were either “warlike (and masculine)” or “servile (and feminine)” (Robb 2021, 7). Buying into these stereotypes, French military authorities adopted an attitude of “benevolent paternalism” toward the colonial troops (Lunn 1999, 160). The French tended to judge the tirailleurs on, as Lunn puts it, “the soldiers’ comparative degree of acculturation (often misinterpreted as ‘intelligence’) and their bravery” (Lunn 1999, 168). Mastery of the French language was taken as a gauge of acculturation as well as of intelligence, and physical scars and bandages as proof of the colonial troops’ bravery (Lunn 1999, 168). Given the socio-historic context and systemic racism of the time, it is not surprising that some critics over the years have questioned Force-Bonté’s very authenticity, deeming the writing too polished to have been created by a native Pular speaker who only learned French when he joined the colonial army (Blair 1996, 17; Michelman, 1976, 33). The contention that Diallo’s writing is too sophisticated to be his own is based largely on the fact that, like

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many of the tirailleurs who did not speak French, he learned “le petit nègre,” a pidgin language, created with the colonial troops in mind, based on French lexicon and Bambara syntax (Champeaux 2008, 22), before learning standard French. In short, these critics did not believe Diallo was intelligent enough to acquire such a high level of proficiency in French. The racism of such a critique is unmistakable but not unique; in decades past, it was not uncommon for white critics to cast doubt upon the authorship of works by black authors (Robb 2021, 26). Brière’s recent work on establishing the authenticity of Force-Bonté through Diallo’s correspondence with his editors may well have put that controversy to rest. Diallo’s political sympathies were another point of contention for critics in the 1930s. Adherents of the Négritude movement erroneously assumed that Force-Bonté was an apology for colonialism and, as such, judged it to be “an inauthentic beginning to a genuine African literature” (Goldblatt 2020a, 185). For instance, although the novel’s final sentence, “Vive la force-bonté de la France!” [“Long live the strength-goodness of France!”] (Diallo 1985, 171) has been widely interpreted as a pro-colonial declaration, it is in fact more nuanced. Indeed, Goldblatt argues that Diallo is referring to France as “both a historical entity and an aspiration to a unified (and equal) humanity—not a specific polity but instead the future potential of humanity, the epitome of equality, freedom, and brotherhood” (Goldblatt 2020a, 186). Goldblatt further argues that Force-Bonté “[has] been subject to neglect and selective reading, and the non-racialist, imperial humanist critique within [it] has been misinterpreted or overlooked” (Goldblatt 2020b, 841). For his part, Saletes, who visited Diallo in Senegal several times in the late 1960s and early 1970s, declares that the writer was “plus ‘nationaliste’ que le titre de son livre pourrait laisser croire” [“more ‘nationalistic’ than the title of his work would lead us to believe”] (Saletes 2011, 138). Attempting to address the negative assessments of Diallo’s memoir, Mélanie Bourlet, a researcher at the CNRS Langage, Langues et Cultures d’Afrique [National Center for Scientific in Speech, Languages, and Cultures of Africa], argues that Force-Bonté “dérange car il ne cadre pas avec les préoccupations politiques des écrivains de la Négritude. C’est le temps des silences confus, des doutes, des critiques acerbes, des accusations, des interprétations empreintes d’idéologie” [“disturbs because it does not conform to the political preoccupations of the Negritude writers. It is a time of embarrassed silences, doubts, acerbic criticism, accusations, interpretations marked by ideology”] (Bourlet 2007, 25). Bourlet contends that Diallo’s “humanisme, son désir d’un dialogue permanent entre les peuples ont parfois été assimiliés à de la naïveté” [“humanism, his desire for a permanent dialog between people, have often been equated

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with naïveté”] (Bourlet 2007, 25). Force-Bonté, then, is more complex thematically and artistically than some previous critics would have us believe. It is to be expected that Diallo, who was from rural Senegal and had never been to school when he enlisted, should have a view of society that is filtered through the culture in which he was raised. Pulaaku, the foundation for Peuhl culture, prescribes the individual’s conduct in interpersonal relationships, “or when a man acts before the eyes of the public” (Riesman 1977, 127). Simply put, pulaaku provides the individual with the guidance necessary to realize his potential (Riesman 1977, 140). One of the basic elements of pulaaku is semteende, which refers at once to shame, modesty, humility, and selflessness. Paul Riesman notes that “it is the strength of the semteende that helps men approach, with a certain degree of success, the ideal of pulaaku” (Riesman 1977, 139). Following it, then, brings the practitioner dignity and esteem. Bakary consistently displays semteende, at one point reminding his friend Samba that pride and vanity prevent us from hearing and understanding others. When we think only of ourselves and are convinced of our superiority, “c’est soi-même qu’on diminue progressivement” [“it is ourselves that we are diminishing little by little”] (Diallo 1985, 74). The humility and respect for others that semteende advocates for lay the groundwork for the guiding principle of Peuhl culture, fotuki, translated as egalitarianism (Ver Eeck 1988, 190). Since equality is one of the core values of the French Republic, it is only natural that Diallo should feel a kinship with the country he serves. As Bakary tries to decide if he will enlist in the colonial army, his friend Samba makes a pitch for him to become a tirailleur. He frames his argument in terms familiar to the Peuhl, referring to the multiethnic groups of soldiers as the offspring of the government. Samba underscores the equality among the tirailleurs along with the cohesion of the group, and only mentions in passing the possibility of advancement, since seeking power for the sake of power goes against fotuki (egalitarianism) (Ver Eecke 1988, 190). In the French army, Bakary concludes, all men are equal, no matter their race or ethnicity. Interestingly, the tirailleurs who had more exposure to colonial administration than Diallo were surprised to find themselves treated in the same way as the poilus of the same rank (Le Naour 2018, 301). With these observations, Diallo indirectly targets the colonial power because emphasizing racial and cultural differences is one way the colonizer maintains dominance (Goldblatt 2020a, 198). In Force-Bonté, Goldblatt observes, “empire signals the—as yet, unrealized—ideal of human solidarity and equality across ostensible differences of race and culture. In this sense, [it draws] upon and contribute[s] to traditions of imperial humanist critique” (Goldblatt 2020b, 843). Diallo relates to the beliefs of the French Republic while also recognizing that, if there are injustices, it is because of human error: “Tu connais la France, dans son intérieur général; les injustices militaires que tu as senties

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ne sont que des accidents de ta vie, comme cela arrive; mais devant elles se redresse, haute et belle, la France généreuse, sensible, poussant à l’extrême sa délicatesse et sa justice pour lutter contre toutes les imperfections de la vie humaine” [“You know France’s inner soul; the military injustices that you have felt are only accidents in your life, which happens; but before them, generous, sensitive France rises up, tall and beautiful, pushing to the extreme its gentleness and its justice to fight all the imperfections of human life”] (Diallo 1985, 153–54). It is by means of the numerous reported dialogues with those close to him that Bakary expresses his beliefs, grounded in pulaaku, which are echoed in the French Republican ideals. Demba Sow, for instance, is a model for one of the main elements of the Peuhl value system, that of patience and tolerance, which makes him, in Diallo’s eyes, a potential faithful servant of the French Republic. Only when Diallo is discharged from the army and repeatedly denied a military pension guaranteed to the poilus—that is, when individual functionaries do not respect the Republican ideal of equality—does his resolve falter. Force-Bonté demonstrates that, for the Peuhl, egalitarianism is not a lofty ideal to which to aspire, but the very foundation of their culture. In this way, they offer a model to the French military, if only it were receptive to learning about their culture. During his four-year deployment in Morocco fighting insurgents, Diallo is struck by the free and friendly exchange among the tirailleurs from a variety of ethnic groups: Bambara, Wolof, Peuhl, and Toucouleur are all represented. Listening to the singing and laughing in his diverse unit, he realizes that rather than simply entertaining themselves, their interactions are a way to foster understanding and solidarity. This scene illustrates the principle of laddabu, [mutual respect], a trait that is omnipresent in Force-Bonté without ever being named. At the same time, it is closely related to the French Republican ideal of fraternité [fraternity], a term Diallo uses numerous times in the novel. His friendship with Sow, a member of a lower caste, is emblematic of laddabu/fraternity because it points to equality among social classes. For Goldblatt, Sow “epitomizes the traits of goodness, generosity, and reason that a self-congratulatory colonial discourse would attribute to France and the French” (Goldblatt 2020b, 845). For Diallo or any other Peuhl, however, Sow is simply following the precepts of pulaaku. Reflecting on his friendship with Sow as well as with that of a French family he met soon after his arrival in Sète, Diallo contrasts these relationships with those he has with his sisters. He decides that familial relationships form our personalities but those founded on shared experiences are a source of supreme happiness. The emphasis here is on seeking a connection with those from other social circles with the goal of achieving mutual understanding.

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Another key trait Diallo consistently models is munyal (tolerance and patience), which is demonstrated through empathy. A member of his unit, Alassane Dicko, creates a vivid verbal tableau of life in his home region in Senegal before the French presence brought stability. Diallo empathizes with the terrified villagers but, above all, with the innocent children who witness unspeakable violence. Although Dicko’s audience is moved by his account, his favorable opinion of the French is not shared by all who were gathered. The narrator addresses the trauma the Dicko and his neighbors suffered by referencing the stability and peace that France has brought to their village, asserting that, thanks to the French, Dicko and his fellow villagers enjoy an improved quality of life. At first glance, this observation may seem naïve and idealistic, so it is understandable that some readers might misconstrue it as advocacy of the colonial power. Coming from a rural background, Diallo had little exposure to the hierarchical colonial system and, as a result, has only the egalitarian Peuhl culture as a frame of reference. This creates a distance which allows him to play devil’s advocate in the discussion. In terms of pulaaku, Diallo’s statement represents a validation of his friend’s opinions, a demonstration of mutual respect (ladaabu in Pula). In this light, it is not simply a wholesale acceptance of colonial rule. Throughout his memoir, Diallo provides insight into how he views race, but he provides surprisingly few direct examples of intolerance on the part of French soldiers or civilians. In recollecting the first time he saw white men— French colonizers—in Senegal, he reflects on how external appearances are used by Europeans to establish white supremacy. Mental health practitioners today recognize the psychological toll discrimination and bias take on the individual, which is referred to as race-based traumatic stress (RBTS), a type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Diallo alludes to this phenomenon as he drives home the point that distinctions based on skin color are cultural constructs meant to separate and alienate individuals from one another. A case in point is Diallo’s relationship with his mentor, the French officer Captain Coste, who taught him French. Although initially wary of Coste, Diallo comes to understand that “il ne s’agit pas de chercher l’essence d’un être dans la couleur de son corps mais dans son âme instruite par la raison” [“it is not a question of seeking an individual’s essence in the color of his body, but in his soul educated by reason”] (Diallo 1985, 89), precisely what laddabu and fotuki prescribe. Diallo’s unwavering dedication to and open discussion of racial equality, Robb asserts, in “the political context of the 1920s, quite radical” (Robb 2021, 37). Diallo’s obvious admiration of French values and culture does not prevent him from pointing out its shortcomings. While in the hospital, he notices that one member of the group of marraines de guerre (war godmothers)3 who visited him daily, the working-class Mlle Albertine Velty, leaves

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immediately after the arrival of a group of women from a higher social class. Diallo reminds the young woman that everyone is equal, no matter how rich they may be. What makes one person superior to another, he insists, is their kindness. As he has shown by his friendship with Sow, Diallo believes in fotuki (egalitarianism), which condemns unequal treatment, be it based on social class, wealth, or skin color. In recalling an encounter with a tirailleur who speaks neither Peuhl nor French, he reflects on the source of conflict between individuals as well as nations, a prominent theme in ForceBonté: “L’humanité, c’est la parole bien comprise” [“humanity is speech that is well understood”] (Diallo 1985, 68). To achieve universal understanding and equality, he argues, the fundamental skills that foster the development of compassion must be instilled at an early age. Part of that, of course, is following pulaaku’s prescribed behavior. Diallo addresses the emotional impact of intolerance when Sow checks on his well-being after a military operation. Like a chameleon, he replies, it changes according to the environment. When he sees justice carried out, he is in excellent health, but when he sees strife and discord, his well-being suffers. Whereas his friend was inquiring about his physical condition in the aftermath of a firefight, Diallo establishes the mind-body connection in his health, specifically, the link between trauma and physiological symptoms. Harboring no romanticized view of the war, he derides the idea of resolving differences on the battlefield and instead promotes conflict resolution through open communication and mutual respect. Pulaaku prescribes the demonstration of kindness and charity, referred to as endam, which is one of Diallo’s most striking attributes. Endam is essentially the Golden Rule common to most cultures and religions. Worried that his catastrophic facial wounds would traumatize his loved ones—his jaw was shattered and his tongue nearly severed at the first Battle of the Marne in September 1914—he decides to forgo a trip to Senegal. The strength of his attachment to his family is expressed through the fever dreams he experiences during his hospital stays, which feature “visits” by his sister and his mother. It is among the tirailleurs, his community for over ten years, that his practice of endam is most evident. Sow references endam when he insists that helping others, the product of mutual respect and caring, is the source of true happiness. It is in moments of interpersonal conflict that Diallo best models endam. He decries the violence a French sergeant commits against a recruit because such treatment teaches nothing. Diallo naturally feels compassion for the newly conscripted soldier because he believes in the humane treatment of others, in accordance with endam. The precepts of pulaaku lead him to try to pinpoint the emotional source of the sergeant’s violence. Diallo himself was mistreated by a French officer during his time in the colonial army. Choosing to follow endam, he concludes that the officer had simply overreacted. There

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is a hint of munyal (patience) here as well since Diallo must control the urge to lash out even though his superior officer does not respond in kind. The humane treatment of a frightened German is one final example of Bakary putting endam into practice. German propaganda portrayed the tirailleurs as bloodthirsty fighters who spared no one (Echenberg 2009, 70). The French government likewise promoted the West African troops’ alleged ferocity to exploit them as “shock troops” (Lunn 1999, 6). The fearful prisoner is astonished that the tirailleurs treat him with kindness. In a declaration reminiscent of Grandgousier’s compassionate treatment of enemy troops in François Rabelais’s Gargantua, Diallo tells him: “Puisse ta peur ne t’empêche pas de proclamer dans ton pays, demain après la bataille, les sentiments de justice qui réhabiliteront leur nom parmi les races humaines, toutes sauvages” [“May your fear not keep you from proclaiming in your country, tomorrow after the battle, the feelings of justice which will rehabilitate their name among the human races, all of them savage”] (Rabelais 1996, 103). The hope is that the German prisoner will not only speak highly of his captors—in practical terms, a way to combat stereotypes—but above all show others he meets the same dignity that the tirailleurs had afforded him. As with most of his encounters, Diallo offers the prisoner advice and invites him to reflect on humane treatment of the enemy. While Diallo avoids directly discussing his combat experience in either Morocco or northern France, he nonetheless stands as a model of ngoru (courage). As with most recruits before their first engagement with the enemy, Diallo was understandably afraid but resolves not to let his fellow tirailleurs see his vulnerability. Hiding his fear and putting his fate in God’s hands gives him courage, thereby allowing him to take on a leadership role and to prove that he is both an exemplary soldier and a practitioner of pulaaku. In a skirmish in Morocco, after he is hit by a shell fragment, he charges forward like an attacking lion, the simile descriptive shorthand for courage. At the Battle of the Marne, shrapnel shatters his jaw and nearly severs his tongue. Diallo discloses little about the circumstances of his wounding and instead focuses on its aftermath, that is, giving a summary of the medical interventions he received, first in army field hospitals, then in Paris and, once his wounds finally responded to treatment, in facilities in southern France. Requiring extensive treatment, he undergoes thirteen operations which did not repair all the damage to his jaw. This third front, then, is essentially a trauma narrative. In excruciating physical pain, Bakary is tortured by nightmares, which he refers to as demons. He explains that he is able to ward off the evil spirits thanks to a gris-gris a marabout in Senegal had prepared for him. Transferred from a military hospital to Lariboisière in Paris, better equipped to care for him, he describes his room in the new facility as a heaven designed to

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welcome “des malades sortis de l’enfer et venus guérir les blessures de la flamme. Flamme provoquée par des dieux qui s’étonnent du feu qu’ils ont allumé” [“the sick who left hell and have come to cure the wounds from the flames. Flames caused by the gods who are surprised by the fire that they lit” (Diallo 1985, 114). The flames that translate the intensity of his suffering are embodied by the high fever he develops after a tracheotomy. Diallo’s difficult convalescence from the devastating injuries is proof of his courage. Pulaaku accentuates courage and independence so, logically, it discourages asking for help. The code of conduct dictates that anger, grief, and love be reserved for one’s inner circle (Regis 2002, 21). For the Peuhl, not soliciting aid fosters humility and self-reliance, semteende (humility, shyness) in Pular. In accordance with pulaaku, Diallo hesitates to solicit aid from his French friends while living in Paris after being discharged from the hospital. Madame Hasselmans, one of his marraines and mother figure, a cousin of Diallo’s mentor, captain Coste, ultimately provides him with food and lodging. Equating Madame Hasselmans with his mother lessens the shame of having to seek help while also demonstrating his belief in endam (kindess, mutal respect). A key component of semteende is gratitude, which is expressed throughout Force-Bonté. Diallo repeatedly praises “la bonté intelligente” [“intelligent kindness”] (163, 166) of those who helped him during his time in France, among them his patroness, Lucie Cousturier, to whom he dedicates his novel. Diallo was one of the tirailleurs to whom Cousturier taught French at her villa near Fréjus, an experience she recounts in Des Inconnus chez moi (1920). The final pages of the Force-Bonté contain a series of acknowledgments of the people, military and civilian, who had warmly welcomed Diallo and his fellow tirailleurs in France. Perhaps the best compliment he pays his mentors is that, through his contact with them, he has become a better person. What saves the gravely ill Bakary is the intervention and support of his medical team and friends. He comes to believe that, if only everyone extended to others the kindness that his friends show him, there would be no wars. The message here is to avoid prejudging others and to remember that we share a common humanity. This, as we have seen, stems from fotuki (egalitarianism), a cornerstone of Peuhl society. If pulaaku determines the focus of Diallo’s memoir and his personal philosophy, his rural upbringing determines the way he chooses to express himself. Historian Jean-Yves Le Naour explains that unlike the poilus, those tirailleurs sénégalais who wrote to their loved ones did not talk about combat experiences or life at the front because their correspondents likely would have difficulty imagining airplanes or trench warfare. Instead, the tirailleurs, most of whom were from rural areas of West Africa, wrote about the lush countryside and the beautiful livestock they saw in northern France (Le Naour 2018, 296). This is the case for much of the imagery Diallo uses in Force-Bonté.

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True to his Peuhl heritage, which includes a strong tradition of storytelling and poetry, Diallo looked to nature for creative inspiration in writing his memoir. Bourlet has discovered phrases translated from the French in ForceBonté into Pular in Diallo’s poem, “M’Bala” (M’Bala is the name of his native village) (1949), which was written in his native tongue (Bourlet 2007, 27). To her mind, the similarity between the two works is proof that he is the true author of his memoir. Recounting the trip by rail to his first deployment in Morocco, Bakary describes the baobab trees lining the tracks as men charging with bayonets. The desiccated branches he sees from the train resemble wounded soldiers while the dry trees look like dead men. The locomotive’s steam, meanwhile, calls to mind the artillery they will use to fight the insurgents. Seeing war imagery in the landscape is at once evidence of Bakary’s keen imagination and of his apprehension about engaging in combat. Diallo brings memories of his time as a shepherd to his descriptions of the Mediterranean coast where he was sent to recover from his war wounds: “des vagues en grandes eaux [qui] se jettent successivement comme des moutons poursuivis par des loups” [“big waves (that) throw themselves one after the other onto the beach, like sheep pursued by wolves”] (Diallo 1985, 128). Watching passersby on the boardwalk near Menton, he muses that their movements resemble those of the “éléphants qui courent vers la brousse de Cap Martin-Roquebrune” [“elephants that are running toward the brush of Cap Martin-Roquebrune”] (Diallo 1985, 132), transporting in his mind’s eye the fauna of the savannah to the seaside. Diallo’s use of apostrophe and personification calls to mind the lyricism of René de Chateaubriand’s quintessential Romantic text, René (1802): “Ton mouvement, tes bruits, sont des langages que la science traduira plus tard avec justesse” [“Your movement, your noises, are languages that science will later accurately translate”] (Diallo 1985, 129). Although there is no reason to believe that Diallo was acquainted with Chateaubriand’s work, the two authors depict nature in similar terms. In Boulet’s documentary “Bakary Diallo: Mémoires Peules” (2016), Diallo’s son Don Thiama Diallo remembers his father going for long walks in the bush at dawn where, surrounded by the sights and sounds of the early morning, he would compose his poems as he walked, reciting verse as it came to him. Communing with nature and being inspired by its beauty is a common trope in French literature, found not only in René but in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s pre-romantic Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire (Reveries of a Solitary Walker). Diallo displays as much reverence for the natural world as Colette and evinces just as much aptitude for bringing it into his narrative. He describes the bullets that buzz past his head in battle like bees heading toward a flower (Diallo 1985, 71). The danger of the ammunition whizzing past the soldiers, which few readers have likely experienced, is conveyed through an image

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with which most are likely familiar. By using an apian simile, Bakary captures the sound and the speed of the ammunition in the same process Blaise Cendrars employs in La Main coupée, as we shall see in the next chapter. Butterflies, too, appear in Force-Bonté as an extended metaphor for the power of human connections. There is a symbiotic relationship between the insect and the plant in Diallo’s image for, on the one hand, if the plant dies, the insect is passive. On the other hand, if the plant is healthy, the insect is active. The butterflies in this analogy, representing the tirailleurs, have affixed themselves “sur la plus belle des fleurs humaines: l’âme française. Elle ne se fane ni ne se dessèche. Elle reste vivante à travers les temps” [“on the most beautiful of human flowers: the French soul. It never fades nor dries out. It remains alive through time”] (Diallo 1985, 151). Here, France is portrayed as the provider of sustenance for the tirailleurs, an allegory for the country’s status as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Bees, of course, are pollinators, carrying pollen from one flower to the next, and thus facilitating reproduction. By extension, the tirailleurs will carry France’s “grains” to other people, thus disseminating the country’s values and ideals far and wide. Birds, as we have seen in the discussion of Colette’s war reporting in chapter 2 and, as we shall see in Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée in chapter 4, are rich in symbolic meaning and in metaphorical potential. In Force-Bonte, birds evoke the symbiotic relationships between the colonial troops and the colonizer: “il me semble que ces oiseaux, c’est nous, les noirs qui désirent aimer, et que cette Dame est la France!” [“it seems to me that we are these birds, the Blacks who want to love, and that this Lady is France!”] (Diallo 1985, 170). The fact that the Africans in the metaphor seek to love points to their potential, idealized relationship with France rather than to the one that exists between colonizer and colonized. Casting the two countries in a potential romantic relationship reinforces Diallo’s aspiration toward a deeper connection between Africans and the French. Avian imagery in Force-Bonté also references civilians affected by the war. Apostrophizing the pigeons he sees roosting near the trenches at the first of the battle of the Marne, he advises them to leave their habitat that has been destroyed by shelling. The trees where they had lived have become inhospitable, “les toits qui cachaient vos nids sont sous la pluie des monstres en colère; suivez la rivière; la Marne guidera vos yeux vers la Paix, vers le centre de la France” [“the roofs that hid your nests are under the rain of angry monsters; follow the river; the Marne will guide your eyes toward Peace, toward the center of France”] (Diallo 1985, 104). Diallo directs the birds away from the front lines toward the safety of central France, the country’s symbolic heart. The destruction of the birds’ shelter mirrors the obliteration of villages within the war zone. Birds and civilians alike are the object of Diallo’s concern, but birds, as we shall see in Cendrars’s La Main coupée,

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are more adaptable and have the advantage of being more mobile. One final analogy portrays human kindness as akin to birds whose heads appear at the opening of their nests because “les signes de bonté, mère de tous les biens de ce monde, sont plus lentement sentis ou aperçus que ceux de la méchanceté ou autres: ils sont également plus sûrs et plus durables” [“the signs of goodness, mother of all the good in this world, are felt or perceived more slowly than those of evil or others: they are also more certain and longer lasting”] (Diallo 1985, 147–48). Just as one must make an effort to see birds in their nests, so too must one look closely to perceive an individual’s positive traits because the negative ones are all too evident. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the narrator’s friend Demba Sow declares that they can discuss the world’s problems all they want but are unable to effect change. To make his point, he compares himself and Bakary to birds without feathers, unable to fly despite their will to do so. True to his poetic vocation, Diallo can see the extraordinary in the ordinary and recognize that goodness is the foundation of human understanding. Imagery of fauna occupies as prominent a place in Force-Bonté as it does Colette’s war writings and, each in their own way, the authors advocate for animal rights. Seeing two horses being used to set a windmill in motion causes Diallo to reflect on the power dynamics among humans and animals in terms akin to those Colette uses in portraying military war dogs. He condemns the belief that animals were created for humans to exploit: “Ces êtres, dits animaux, me font grande peine parce qu’ils ne peuvent pas exprimer aux êtres dits humains ce qu’ils pensent” [“These beings, called animals, cause me great sorrow because they cannot express what they think to the beings called humans”] (Diallo 1985, 58). The West African troops, most of whom spoke only rudimentary pidgin French, are unable to express themselves adequately and thus are in a position only marginally better than that of the horses exploited by the French army. Extending Diallo’s allegory, Sow suggests that, given the beasts’ intelligence, there is the possibility that one day the roles will be reversed and animals will take the place of humans. This is a somewhat more radical view of animal rights than we saw in Colette’s essays, but both authors portray animals as sensitive and intelligent creatures deserving of respect. Goldblatt argues that Diallo’s “persistent concern with laboring and domestic animals—draft horses and dogs principal among them—constitutes a response to the imperial racism that denied the full humanity of black colonized people” (Goldblatt 2020a, 184). Goldblatt may be overinterpreting Diallo’s use of metaphor by arguing that there is an underlining political message. It may simply be that Diallo chose to invoke animals with which he was acquainted and which were present in the areas in which he served. At any rate, fotuki, or egalitarianism, as we have seen, is the bedrock of pulaaku and, by extension, of Diallo’s worldview.

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Diallo does not limit his advocacy to humans. Rather, he takes up the cause for the compassionate treatment of animals just as Colette did “Le Refuge: 13 avril 1915” (Colette 1917p). During the Morocco campaign, Bakary recalls a member of his unit holding a fish that he had caught so that, as the man puts it, it can see the sun. The narrator muses that it is torture for the fish to be out of water, unable to breathe and, what is more, the fish has just as much right to freedom as man. During that same campaign, two of the horses serving in his battalion were killed in a skirmish, which prompted a European legionnaire to joke that the animals would be on the menu that evening. The spiritual tirailleurs in attendance—Diallo among them—refuse to partake of the dinner. He explains that “il est inutile de faire admettre par force ce que la conscience ferme n’accepte pas” [“it is useless to make someone admit through force what their firm conviction does not accept”] (Diallo 1985, 63). In describing the wives of the tirailleurs who followed the unit from Senegal to Meknes, the narrator compares their strength and courage to those of lionesses protecting their cubs. He explains that he does not offer a physical portrait of the women because their true worth is their inner qualities, that is, their hearts and their minds. Expanding on the metaphor, he references the pride of lions to express his hope that one day all humans will come to understand that a person “qui possède un esprit et un cœur possède raison et esprit de décision” [“who possesses a mind and a heart possesses reason and a decisive mind”] (Diallo 1985, 82). Like Colette, Diallo does not anthropomorphize animals, instead referencing their behavior to further his arguments. Unlike Van der Meersch, who uses animals to signal a character’s negative attributes, Diallo, like Colette, views animals as equal in intelligence to humans and thus worthy of respect. Diallo’s belief in fotuki thus extends to all sentient creatures, not just humans. For decades, Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté was shrouded in controversy because of unfounded claims that a ghostwriter had created it. As we have seen, most critics now believe that that controversy has been resolved. Diallo’s novel can now claim its rightful place as one of the few World War I memoirs penned by a tirailleur sénégalais. Like Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 and Colette’s war writing, Force-Bonté contributes to the decentralization of the French World War I narrative that has largely been defined by poilus’ experiences. The protagonist/narrator of Force-Bonté follows a trajectory reminiscent of a traditional bildungsroman, a coming-of-age story set in the French colonial troops. The three fronts that Diallo presents—basic training, fighting the insurgents in Morocco, and the western front—offer us a view of the western front from the perspective of the West African troops. More importantly, through these fronts we can trace the refinement of Diallo’s philosophy, grounded in pulaaku, as he becomes acquainted with the ideals of the French Republic. Diallo draws on animal and botanical

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metaphors, many of which are inspired by his time as a shepherd in Senegal, to present his personal philosophy. He privileges his conversations with his fellow tirailleurs, showing their intellect and values to counter the dismissive, racist views many Europeans had of the colonial troops. To put it more succinctly, Diallo, seeks to reverse the dehumanization of the West African troops. Blaise Cendrars, a wounded veteran like Diallo, has a similar intent in La Main coupée for, as we shall see, he seeks to individualize and humanize the immigrant volunteers in his Foreign Legion unit beside whom he fought at the beginning of the Great War. Lunn underscores the importance of the individual recollections like those of Diallo, declaring that the archival records he consulted give a view of the events from above of the events while the individual testimony offers “a no less valuable view from below. This affords a rich and multifaceted perspective of the past that encompasses social, political, military, and intellectual history as well as the history of the mentalities” (Lunn 1999, 5). Diallo shows how the bureaucratic red tape affects those that the French government is morally obligated to help. One cannot help but notice the similarity between the callous treatment of the gravely wounded colonial troops in World War I and the current situation of thousands of United States veterans, many of whom are homeless or denied benefits because of bureaucratic red tape. There is also a parallel to be made to the slow response by the United States in 2021 to evacuate the Afghan translators who had worked closely with American troops. The debt owed these diverse groups is similar, their devotion to the cause just as deep, although the Afghan civilians were in more immediate danger than the tirailleurs were. In both cases, promises were broken and sacrifices were forgotten by the military authorities. NOTES 1. The tirailleurs sénégalais were soldiers recruited from the French West African colonies. Most of the recruits were from Senegal, hence the reference to that country. 2. János Riesz explains that Diallo introduces what would become some of the main themes of West African literature, including traditional beliefs and social structure and the transition from African to European society (Riesz 1996, 159). 3. The “marraines de guerre” were women who, out of patriotism, corresponded with men at the front as a way to boost the latter’s morale. See Margaret H. Darrow’s French Women and the First World War for a more detailed analysis.

Chapter 4

Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée A Prose Collage

Born in Frédéric Sausser in Switzerland in 1887, the poet, novelist, and journalist Blaise Cendrars was a member of the avant-garde art scene in Paris before World War I. In November 1914, he volunteered for the French Foreign Legion because of the loyalty he felt toward France and because his military service would allow him to apply for citizenship (Bursey 2004, 62–63). One year after enlisting, in September 1915, he lost his right arm in the battle of la ferme Navarin in Champagne. During World War II, Cendrars began work on a series of four semi-autobiographical works, based on his war experiences in the trenches, which were published in quick succession: L’Homme foudroyé [The Astonished Man] (1945), La Main coupée [Lice] (1946), Bourlinguer [Planus] (1948), and Le Lotissement du ciel [Sky] (1949). Jeff Bursey aptly notes that the tetralogy showcases Cendrars’s ability to communicate on the one hand the horror of war and, on the other, the discovery of beauty where one would least expect to find it (Bursey 2004, 80). This juxtaposition of war and beauty is abundantly evident in La Main coupée, the subject of this chapter, in which Cendrars memorializes the men with whom he had served during the Great War. The novel’s front overlaps with that of Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté, analyzed in chapter 3, and, because most of Cendrars’s characters are immigrants, they share an outsider status with the tirailleurs. La Main coupée portrays everyday life in the trenches from the perspective of those populated them. As is the case with the works examined in the previous three chapters, Cendrars’s novel covers several fronts. The military front figures most prominently, but there are also the marshy front adjacent to the military one, the front of Paris in wartime, and that of the capital between the two world wars. While some of the episodes in La Main coupée are decidedly comical, Cendrars always maintains his characters’ dignity. His goal in writing the novel was to profile the men, many of them immigrants and from working-class backgrounds, as he knew them. As he was drafting 91

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the work, he wrote to his friend Jean-Henry Lévesque that, “tout au long du jour on voit passer, apparaître et disparaître des gens de la vie. Pourquoi se cramponner à des ‘héros’? Ça n’existe pas dans la vie” [“All day long, we see people passing through, appearing and disappearing from life. Why do we hang on to the notion of ‘heros’? They do not exist in real life”] (Cendrars 1991, 376). This stance against the idealization of soldiers and of war is one of the defining characteristics of La Main coupée. Cendrars’s anti-war, antimilitary attitude manifests in the episodes featuring what he called “la petite guerre dans la grande” [“the little war in the big war”], that is, mischief and unauthorized sabotage—without a doubt embellished—in which Blaise1 and his comrades-in-arms engaged (Connolly 2015, 8). The title alone of Cendrars’s novel would seem to eliminate the need to justify reading it as a trauma testimony, especially to anyone who is aware of the author’s World War I experience, misleading though it is, the severed hand only occupying one of the novel’s final chapters. More generally, Michelle Balaev might see Cendars’s protagonist/narrator as “[bringing] into awareness the specificity of individual trauma that is often connected to larger social factors and cultural values or ideologies. We can see that the trauma novel provides a picture of the individual that suffers but paints it in such a way as to suggest that this protagonist is an ‘everyperson’ figure” (Balaev 2008, 155). It will become clear in my examination that the characters in La Main coupée are meant to be read as “everypersons,” that is, ordinary men with little military training who volunteered to protect their adopted country in the French Foreign Legion. These are not the heroes whose courage on the battlefield has become a part of the mythology of war. Cendrars contributes to the decentralization of the French World War I narrative by presenting us with portraits of individuals on the margins, that is, immigrants without citizenship, many from working-class backgrounds, who were likely invisible to the middle and upper classes in civilian life but who fought shoulder to shoulder with them as equals in the trenches. Disillusioned even before his injury, Cendrars left military service with a hatred for machismo and for any sort of idealism or glorification of war (Mounic 2011). Adamantly refusing the label “écrivain-combattant” [“writer/ combatant”], Cendrars took to task those poets, like his friend Guillaume Apollinaire, who were able to “faire des rimes dans les tranchées, écrire des gentilles petites poésies, des gentilles petites choses, des gentils petits paysages, des gentils petits bonhommes” [“make rhymes in the trenches, write nice little poems, make nice little things, nice little landscapes, nice little guys”] (quoted in Leroy 2015, 3). In La Main coupée, the narrator Blaise echoes that sentiment: “De tous les tableaux des batailles auxquelles j’ai assisté je n’ai rapporté qu’une image de pagaïe. Je me demande où les types vont chercher ça quand ils racontent qu’ils ont vécu des heures historiques

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ou sublimes” [“of all the battlefield scenes that I have witnessed, I have only retained an image of mayhem. I wonder where the guys go to find that when they say that they lived historical or magnificent hours”] (Cendrars 2013, 76–77). The chaos of war, a part of the narrative structure as well as the events Cendrars recounts, is at the heart of La Main coupée. In a first movement, I will examine Cendrars’s metaphorical use of the sights and sounds of nature in his descriptions of the trenches and the surrounding areas. Cendrars wrote to his friend Lévesque as he was creating La Main coupée that he was more interested in “la composition du récit” [“the composition of the narrative”] (Cendrars 1991, 307) than its style or lyricism, a preoccupation that may be linked to a cubist aesthetic, specifically, the use of collage. This technique, popular among cubists in literature and in the plastic arts, heightens the impact of La Main coupée’s anti-war message. In a second movement, I will show the influence of Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie humaine on Cendrars’s gallery of Legionnaires. Although Cendrars chose to reject the conventions of the “traditional” war novel in writing La Main coupée, he nonetheless retained characteristics commonly associated with realism. A work that Cendrars attempted to make “plus vrai que vrai” [“truer than true”] (Cendrars 1991, 339), La Main coupée, I argue, illustrates Henri Mitterand’s assertion that realism is constantly renewing itself “en même temps que notre vision et notre compréhension du réel, la poétique des genres” [“along with our vision and understanding of what reality and poetic genres are”] (Mitterand 1994). Despite his many works of journalism, fiction, and film criticism, Blaise Cendrars remains best known in the United States for his poem “La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France” [“Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jehanne of France”]. American novelist John Dos Passos observed in an introduction to his translation of Cendrars’s poem “Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles” [“Panama: Or, The Adventures of My Seven Uncles”] (1919) that “the poetry of Blaise Cendrars was part of the creative tidal wave that spread over the world from the Paris of before the last European war. Under various tags: futurism, cubism, modernism, most of the best work in the arts in our time has been the direct product of this explosion, that had an influence in its sphere comparable with that of the October revolution in social organization and politics and the Einstein formula in physics” (Dos Passos 1931, vii). The innovation for which Cendrars is known in poetry carries over into La Main coupée, since the novel diverges dramatically in style and content from the way his contemporaries portrayed the Great War. Cendrars indicated in a letter to Lévesque that he was happy with La Main coupée, which he characterized as “dépouillé au point que vous en serez surpris. Aucun lyrisme, vocabulaire pauvre, c’est comme un herbier. Tout est desséché. Aucun coloris, mais la vie” [“so bare that you will be surprised.

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No lyricism, poor vocabulary, it’s like an herbarium. Everything is dried out. No color, just life”] (Cendrars 1991, 320). While critics generally consider La Main coupée to be a novel, Philippe Forest insists on the work’s hybridity, pointing out that, like the other works that make up the war tetralogy, it contains elements of poetry, hagiography, and autobiography (Forest 2013, 85). Forest takes poetry in the broadest sense, for while Cendrars does not use verse or rhyme in La Main coupée, his goal, like that of the poet, is to move the reader. In the same vein, André Vanoncini sees the novel as “une œuvre polyphonique” [a “polyphonic work”] that is equal parts chronicle, prose poetry, testimony, satire, and condemnation (Vanoncini 2004, 52). Cendrars, along with contemporaries such as Henri Barbusse, Maurice Genevoix, and the subject of chapter 5, Raymond Dorgelès, used their unadorned prose and direct style to discourage readers from empathizing with the protagonists in their World War I novels (Mecke 2014, 122). La Main coupée’s form, moreover, expresses the chaos of war as well as the capricious nature of memory. For many, the term cubism brings to mind the work of painters like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso or of poets like Guillaume Apollinaire, Jean Cocteau and, of course, Blaise Cendrars. Cubism in the novel, like that in its other forms, “[dissects] in order to reassemble into a newly coherent whole, one that would reveal a deeper truth about the subject and enable multiple points of view” (“Cubism” 2012). The practitioners of prose cubism in the first half of the twentieth century were “interested in presenting faceted works that relied on precise, realistic detail” (“Cubism” 2012). For her part, Marta Dvořák argues that the poetic incarnation of cubism was radical for its protean free verse, collage of non-linear sequences, abrupt shifts in time and place and simultaneous multiple viewpoints, which were the Dada-tinted verbal equivalents of what the avant-garde Cubist painters had been doing. Contributing to what was in the air, it preceded [Sergei] Eisenstein’s invention of filmic montage: creating a whole from isolated fragments. (Dvořák 2019, 143)

Cendrars adapts these very techniques to prose in La Main coupée by “breaking up and manipulating time” and creating a collage in an effort “to get at the ‘real’ beyond the printed page” (“Cubism” 2012). Catharine Savage Brosman asserts that, because cubism deconstructs and reorganizes the elements of traditional narration, it is an ideal form “for portraying a war that broke all the rules” (Brosman 1999, 141). A quick glance at La Main’s table of contents reveals the work’s collage structure. Of the novel’s twenty-five chapters, eleven bear the name of a poilu from Blaise’s unit, each profiling an individual inside and out rather than recounting battlefield heroics. The remaining chapters variously designate a geographic place (“À la Grenouillière” [“In

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la Grenouillière”]), objects (“La Pipe de Maïs” [“The Corncob Pipe”]), an action (“Faire un prisonnier” [“Taking a Prisoner”]), or emotion (“‘Maman! Maman!’”). Cubism, then, provides Cendrars the tools to express the changing face of modern warfare in his novel. The most evident cubist technique in the cri du cœur that is La Main coupée is the muddled sequence of events. Cendrars eschews straightforward chronology between and even within chapters, frequently shifting fronts several times in a single chapter, from the trenches of Picardy and Champagne to that of Paris years after the armistice, a technique that he named “prochronie” [“prochrony”]. Although Cendrars never fully defined the term, Forest asserts that it refers to an interconnection of past, present, and future events (Forest 2013, 85). As he was drafting La Main coupée, Cendrars described to Lévesque in a letter dated 10 December 1945 his technique, albeit without the label of “prochronie”: Composition et décomposition du récit dans le temps: je viens de terminer un long chapitre où la dislocation du temps est poussée à l’extrême et se termine sur un enchevêtrement de toutes petites mesures qui se chevauchent—le passé après, le futur avant le présent—fragmentations qui tiennent souvent à quelques minutes! Je crois qu’on ne peut pas aller plus loin sans en faire un système emmerdant. [Composition and decomposition in time of the narrative; I have just finished a long chapter in which the dislocation of time is pushed to the extreme and ends in a jumble of all the little things that overlap—the past afterward, the future before the present—fragmentations that persist for several minutes! I don’t think it is possible to take it any further without making it into an annoying system.] (Cendrars 1991, 401)

Because of the upended chronology, the episodes in La Main coupée run together, mimicking the war-weary combatants’ train of thought. What is more, the work’s time shifting allows Cendrars to convey simultaneously the trauma of war, a memory of life before the war, and a promise of an eventual return, if not to normalcy, then at least to a life without armed conflict (Touret 2010, 106). Combat scenes exist at the margins of the narrative in La Main coupée, largely downplayed so as not to glorify war. In The Art of Survival: France and the Great War Picaresque, Libby Murphy provides a context for the way in which Cendrars portrays French soldiers in during the first year of the Great War. She maintains that certain protagonists in French World War I novels may be seen as modern picaresque heroes in that they possess the wherewithal to survive in the carnage, chaos, and randomness of service in the trenches (Murphy 2016, xiv). The narrator of La Main coupée, though not referred to specifically in Murphy’s argument, may be seen as a picaro because he engages in a strategy of proactively addressing problems as they

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arise instead of regretting the past, anticipating the future, or hoping for justice that never comes (Murphy 2016, 3). Most importantly for the present discussion, the picaresque worldview puts an emphasis on truth and “seeing through the corruption, illusions, and hypocrisy of mainstream society and the mass media” (Murphy 2016, 3). Openly antiauthoritarian, Blaise challenges his superior officers every chance he gets. He is especially skilled at leading a small squad of men on impromptu raids, actions that he enjoys because they operate outside of official channels and away from the military brass. At one point, in an abandoned house from which he pilfers a gramophone and records that are part of a Christmas Eve strike against German positions, Blaise reads Le Tiers livre, which features the roguish Panurge. Like Panurge, Blaise is a gouilleur [impertinent, cheeky individual] with a penchant for challenging authority, although Rabelais’s character is by far the more diabolical of the two. One of Blaise’s commanders, Colonel Bourbaki, though willing to overlook his insubordination because of his effectiveness, dresses him down for being too daring and disrespectful to his superiors. Simply put, like other picaresque heroes of the French World War I novel, Blaise does not, as Murphy might see it, “aspire to overturn the world order, only make it bearable” (Murphy 2016, 10). I offer an analysis of Cendrars’s first war narrative, J’ai tué (1918) as a primer for his use of collage in La Main coupée. Christine Le Quellac Cottier contends that J’ai tué is not “une expérience combattante reconnaissable par tous mais un témoignage littéraire, c’est-à-dire la représentation d’un vécu, d’une expérience authentique” [“a combat experience recognizable by all but a literary testimony, that is, the representation of an authentic lived experience”] (Cottier 2015, 14). The same, I submit, can be said of La Main coupée, of which J’ai tué is a first draft of sorts. The latter, first published in 1918, is made up of quick descriptions resembling a series of snapshots. The first element of this narrative collage is auditory, a description of the echo of the troops’ boots, the clanking of equipment, and the singing of patriotic or bawdy songs as the men leave the train station for the front.2 The sounds of combat creep in as the men near the fighting: “Tout pète, craque, tonne, tout à la fois” [“Everything is popping, cracking, rumbling, at the same time”] (Cendrars 2013, 15). The clatter and reports of machinery and munitions are accompanied by the clamor of humans: “Grincement. Chuintements. Ululements. Hennissements. Cela tousse, crache, barrit, hurle, crie et lamente” [“Creaking. Hissing, Hooting. Whinnying. There is coughing, spitting, trumpeting, howling, screaming, whining”] (Cendrars 2013, 15). The unnamed narrator of J’ai tué observes that the disparate sounds nonetheless work together, taking on a discernable “rythme ternaire particulier, une cadence propre, comme un accent humain” [“a particular ternary rhythm, a unique cadence like a human accent”] (Cendrars 2013, 16). By equating

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the sound of war with a human voice, the narrator subtly reminds the reader that what he is describing is a man-made phenomenon. The soldiers quickly become acclimated, so “ce bruit terrifiant ne fait pas plus d’effet que le bruit d’une fontaine.. . . On pense à un jet d’eau, à un jet d’eau cosmique, tant il est régulier, ordonné, continu, mathématique. Musique des spheres” [“this terrifying noise has no more effect than the noise of a fountain. You think about a water jet, a cosmic water jet, it is so regular, ordered, continuous, mathematical. Spherical music”] (Cendrars 2013, 16). The reference to a cosmic fountain emphasizes that there is a force at work that surpasses human capabilities. As the narrator enters the fighting, the commands and whistles from the commanding officers—the conductors of the deadly orchestra—prevail over the noise of combat. Sounds give way to visual evidence of the unequal treatment of enlisted men and officers with the mention of the commanding general’s silhouette pacing in front of a window. The narrator ironically suggests that this “Grand Chef Responsable” [“Big Responsible Boss”] should be pitied because he is kept awake by logarithmic calculations that will determine the fate of the troops. The snapshot of the general is followed by elements of the collage referencing the infantry troops’ experience. The odors wafting past the troops as they march to battle give the collage a sensorial depth: “Cela sent le cul de cheval enflammé, la motosacoche, le phénol et l’anis. . . . L’haleine du père Pinard empoisonne la nature” [“It smells like an inflamed horse’s ass, a motorcycle, phenol, and anise. . . . The breath of Old Man Booze poisons the air”] (Cendrars 2013, 15). This scene will be replicated in La Main coupée, when Blaise recounts that, as the men creep toward the enemy position, they are surrounded by a noxious cloud of mud and horse manure (Cendrars 2013, 69).These are the odors of a unit on the move, the juxtaposition of the two forms of transportation (the horse and the motorcycle) pointing to the transformation of warfare that was occurring at the time. The first reference to the horse’s backside, while startling, does capture the odors of thousands of draft animals on the way to the front. One would be remiss not to mention the word play with anus/anis, evidence of Cendrars’s attention to the sounds of the words he chose. The smell of phenol, a disinfectant, evokes the presence of wounded soldiers. Finally, the mention of pinard and anis reference two alcoholic staples in the poilus’ diet. Abandoned objects are the most evident cubist technique in J’ai tué. These serve as markers and descriptors of each location the narrator passes through. For instance, outside the military authorities’ quarters, he catches sight of elegantly dressed young men, employed by the officer corps, relaxing nearby. Traces of the creature comforts provided exclusively to officers are strewn haphazardly in the poilus’ path as they move toward the front: a novel, a basin, and a bottle of cologne. The military hierarchy stands out in the

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juxtaposition between the smells of pure, raw nature to which the infantrymen are subjected and the trappings of civilization and normality afforded the officers. As they draw closer to the fighting, the play of light dominates: “des feux, des brasiers, des explosions” [“fire, flames, explosions”] (Cendrars 2013, 15), creating the prose equivalent of snapshots. The quick flashes illuminate the chaos of the moment: “Sur la lueur des départs se profilent éperdus des hommes obliques, . . . un cheval fou. Battement d’une paupière. Clin d’œil au magnésium. Instantané rapide. Tout disparaît. On a vu la mer phosphorescente des tranchées, et des trous noirs” [“Against the light of outgoing shells, leaning men, distraught, are profiled . . . a crazed horse. The blink of an eye. A magnesium flash. Quick snapshot. Everything disappears. We see the phosphorescent sea of the trenches and black holes”] (Cendrars 2013, 15). This image is in and of itself a collage because it captures the simultaneous reaction of several witnesses to combat. Although the illumination lasts only a fraction of a second, it is enough to convey the emotion of the moment. In the same flash, the craters and trenches show the effects of the artillery barrage on the landscape. The trenches are described via a maritime metaphor, an allusion to the damp conditions in which the men fought. As the troops proceed toward the front, they find disabled weaponry and debris of munitions strewn in the fields. The objects and flashes replace the more detailed descriptions found in conventional war novels. The most graphic description in J’ai tué is of the narrator and his fellow poilus engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an Austrian unit: “Des membres volent en l’air. Je reçois du sang plein le visage” [“Limbs fly through the air. I get a face full of blood”] (Cendrars 2013, 17). The short sentences translate the speed at which the events take place while also contributing to the snapshot motif. The perspective is that of a recruit newly arrived at the front, his first glimpse of war the sight of the carnage it leaves behind: “des grappes de cadavres, ignobles comme les paquets de chiffonniers des terrines pleines de choses sans nom, du jus, de la viande, des vêtements et de la fiente. Puis, dans les coins, derrière les buissons, dans un chemin creux, il y a les morts ridicules, figés comme des momies, qui font leur petit Pompéi” [“clusters of cadavers, hideous like bundles of rags, pâtés full of nameless things, juice, meat, clothes, and feces. Then, in the corners, behind the bushes, in a hollow road, there are the ridiculous dead, rigid like mummies, who are doing their impression of a little Pompei”] (Cendrars 2013, 17). The narrator emphasizes the dehumanization of the men who gave their lives to defend France, their bodies liquified and unrecognizable, reduced to rags and excrement on a field. The reference to the “morts ridicules” [“ridiculous dead”] brings home the fact that few soldiers who die met a heroic—or even dignified—end. There is an echo here of Michel de Montaigne’s Of Glory (Book II, 16), which reads in part: “in a great battle where ten thousand men

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are maimed or killed, there are not fifteen who are taken notice of. . . . For to kill a man, or two, or ten: to expose a man’s self bravely to the utmost peril of death, is indeed something in every one of us, because we there hazard all” (Montaigne 1877). Dead soldiers are not simply anonymous, they are no longer recognizable as human forms. The narrator of J’ai tué muses about the “progress” in the form of manpower and technological advances that has brought him to the point of killing another human being. Industries from across the world have come together to facilitate the destruction of mankind and to make a profit for the rich. As the narrator prepares to describe his murderous act, he comes to understand that his target is “mon semblable. Un singe. Œil pour œil, dent pour dent. À nous deux maintenant. À coups de poing, à coups de couteau. Sans merci” [“my fellow man. An ape. An eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. It’s just you and me now. With punches, stabs. Mercilessly” (Cendrars 2013, 18). The narrator references humanity, biological evolution, the Old Testament, and Honoré de Balzac’s Eugène de Rastignac in Old Goriot, the juxtaposition of the disparate allusions in quick succession conveying the soldier’s surge of adrenalin. Leaping at his adversary, he cuts the man’s throat, nearly decapitating him. He concludes: “J’ai tué le Boche” [“I killed the Kraut”]. There is a parallel scene in La Main coupée in which Blaise heroically “kills” a German soldier, nearly severing his head, only to discover that the soldier is already dead. In the later work, the scene is recounted for laughs; the emotional distance that three decades affords Cendrars likely accounts for the difference in tone and the surprise ending of the second version of events. Claude Leroy asserts that in the episode from J’ai tué, Cendrars symbolically eliminates his German heritage, the part of himself he despises because of what he perceives as the nation’s barbarism (Leroy 2015, 3–4). The narrator owes his survival to his quicker reflexes and to his groundedness: “J’ai le sens de la réalité, moi, poète. J’ai agi. J’ai tué. Comme celui qui veut vivre” [“I have a sense of reality, as a poet. I acted. I killed. Like someone who wants to live”] (Cendrars 2013, 18). The reference to his status as a poet is paradoxical since poets are held in the popular imagination to be dreamers loosely anchored in reality. Nonetheless, the narrator’s confession shows how the trauma of combat leads to his transformation from artist to killer. The images, sounds, and smells of war in quick succession closely approximate the pace at which events occur at the front. As we shall see, J’ai tué is a blueprint for La Main coupée in that it establishes—albeit on a smaller scale—Cendrars’s brand of collage. The first element of the collage of La Main coupée—and its very foundation—is, fittingly, the environment. The poilus in the trenches were not only fighting the human enemy but natural ones as well: ground, weather, vermin (Pearson 2012, 104). While nondescript nature initially forms the backdrop

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of the collage, it becomes more detailed in the opening movement, much like a photographic image that emerges on paper immersed in developer in a dark room. References to the flora of the western front in La Main coupée are made in generic terms such as “champ” [“field”] or “herbe” [“grass”], with the occasional mention of the beet fields for which the region is known. Cendrars uses “champ”—with no qualifier—to refer to battlefield, the commonality of the term emphasizing the lack of clear demarcation between the war front and the agricultural one. Navigating safely at night between the camp and no-man’s land and avoiding an abandoned mine nearby proved to be a challenge, since the hellish landscape hides any number of dangers. By light of day, the devastation comes into full view, a “paysage lunaire” [“lunar landscape”] (Cendrars 2013, 32) characterized by mine craters and destroyed buildings. The terrain is transformed as Blaise’s company moves from lunar landscape to a waterlogged prairie, which poses its own set of challenges. The poilus were subjected to unsanitary conditions in which potable water was rationed and in which rats, attracted by the smell of blood, had free rein (“Noyés”). Pierre Chaine’s Mémoires d’un rat, which first appeared in serial form in the newspaper L’Œuvre in 1916 and published as a collection in 1917, offers a rodent’s-eye view of the trenches that brings home the reality of the front. The work’s narrator, Ferdinand, claims that he and his brethren provided the troops a great service: “Combien de soldats se seraient laissés surprendre par l’ennemi, si notre activité nocturne n’avait stimulé leur vigilance! Grâce à nous, le poilu ne dort jamais d’un œil” [“How many soldiers would have been surprised by the enemy if our nocturnal activity had not stimulated their vigilance! Thanks to us, the poilus are never half asleep”] (Chaîne 2015, 9). There is more than a little truth in the humorous statement, of course, especially the importance of being alert to danger of all kinds. In addition to being vulnerable to the shelling, the soldiers in the trenches were exposed to bacteria, which put them at risk for serious infections such as trench foot (Brault-Dreux 2015). Nature itself posed innumerable dangers, beginning with the unstable wetlands that developed because the trenches redirected the waterflow in a flat area with a high-water table (Leonard 2010). Thousands of photos taken during the Great War attest to the fact that mud was a constant problem for the poilus on the western front. Matthew Leonard reveals that the composition of the muck and mire in which the troops lived and fought included “the remnants of human beings and of murdered nature, the by-product of modern industrial warfare fought on a scale that had never before been thought possible. It is not the same mud we know of today” (Leonard 2015). Leonard’s graphic description draws attention to the biohazard stockpile the soldiers were exposed to. With this in mind, it is no surprise that the wetlands that developed near the trenches in Picardy are at the center of La Main coupée’s collage. Blaise creates a verbal landscape using long,

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flowing sentences that allude not only to the quagmire of war but also to the growing despair among the poilus he leads. The men slip and slide in the muck, trying to grab hold of anything they can, the panic registering in their faces as they realize that their death is imminent. Blaise compares the soldiers to shipwrecked sailors, which at first blush is incongruous in a setting far from the sea. However, the image does convey the feelings of isolation and depression the troops experienced. The description includes the verb “digérer” [“to digest”], which points to the risk of being swallowed up by the mud and water. Blaise recalls one cavalry member who, despite the best efforts of his comrades, was slowly sucked into the muck and suffocated, his body never recovered. This anecdote is not exaggerated or embellished; examples from contemporary news reports and soldiers’ journals offer similar descriptions. On 7 January 1915, several soldiers in the Artois, near Notre-Dame de Lorette, were caught in the mud and, unable to free themselves, suffocated in the bog (“Noyés”). An essay published in a trench newspaper,3 Le Bochofage, in March 1917 tells us that “la boue est la femelle du boche. Elle et lui sont exécrés du poilu, elle plus que lui, parfois. Tous deux sont masqués de gris. Ils sont aussi perfidies l’un que l’autre. . . . Car on meurt de la boue comme des balles, et plus horriblement” [“Mud is the female of the Kraut. They are both detested by the poilus, she more than he, sometimes. Both are masked in gray. They are equally treacherous. . . . For you die from the mud as you do from bullets, and more horribly”] (“Boue” 1917, 2). Mud, then, forms a sort of shifting back drop in the collage of La Main coupée. The marshy fields impeded military operations and stalled the forward movement of the troops. Nature is in constant flux, leaving the poilus off guard as the saturated earth shifts beneath them and the water rises around them. Completing the forbidding scene is the sky that grows dark with storm clouds, “le crépuscule se noyait dans la pluie. La nuit menaçait” [“twilight was drowning in the rain. Night was menacing”] (Cendrars 2013, 139). There is an allusion in this description to Charles Baudelaire’s poem “Harmonie du soir” [“Evening Harmony”]: “Le ciel est triste et beau comme un grand reposoir / Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige” [“The sky is as sad and beautiful as a great altar of rest. / The sun drowned in its blood which coagulates”] (Baudelaire 1964, 111). Cendrars transforms the setting sun sinking below the horizon in Baudelaire’s poem into an image depicting the reality of war. He even channels the Baudelairian spleen in “la nuit menaçait” [“night menaces”], which takes the form of the unstable ground and the rising water. The stagnation of the war is translated by the rhythm of the phrases in this excerpt, the increasingly short sentences calling to mind the unit’s slowing to a stop. Fog, a weather phenomenon that can be a natural consequence of the marshland, transforms the landscape one final time. Venturing out on patrol,

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Blaise and his comrades find themselves disoriented by the “effets surprenants de brume et des enroulements et des désenchantements de brouillard sur l’eau, des mouvements et des éclairages de nuages et des apparitions et des disparitions subites de lune dans les déchirures et les coulisses du ciel” [“the surprising effects of mist and the winding and disenchantment of the fog on the water, the movements and lights and appearances and disappearances of the moon in the rips and the wings of the sky”] (Cendrars 2013, 155–56). Cendrars uses theater vocabulary, “coulisses” [“wings”], which conveys the unreality of the location. The fog becomes an actor in the marsh, the connector “and” marking the various stages of the morphing landscape. The misty shapeshifting is accompanied by the transformation of trees into otherworldly beings, including a humanlike headless tree and the movement of the aquatic plants in the current. Cendrars emphasizes the continuous movement in the marsh, with the “bourrasques brusques faisant gesticuler les rameaux et les ramillons et se dérouler les baguettes dont les rares feuilles pendantes, proches, tout proches, se tendaient à nous toucher le visage comme des mains humides aux doigts glacés pour nous alerter” [“brusque gusts of wind making the branches and twigs gesticulate and making the sticks unfurl, their sparse leaves hanging, close, really close, were reaching out to touch our faces like damp hands with icy fingers to alert us”] (Cendrars 2013, 156). The description of the marsh relies on a drawn-out series of noun/adjective units in which gerunds prevailing over conjugated verbs approximates the movement of the vegetation and the water. Seemingly complicit with their enemy and in constant movement, the inhospitable nature keeps Blaise and his comrades on alert and intensifies their fear. The personification of the plants translates the fear of the poilus, who are aware that enemy combatants lurk nearby, hidden by the fog. Cendrars’s use of personification in this passage underscores the necessity of being aware that the enemy may be lying in wait out of sight. What Cendrars is describing here is “the fog of war,” a term coined by Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz during the Franco-Prussian War. Military members must learn to visualize not only the tactics they plan to execute but the area in which they will be carrying them out, that is, to imagine what they cannot see (McConnell et al. 2021, 59). The inability to see heightens the soldiers’ imagination and in turn increases their fear. Cendrars’s use of metaphor and literary allusion allows him some distance from the traumatic events, in effect creating a fictional space safe from the reality that he lived decades before. The fog takes on a supernatural quality, enchanting the soldiers and distracting them from their primary purpose. The mist’s dizzying movement, constantly shifting between light and dark, evokes whirling dervishes engaged in the meditation practice that is part of their worship ceremony. The swirling columns the fog forms sparkle in the shifting light and metamorphose

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into women wearing billowing skirts who beckon to the men, inviting them to dance, ghostly reminders of the pleasures of life on the home front. In this passage, Cendrars uses run-on sentences—punctuated only by a comma—to convey the swirling and mingling of light and shadow. The precariousness of the situation in which Blaise and his comrades find themselves is referenced here in the disappearing and reappearing forms and in the unstable light. The constant movement is disorienting in the unfamiliar landscape, making it nearly impossible for the poilus to ascertain the enemy’s location. At once festive and ominous, the moving mist creates an unceasing ghost ball and what the narrator refers to as “la danse des spectres, la valse des lépreuses” [“the ghostly danse, the women lepers’ waltz”] (Cendrars 2013, 278). These danses macabres of sorts, are striking because they point to nature’s indifference to the soldiers’ apprehension. If mud forms the background of the collage, fog creates an overlay that obscures the narrative composition, thus translating the poilus’ perspective in the wetlands. Wildlife in La Main coupée is as pronounced an element as the flora and meteorological phenomena. On a very basic level, the details of the indigenous fauna affected by the war allow the reader to better visualize the scene. Because the soldiers are below ground in the trenches most of the time, they are vulnerable to the insects and animals whose habitat they have invaded and who live off the poilus as well as off the detritus of war. Interestingly, the English translation of La Main coupée is Lice. Cendrars devotes a chapter, “Les Poux” (“Lice”) to that scourge of the poilus, because, as Jean-Michel Derex reminds us, “le pou est le grand ennemi du soldat” [“lice are the great enemy of the soldier”] (Derex 2014, 113). Because of their ubiquity, it is only logical that lice constitute an element unto themselves in the collage. The poilus referred to the parasites as “les totos,” a nickname that confirms their pervasiveness. According to the Musée de l’Armée, “toto” is a reference to the “monde de l’enfance et au personnage que plusieurs auteurs et dessinateurs évoquent comme un mauvais garnement, un cancre qui fait des farces” [“the childhood world and to the character that several authors and illustrators evoke as a bad boy, a dunce who likes to play practical jokes”] (“Animaux 9” 2017). Lice literally accompanied the poilus in everything that they did, yet the twenty-first-century reader likely is not aware of the extent of the infestation in the trenches. Blaise Pascal famously observed, “Le pouvoir des mouches, elles gagnent des batailles, empêchent notre âme d’agir, mangent nos corps” [“The power of flies, they win battles, keep our souls from acting, eat our bodies”] (B. Pascal 1977, 72). Substitute “lice” for “flies” and you have the point of departure for the opening chapter of La Main coupée, set in Tilloloy just after the bloody spring of 1915. Lice infestations were at their peak in 1914–1915, before the French army put into place a disinfection protocol. Artilleryman Henri de Romagny chronicled in his journal entry from

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20 March 1915 his constant struggle to eradicate lice: “il a fallu de suite prendre l’offensive contre cette vermine en renouvelant la paille de couchage . . . se laver entièrement à l’oxyanure de mercure et changer de linge” [“we had to go on the offensive against those vermin by replacing the straw bedding . . . washing ourselves all over with mercuric oxide and changing the sheets”] (Romagny 2008, 91). Romagny ironically declared that the trench remedies he and his comrades use are ineffective: “les poux reniflent et en éternuant, se cassent contre les morceaux de sel . . . ou se graissent la peau à l’huile de ricin, le pou attrape la ‘courante’ et dès que la colique le prend . . . essaye de s’enfuir” [“the lice sniff and sneeze, break themselves on grains of salt . . . or grease their skin with castor oil, the louse catches ‘the runs’ and as soon as the colic hits them, tries to flee”] (Romagny 2008, 91). The lice, like the men in the trenches, suffer from intestinal infections in the imagination of the poilu author, but unlike their human counterparts, they can flee the unhealthy situation. Le Ver luisant (The Glowworm), a popular trench newspaper, had a recurring column, “Journal d’un pou,” [“Journal of a Louse”] that gave satirical voice to the annoying visitor. In one entry from 1917, the parasitic narrator remarks that “au cours de notre vie intime avec l’homme, nous avons pris, avec son sang, un peu de son âme, nous avons suivi la même évolution” [“in the course of our intimate life with man, we have taken, along with his blood, a bit of his soul, we have followed the same evolution”] (E. Pascal 1917, 3). There is, then, a symbiotic relationship between soldier and louse. Given the pervasiveness of lice in the trenches, it is only natural that Cendrars use them as a metaphor for the poilus. Looking back at his time in the trenches at Tilloloy, Blaise compares his comrades and himself to lice on a human head, categorizing them according to their appearance, thus reducing the soldiers to the sum of their biological parts. This is not to say, however, that Blaise is mocking the poilus. On the contrary, the visual he creates emphasizes the smallness of individuals in the expanse of war, as insignificant as lice on a human head. By classifying the various lice species according to nationalities who represent the Allied and Central powers, moreover, he narrows his scope from the globe down to the battlefields of World War I which were populated by troops from a wide variety of countries. Equating lice and Germans was something of a cliché during the conflict; the trope was featured on postcards sent from the front, complete with inscriptions such as “on les chasse et on les écrase” [“we hunt them and we crush them”] (“Animaux 9” 2017). What is more, there is an echo here of J’ai tué, in which the narrator, criticizing man’s bloodlust, declares “sur toute la surface de la terre on ne travaille que pour moi” [“on the surface of the entire earth, they only work for me”] (Cendrars 2013, 17). Lice provide a link between nature and the troops in the trenches, underscoring the interconnectivity of the two elements. In effect, the discussion of

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lice bites sets up the description of men who go off by themselves to write letters to loved ones and to scratch themselves, not because of the irritation the parasites’ saliva causes, “mais pour attraper une idée ou un mot entre le pouce et l’index” [“but to catch an idea or a word between your thumb and your index finger”] (Cendrars 2013, 29). It is worth noting that “pou” [“louse”] is a part of “pouce” [“thumb”], another example of Cendrars’s penchant for wordplay. Rooted in the physical discomfort, the scratching and the searching for lice comes to represent writer’s block. The physical sensation holds sway over the intellectual activity, with the writer abandoning his correspondence to devote himself to literally picking nits from his body. The irony here is evident because, instead of shutting out the physical world to put his thoughts on paper, the soldier gives in to the immediate, primal need brought on by the parasites’ bites. Flying insects, too, appear in La Main coupée, another category of visitors to the trenches. These creatures, the point of comparison for the sounds of war, add another dimension to the collage’s soundtrack, an element that is present in J’ai tué as well, as we have seen. Errant bullets reach Blaise and his comrades in buzzing swarms like wasps, the gentle dropping of the ammunition in the mud belying their potential for danger. The narrator’s reference to swarms conveys the sheer number of bullets as well as their intensity. Wasps, more aggressive than, say, a horsefly, add a sinister aspect to a setting that otherwise appears tranquil. In portraying his friend Bikoff, a Russian expat in his unit, Blaise mentions that their shared passion for bees allows him to establish a rapport. In the popular imagination, bees commonly symbolize industriousness as well as rebirth. Since the time of Clovis, moreover, the French royalty used the bee as a symbol. It is at that tradition that Bikoff takes aim when he uses the example of the queen bee, which he calls the “mother” to praise the republican ideals of the “honey flies” who did not have middle-class values. By replacing the appellation “queen bee” with the more egalitarian “mother,” he conveys, consciously or not, his anti-tsarist political ideals. Consequently, bees are at once a part of the collage’s fauna, and the means by which to develop the character of Bikoff. The most striking images of winged creatures in La Main coupée are those of birds. We saw in chapter three the prominence of avian imagery in the works of Bakary Diallo. On the one hand, birds symbolize the freedom that soldiers must give up once they are conscripted and, on the other hand, their status as “prisonniers d’un enfer dont ils ne peuvent s’échapper” [“prisoners of a hell from which they cannot escape”] (Derex 2014, 105). Chris Pearson points out that birds were a common trope in writings from the Western Front, which he sees as a part of the “romantic tradition of nature as a source of spiritual nourishment and mental renewal [that] represents an alternative to the militarized environmental perspective” (Pearson 2012, 101). Ducks and

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other waterfowl are the constant companions of Blaise’s unit in the marsh, earning them a space in the collage of La Main coupée. Somewhat counterintuitively, birds tend to remain near the fighting instead of fleeing it. The aquatic birds, even more so than the poilus, grow accustomed to war, refusing to abandon their position even as stray bullets fall around them. Wild birds in war, Éric Baratay argues, come to understand that they are not the targets of the violence, “sans doute en mobilisant leurs excellentes capacités à voir et distinguer les sons [“undoubtedly by mobilizing their excellent capacities to see and to distinguish sound”] (Baratay 2013). Louis Rousseau, an ornithologist who was in an artillery unit near Woëevre in Lorraine, prefaced his observations in an essay published in a professional journal in 1915 with a “témoignage de mon admiration pour la bravoure avec laquelle ils [les oiseaux] se moquent des coups de feu et de la canonnade” [“testimony of my admiration for the bravery with which they [the birds] mock the gun shots and the heavy artillery fire” (Rousseau 1915, 203). The waterfowls’ perseverance and adaptation harken back to a time undisturbed by war while also presaging a return to peace in the future. Migratory and nonmigratory birds were a common sight in and around the trenches, Rousseau reported: “le canon gronde, la fusillade crépite: sans se soucier du bruit, nos migrateurs traversent les bois de Mortmane à faible hauteur” [“the cannon rumbles, the gunfire crackles: without worrying about the noise, our migrators cross the Mortmane woods at low heights”] (Rousseau 1915, 204). Offering behavioral observations about the numerous species he saw, Rousseau noted that the swallow “fait revivre dans tous les cœurs de bien doux souvenirs d’antan” [“resurrecting in our heads very sweet memories of the past”] (Rousseau 1915, 205). Generally known for its freedom of movement and association with spring, the swallow represents luck, prosperity, fidelity. There is a symbolic meaning here as well, since in France and other European countries, the swallow is commonly believed to harbor the souls of the dead (Ogden 2012), which means that killing them brings bad luck. Cendrars shares with Diallo an appreciation for what birds do for the troops’ morale; in effect, the creatures brought to those in the trenches “l’image de la Victoire et de la Paix, au milieu même des tristes horreurs de la guerre” [“the image of Victory and of Peace, in the very middle of the sad horrors of war”] (Cendrars 2013, 205). The omnipresence of birds in Cendrars’s novel suggests that war never completely triumphs over nature. La Main coupée includes an episode from winter 1914 near Tilloloy featuring the wetlands and its avian inhabitants. Between 24 and 25 December 1914, there was a spontaneous, unofficial cease-fire in certain areas of the western front. The 2005 movie Joyeux Noël is based on this impromptu Christmas truce between German and French troops. For roughly twenty-four hours, French and German troops emerged from their respective trenches to

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meet in no-man’s-land to celebrate Christmas. Blaise sets the scene for his anecdote by evoking the natural inhabitants of the marsh near his trench. It was a clear, cold night, punctuated by the “cris des oiseaux aquatiques dans les marais, le bruit du ravitaillement allemand qui roulait derrière la colline d’en face, la voix lointaine de la canonnade qui descendait du Nord, le déclic des fusées éclairantes, quelques rares coups de fusil et le ‘clac’ des balles perdues” [“the cries of the waterbirds in the marshes, the sound of the German resupply truck was rolling behind the hill opposite us, the faraway artillery fire that was coming from the Nord, the click of the flares, some scattered rifle shots, and the ‘clack’ of stray bullets”] (Cendrars 2013, 126). Nature’s soundtrack is as an integral a part of Cendrars’s collage as that of the battlefield in J’ai tué. The waterfowl are mentioned first in this description, perhaps because they are the marsh’s normal inhabitants and thus part of the natural landscape. The sounds of war, “invaders” in the marsh, merit second billing because the bullets that fall are not threatening. The serenity of the night is the only element Blaise’s version of Christmas Eve 1914 has in common with the legendary story of the impromptu truce, however. With the help of some friends, Blaise engages in an ill-advised attempt to give the German troops the gift of music: a recording of “La Marseillaise.” Delivered via a gramophone he found in an abandoned house, the French national anthem marks a change in the collage’s soundtrack. Sneaking the gramophone through the barbed wire and using the music as a distraction, he is able to launch a hand grenade. On the way back to the trenches, Blaise’s rogue unit comes across German weaponry among the farm implements, a harrow that “ressemblait à l’entrée d’une cage fantastique contenant non pas des oiseaux des îles ou, par cette nuit de Noël, des anges planeurs annonçant la paix aux hommes de bonne volonté mais un bruit de bottes et des rires rauques et, comme un oiseau rare, le tube astiqué d’un canon de mitrailleuse” [“resembled the entry of a fantastic cage containing not tropical birds or, on this Christmas night, hovering angels announcing peace to men of good will but a noise of boots and raucous laughter and, like a rare bird, the shiny tube of a machine-gun muzzle”] (Cendrars 2013, 128–29). There is a similar juxtaposition of farm implements and matériel in J’ai tué, as we saw earlier in this chapter. Here Cendrars introduces a note of irony with the allusion to the gospel of Luke in which angels announce the birth of Jesus to the shepherds. The comparison of the harrow to a bird cage, moreover, reverses the association of birds with freedom. The reference to the rare tropical birds underscores the incongruity of weapons of death in an area that during peacetime is essentially a wildlife refuge. When the music from the gramophone Blaise sets up triggers a firefight, he likens the machine guns that come back to life to a phoenix. This image suggests that war, with man’s diabolic complicity, is constantly renewing itself.

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In La Main coupée, as in Diallo’s Force-Bonté, birds provide shorthand descriptors for soldiers. One such example is that of the Belgian legionnaire Opphopf, who, because of his reckless behavior, Blaise assumes died on the battlefield in Champagne. Cendrars’s narrator recalls that before losing his leg in combat, Opphopf was energetic. In a flash forward to the front of interwar Paris, he recalls meeting his friend by chance on a Parisian street at the end of January 1937. He describes his former comrade as a sad, bald heron with only one leg. The reference to the bird’s lack of feathers immediately tells us that Opphopf is not well, while the reference to his posture is an indicator of his status as a disabled veteran. In Greek myths, the heron is depicted as the messenger of God, so harming one would bring bad luck. What is more, one of Athena’s messengers was a heron. In this way, Opphopf is endowed with a proud lineage. More generally, the heron symbolizes virtue and honor and, in ancient Greek art, it plays “a vital role in striking a balance in the continuous struggle between evil and good” (Clifford 2023). The avian reference, then, is at once an element in the collage and the means by which to develop the character of Opphopf. Even in death, soldiers take on an avian aspect. In describing the sight of hundreds of rotting cadavers forgotten in a field, Blaise opines: “ces pauvres petits piou pious en pantalons rouges garances oubliés dans l’herbe, faisaient des taches aussi nombreuses mais pas plus importantes que des bouses de vaches dans un pré” [“those poor little soldiers in madder red forgotten in the grass, made as many spots as cow dung in a field but not were not as consequential”] (Cendrars 2013, 137). In J’ai tué, the narrator does not spare us graphic descriptions of the battlefield because the shock value is the point. In La Main coupée, there is more distance between the narrator and the events he relates, in part because he is describing the aftermath of the battle and because the years may have lessened his trauma. The comparison between the stains they leave on the battlefield and the cow manure scattered nearby shows the dehumanization of soldiers in war. The bodies barely have a presence on the battlefield on which they had fought, demonstrating the poilus’ expendability while also alluding to the unprecedented scale of the war.4 The term “piou pious” is French military slang for infantrymen, and the fact that it can also designate a chick refers to the tender age of the soldiers on the field who had not yet reached maturity when they perished. The exception to the birds that adapt to the war is that of a crazed chicken Blaise encounters as he enters the abandoned house where he had found the gramophone. When he first enters the building, the fowl charges him with an aggression that he likens to that of a secretary bird attacking a viper. As with the anthropomorphized flora in the marsh, the avian ambush serves as a reminder to always remain alert; there are hazards everywhere, even in the

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form of an ordinary chicken. Blaise manages to neutralize his attacker and brings him back to his unit for dinner. The fowl’s uncharacteristic behavior results, he speculates, from being cooped up alone too long. The enraged chicken’s isolation may thus be seen as a counterexample of one of the main themes of La Main coupée, that of camaraderie among the poilus. An example of Cendrars’s quirky sensibility, the chicken provides another link between nature and soldiers. Birds, friends, and foes alike, form an auditory and visual component of the collage Cendrars creates in La Main coupée while also serving as a vehicle for his denunciation of war. Perhaps the strongest links between man and nature in La Main coupée are those with mammals, in particular the horses and dogs that serve alongside the poilus. Although cats were plentiful in and around the trenches, they are far from the companions they were in civilian times. They do, however, serve a purpose in the lives of Blaise’s troops since they often end up as their main course at dinner. Several of the anecdotes in La Main coupée feature domesticated animals who have earned the status of trusted companions to the legionnaires in Blaise’s unit. One prime example is that of the Walloon coachman who was killed along with his horse when his wagon was hit by a shell. Although his name is long since forgotten, the man lives on in Blaise’s memory because of his devotion to his equine companion, conveyed through his search for decent food and shelter for the beast. There is no sense of irony in the anecdote of the Walloon coachman; to the contrary, Blaise shows a respect and admiration for the relationship based on mutual trust. Érik Baratay confirms the strong bond horses forge with their handlers, asserting that if the animals do not experience affection the way that humans do, they nonetheless understand and appreciate gentle treatment, caresses, and soft voices (Baratay 2013). When their usual trainer is replaced by one who uses force to motivate behavior, horses become stressed and are at higher risk for cardiac events, an important reminder that animals are sentient creatures. Pearson notes that the traumatic memory of equine suffering haunted countless poilus long after the war (Pearson 2012, 98). Baratay declares that: il faut se défaire de la tentation orgueilleuse de nier ou de réduire les facultés des animaux, et donc adopter des définitions souples et plurielles des capacités car leurs groupes et les époques, à l’exemple de l’intelligence que les éthnologues ne veulent plus définir d’une manière unique pour toutes les espèces, préférant parler d’intelligences multiples. [“we must free ourselves from the arrogant temptation to deny or diminish the animal’s faculties and instead adopt multiple and flexible definitions of their abilities, for their groups and their eras, as in the case of intelligence which ethnologists avoid defining in one single way for all species, preferring to speak of multiple intelligences”] (Baratay 2013)

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The friendship between the Walloon and his beast reflects the importance of horses in the early days of the Great War, when they were the primary means of transporting munitions and supplies. The bond between horse and human is crucial to the animal’s well-being and to its ability to perform, especially on the battlefield. The animals and their human handlers occupy a separate area of the military front. There is a common misperception that motorized vehicles replaced horses during the Great War. In actuality, at the end of 1916, 881,000 horses were in military service, far outnumbering motor vehicles. In November 1918, equids were still transporting 80 percent of French army artillery battalions on the western front, even with 90,000 motorized vehicles in service (Pearson 2012, 97). The demand for horses between 1914 and 1916 was so great that thousands were brought to France from North and South America (Derex 2014, 75). One anecdote from La Main coupée centers around imported North American equids. A Canadian Legionnaire, Colon, (aka Don Quixote), a wealthy druggist from Winnipeg, brings three hundred horses with him to France, hoping that the donation would pave the way for his enlistment. At fifty-three, he is too old to enlist in Canada, but his age does not exclude him from the French Foreign Legion. Colon drives the horses from Le Havre to the ministry of war in Paris with the help of the six Canadian cowboys who had crossed the Atlantic with him. When Colon is accepted into the Legion, he must leave behind his horses, which he does, at Les Invalides, because he had no other option. The targets in this episode are the narrow-minded bureaucrats who are unable to process the much-needed horses simply because Colon did not have the correct paperwork. This anecdote also offers us a glimpse of the humanitarian crisis early in the war by creating a unique juxtaposition between the Canadian cowboys leading a string of horses out of the port through a city teeming with refugees from other parts of France and from Belgium. The scene resembles a snapshot, recalling the battlefield flashes of J’ai tué. It is a powerful reminder of the impact on civilians, and constitutes another front, that of the humanitarian crisis brought on by the mass exodus from the German-occupied territories. Cendrars pays homage to the working animals who contributed to the war effort on equal footing with the humans with whom they serve. Like Colette, he was decades ahead of his time in his understanding of animals’ souls. Cendrars adds to Colette’s profiles of Military War Dogs by offering us a first-hand account of the canine troops, this time from the other side of the trenches. Despite the prohibition of animals at the front, commanding officers occasionally allowed pets to remain for the sake of morale (“Animaux 2” 2017). Pearson sees the pets / mascots as part of the “surrogate domesticity” that the poilus established in the trenches, a remedy for the stress of life at the front (Pearson 2012, 99). In one episode of La Main coupée, Blaise helps

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deliver “volunteer” dogs to battalions, adopting one himself, which he names Black and White. His canine companion crosses the no-man’s-land separating the enemy camps, steals from the German troops, then brings the loot back to the French. One day, Blaise sends the dog out with a mocking note written in German, a provocative response to an earlier message from the enemy declaring that France is doomed. Tragically, this is Black and White’s final mission because he is killed by a German officer, who shoots him in head. There is more grieving in the unit over the dog than after the deaths of their comrades, undoubtedly because the faithful canine is an innocent victim of German aggression. The episode brings home the senselessness of war while also reminding us of the emotional interdependence of poilus and working dogs and mascots. La Main coupée demonstrates, as Baratay might see it, that animals in the Great War were “acteurs agissant, réagissant, créant avec les hommes de véritables interactions et de vraies communautés” [“participants acting, reacting, creating with the men authentic interactions and real communities”] (Baratay 2013). Black and White represents the thousands of dogs who accompanied the poilus in the war, making him worthy of inclusion in the gallery of poilus and a place in the novel’s collage. Dogs have been human companions for thousands of years so the attachment between Black and White and the poilus is not surprising. Less expected is the bond Blaise’s unit forges with a wild animal, a hedgehog, who wanders into the unit’s trench and becomes their mascot, affording the poilus a small measure of comfort and a large measure of entertainment. The tiny mammal with its humanlike footprints shares a vice with his human companions: red wine. The identity of the thief in Blaise’s unit remains unknown for some time because he has the perfect cover; no one expects the perpetrator to be a hedgehog. Wine, referred to by the slang term pinard, was a staple of the soldiers’ diet at the western front; beginning in 1914, each poilu received 25 cl of low-quality, often diluted, wine per day. This was because, at the time, wine was considered an essential food group instead of an alcoholic beverage (Pinczon du Sel 2018). Since the demand for wine was great at the time, the poilus kept a close eye on their personal rations. Consequently, it was evident when their supply dwindled. Ferdinand, the narrator of Chaîne’s Mémoires d’un rat, remarks that “le pinard, le galon et l’amour semblent être les trois états du bonheur militaire. Mais l’amour était rare, le pinard cher et le galon parcimonieusement distribué” [“booze, promotion, and love seem to be the three states of military happiness. But love was rare, booze was expensive, and promotions handed out sparingly”] (Chaîne 2015, 17). When drunk, the hedgehog wanders in and out of no-man’s-land; the only sign of his inebriation is that he often tumbles into the trench. Blaise awakens one morning to find the hedgehog dead so, naturally, he puts his medical training to use and performs an autopsy. He discovers that the animal’s liver had shrunk into a

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small, hard mass because of his excessive alcohol consumption. On a symbolic level, the hedgehog represents the hardscrabble poilus who had captured the public’s imagination. In effect, the unit’s mascot may be seen as an animal picaro since, as Murphy might see it, it shares the French infantrymen’s struggle “to stay alive among the deadly traps of industrial warfare” (Murphy 2016, 11) by their wits alone. It is an interesting side note that, according to Guy-Pierre Geneuil, the Roma venerate the hedgehog because it “[combat] la mort avec intelligence et ténacité. Il arrive toujours à ses fins avec une patience et une perséverance infinies” [“[fights] death with intelligence and tenacity. He always gets what he wants through infinite patience and perseverance”] (Geneuil 2007, 115). One of Blaise’s friends in the trenches, a Roma soldier named Sawo, has a particularly strong connection with the hedgehog, perhaps because in his culture, the animal symbolizes rebirth. As a result, the hedgehog provides a contrast to the earlier image of the artillery— the instrument of mass death—which is referred to as a phoenix. Objects in La Main coupée are the most evident examples of Cendrars’s use of cubist techniques because they call to mind the works of Pablo Picasso and of Fernand Léger. Objects in Cendrars’s work are associated with the narrator’s insubordination and general disdain for military protocol. Blaise, as we have seen, often roams away from the trenches to scavenge (against military regulations) or simply to escape boredom. Near their encampment, the men find a crucifix hanging upside down, an image that may be understood in several ways. For the twenty-first-century reader, it has a satanic connotation since it reverses the representation of Christ’s crucifixion, an association that heavy metal artists such as Ozzy Osbourne have exploited for decades. One cannot help but think of the famous scene in the movie The Exorcist (1973) in which the flipping of the crucifix in Regan’s room announces the demonic presence. However, the inverted crucifix, known as St. Peter’s Cross, originated in that apostle’s humble refusal to be executed in the same manner as Jesus. For early Christians, then, the St. Peter’s Cross was a symbol of humility. It is the controversial nature of the inverted crucifix that figures into Cendrars’s narrative, however. Blaise is sentenced to thirty days in military detention for having taken a photo of “Le Christ de Dompierre,” just one example among many of la petite guerre dans la grande. The inverted crucifix symbolizes the world turned upside down by the war. Everyday objects are the arms with which Blaise wages his nonviolent petite guerre dans la grande. The chapter “La Pipe de Maïs” (“The Corncob Pipe”) tells of a general inspecting the troops who singles Blaise out as a recipient for one of the pipes he carries as a “reward” for those poilus he deems worthy. At the beginning of the war, pipes were more popular than cigars and cigarettes; loose tobacco was distributed to the troops to calm their nerves (Johnson 2014). The officer incorrectly assumes that the narrator’s

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unkempt appearance is evidence of his low morale, a notion of which he is quickly disabused. Blaise’s refusal of the gift is seen as an act of insubordination, punished by ten days in the brig. The misguided reward highlights the officer’s distance from the reality of the men in the trenches. Another member of Blaise’s unit, Vieil, is sent to a supply unit in Nice because he manages to convince an officer that he was medically unable to be at the front. There, he sets up a side business of pipes and other objects made from shell fragments created by his former comrades at the front and which he sells to civilian clients. The pipes in both episodes are linked to the “je-m’en-foutisme” [“I-don’t-give-a-damn attitude”] and bucking of convention that Blaise attributes to Vieil and which he himself exhibits at nearly every turn. Blaise’s rejection of the general’s pipe is in effect an act of defiance while Vieil’s repurposing of the detritus of war symbolically takes away its destructive potential. Objects with personal significance to the poilus remind us that the majority left loved ones behind when they went to war. As part of the collage, the personal belongings represent the connection between the soldier and his family and friends. When his friend Goy is taken prisoner by the Germans at La Croix and declared missing in action, Blaise finds his wallet, lost in the struggle, containing his wife and daughter’s locks of hair. The object brings forth the memory of Goy being written up for destroying government property because he attached a photo of his wife and daughter to his rifle butt. Seeing their faces in moments of danger was a comfort and inspiration to him. For the man’s sergeant, however, a rifle is government property and, as such, not to be personalized by individual infantrymen. Because he is the noncommissioned officer supervising Goy, Blaise has the authority to allow him to keep the rifle with the embedded photos and to retain another, unadorned, weapon for inspections. Individuals, rather than the army as an institution, let alone its arbitrary rules, are his priority. Murphy asserts that, for the picaro of French World War I literature—and I include Blaise in this characterization—“it is in their ability to do their jobs as soldiers without being roboticized, militarized, or completely brutalized, and not in their courage, self-sacrifice, or ambition, that their heroism lies” (Murphy 2016, xvi). The narrator of La Main coupée, though jaded, never loses his humanity, which makes him a picaresque hero according to Murphy’s definition. At the center of the prose collage of La Main coupée are the portraits of the poilus Blaise knew in the trenches. While Cendrars’s narrator presents several men in cursory portraits, a series of human types that are akin to the flashes of battle in J’ai tué, several of the novel’s twenty-six chapters bear the names or nicknames of the men who have died. The chapter titles thus preserve the names of the casualties of war that would otherwise likely have been lost to time. Like Maxence Van der Meersch, whose novel Invasion

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14 was examined in chapter 1, Cendrars was an admirer of Balzac and of his Comédie humaine and, as André Vanoncini rightly observes, “plus on scrute l’univers de Cendrars, plus on gagne l’impression qu’il a comme assimilé, voire vampirisé, la matière balzacienne dans toute la diversité des registres qui la caractérise” [“the more you scrutinize Cendrars’s universe, the more you have the impression that he has virtually assimilated, even vampirized, Balzacian matter in all the various registers that characterize it”] (Vanoncini 2010, 71). Balzac declares in the Avant-propos de la Comédie humaine that “j’accorde aux faits constants, quotidiens, secrets ou patents, aux actes de la vie individuelle, à leurs causes et à leurs principes autant d’importance que jusqu’alors les historiens en ont attaché aux événements de la vie publique des nations” (Balzac 1976, 26) [“I attach to common, daily facts, hidden or patent, to the acts of individual lives, to their causes and principles, as much importance as historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of public national life”]. This is true of Cendrars’s undertaking in La Main coupée for, like Balzac, Cendrars classifies individual characters according to human “type.” Henri Mitterand asserts that the realist novel develops “partout où la bourgeoisie industrielle édifie une empire” [“everywhere the industrial bourgeoisie constructs an empire”] and that it “se transforme en une chambre d’enregistrement et de ses succès et de ses turpitudes, en laboratoires d’observation des types humains et des pathologies privées ou sociales qu’elle peut sécréter” [“is transformed into a recording chamber of both its successes and its turpitudes, into real-life laboratories for human types and private or social pathologies that it can create”] (Mitterand 1994). The trenches of the Great War, as we shall see, provide the ideal setting in which to observe human types and their idiosyncrasies. The segment of the collage dedicated to Blaise’s comrades-in-arms may be divided into two basic categories: immoral characters and honorable ones. The first group includes the incompetent commanders who are often the reason Blaise engages in unsanctioned activity and resorts to picaresque tactics. The narrator of J’ai tué offers a dictum about men at the front that is illustrated in La Main coupée: the calm and composed lead, followed by the more rambunctious recruits. By contrast, the braggart shrinks away at the moment of truth, the cowards hide, the weak stumble, the thief has no one’s back. Most poilus are poor saps “qui se font bravement tuer sans savoir comment ni pourquoi” [“who bravely get themselves killed without knowing how or why”] (Cendrars 2013, 16). Personality dictates the way an individual reacts to the stress of combat, Cendrars suggests, but there is no way to determine who will live and who will die. At his first posting, Blaise encounters an incompetent colonel who cannot locate the men’s position, and a sergeant and a lieutenant who abandon their men while they are under fire from all

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sides. The narrator interrupts his description of the confusion the bungling commanders sow, breaking through the fourth wall as it were. War, according to Blaise, is neither glorious nor poetic for the combatant, especially for infantrymen who are unable to make sense of orders and who are essentially victims of fate. Early in the narrative, foolhardy officers order the unit to wear white cloth on their backs so that the artillerymen can track their progress, not realizing that the adornment makes them easy targets for the enemy as well. In another episode, a career officer, a lieutenant nicknamed Plein-de-Soupe [“Full of Soup”], so named because of his air of self-satisfaction, threatens to write up Blaise when he finds him on Christmas Eve 1914 bringing back the pillaged gramophone. Blaise gets his revenge by setting up Plein-de-Soupe in a pretend ambush and then “saving” him. As a result, the grateful officer drops his complaint against Blaise. The inept lieutenant occupies a segment of the collage as a representative of a human type à la Balzac, that of a career officer who has no business leading a unit in wartime. If the portraits of the incompetent superiors are scathing indictments of the professional officer corps, those of the ill-suited infantrymen are tragic memorials to those who fought the war. Rossi is a key element of the collage because, in addition to having a chapter dedicated to him—“Rossi: tué à Tilloloy” [“Rossi: killed at Tilloloy”]—figures in several key episodes. A member of Blaise’s unit in need of more guidance than his comrades, Rossi is a hulking figure whose head looms above the top of the trenches. Exhibiting two of the seven deadly sins, wrath and gluttony, he is nonetheless a sensitive soul who is easily overwhelmed, frequently losing his way in the labyrinthine trenches and ending up in no-man’s-land. Although Rossi is an example of a conscript poorly suited for war, he is nonetheless an invaluable member of the unit because of his skill and speed in setting up tents and barbed wire and carrying supplies. Blaise likens him to an elephant because he requires huge amounts of food in order to recover from his physical exertion and psychological exhaustion. To reward Rossi, he scrounges up extra food as a supplement for his regular rations and the food his wife sends him. The more Rossi eats, however, the hungrier he becomes, which suggests that he suffers from what today might be diagnosed as an eating disorder; food acts as a substitute for an unspecified emotional need not being met. Among Rossi’s quirks is his compulsion to take his meals far from the others, in the muck of the trenches, so he could avoid sharing his food, another indication of disordered eating. The one thing that makes Rossi lose his appetite is writing to his French wife because, as a native Italian speaker, it is difficult for him to express himself in his second language. Rossi dies just after finishing a letter to his spouse the night before he is to go on leave, hit in the stomach by a shell as he is eating alone in the corner of a trench. As is the case with Balzacian monomaniacs

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such as Facino Cane and La Cousine Bette, Rossi’s obsession indirectly leads to his death. The story of Garnéro, aka Chaude-Pisse [“Burning-Piss”], who bonds with Blaise over their shared contempt for authority, is another prominent piece of the collage. A procurer in civilian life, Garnéro brings a crew of prostitutes with him when he joins Blaise’s unit, which earns him time in the brig. Garnéro’s nickname comes from the fact that he had contracted a venereal disease from his future wife Lucie, a cocaine-addicted prostitute. Of course, “Garnéro” calls to mind “gonorrhea” as well. Garnéro sees himself as a victim of persecution by his commanding officers who, instead of ordering his treatment for his sexually transmitted disease, sentence him to an additional sixty days in the lockup for having contracted it. His mistreatment at the hands of his military officials and separation from his beloved Lucie is a contributing factor to his sour demeanor and insubordination. Garnéro’s defining episode comes during the campaign at La Crête de Vimy, when he is scalped by a shell and then blinded by the detached skin flap that falls over his face. Unable to communicate or move, he is presumed dead by his comrades, who bury him a few meters away. Some ten years later, Blaise runs into him in Paris delivering sawdust to restaurants by a horse-drawn wagon. Garnéro immediately recognizes his old friend and does not waste a second in making it clear he holds a grudge for having been abandoned on the battlefield. He is nonetheless thankful that his comrades moved him from his original position because, not long after they had left, Garnéro was unearthed by another shell, which deposited him one hundred meters away. The second impact knocked loose the flap of scalp that was covering his face, thus allowing him to summon help. Garnéro’s wounding calls to mind that of the eponymous character of Balzac’s Le Colonel Chabert who, having suffered a severe head injury that was assumed to be fatal, was left for dead on the battlefield, then buried alive in a mass grave. What is more, Chabert’s wife, like Lucie, was a prostitute when he first met her. While Balzac’s character unsuccessfully fights to win back his fortune and his wife and leaves his life as he entered it, as a ward of the state, Cendrars’s enjoys a happy domestic situation despite their financial difficulties and his wife’s continued drug abuse. For all her character flaws, Lucie is the object of Garnéro’s monomania and his raison d’être. We find another human type in the Luxembourger Lang, a ladies’ man who enlists because he looks good in a uniform. While in the trenches, he has dozens of photos made of himself in various poses and outfits, which he sends to his many admirers. Deprived of the constant attention from the opposite sex that he enjoyed in Paris, however, he falls into a funk, suffering from headaches and hypochondria. Hoping to lift Lang’s spirits, Blaise recommends him for the position of supply clerk in the food depot in the town of Bus. Lang is killed by a shell, along with the horse and coachman who transport

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him, just as he arrives at his new posting. To be sure, randomness plays a part in his death because he is killed by the first shell to hit the town previously considered to be safe. But it is Lang’s obsession with being the object of women’s desire that sets in motion the events that lead up to his untimely death. His “sin,” then, is that of vanity. There is a resemblance between Lang and Balzac’s Lucien de Rubempré in Les Illusions perdues [Lost Illlusions] since both characters are narcissistic and exploit their physical beauty to further their personal agenda. Lang, like Lucien, is an aspiring poet who tucks his verse into envelopes along with his photos which he sends to his admirers. Whereas Lucien exhibits fits of anger and imagines exacting revenge on those who wrong him, however, Lang turns his pain inward, which leads to depressive episodes that Blaise likens to those of women suffering from severe menstrual symptoms. Despite Lang’s “hysterical” personality, Blaise makes it clear that he is sexually attracted to women. As obsessed as he is with his appearance, it is fitting that Lang be featured in the gallery of poilus in La Main coupée. “Madame Kupka” is the one chapter that is named for civilian relative rather than the poilu himself. This is the story of a devoted wife’s efforts to be with her husband amid the chaos of war. By naming the chapter after Madame Kupka Cendrars privileges the love that pushes the woman to risk her life to spend what time she can with her husband. Kupka, a forty-something Czech immigrant, is in fragile health, yet never attempts to get a medical exemption, which Blaise speculates is due to the patriotic Madame Kupka’s influence. As the unit leaves Paris on foot, the devoted spouse seeks out her husband to help him carry his pack and weapon, leaving him only when the commanding officer has the gendarmes remove her and send her home. The day after the regiment’s arrival at the front, she appears once again and spends several days with him. Although strictly forbidden by military authorities, these conjugal visits which, as we saw in chapter 2, Colette participated in when her husband was in Verdun, were not uncommon. Because there is a lull in the fighting, Blaise allows the couple an idyll in the trenches, which rejuvenates his comrade. The Kupkas exhibit a sort of codependent monomania in that both are desperate to be together. Blaise muses that war is part of the human condition: “Perversité. Phénomène de la nature de l’homme. L’homme poursuit sa propre destruction” [“Perversity. A phenomenon of man’s nature. Man pursues his own destruction”] (Cendrars 2013, 77). Fleeting moments like those the Kupkas enjoy are the antidote to the suffering of war. Because we do not learn of Kupka’s fate, the reader is encouraged to assume a happy ending to his story. In this way, the couple stands at once as an example of conjugal bliss and an endorsement of Cendrars’s anti-war commentary by showing what the poilus and their families are at risk of losing.

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There are portraits of poilus who remain outside of Blaise’s entourage because of their lack of scruples but who nonetheless add depth to the collage of La Main coupée. Uri, who, like Blaise, is from German-speaking Switzerland, incarnates sloth and who, by all accounts, has no redeeming qualities, is one such example. Uri, suspected of stealing from his comrades in the trenches, shoots off three of his fingers in order to escape the Legion. He continues his thieving ways after the war, always looking to make a quick profit and enjoy a big payoff. When Blaise encounters him in Paris in 1940, Uri confides that his plan, should the Nazis invade Paris, is to loot the houses in the prosperous neighborhoods of the capital after the owners flee the city. Uri is a counterexample to the other men that Cendrars profiles in La Main coupée who, while by no means angels themselves, do act out of solidarity. The inclusion of Uri’s story among those of Blaise’s flawed but admirable comrades establishes a moral hierarchy of sorts. Rossi, Lang, Garnéro, and Kupka each exhibit signs of monomania but none of them harm their comrades. By contrast, Uri’s sloth and greed impact the others in his unit by damaging their solidarity. Cendrars associates Uri’s character flaws with moral decrepitude yet spends time with the lustful Garnéro who, despite war injuries, manages to hold down an honest job. The negative characters such as Uri and Plein-de-Soupe are part of the collage of La Main coupée, but they populate the farthest edges. In addition, this may be seen as an example of Cendrars de-centering the French World War I narrative. The mutilated body is the final element of the collage that is La Main coupée. Although at times unsettling, the separated flesh is a central part of Cendrars’s anti-war message. Many of the mutilations are mentioned in passing, a quick glimpse that resembles the battlefield flash images in J’ai tué. Rossi, who as we have seen, is obsessed with food, peacefully consumed his meals away from his comrades in arms in an area of the trench next to which a cadaver’s legs protrude. Opphopf, as we have seen, loses a leg in the war. After Lang’s death, Blaise discovers his comrade’s bloodied mustache, the man’s crowning glory, stuck to the side of a building by the explosion that killed him. Bikoff, the Russian beekeeper, the most talented marksmen in the unit, has his left eye removed after being shot in the head. He loses his remaining eye in a traffic accident while being transferred between hospitals in Paris. Even enemy body parts have a place in the collage of La Main coupée. In the chapter “Dieu est absent” [“God is Absent”], Blaise and Sawo set out to establish the allegiance of dozens of corpses forgotten in a field for several months. Near the site they find an abandoned hut with the skeletons of three German soldiers, presumably killed by friendly fire and untouched since their death. Blaise discovers that the rotting uniforms contain letters and photos of their families but there is still no way to identify them as individuals. The chapter’s last sentence offers a macabre detail: wiggling worms in

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the skulls’ orbits, which Blaise indicates he had forgotten to mention. The offhand remark transforms what would simply be viewed as the remains of German soldiers into a memento mori à la Cendrars, a reminder of the futility of war. Skulls are a common trope in the later works of painter Paul Cézanne, such as “Still Life with Skull” (1890–1893) and “Pyramid of Skulls” (1901). The cubist painters are also known for their use of the skull as a memento mori. What is more, Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, and other artists of the period kept human skulls in their studio, in part because of their intriguing forms. In La Main coupée, however, it is not so much the presence of death that Cendrars is alluding to with these references to body parts, but rather the dehumanization and effacement of the individual in war. The twenty-fifth chapter of La Main coupée, “Le Lys rouge” [“The Red Lily”], in which a severed arm drops from the sky, is the center around which the other elements of the collage are arranged. A review of recent criticism of the novel suggests that “Le Lys rouge” is the episode in La Main coupée that has received the most critical attention. The origin of the fictional severed arm is a mystery, according to Blaise; no planes had flown over the area and there were no reported amputations at nearby field hospitals. The arrival out of nowhere of the severed arm echoes reports that one finds in newspapers even today of odd objects falling from the sky: fish, blood, or golf balls. Each of those incidents, of course, has a scientific explanation. The fish have been caught in waterspouts and carried to land, what looked like blood was algae, and the golf balls were swept up out of a water hazard on a golf course by a tornado (Morgan 2012, 87). In Cendrars’s novel, there is no logical explanation. The eyewitness Blaise quotes initially mistook the limb for a pigeon alighting on a fence then dropping to the ground. Because death in the trenches most often came from falling shells and shrapnel, it makes narrative sense that the arm lands like a bird, a creature that, as we have seen, symbolizes freedom. And, in an ironically macabre way, the limb is, in fact, free. The narrator depicts the gruesome discovery in floral metaphors, which, like the bird comparison, leave the reader with the impression that it is a natural part of the landscape: “planté dans l’herbe comme une grande fleur épanouie, un lys rouge, un bras humain tout ruisselant de sang, un bras droit sectionné au-dessus du coude et dont la main encore vivante fouissait le sol des doigts comme pour y prendre racine et dont la tige sanglante se balançait doucement avant de tenir son équilibre” [“planted in the grass like a big flower in bloom, a red lily, a human arm with blood streaming down it, an arm severed above the elbow and whose hand, still alive, was digging in the earth with its fingers as if to take root there and the stem of which was swaying back and forth before finding its equilibrium”] (Cendrars 2013, 288). Élise Brault-Dreux draws attention to Cendrars’s use of “a double process of substitution (or a stammering metaphorical process)” in which the mysterious appendage

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symbolizes his own severed limb. That in turn is transformed metaphorically into a crimson lily, “a sort of poetic prosthesis” (Brault-Dreux 2015). Blaise maintains a narrative distance from the scene, at one point comparing the arm to a slice of sausage. I submit that, because the arm is metaphorically “planted” there is the implication that it will regenerate. In that light, we may view the transplanted lily as a startling use of synecdoche referring to Cendrars’s recovery of his literary vocation with the writing of the war tetralogy. Supporting this reading is the fact that the limb is “alive” and that it struggles to keep its equilibrium, which calls to mind a wounded soldier who struggles to stay upright after being wounded. The severed hand was a veritable motif during World War I, beginning with the rumor that Germans would cut off the hands of civilians—even those of children—in order to terrorize the civilian population (Horne and Kraemer 2001, 197). The severed arm, as Claire Maingon observes, is an “allégorie de la barbarie allemande, la main coupée nourrit également le mythe du patrimoine blessé” [“allegory of German barbarism, (and) the severed hand also nourishes the myth of the heritage”] (Maingon 2016, 55). This interpretation echoes Leroy’s assertion that Cendrars was ashamed of his German heritage because of what he perceived as the nation’s brutality (Leroy 2015, 4). The backstory of Cendrars’s injury, just as intriguing as the red lily episode, helps us better appreciate the author’s artistry. Laurent Tatu and Julien Bogousslavsky dove into archival documents and into Cendrars’s personal papers to better understand the events surrounding his wounding. They discovered that the bullet that struck Cendrars’s arm nearly severed the appendage, and that he reportedly pleaded with a fellow poilu who was a butcher in civilian life to cut off what was left of it (the man naturally rebuffed the plea) (Tatu and Bogousslavsky 2016, 165). For the rest of his life, Cendrars endured pain from his phantom limb, writing in his journal that “a phantom can be seen but does not exist, while a phantom limb exists but cannot be seen” (quoted in Tatu and Bogousslavsky 2016, 165). Although never able to pinpoint the source of his pain, he sensed that “it was outside his own body, with a Shiva-like multiplication of hands which disappeared shortly after their sensory appearance” (Tatu and Bogousslavsky 2016, 165). To my mind, Cendrars’s description of his phantom sensations helps explain the image of the severed hand falling from the sky. First, and most obviously, the arm is detached from the rest of the anonymous body. Second, the allusion to Shiva suggests that the arm has agency and thus able to exist on its own. Cendrars abandoned writing poetry during World War I and, once he recovered from the trauma, he took up writing novels and journalistic essays with his left hand. In effect, his poetry died along with his right hand while his prose work was born of his left (Tatu and Bogousslavsky 2016, 166). Finally, Cendrars had initially conceived La Main coupée as “une analyse de la douleur physique

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que les toubibs m’ont souvent demandé d’écrire après ce que je leur racontais sur ma main” [“an analysis of physical pain that the doctors have often asked me to write after I told them about my hand”] (Cendrars 1991, 286). The loss of Cendrars’s arm means that, in the eyes of the world, he is forever defined by his war wound, much as Diallo was after his catastrophic facial wound. Despite the expectations raised by the title, Cendrars’s own arm is referenced in La Main coupée only when Blaise reveals that his comrade Ségouâna was killed at la Ferme Navarin, where his catastrophic wounding also occurred. This prompts Leroy to declare that La Main coupée is “un récit qui ne rejoindra jamais son titre” [“a narrative that will never join its title”] (Leroy 1996, 204). However, I read the arm’s absence as a fulfillment of the title rather than a failure of the narrative because it illustrates what trauma researchers have discovered, namely that “traumatic memory [corresponds] to the fragmentation of narrative” (Higonnet 2008, 118). After the amputation, Cendrars refused to wear a prosthesis, in part because of the pain it caused to the remaining stub. Given Cendrars’s iconoclasm, we may also understand his decision to be a rejection of any attempt to soften the appearance of his disfigurement, a sort of “in your face” defiance of the government’s attempt to rehabilitate veterans. “War is nominalized in the configuration of prosthetic body as normative, enabled, masculinity,” Ana Carden-Coyne observes. “The wounded body thus continued as a political object—both valued and devalued—while individuals negotiate an often-precarious relationship to the state and the military” (Carden-Coyne 2017, 95). The heart of La Main coupée’s collage is the dismembered body, which represents the dehumanization of war while also symbolizing the veterans—wounded or not but almost certainly traumatized—who must piece their lives back together when they return home. A cursory reading may create the impression that there is no order or structure in La Main coupée. Approaching the novel as a collage, however, brings to light Cendrars’s artistic vision. The collage format, fragmentary by nature, replicates the chaos and randomness of modern warfare and, in Brosman’s words, “turned out to suit, indeed foreshadow aspects of the cultural catastrophe” (Brosman 2005, 170). Cendrars integrates the technique of collage in La Main coupée while retaining elements of realism, thus confirming Mitterand’s argument that twentieth-century French literature as a whole “s’est construite moins sur le procès du réalisme que sur son expansion, son approfondissement et ses transformations” [“was constructed less on the process of realism than on its expansion, its deepening, and its transformations”] (Mitterand 1994, 3). Cendrars’s use of collage gives La Main coupée depth by featuring a number of elements that represent the various facets of life in the trenches: flora, fauna, objects, sounds, landscapes, and, above all, comrades-in-arms. The portraits of the poilus in La Main coupée reveal the

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physical and psychological toll the war took on the men. Many were left trying to reassemble their psyche left in shards because of their experiences. By recounting the experiences of the men marginalized upon their return from was as well as at war, Cendrars contributes to the de-centering of the French World War I veterans. The re-acclimation of poilus, including the disabled, into civilian life is at the center of the fifth chapter of this book, Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts. NOTES 1. To avoid confusion, I refer to the narrator of La Main coupée as Blaise and the novel’s author as Cendrars. 2. Jean Giono’s World War I novel Le Grand troupeau (1931) offers a similar assemblage of sounds and scents. Giono’s sensory descriptions are more detailed and poetic than Cendrars’s, however. This is a deliberate choice on the part of Cendrars, as we have seen, since he believed that war should not be glorified. 3. Trench newspapers were newspapers written for and by the poilus at the front. In all, there were some four hundred produced by French troops. Koenraad Du Pont explains that “trench warfare was characterized by vast yet relatively stable front lines and by periods of relative calm alternating with intense battle. The armies’ isolation from civil society and the fact that life in the trenches regularly offered spare moments, notwithstanding its harshness, encouraged by the soldiers to engage in the publication of their own magazines” (Du Pont 2015, 107). 4. This description of the dead calls to mind Arthur Rimbaud’s “Le Dormeur du val,” in which a young soldier, who appears to be sleeping in an idyllic setting is revealed to be dead by the reference to two bullet holes in his right side at the end of the poem. The two works share a similar anti-war message but whereas Rimbaud positions the body in a tranquil space that leads the reader to mistakenly conclude that the young soldier is napping, Cendrars evokes a field of dead bodies in a pasture.

Chapter 5

Exorcising Guilt in Roland Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts

Roland Dorgelès enlisted in 1914 to defend the ideals of freedom and democracy, a driving force in his life and his subsequent career as a writer. Les Croix de bois [Wooden Crosses] (1919), well received by the public and critics alike, established him as a novelist, helping him to rise above his reputation as a prankster and a habitué of artistic circles in Montmartre. His second novel, Le Réveil des morts [The Rising of the Dead] (1923), the subject of this chapter, depicts the difficulty some veterans experienced in returning to civilian life. Martin Hurcombe, who has written extensively on the political aspects of Le Réveil des morts, argues convincingly that the novel emerges from the veterans’ activism movement of 1920s France, which sought better political and social integration of former soldiers (Hurcombe 2012, 65). He maintains that Dorgelès envisioned that the movement would transform the conventional worldview of the time (Hurcombe 2012, 71). One of the first members of the Association des Écrivains Combattants (AEC), founded in 1919, he was dedicated to helping veterans reintegrate into society and to ensure that the Great War and its combatants are never forgotten. In Bleu horizon [Blue Horizon] (1950), which chronicles the writing of Les Croix de bois, Dorgelès expressed his disgust at the inequitable treatment of the former poilus: “Je voudrais les sauver de l’oubli ces infortunés, comme on relevait un blessé entre les lignes pour l’aider à se traîner jusqu’au poste de secours” [“I would like to save these unfortunate men from oblivion, as one lifts up the injured between the lines in order to help them drag themselves to the aid station”] (Dorgelès 1949, 193). To Dorgelès’s mind, preserving the memory of the dead is as urgent a need as providing services to the living. Set in an area close to the battlefield of le Chemin des Dames, Le Réveil des morts depicts two separate but overlapping fronts: that of the civilians returning to their homes and that of the former poilus returning from the war. The novel’s protagonist, the architect and veteran Jacques Le Vaudoyer, 123

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moves to the fictional town of Crécy with his new bride Hélène, a war widow, to help rebuild the decimated region. Haunted by the carnage he witnessed in the trenches and physically fragile after being gassed there, he tries to reclaim his place in society. For all intents and purposes, Jacques replaces Hélène’s first husband, André Delbos, in the dead man’s home. This is a guilt-inducing situation since Jacques was having an affair with Hélène when André was declared missing and presumed dead. As a result, Jacques suffers from a classic case of survivor’s guilt, which is compounded by his shame over betraying a fellow poilu. Like Maxence Van der Meersch, whose Invasion 14 was scrutinized in chapter 1, Dorgelès exposes the impact of the war on civilians. There are few other novels that deal with the civilian return to the devasted towns near the front, but one standout is Henri Champly’s Nécropolis (1922), a symbolist work set in a town that has recreated graphic battlefield scenes as a tourist attraction. In Le Réveil des morts, Jacques modifies his professional trajectory from architect to advocate for civilians in the Aisne. Consequently, he may be seen to occupy both fronts simultaneously. A key actor in the rebuilding of Crécy and the rehabilitation of the land surrounding it, he confronts those who take advantage of the vulnerable recipients of government relief payments. The message of Le Réveil des morts, as Nancy Sloan Goldberg puts is that “the experience of war . . . is unfinished and is still being lived by veterans and the families of the missing” (Goldberg 2017). In effect, in this fifth and final chapter, we return to the civilian front in spring 1918 to examine how Dorgelès portrays the reconstruction of the communities devastated by war. The focus on these marginalized groups results in a decentering of the French World War I narrative away from that of the poilus. If Cendrars focuses on the experiences of the infantrymen (legionnaires, in La Main coupée) in the trenches, Dorgelès gives us insight into their life after the war. The protagonist of Le Réveil des morts represents the countless veterans of World War I who suffered from the lingering psychological effects of combat trauma. I will argue that Jacques Le Vaudoyer presents with the signs of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), known in the first decades of the twentieth century as traumatic hysteria. Neuroscientists Marc-Antoine and Louis Crocq explain that the symptoms of PTSD fall into three categories: first, “the re-experiencing of trauma in dreams, obsessive thoughts, and flashbacks”; second, “emotional numbing and avoidance of stimuli reminiscent of the trauma”; and third, “a permanent state of increased arousal” (53). These symptoms are often delayed but once they emerge, their intensity does not wane and the risk that they will become chronic increases (Crocq and Crocq 2000, 53). As we shall see, Jacques works through his trauma on his own by undertaking what is known today as exposure therapy, but most of all by engaging in a sort of do-it-yourself psychotherapy. His ultimate cure comes in the form of a cathartic nightmare featuring zombie poilus rising

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up from their graves. The macabre nightmare finds its source in Jacques’s survivor’s guilt and PTSD, its images coming out of events and emotions he experiences once he arrives in his adoptive town. In Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War, Ana Carden-Coyne teases out the way in which memory forms an individual’s identity, asserting that “memory is better understood as a composition of personal, psychic ‘underlay’ knitted together with social ‘overlay’” (Carden-Coyne 2009, 64). This is precisely what we have in Le Réveil des morts since Jacques attempts to incorporate society’s perception of the returning veteran into his own changed identity. There is an additional “overlay” in his case that is composed of André’s secondhand memories Jacques gleans from the dead man’s letters to his wife and from anecdotes his friends and loved ones recount. Juliette Sauvage observes that Le Réveil des morts is a “polyphonic” novel that interweaves the perspectives of the veterans, the government, and those who profit from the misery of others (Sauvage 2020, 240). André’s overlay facilitates the reintegration of archetypal characters representing three groups with links to the fallen poilus: the returning veteran, Jacques; the grieving mother, Mme Delbos; and the fickle widow, Hélène. These three characters, as we shall see, form the novel’s narrative scaffolding, which may be summarized as Jacques’s efforts to construct his identity in the postwar world. Like Blaise Cendrars, whose La Main coupée was examined in chapter 4, Dorgelès’s style is direct and unadorned, meant to disabuse readers of any romanticized ideas of war. What is more, like Cendrars as well as Maxence Van der Meersch, whose Invasion 14 was analyzed in chapter 1, he found artistic inspiration in nineteenth-century realist novels. Lucien Descaves, in a review of Le Réveil des morts which appeared in Le Journal on 25 June 1923, extolled the newly published novel: “Roland Dorgelès est aujourd’hui le plus remarquable des héritiers d’Émile Zola. Si celui-ci n’était pas mort avant la guerre, il eût sans doute écrit le roman des régions libérées, admirable sujet, et ce roman eût été construit comme l’est Le Réveil des morts, solidement” [“Roland Dorgelès is today the most remarkable of Zola’s successors. If the latter had not died before the war, he would have undoubtedly written a novel about the liberated regions, an admirable subject, and this novel would have been constructed the way Le Réveil des morts is: solidly”] (Descaves 1923, 4). Approaching many of the same themes found in the Rougon-Macquart, chief among them poverty, madness, and infidelity, Dorgelès advocates for social justice in much the same way that Zola did before him. Written at a pivotal moment in terms of national memory of World War I, Le Réveil des morts centers on the disconnect between collective and individual memory that triggers Jacques’s psychological distress. While he hopes to keep the memories of each of his fallen comrades alive, society wants to erase

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them and replace them with an idealized and sanitized narrative. In France during the 1920s, there was what historian Béatrix Pau calls “le culte des morts” [“the cult of the dead”] (Pau 2010, 1), which privileged fallen soldiers over returning veterans, a phenomenon to which Dorgelès reacts in Le Réveil des morts. This determined the dominant narrative of the French World War I novel. For her part, Nancy Goldberg suggests that the ways that the Great War, its veterans, and its civilian victims are remembered—through memorials, publication of memoirs, and visual representations—“link, with different degrees of success, the perceiver to a moment that simultaneously becomes a shared, public experience and one that is uniquely individual and private [and] at once collective and specific” (Goldberg 2017). Hurcombe sees in Le Réveil des morts “a battle for memory” (Hurcombe 2012, 63), which makes it a memorial for the thousands of unidentified dead whose relatives did not benefit from the closure funerals provide. In the twentieth century, veteran and widow advocacy groups, physicians, and other organizations helped to shape society’s memory of war (Carden-Coyne 2009, 64). If the civilians did not forget the casualties of World War I—and the countless monuments across France are proof that they did not—they often turned a blind eye to the poilus who returned home after the armistice. Simply put, the individual narratives of the infantrymen are sacrificed to that of the nation. While there is extensive archival documentation of the soldiers’ time in the trenches, less is known about their reintegration into society. Writing in the immediate aftermath of the war, Dorgelès offers insight into the reintegration of veterans, specifically, the civilians’ inability to understand the psychological toll the exposure to the violence of war had on the soldiers. In short, Le Réveil des morts chronicles the poilus’ reentry into a society that is intent on erasing all traces of war in a misguided attempt at national healing. Le Réveil des morts’s geographical front is in the Aine, near the 460-squaremile Red Zone, a mostly contiguous area in Northern France that was so contaminated with human and animal remains, untold numbers of rusting mustard gas canisters, and unexploded munitions that it is to this day uninhabitable and uncultivable. When Jacques arrives in Crécy, he finds the town in ruins and immediately understands the challenge it poses to those who seek to rebuild it: “Les rares maisons restées debout avaient des airs hagards, avec leurs fenêtres béantes comme des yeux crevés” [“The few houses left standing looked distraught, with their gaping windows like gouged-out eyes”] (Dorgelès 2012b). In the discussion of Colette’s war reporting in chapter 2, we found a similar description of a town destroyed by war. In Le Réveil des morts, the comparison of the missing windows to “des yeux crevés” [“gouged-out eyes”] calls to mind a skull, which emphasizes that this is a dead town. The effect that four years of war had on Crécy is the equivalent

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of that of centuries of neglect on towns outside the Red Zone: “Des maisons s’ouvraient, sans toit, comme des boîtes vides. Des plafonds effondrés laissaient pendre leur chevelure de lattes et de plâtras. Un escalier à la rampe tordue montait bizarrement vers le ciel, sans rien pour le soutenir” [“Some houses were opened up, like empty boxes. Caved-in ceilings left their hair made of laths and plaster hanging. A staircase with a twisted banister ascended toward the sky, without anything to support it”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The image of the houses calls to mind a skeleton with wisps of hair hanging from the skull, its spine twisted and unsupported. Few traces of the families that had made their homes in the community remain, for all evidence of their lives has been obliterated. At one point soon after his arrival, Jacques surveys the catastrophic damage to the land surrounding Crécy: “Le décor saisissant de la guerre n’avait pas changé. Les réseaux barbelés, en tous sens, traçaient de larges allées couleur de rouille; on en comptait dix, quinze, sur le plateau inculte, devant les tranchées clayonnées et le long des boyaux. Çà et là traînaient de grosses tôles, ajourées par des éclats d’obus et tordues comme du carton” [“The startling decor of the war had not changed. The networks of barbed wire, in all directions, traced out wide, rust-colored alleys, ten, fifteen, on the uncultivated plateau, in front of wattled trenches and the length of narrow passages. Here and there, large sheets of steel, perforated by shrapnel and twisted like cardboard, were lying around”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The visibly damaged countryside serves as a mirror of Jacques’s psychological scars while his constant exposure to the destruction acts as a trigger to his PTSD. Bessel van der Kolk explains that “we have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present” (van der Kolk 2015, 21). Indeed, the protagonist of Le Réveil des morts illustrates van der Kolk’s assertation that “trauma results in a fundamental reorganization of the way mind and brain manage perceptions. It changes not only how we think and what we think about, but also our very capacity to think” (van der Kolk 2015, 21). By showing us the destruction of the countryside through the eyes of a veteran, Dorgelès demonstrates how trauma transforms our perception of our world. To date, there have only been a few long-term, wide-ranging studies on the impact World War I had—and continues to have—on nature (Anthes 2022). However, research lead by soil scientists Marc Van Meirvenne, Meklet Tariku Chernet, Samuel Verstraete, Maarten De Boever, and Filip Tack have shown that the high level of copper in the soil around the battle site of Ypres in Belgium is attributable to shelling that took place in the area during the Great War (Van Meirvenne et al. 2008, 378). Geographers Tobias Bausinger, Eric Bonnaire, and Johannes Preuß were the first to attempt to examine the amount

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of munitions use in Europe in World War I, which they put at 15 million tons of chemical compounds, explosives, and munitions over the four-year period (Bausinger et al. 2007, 260). Soil samples from the site of a German ammunition dump near Verdun showed high levels of arsenic, zinc, and copper. Still a part of the Red Zone, the area remains infertile more than one hundred years after the war’s end. Only 1 percent of plant species can survive at the site, specifically those that are highly resistant to arsenic and heavy metals. Even then, they are only found at the edges of the area (Bausinger et al. 2007, 270). War also changed the topography of the region, the craters left by shells permanently altering the hydrology and soil in the surrounding fields (Uekötter 2018, 281). In 1920, the economic and sociological geographer Albert Demangeon concluded that war debris rendered uncultivable and uninhabitable in perpetuity 350,000 hectares of farmland in northern and eastern France (Pearson 2012, 128). Although his estimate turned out to be high, the contaminated area today encompasses 170,000 hectares (Holstein). There is, then, no question that the debris of war has a long-lasting effect on flora and fauna. However, even today, once the military operations end in war zones, the public tends to pay less attention to their environmental consequences. The environment is, as David Weir, director of the Conflict and Environmental Observatory, observes, “the silent victim of conflicts” (quoted in Anthes, 2022). Indeed, the environmental impact of war has been evident in present-day Ukraine where the Russian army engages in scorched-earth tactics that have prompted comparisons to the German military offensive on the western front during the Great War (Myers and Panfil 2022; Anthes 2022). Yet nature is one of the most important repositories of sociological, cultural, and economic memory. Historian Frank Uekötter submits that while focusing on landscapes tends to view the environment first and foremost as a reflection of memories, we should see it more broadly as a distinct mode of memory. Bringing the environment more fully into memory studies forces us to take first-hand experiences with the natural world more seriously . . . and it alerts us to the co-evolution of human memories and the natural world. (Uekötter 2018, 279)

Dorgelès’s novel reminds us that land holds memories for the poilus as well as for the families of those who perished on the battlefield. In Le Réveil des morts, nature parallels both Jacques’s psychological recovery and Crécy’s structural and economic rebuilding. The novel opens in spring 1919, just four months after the armistice. The devastated countryside surrounding Crécy is showing some signs of healing, but the visible scars and leftover matériel are still present. In the north of France, an area measuring 500 kilometers long by 10–25 kilometers wide—what was once the front lines—was razed, the

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farmland now a wasteland (Nivet 2020, 166). This is the sight that greets Jacques upon his arrival in Crécy: “les coteaux mis à nu, sans vignes, sans arbres, sans maisons” [“the hills laid bare, without vines, without trees, without houses”] (Dorgelès 2012b). He has his work cut out for him, since the region will have to literally be rebuilt from the ground up. In a scene that confirms Bausinger’s findings, Jacques and Hélène stroll along a country road featuring rusting matériel near the trenches that symbolizes the decay that must be stopped before reconstruction can begin. Shell blasts were not the only danger to the flora of the battlefields. The poison gas used on the battlefield had poisoned the trees in the areas: “tous les sapins étaient morts; mais quelques acacias et les ormes, plus robustes, avaient résisté, et l’on voyait des bourgeons naître sur leurs branches blessées” [“all the fir trees were dead, but several acacia and elms, more hardy, had resisted, and buds were emerging on their wounded branches”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The use of personification to describe the countryside made fragile by the poison gas mirrors Jacques’s lungs scarred by that same agent. What is more, the disfigured landscape serves as a reminder of his time in the trenches, making it a trigger of his PTSD: “Toute la misère est pour la campagne. . . . C’est comme pendant la guerre, il n’y en avait que pour nous autres” [“All the misery is for the countryside. . . . It is like during the war, there was not any except for us”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Dorgelès uses personification as well as the pathetic fallacy, the latter a technique in which the poet sees his own emotions and attributes reflected in nature. The device was notably favored by the French romantic writers and poets. In Alphonse de Lamartine’s “Le Lac,” the poet implores the lake to guard the memory of the happiness he enjoyed on its banks with his beloved. In Le Réveil des morts, too, nature is the keeper of memory, but in this case, it is of war, not love. Despite the catastrophic damage it has incurred, nature shows signs of healing just as Jacques begins to feel a part of his new community: “Un duvet léger verdissait les branches et un peu d’herbe commençait à pousser entre les tranchées” [“A light fluff turned the branches green and a little grass was beginning to grow between the trenches”]. Half of the surface of one field that struggles to support the odd oat plant “était toujours en friche, avec sa brousse de barbelé, ses trous d’obus, ses boyaux; pourtant la terre ravagée commençait à revivre, et il fleurissait, sur les tombes perdues, des touffes jaunes de chrysanthèmes sauvages” [“was still uncultivated, with its barbed-wire brush, its shell craters, its narrow passages; however, the ravaged earth was beginning to return to life, and yellow tufts of wild chrysanthemums were blooming”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Life and death coexist in this description, mirroring the coexistence of the living and the dead who share the same space in Crécy. It also mirrors Jacques’s place in the community because he is at once a part of the resurrection of the area—which necessarily entails forgetting the

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past—and a leader in the movement to ensure that the war and its victims are not forgotten. He is, then, in a social no-man’s-land. As if nature were aware of its role in the preservation of the battles fought on it, the wild chrysanthemums in the description, the flowers traditionally used in France for funerals, mark the final resting place of the poilus killed in battle. When Jacques visits the park where André was last seen, he finds dozens of dead trees stripped of their branches and foliage, but also wild roses and elders emerging from the desolation. At the nearby castle, “pas d’autres vestiges que des pierres en tas, mais la clématite et la vigne vierge s’y accrochaient encore, demeurées fidèles à leur vieille maison” [“no vestiges other than the piles of rocks, but the clematis and new vines were still clinging there, remaining faithful to their old house”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Only the most resilient and faithful plants remain, living monuments to the men who fought there for their country. The priest’s housekeeper understands that nature mirrors the villagers’ desire to forget, observing to Jacques that: “Et rien ne s’en souvient, et le gazon repousse, et d’autres oiseaux chantent. . . . Il n’y a pas que les hommes qui oublient” [“And nothing remembers it (the war), and the lawn regrows, and other birds sing. . . . It is not only man who forgets”]. This description echoes Victor Hugo’s “Tristesse d’Olympio,” in which nature’s mutability and erasure of memories constitutes an act of betrayal. In the same vein, Uekötter offers a symbolic meaning of nature’s resurgence: “overgrowth was a metaphorical problem, as it seemed to reflect a fateful fading of collective awareness” (Uekötter 2018, 284). The land around Crécy is in the process of healing and, with the help of humans, is filling in the trenches and craters that scar it. Nature, then, supports those who strive to forget war and its trauma, thereby putting it at odds with Jacques’s efforts. Le Réveil des morts’s final scene underscores the transformation that the land and the protagonist have undergone in the year and a half since the end of the war. Jacques assesses the cleared land where the trenches have been filled in. Rolls of barbed wire run alongside his walking path but since they no longer demarcate the front lines, they provide a perch for singing birds. Satisfied with what he sees, Jacques says to himself “C’est moi qui les ai bâties” [“I’m the one who built them”] (Dorgelès 2012b). This is the reaction of Jacques the architect; Jacques the veteran continues to feel betrayed by the unheeded lessons of previous armed conflicts in the area. For Dorgelès’s protagonist, nature is at once a gauge of the rebuilding and a trigger for his PTSD. Dorgelès’s portrayal of civilian suffering immediately following the Armistice is one of the reasons Le Réveil des morts is an important document for historians and literary scholars. The extent of the damage caused by the war in northern and eastern France is almost unimaginable today; photographs from the time cannot begin to show the extent of the destruction there. In the Aisne alone, where Le Réveil des morts is set, 112,000 homes,

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2,897 factories, and 700 bridges were demolished and the entire road system obliterated. In that same region, forty million square meters of barbed wire had to be taken down and forty-five million cubed meters of trenches filled in after the Armistice (Nivet 2020, 166). Touring the area six months after the end of the war, French senator Paul Doumer declared the area “a desert, a zone of death, assassination, and devastation. There are corpses of horses, corpses of trees covering corpses of men” (quoted in Clout 1996, 3). The impact on civilians, too, was great; thirty-seven percent of the Aisne’s population fled the area between 1914 and 1917 due to the danger of being so close to the front (Nivet 2020, 171). The civilians who fled the war zone and German-controlled areas were not always welcomed in the towns and cities they settled in because of the strains to the infrastructure (Sauvage 2020, 228). In one scene in Le Réveil des morts, Jacques asks the farmer Didier Roger how the returnees find the emotional fortitude to move back. Roger replies that it was simply out of necessity: “Ailleurs, ils étaient des réfugiés, c’est-à-dire des manières de mendiants, tandis qu’ici ils sont chez eux. . . . S’ils avaient été mieux traités dans les villes et dans les campagnes où l’administration les avait relégués, ils ne seraient pas revenus si vite” [“Elsewhere, they were refugees, that is, beggars of sorts, whereas here, they are at home. . . . If they had been better treated in the cities and the countryside where the administration had relegated them, they would not have come back so quickly”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Despite the staggering numbers, rebuilding the region—or any of the occupied areas for that matter—was not widely covered in contemporary newspapers (Sauvage 2020, 228). Dorgelès’s novel thus provides information about civilian experiences that was not readily available to the French readers of the time. For this reason, Le Réveil des morts is just as much a testimonial on behalf of the millions displaced by the war as it is a memorial to the forgotten poilus. The citizens of Crécy are understandably eager to receive every cent available to them to rebuild their destroyed homes: “l’armistice n’était pas signé depuis trois mois que déjà la vie reprenait sous les ruines, comme une mystérieuse germination” [“The armistice had not even been signed for three months when life started up again under the ruins, like a mysterious germination”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The use of “germination” references nature that is also undergoing a rebirth. The image derives its power from the implication that beneath the rubble lie the seeds of renewal. The returnees’ determination pays off since, after several months of uncertainty, they are finally able to cultivate the fields and to harvest crops for the first time in four years. “Ces poutres apparentes et ces volets verts, ces murailles d’un blanc tout neuf sortaient des ruines comme de jeunes pousses, et le pays changeait d’aspect” [“Those visible beams and those green shutters, these walls of a totally new white came out of the ruins like young shoots, and the area was changing its

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appearance”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The nature imagery Dorgelès uses to describe the new construction among the ruins links the healing of the countryside to the rebirth of the town. In addition, the comparison of the new construction to seedlings, combined with the green of the shutters, points to the region’s reemerging agricultural production and community life. The recovery of the displaced civilian population in the spring of 1919 was not as swift as that of the countryside. Wanting nothing more than to move on, the citizens of Crécy are forgotten by the government as well as the rest of society as they wait for assistance in rebuilding: “Un instant, cette France pauvre put croire que la France heureuse l’oubliait. Les journaux de Paris leur apportaient l’écho d’une fête incroyable; on dansait, on s’amusait, on gâchait l’argent. Chaque jour éclataient de nouveaux scandales, avec des gains de dix, de vingt millions. Et eux, gîtés dans des cahutes, se disputaient les boules de pain et les déchets de frigo” [“For one second, this poor France could believe that the happy France forgot it. The Paris newspapers brought them the echo of an incredible party: they danced, had fun, wasted money. Every day, new scandals erupted, with profits of ten, twenty million. And they, making their homes in shacks, fight for bread and garbage from the fridge”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The comparison between the two sides of France is based not only on the differing mindsets but on the quality of the living conditions in which the respective groups live. The earliest returnees live in squalor in the ruins of their homes, receiving a mere pittance of aid from the government, twenty francs over a four-month period, one man tells Jacques. Bureaucratic hurdles impede the reintegration efforts; delays because of incorrect paperwork and fines for unauthorized settlement in the restricted area, for example, add to the frustration. Despite not having access to clean water or decent housing, the townspeople cling to their “désert” [“desert”], as precarious as it is. For the first few months, the helplessness and hopelessness are palpable: “On eût dit que le malheur s’y était installé, ayant trouvé dans ces champs de ruines un décor à son goût” [“You would have thought that misfortune had moved in there, having found in those areas lying in ruin a landscape to its liking”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Dorgelès commemorates the passage of the law guaranteeing war damages to the civilian population, which marks the day reconstruction can begin in earnest. The reference to this actual law, passed in April 1919, situates the stages of rebuilding and their meaning for those living in the former Red Zone. Perhaps the biggest boost to morale is the arrival in Crécy of the Service des Travaux de première urgence (S.T.P.U.), an actual agency established 13 December 1918 that was dedicated to rebuilding the town’s infrastructure: “Rien qu’en prononçant ces quatre lettres magiques, S.T.P.U, les sinistrés croyaient que les murs allaient sortir de terre tout jointoyés” [“Simply by pronouncing those four magic letters, M.U.W.S. (the Most Urgent Work

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Service), those affected believed that the walls were going to rise from the earth fully intact”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The reality, of course, was quite different, since rebuilding did not begin in earnest until 1920 (Nivet 2020, 188). In addition to documenting the war’s impact to the countryside, the images Dorgelès uses to convey the reconstruction of the town and the surrounding farmland establish the factors that contribute to Jacques’s PTSD. Jacques’s initial reaction on viewing Crécy and the surrounding farmland is that “il n’y a plus à récolter ici, que de la ferraille et des os” [“there is nothing left to harvest here but scrap metal and bones”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Where one would expect to find life and regrowth of vegetation, there is only death and decay. Indeed, the reminders of the countless bodies that take the place of crops in the fields are omnipresent: “On marche, on piétine dans la mort. La terre est comme pétrie de cadavres” [“You walk, you trample on death. The earth seems to be shaped by cadavers”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The epic undertaking required to clear the fields is, fittingly, depicted in military terms: “la dernière offensive et l’on eût dit que, désertes, les tranchées se défendaient encore” [“the last offensive and you would have said that the deserted trenches were defending themselves again”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The men hired by the government mount an offensive against the land where countless poilus died. The land, foreshadowing the novel’s nightmarish climactic scene of poilus leaving their graves, refuses to give up the detritus of war. Troops of civilians continue the backbreaking work through the night to expediate the entombing of the war. The same term is used with reference to the town’s reconstruction: “C’était tout le Crécy d’autrefois qu’on enterrait dans ce grand trou” [“It was all of the former Crécy that was being buried in that big hole”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The use of “enterrait” [“buried”] is significant because, in the eyes of administrators and politicians, the war must be concealed like the remains of the military dead—if not forgotten, then at least removed from view—for life to begin again. This is precisely the challenge that is at the heart of Le Réveil des morts: how to move on without forgetting the war and its casualties? The dark underbelly of reconstruction effort after the Great War is laid bare in Le Réveil des morts. The government money provided the means to rebuild towns like Crécy but also left property owners vulnerable to con men the influx of cash attracts. The portrayal of the families searching for loved ones’ bodies to bring them home is an especially heartbreaking element of Dorgelès’s narrative. What is more, the presence of the grieving loved ones is another trigger for Jacques’s PTSD. The “cult of the dead” was so strong in the two years following the Armistice that thousands of families had their loved ones clandestinely disinterred from their battlefield graves and reburied in a local cemetery (Pau 2010, 1–2). The unsavory practices of scores of “entrepreneurs” who profited financially from the suffering of the families is another aspect often left out of the official narrative of the Great War (Pau

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2010, 2). Hoping to stop this profiteering and the consequent destruction of military cemeteries, the French government passed a law in September 1920 that gave the bereaved the right to bring the remains of their fallen loved ones home and money to cover the endeavor’s cost (Winter 2014, 26). By 1922, some 300,000 soldiers had been disinterred and reinterred in their hometowns (Winter 2014, 26). In some cases, there was a second exhumation to move the body to a national war monument (Pau 2018). Dorgelès creates the character of Canivet, a disabled veteran who lost his eye and severely injured his hand in combat, to represent those who sought to do right by the mourning families. Disgusted by the men who transport the bodies from the battlefields near Crécy to Paris for the price of two thousand francs, Canivet opposes dishonest businessmen, such as Bouzier, Crécy’s undertaker, who sees the dead as a commodity. Eager to make a quick profit, this unsavory entrepreneur pays little attention to identifying items on the cadavers because to him, faster work means more money. Confident that he will not face legal consequences, Bouzier finds himself confronted by an angry Jacques: “Vous sentez la charogne, monsieur Bouzier. Vous êtes vêtu avec la peau des morts. . . . Sachez-le bien, tous ceux qui, comme vous, se sont enrichis sur la misère des autres en rendront compte un jour” [“You smell like carrion, Mr. Bouzier. You are draped in the skin of the dead. Know this, those who, like you, have become rich on misery of others will have to account for it one day”] (Dorgelès 2012b). This incident imprints on Jacques’s unconscious, providing fuel for his eventual cathartic nightmare. Witnessing the victimization of the returning villagers and mourning families adds to his PTSD-related anxiety and depression, which manifests in his uncharacteristic anger. Le Réveil des morts is thus as a testimonial of sorts for the dead and their families who were mistreated by the functionaries and unscrupulous businessmen. The front that Jacques inhabits includes the former battlefields near Crécy. The high number of casualties in World War I, compounded by the need for the poilus still on active duty to carry out their military duties, resulted in a dearth of able-bodied men to clear the former battlefields of the detritus of war. German prisoners of war helped rebuild in the immediate aftermath, but the massive effort required more manpower from overseas; even the arrival of thousands of construction workers from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Poland, and North Africa was not enough to meet demand (Bailey 363). The British army brought in Chinese workers to fill the void, with the French following suit not long after. In 1911, there were only 238 Chinese nationals living in France. Between 1916 and 1922, the number swelled to approximately 140,000. Mark O’Neill tells us that the immigrants first cleared the fields of ordnance and of human and animal remains. Once that was completed, they redirected water flow disrupted by the trenches, thus facilitating the resumption of agricultural activity necessary to feed the civilian population

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on the brink of starvation (O’Neill 2014, 73). The Chinese workers were contractually engaged for a five-year term (which could be canceled by French authorities after three) with a salary set at five francs for a ten-hour workday, six days a week (Live 1991, 12). Their contracts specified that the laborers were not to engage in military action (Live 1991, 12) but this was nonetheless hazardous duty; approximately two thousand perished in France, some “collateral damage,” other victims of accidents, still others of illnesses such as influenza and tuberculosis (O’Neill 2014, 81). The Chinese laborers’ contributions to the rebuilding of France have recently been the subject of renewed interest. However, few firsthand accounts by these essential workers exist, in part because many were illiterate in their native languages and possessed little knowledge of French to boot (Bailey 2014, 362). In fact, Le Réveil des morts provides invaluable information to scholars such as Yu-Sion Live, Philipe Nivet, Paul J. Bailey, and Li Ma, all of whom reference Le Réveil des morts in their discussions of the Chinese laborers at the western front. Le Réveil des morts offers rare insight into the way the French villagers returning to the area viewed the Chinese workers. A book published in 1918 by the British army for those working with the laborers offered advice on how to “manage” them. Among the racist stereotypes the book perpetuated was what the author perceived as the group’s ability to “drive a hard bargain.” The Chinese laborers were seen as “artist[s] at loafing and . . . splendid bluffer[s]” (Bailey 2014, 365). Bailey dryly observes that these alleged traits provide “an intriguing counterpoint to the conventional western view of the ‘coolie’ as a docile and obedient manual worker” (Bailey 2014, 365). In Le Réveil des morts, the inhabitants of Crécy evince similar attitudes toward the Chinese workers. In the eyes of the townspeople, “ils arrivaient bien, pierre à pierre, à déblayer quelques rues, à combler quelques tranchées, mais cela s’accomplissait en quelque sorte malgré eux, par la force du temps, et parce qu’il était physiquement impossible d’en faire moins” [“they did in fact manage to clear out several streets, fill in some trenches, but that was accomplished in a way despite them, through time, and because it was physically impossible to do less”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The Journal des régions dévastées: pour la défense des sinistrés du Nord et de l’Est [The Newspaper of the Devastated Regions: For the Defense of the Victims of the Nord and the East], which published twenty-one issues between May and October 1919, had a regular feature on incidents involving Chinese workers. The newspaper’s 15 June 1919 edition included an opinion piece about the stalled reconstruction efforts in the Marne, which the essayist blamed on the slowness of German prisoners of war and Chinese laborers who made up the lion’s share of the workforce: “Silencieux, invisibles, [les Chinois] se faufilaient partout, pas plus gênés pour pousser une porte que pour escalader un mur, et à tout

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moment des habitants rentrant chez eux en trouvaient d’installés à leur table, pas menaçants du tout, l’air avenant au contraire” [“Silent, invisible, (the Chinese) sneak in and out everywhere, no more embarrassed to push open a door than to scale a wall, and at any moment the residents returning home would find some of them seated at their table, not at all menacing, on the contrary looking affable”] (“Marne” 1919, 71). Dorgelès references problematic behavior that closely resembles what was reported in contemporary newspapers. Many of the complaints had to do with the laborers’ unwillingness to do the bidding of their supervisors, accounts that are also a part of Le Réveil des morts: “Pour l’enlèvement des obus, ils y avaient tout de suite renoncé, trouvant la tâche trop périlleuse, et les explosifs attendaient dans les champs la venue d’artificiers français” [“They immediately refused to remove the shells, finding the task too perilous, and the explosives were waiting in the fields for the arrival of the French munitions specialists”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The Chinese, untrained in explosive removal, understandably balk at the hazardous duty that Frenchmen without specialized instruction are not asked to do. For the French supervisors, however, the refusal is an act of insubordination. At the same time, requiring Chinese to undertake the perilous tasks suggests that, in the eyes of management, they are expendable. The xenophobic reaction of the inhabitants of Crécy, who see the Chinese as a new invasion or even a “plague,” is fueled by the racist stereotypes prevalent at the time. For some of the inhabitants of Crécy, the Chinese are the existential Other. It should be noted that critiques of the Chinese in Le Réveil des morts represent the French civilian reaction to the workers and is a function of the unabashed racism of the time and was not driven by any sort of animus against them on Dorgelès’s part. The economic divide between the laborers from outside the country and the French villagers whose needs were not being met was the source of conflict in the former Red Zone, a situation Dorgelès works into his narrative. The Chinese laborers serve a narrative function in Le Réveil des morts, that of a contradistinction to the suffering of the villagers. Whereas the inhabitants of Crécy must scramble to find food and fuel, the temporary workers have the cash to pay the inflated prices in the local stores. The French villagers, most of whom live in the basements of their ruined homes, envy the Chinese workers’ accommodations in military barracks. There is also some resentment because the laborers enjoy a regular salary while the returnees await the twenty-franc stipend the government promised; this aspect is reflected in the historical record (Ragache 2015, 159). Even more galling to the townspeople of Crécy is the belief that the Chinese working in the factories take jobs from the returning veterans. Sociologist Yu-Sion Live quotes a letter sent in 1916 from the secretary general of la CGT, one of the largest French labor unions, to the ministry of labor, demanding that poilus be guaranteed the jobs

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they had before being mobilized even if they had been replaced by a foreign worker in their absence (Live 1991, 13). As we continue to see today, xenophobia gives rise to lies about the new arrivals and their intent. The Chinese inspired fear in the French civilians because their culture was poorly understood. Ignorance, after all, often begets fear. The fact that they had access to explosives through their clearing of fields exacerbated the public’s anxiety. Tragically, the disputes between the French and Chinese workers during and after World War I occasionally turned violent (Bailey 2014, 365–66). Nivet documents a narrowly averted clash between five hundred Chinese laborers and the locals in Soissons, in the Aisne, over unpaid wages and the unjust punishments meted out by French foremen (Nivet 2020, 181). The uprisings contradict the stereotypes of lazy, obedient Chinese that were rampant, which offers more proof, if any were needed, of the unreliability of broad, racist generalizations in predicting human behavior of any group. Local newspapers from the time did little to calm the tensions since they published inflammatory articles about crime waves for which the Chinese were allegedly responsible. In 1919, the newspaper Le Progrès de la Somme [The Progress of the Somme] incorrectly declared that the Chinese workers were to blame for the uptick in violent crime observed in the region (Nivet 2020, 181). The journalist offered an anecdote from Champagne as evidence to support the contentions. He asserted that the Chinese working in the city of Hautevilliers only put in three hours per day and spent the remaining hours aggravating the locals. Another article reported on the Chinese who allegedly broke into local homes and caused panic among inhabitants (“Marne” 1919, 71). There was no explanation offered for the violent outburst, undoubtedly because the objective of the piece is to condemn the practice of bringing in foreign workers. In 1918, the French Ministry of War concluded that using Chinese workers to resolve labor shortages was a mistake because, an official asserted, three thousand of them had “destabilized the functioning of national industries” with their violence, revolts, and unwillingness to work (quoted in Bailey 2014, 366). Bailey asserts that “in many ways the Chinese workers were a convenient scapegoat for public frustration with the ineffectiveness of state reconstruction after the war, but it should not be overlooked either that criticism of the Chinese workers was an element of wider racist fears and suspicion of all non-white workers who had been recruited during the war” (Bailey 2014, 367). In short, these temporary inhabitants are presumed guilty by virtue of their Otherness. In addition to clearing and demining, the Chinese workers were often charged with the unsettling but necessary task of removing the dead from battlefields. O’Neill explains that this undertaking “was especially difficult for the Chinese, who believed that touching a corpse brought bad luck” (O’Neill 2014, 74). Despite the cultural taboo and doubtless because of

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financial incentives, the men adapted to the demands of their jobs, which the narrator of Le Réveil des morts acknowledges. When they removed a body from the trenches, they deposited it “dans une grande toile de tente, dont ils nouaient les coins au milieu d’un bâton, et, l’un à chaque bout, ils emportaient leur charge d’os, comme ils le faisaient dans leurs rizières” [“in a big tent canvas, the corners of which they knotted around a pole, and each taking one end, they carried away their load of bones, as they did in their rice fields”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Claude-Catherine Ragache asserts that “relever les morts étaient pour Dorgelès une mission sacrée. Il n’admettait pas qu’on l’eut confiée à des étrangers venus au bout du monde” [“bringing back the dead was a sacred mission for Dorgelès. He could not accept that that the task be entrusted to strangers who came to the end of the world” (Ragache 2015, 160). What troubled him most was the lack of care taken with the bodies of the fallen soldiers. In Le Réveil des morts, Jacques comes across piles of shoes those workers removed from the decomposing bodies. Whereas for the Chinese laborers, who have become inured to the thousands of nameless corpses they handle, these are simply shoes, part of what Carden-Coyne refers to as the “detritus of warfare” (Carden-Coyne 2009, 75). In Jacques’s eyes, the abandoned footwear represents his fallen comrades. Dorgelès uses synecdoche to portray the suffering of the poilu, who are designated by their feet: Ils ne la quitteraient plus, cette terre insatiable qu’ils avaient piétinée tant de mois; tous ces pieds de soldats, elle les garderait, elle en ferait sa chair et son engrais. . . . C’est eux qui gelaient dans la boue glacée de Verdun, dans la neige des Vosges, c’est eux qui s’enlisaient dans les boyaux fangeux d’Artois, c’est eux qui se gonflaient et saignaient dans le cuir racorni, quand il fallait marcher des heures sous le soleil. [“They would never leave this insatiable land that they had trampled on for so many months, it will keep all these soldiers’ feet, it would make them into its flesh and its fertilizer. . . . They are the ones who froze in the Vosges, they are the ones who got stuck in the muddy trenches of Artois, they are the ones who swelled up and bled in the hardened leather when they had to walk for hours in the sun”]. (Dorgelès 2012b)

The emphasis here is on the sacrifice the fallen infantrymen made and their way in which their remains are reclaimed by nature. At the same time, it calls to mind the line from the Christian burial service, “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” (in French, “souviens-toi que tu n’es que poussière et que tu retourneras en poussière”), although in Le Réveil des morts, it is to mud that the men return. Based on what he knows firsthand of life in the trenches and inspired by the piles of abandoned footwear, Jacques proposes a new emblem of the poilu: “Une pioche et des souliers, c’était cela l’emblème de la guerre, plus que le casque et le fusil” [“A pickax and shoes, that was the emblem of the war, more so than the helmet and the rifle”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The sight of

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heaps of shoes triggers one of the classic symptoms of PTSD, a flashback to the sight of corpses and personal effects strewn across the fields. Seeing the shoes dredges up memories of Jacques’s own experiences in the trenches, while his uncharacteristic emotionality—another symptom of PTSD—is evident in the repetition of “c’est eux qui” [“they are the ones who”]. Dorgelès was disturbed that the deceased poilus’ personal effects—which potentially would help to identify them—would be lost because of carelessness or indifference (Ragache 2015, 160), a concern that he expresses in Le Réveil des morts. There are parallels between the treatment of the Chinese laborers and that of the tirailleurs sénégalais, the subject of chapter 3 of this study. Both groups suffered from prejudice, of course, and both were often culturally and linguistically isolated. Although not engaged in military activity, the Chinese were confined to camps guarded by French troops as part of the effort to keep them away from civilians—especially from women (Bailey 2014, 370). As we saw in chapter 3, the French civilian population judged the tirailleurs to be inferior, which is the how many saw the Chinese. But whereas the tirailleurs were given language instruction—rudimentary, to be sure—little effort was made to help those from China to gain the skills necessary to communicate (Nivet 2020, 181). Because of the linguistic barriers, the men were unable to share their perspective or to negotiate their working conditions. The frustration and paranoia the Chinese laborers likely experienced in an unknown culture undoubtedly contributed to the disagreements and violent acts attributed to them. Their lack of fluency in French, moreover, made them vulnerable to unscrupulous businessmen, which, ironically, put them on the same footing as the returnees to the former war zone who begrudge them their paying jobs. It comes as no surprise, then, that only two thousand Chinese workers chose to settle in France at the end of their contracts. With his inclusion of the scenes featuring the Chinese workers, Dorgelès ensures that their efforts to help reconstruct France are not forgotten. The passages featuring the Chinese laborers are a part of the depiction of Jacques’s work rehabilitating the Red Zone. Seeing the workers exhume bodies reminds him of his comrades who had perished on the battlefield, which triggers his PTSD. His psychological pain is externalized through simple gestures, such as his doodles on architectural blueprints: “L’Oubli . . . Cela tombe comme une pelletée de terre, ce mot-là. Sans y penser, le jeune homme l’avait écrit sur sa feuille de calque, et il repassait distraitement les traits, il ornait chaque lettre, avec un O étrange, horrible, troué de deux yeux vides et fendu d’un grand rire” [“Forgetting . . . That word falls like a shovelful of dirt. Without thinking about it, the young man had written it on his tracing paper, and he retraced its outlines, decorating each letter, with a strange, horrible O, with holes for the two empty eyes, and split by a big smile”] (Dorgelès

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2012b). The “pelleté de terre” [“shovelful of dirt”] evokes the filling in of a grave while the doodling in the “o” takes the form of a death’s-head. The “deux yeux vides” [“two empty eyes”] moreover, recalls the “yeux crevés” [“gouged-out eyes”] used to describe Crécy’s bombed-out houses. The mouth evoking postmortem rictus completes the image of the dead poilus whose memory Jacques strives to protect. His impromptu sketch, which calls to mind the surrealist practice of automatic writing, is an artistic manifestation of his PTSD. Jacque’s psychic distress, exacerbated by his exposure to the constant reminders of his service in the trenches, is accompanied by the lingering physical effects of mustard gas exposure. Studies conducted after World War I show that the nerve agent caused psychological as well as physiological damage, a syndrome referred to as ypéritage, after the battle near the town of Ypres in Belgium where it was first deployed. The ypéritage damaged Jacques’s lungs, leaving him vulnerable to mental and physical exhaustion and residual illness. After one debilitating episode, he comes to understand that he must not forget his lost comrades, despite the pressure from all sides to do so: “Rien qu’en se disant [les noms de ses camarades], il croyait les défendre, les arracher à l’horrible néant. . . . Ils ne meurent pas tant qu’on les aime” [“Just by saying (the names of his comrades) to himself, he believed he was defending them, wrestling them away from the horrible void. . . . They do not die as long as they are loved”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Motivated by the friendships he forged in the trenches, Jacques strives to remember the poilus as he knew them rather than as the cadavers he saw on the battlefield. Jacques’s psychological suffering is exacerbated by his increasing visibility in Crécy, which means that he replaces André in the community as well as in his home. That realization produces a resurgence of pain that he attempts to quell by remembering and speaking about the dead man, “comme on ranime un feu qui va s’éteindre” [“like a fire about to go out is rekindled”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Although he had never met Hélène’s late husband, Jacques becomes obsessed with him. He comes to believe that it is his duty to remember André, a duty that becomes more personal when he encounters André’s mother, who has never stopped searching for her son’s remains. For the old woman, finding André’s body and giving him a proper burial in Crécy would mean that he is not forgotten. The only clue she has is the location where he went missing, which, ironically, is close to where he grew up. André’s mother—never named in the novel, which encourages the reader to associate her with the countless other women in her situation—confides to Jacques that “Il est là, tout près, je veux le voir. . . . J’aimerais mieux m’asseoir à côté de sa croix et ne plus bouger, ne pas le laisser tout seul” [“He is here, nearby, I want to see him. . . . I would prefer to sit next to his cross and not move any more, not leave him alone”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The sentiments expressed by André’s

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mother find their echo in the words of a twenty-first-century American “Gold Star” mother, Jill Stephenson, whose son Ben Kopp was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2009. Interviewed in September 2021, she said “I was the only voice left to tell his story. . . . If I stop talking about him, he ceases to exist” (Kaijo 2021, 3B). Juliette Sauvage asserts that “pour Mme Delbos, le fait qu’André soit mort pour la France n’a aucune vertu réconfortante. Cela permet à Dorgelès de suggérer l’absurdité du conflit, son injustice inhérente, et l’inexactitude d’un discours patriotique insuffisant qui devrait consoler mais s’avère inutile” [“for Madam Delbos, the fact that André died for France had no comforting virtue. That allows Dorgelès to suggest the absurdity of the conflict, its inherent injustice, and the inexactitude of an insufficient patriotic discourse that should console but turns out to be useless”] (Sauvage 2020, 241). Above all, through Mme Delbos, Dorgelès challenges the superficial patriotism and empty words offered to the surviving families. In short, André’s mother serves to underscore the disconnect between individual loss and patriotic duty (Sauvage 2020, 241). Like Jacques, André’s mother does not see her son in terms of the official remembrance of a glorious sacrifice for the country that the government promoted but rather as a vulnerable soul left alone in an unmarked grave. There is a very human need for physical proof that a loved one has passed, which is an important part of what mental health professionals refer to today as closure. For André’s mother, as long as her son’s remains are not recovered, he is not dead—and she has no closure. Before Jacques met André’s mother, the woman and her loss made did not register with him, for he does not have a face to put to the story. Once he meets her, however, he cannot get her out of his mind. The grieving mother is a literary trope of sorts, but Dorgelès’s inclusion of the character of Mme Delbos in Le Réveil des morts also reflects a societal preoccupation during and after the Great War with “the presence and absence of the human body” (Carden-Coyne 2009, 78). Indeed, Mme Delbos’s role is more than symbolic, for she furthers the plot by revealing to Jacques that her son knew that Hélène was not faithful. The encounter with his wife’s former mother-in-law changes the way that the protagonist sees the world and those around him, including— and especially—Hélène, making her a pivotal character. Jacques’s association with Mme Delbos leads to his participation in the disinterment of a young soldier that the grieving mother hopes is her son. Overcome with emotion, Jacques takes control of the exhumation, uncovering the dead man’s face with his bare hands: “Un visage d’enfant. . . . Oui, sa jeunesse, malgré tout, éclatait et, face au ciel, ce jeune mort accueillait le jour avidement, de ses yeux creux” [“A child’s face. . . . Yes, his youth, despite everything, breaks out and, with his face toward the sky, this young dead man eagerly welcomed the day with his hollow eyes”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The allusion to “les yeux creux” [“hollow eyes”] points to Jacques’s obsessive

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thought pattern—an indicator of PTSD—while also echoing the doodles he makes with the letter “o” and the personification of windowless homes he saw on his arrival in Crécy. The reference to the “visage d’enfant” [“child’s face”] “jeunesse” [“youth”], and “ce jeune mort” [“this young dead man”], moreover, show Jacques’s despair over a life taken too soon. He brings the dead soldier to life in his imagination, imputing to him the joy of seeing sunlight after months underground. This is a sort of macabre riff on Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Le Dormeur du val,” written during the Franco-Prussian war, the last two lines of which are “Il dort dans le soleil, la main sur sa poitrine, Tranquille. Il a deux trous rouges au côté droit” [“He sleeps in the sun, his hand on his chest, Peaceful. He has two red holes in his right side”] (Rimbaud 1895). Tragically, the unearthed cadaver is not André, but Jacques understands that this is someone’s son, condemned to be forgotten because there are no personal effects by which to identify the body. His unearthing of the corpse is an impulsive, intimate gesture that suggests that the protagonist identifies with a mother’s need to recover her son’s remains and to give him a befitting burial. The series of triggering episodes culminates in Jacques’s visit to the battlefield from which André disappeared. His guide is Canivet, a disabled veteran and childhood friend of the missing poilu, who leads Jacques to the last place he saw André alive. The atmosphere of the battlefield site has transformed in the months since the Armistice; the healing of the land is well underway there, the signs of war beginning to fade. This visit is an important step for Jacques as he tries to come to terms with his trauma: C’est si étrange, si fabuleux de songer que là, sur ces bosses, dans ces trous, on a rampé, haletant, qu’on s’est élancé, les yeux hagards, sur ces fossés d’où les mitrailleuses crachaient du feu, qu’on a vu, sans même y prendre garde, tomber ses meilleurs camarades, qu’on aurait pu mourir, enfin râler des heures, se tordre en criant. [It’s so strange, so fabulous to think that there, on these bumps, in these holes, crawling, panting, that we launched ourselves, with crazed eyes, onto these pits where the machine guns were spitting fire, that we saw, without really paying attention, our best comrades falling, that we could have died, at last gasping for hours, twisting and screaming] (Dorgelès 2012b).

There is a need for closure for the loved ones and for Jacques, but since André’s body has never been found, he is not dead but rather “disparu, sorti du monde” [“disappeared, gone from the world”]. Tormented by the possibility of having been with Hélène when his predecessor disappeared, Jacques is overwhelmed with guilt that is intensified by being at the scene of André’s disappearance. Nonetheless, the location, which serves as a receptacle of the poilu’s memory, provides the first step in Jacques’s psychological healing.

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As Balaev might see it, André’s last known location “organizes memories, feelings, and meaning at the level of the physical environment” for Jacques (Balaev 2008, 161). What is more, the visit may be understood in today’s terminology as exposure therapy, in which an individual is confronted with the source of his anxiety in a safe environment. Once Jacques deals with his psychological torment, he can accept that he is not responsible for André’s death. While Jacques’s guilt is replaced by a deep sadness, visualizing André on patrol, as a ghostly guardian of the dead men forgotten on the battlefield, brings him some measure of solace. Like Mme Delbos, Canivet is a pivotal character in Le Réveil des morts because he brings together the various factions in Crécy: disabled veterans / the forgotten living, the friends and family of the war dead, and the displaced civilian victims of the war. Canivet strives to do the right thing even as the obstacles to his successful reintegration into civilian life multiply, managing to maintain a positive attitude and unshakable confidence in the government’s recovery efforts. The conscience of the village, Canivet is the only one besides Jacques to denounce the undertaker Bouzier’s unsavory business activity, accusing him of “selling” the dead from the battle of le Chemin des Dames, the site of a crushing defeat of the French army in April 1917 in which, according to official estimates, 95,000 troops were killed (Porte and Offensdat 2008, 239). Bouzier and other unscrupulous entrepreneurs see the sheer number of dead at the Chemin des Dames as a windfall, a chance to make a quick profit. Canivet and Jacques, however, believe that Bouzier is desecrating hallowed ground. Canivet’s outspokenness results in the loss of his job and a fine for what a judge deems are unsubstantiated claims of misconduct he levels against Bouzier. Reduced to begging for money on the streets with his orphaned nephew in tow, Canivet reaches his breaking point when he learns that the money the government has promised him time and again is not forthcoming. Destitute, his honor destroyed, he leaves his personal effects on the banks of the river and is never seen again. Canivet’s trajectory brings home for Jacques that it is not simply the poilus missing or killed in action who are forgotten, but the returning veterans and displaced citizens as well. The death echoes that of André in that in both cases, the men disappear with no trace. In short, André and Canivet are both victims of war. Canivet’s disappearance takes its toll on Jacques’s psychological health because, to his mind, he has failed André twice, first by making him a cuckhold and then by not preventing his friend’s death. Because of Jacques’s preoccupation with Canivet’s death and his need to somehow process it, the memory remains with him, eventually reemerging in his cathartic nightmare. The third pivotal character in Le Réveil des morts is Hélène, whose actions are a source of Jacques’s psychological suffering. She is the primary connection between Jacques and André as well as between Jacques and the citizenry

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of Crécy. Canivet’s circle of influence overlaps with Hélène’s because, as André’s friend, he is privy to the interpersonal conflicts in the couple but also between the young woman, her former in-laws, and her neighbors. Hélène has more in common with the bureaucrats than with André’s parents because she desperately wants to forget the war and, by extension, her first marriage. When Jacques tries to open up to Hélène about the horrors he saw at the front, she shuts him down: “Non, ne parle plus de la guerre, je t’en prie!” [“No, don’t talk anymore about the war, I beg you!”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Hélène, however, is eager to assume the role of war widow, not as a way to honor André, but because of its social cachet; widows were held in high esteem during and after the Great War because of their husbands’ sacrifice, as we saw in the discussion of Colette’s war reporting in chapter 2. Jacques finally sees Hélène’s true character when Canivet’s mother reveals the younger woman’s abandonment of André’s parents. This is the first indication Jacques has that his wife has a cruel, vindictive side. Whereas he previously saw his spouse as “tendre et enjouée” [“loving and happy”] he now perceives in her “un air de dureté” [“a hard look”]. Canivet and his mother’s insights into André’s marriage, along with those of Mme Delbos, provide Jacques with the evidence that strengthens his resolve to leave Hélène. Wronging the one person who truly mourns André—his mother—Hélène keeps his pension out of spite. To be sure, the pensions the government awarded to the survivors were meager at best, but since André’s mother forgoes food and heat to fund her search for her son’s remains, she is in dire need of help. Her daughter-in-law, on the other hand, has no financial need because she inherited her husband’s business in Paris. In this regard, Hélène is no different from the individuals who, like the undertaker Bouzier, exploit the civilians who receive government subsidies to rebuild their homes and businesses. Hélène thus represents not only the unfaithful wives and lovers of the poilus at the front, but those who unfairly profit from the war. Jacques’s identification with André is complete when he finds in an armoire a cache of letters from the dead man to Hélène. Jacques’s memory of unearthing the unknown soldier imposes itself as he faces the written record of the intimate thoughts André shared with Hélène: “Il s’agenouillait au bord d’une tombe, il déterrait un mort” [“He was kneeling at the edge of a grave, he was unearthing a dead man”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The description underscores the fact that, in perusing the dead man’s letters, Jacques is performing a psychological exhumation. Almost against his will, he is drawn to the letters even as they increase his anxiety, reading “avec passion, comme s’il avait ignoré le dénouement. Il souffrait, il espérait, il rageait avec le soldat. . . . Il oubliait que c’était lui, l’amant, l’autre la victime; leurs deux cœurs si semblables ne faisaient plus qu’un” [“passionately, as if he had not known the outcome. He suffered, he hoped, he raged with the soldier. . . . He forgot that he was the

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lover, the other man the victim; their two hearts, so similar, were now one”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The reference to sharing a heart with André indicates that Jacques is possessed, body and soul. Reading the letters that André wrote to Hélène, Jacques is afforded access to the most intimate details of the marriage he unwittingly destroyed. The knowledge gleaned from the letters allows Jacques to appreciate André as a complex, fleshed-out individual, that is, as a man rather than as a ghost: “ce n’était pas le garçon simple et plutôt fruste qu’il avait cru; c’était comme lui un sensible, un cœur fait pour souffrir” [“this was not the simple and rather unsophisticated boy that he had thought; he was, like him, sensitive, with a heart made for suffering”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Jacques’s heart serves as a barometer of his emotions as he learns more about André and his fraught relationship with Hélène. When he takes his wife to the train station for her return to Paris after a weekend in Crécy, he understands how André, aware that his wife was cheating on him, must have felt as he left the same station at the end of his final leave: “C’était fini. Plus rien” [“It was over. Nothing more”] (Dorgelès 2012b). His anxiety worsening, Jacques’s heart generates a negative physical sensation, a barometer of sorts of his inner turmoil: “c’était le cœur douloureux d’André qu’il portait dans sa poitrine, et il fut alors pris d’une telle angoisse, sur ce quai noir, qu’il rejoignit la place presque en courant” [“it was André’s suffering heart that he carried in his chest, and then he was struck with such anguish, on this dark platform, that he reached the square almost at a run”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Because he empathizes with André, it is logical that Jacques feels that he shares a heart with the dead man, since that organ is the seat of emotions in the popular imagination. More importantly, it indicates the extent to which he identifies with his predecessor. The mention of the “angoisse” [“anguish”] that accompanies the physical sensation calls to mind a panic attack, another element in the symptomatology of PTSD. Tellingly, too, Jacques runs from the station, the location where he experiences anguish, which exemplifies how PTSD may manifest in avoidance of situations similar to those of past trauma. In Jacques’s case, however, it is the reminder of André’s emotional trauma that causes his panic attack, another indication of how the dead man’s identity subsumes his own. Seeing Hélène through André’s eyes changes Jacques’s feelings for her, engendering a physiological change registered in his “souffle brûlant” [“burning breath”] and his “paumes sèches” [“dry palms”] (Dorgelès 2012b). In the throes of a psychological crisis, Jacques “était dans cet état de déséquilibre où une force obscure vous pousse malignement à faire un geste stupide, qu’on ne voudrait pas et qu’on finit par accomplir quand même, uniquement pour échapper à l’obsession” [“He was in that state of disequilibrium where a dark force maliciously pushes you to make a stupid gesture, that you would not

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want to do, and that you end up making anyway, just to escape the obsession”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The reference to “la force obscure” [“dark force”], deepened by the adverb “malignement” [“maliciously”], points to a loss of control, yet with a fair amount of free will. Interestingly, demonic obsession is the term used by the Catholic Church to reference to the third of four stages a possessed individual goes through. “Obsession,” moreover, points to the negative emotions that are one of the hallmarks of PTSD. While it is risky to give biographical details any significant weight in a work of literary criticism, there are several striking resemblances between the letters André sent to Hélène from the front on the one hand and those Dorgelès sent to his partner during much of the war, Madeleine Borgeaud, whom he affectionately called Mado. Dorgelès’s suffering at Mado’s hands seems to have inspired the characters of André and Jacques in Le Réveil des morts. While both the fictional and authentic documents follow a downward trajectory from plaintive pleas to veiled accusations of betrayal, Dorgelès is much more circumspect in his missives than his fictional creation. Whereas he makes it known that “je me ressasse de sales idées” [“I am dwelling on nasty ideas”] (Dorgelès 2003, 339), the fictional character he creates expresses his suspicions and anger directly: “Je demande à Dieu qu’un jour il te fasse souffrir ce que j’aurai souffert. . . . Si tu rencontres un honnête homme, je le charge de me venger” [“I ask God that He one day make you suffer what I will have suffered. . . . If you meet an honest man, I ask him to avenge me”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Reading the author’s actual letters against the fictional correspondence suggests that Roland, like André, feared being abandoned by the woman he loves. By all accounts, then, writing Le Réveil des morts allows the author to work through Mado’s infidelity. Dorgelès’s fictionalization of his own painful experiences, moreover, sheds light on the noncombat issues with which the poilus dealt. Though they may seem trivial compared to constant mortal danger in which the men at the front found themselves, such insight gives us a more complete picture of the memory of World War I the infantrymen retained. Jacques’s psychological torment becomes further externalized in his fits of rage, one of the manifestations of PTSD: “il aurait voulu tout oublier, abolir le passé” [“he would have liked to forget everything, suppress the past”] (Dorgelès 2012b). No longer able to separate his own emotions from the dead man’s, the transference of identity is complete and André’s presence is now constant: “Tout semblait attendre [le retour d’André] dans la maison hantée et Jacques, les yeux creusés, regardait le tiroir aux planches nues, pareil à un cercueil” [“Everything seemed to wait (for André’s return) in the haunted house and Jacques, with his sunken eyes, looked at the drawer with the bare planks, the same as those of a coffin”] (Dorgelès 2012b). The presence of the dead poilu is conveyed by Jacques’s “yeux creusés” [“sunken eyes”]—the

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fourth use of an ocular description—and by the comparison of the armoire drawer holding the letters to a coffin. Jacques’s preoccupation with André leads to an explosive argument with Hélène over her treatment of her late husband. Their spat is interrupted by the appearance of a soldier in their garden that both, in their agitated states, mistake for André. Essentially possessed by André’s memory, Jacques now views everything through the dead man’s eyes. Jacques reevaluates past moments with Hélène in the context André’s letters provide, including one meeting soon after his predecessor is declared missing and presumed dead: “En grand deuil, mais la robe trop courte. Elle lui parlait avec animation, de sa voix perchée, et les passants se retournaient sur cette étrange veuve” [“In deep mourning, but her dress too short. She spoke to him animatedly, in her high-pitched voice, and the passersby turned around to look at that strange widow”] (Dorgelès 2012b). Hélène’s odd comportment, which in the moment could be attributed to grief-induced inappropriate behavior, now is evidence of Hélène’s true feelings for André and her eagerness to forget him. The panic attack at the station, discussed above, engenders other psychological symptoms because now Jacques feels André’s presence in the places the dead man frequented when he was alive. In what may be viewed as a textbook example of PTSD, Jacques revisits in his mind’s eye his time in the trenches, in particular how important his happy memories of loved ones were to him. Jacques’s guilt at having usurped André’s social position and marriage materializes in “la silhouette transparente d’André sur la terrasse” [“the transparent silhouette of André on the terrace”] (Dorgelès 2012b), dressed in his army uniform. The more deeply Jacques delves into the one-sided correspondence, the more he identifies with André and, consequently, the closer he comes to an emotional breakdown. He is particularly affected by a letter in which André declares to Hélène that if he is killed, he will return to haunt her: “Je t’ai trop aimée pour rester dans mon trou et te laisser à un autre. J’en sortirai! . . . Au front, nous n’avons pas droit à un linceul: j’irai prendre le mien dans ton lit!” [“I have loved you too much to remain in my hole and leave you to another. I will get out of it [the hole]. At the front, we do not have funeral shrouds; I will come take mine from your bed!”] (Dorgelès 2012b) André’s threat plants a suggestion that reemerges from Jacques’s unconscious during the cathartic nightmare sequence. The dead man’s influence on the protagonist’s psychological health, particularly the somatization of guilt, calls to mind the case of Zidore Duydt in Invasion 14, discussed in chapter 1. Van der Meersch and Dorgelès each find inspiration for the mental breakdowns of their respective characters in Émile Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. In Zola’s novel, Laurent, who kills Camille to be with Thérèse, senses a presence in the bedroom and comes to believe that the dead man is shaking the bed underneath him. Like Camille, André enters Jacques and Hélène’s marital bed one night. In an intimate moment,

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Hélène mistakenly calls Jacques “André.” Gently extricating himself, “il s’éloigna d’elle, et il se coucha juste au bord, comme s’il avait voulu laisser entre eux la place usurpée du mort” [“he moved away from her, and he lies down right at the edge of the bed, as if he had wanted to leave the place he had taken over from the dead man”] (Dorgelès 2012b). This scene echoes that of Jacques staring into the armoire drawer as if it were André’s grave. In the bedroom scene, however, the perspective shifts and Jacques is within André’s grave. The suffering that Jacques witnesses among the civilians and returning veterans in Crécy, combined with his guilt over assuming André’s place, has a devastating effect on his emotional fragility. His psychic pain can only be resolved through catharsis, which comes in the form of a nightmare rivaling the best scenes from the television series The Walking Dead. In his dream, Jacques finds himself on a battlefield where he witnesses the ground heaving upward and a soldier emerging from the crevasse, an image originating in his unearthing of the young soldier. Soon, the field is overrun by mud-covered soldiers wandering in groups, unarmed. This detail references the weapons and personal items—the dozens of shoes in particular—from which the dead are separated on the battlefield, and which are piled up by the Chinese workers Jacques observes. As the zombie poilus advance, they regain their ability to think and speak and, in the process, recover their pre-death features. The reanimation of the dead soldiers distinguishes them from “ordinary” zombies, who in popular culture are non-verbal and lacking critical thinking skills. The reconstitution of the dead poilus into sentient beings parallels that of Jacques “fleshing out” André by reading his correspondence. The zombies retain their fatal wounds, which reminds Jacques that everyone has a unique story and a unique death. In Le Réveil des morts, the realms of the dead and the living overlap (Leducq 2019,113), a situation that reaches its apex in Jacques’s nightmare. It is not surprising, given the depth of Jacques’s emotional trauma, that the walking-dead poilus want revenge for the same injustices he witnesses as he helps rebuild Crécy. The reaction of the villagers that the mob encounters runs the gamut from terror to joy. The undead soldiers confront those who tried to forget them, threatening them and demanding accountability. There is a settling of scores with those who had taken advantage of or harmed the families after their death; one zombie cuts the throat of his wife’s abusive new husband while other zombies dispatch the con men who prey upon their defenseless widows and orphans. In an obvious nod to psychoanalytical theory, the dream sequence is the way in which Jacques processes his war trauma. In effect, the actions of the zombie infantrymen is the expression of Jacques’s desire to avenge Mme Delbos, Canivet, and all the innocents exploited by the war.

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The ultimate destination of the undead poilus of Jacques’s nightmare is Paris, the seat of the bureaucracy that is so eager to forget the war dead and their families. There, civil servants and politicians attempt to appease the zombie soldiers by accepting their demands to increase their widows’ pensions and by denouncing the very war they had profited from. “Casqués, les morts tenaient conseil et jugeaient les vivants, comme les vivants les avaient jugés” [“Helmeted, the dead held a hearing and judged the living, just as the living had judged them”] (Dorgelès 2012b). This is an allusion to the Judgment Day, but it is the war dead instead of God who judge the politicians. There is also, as Hurcombe observes, a carnivalesque upending of the “post-war hierarchies” (Hurcombe, “Activism,” 63) that likewise originates in the injustices that Jacques witnesses. The demands and concerns the resurrected poilus articulate are precisely those voiced by activists at the time Dorgelès wrote the novel (Hurcombe 2012, 67). Still, the revenants are aware that they died for nothing and that their futile efforts will be replicated by future generations of soldiers, and to the same effect. This is evidence that the nightmare allows Jacques to work through his trauma and encourages him to pursue his advocacy for the veterans who strive to reintegrate into civilian society. As Jean-Pierre Rioux puts it, “La question hante Dorgelès et entretient sa rage dénonciatrice: nous, les survivants, avons-nous changé? Et changerons-nous jamais ce pays?” [“The question haunts Dorgelès and maintains his denunciatory rage: have we, the survivors, changed? And will we ever change this country?”] (Rioux 2020, 83). For the twenty-first century reader, the question still has not been resolved since war continues to rage across the globe in hot spots such as Ukraine and the Middle East. The climactic scene in Le Réveil des morts finds its parallel in Abel Gance’s movie “J’accuse” (1919). The silent movie, a resounding success across the globe when it was first released, alternates between scenes of domestic strife and those of the difficult conditions of the trenches. The film’s protagonist Jean Diaz, driven insane by his time at the front, hallucinates dead poilus returning to his hometown in Provence, where he had returned after being found mentally unfit for service. As the undead soldiers approach the town, Diaz confronts the villagers, declaring them unworthy of the sacrifice the fallen men made for them. This key scene was filmed in Southern France with soldiers on leave from the fighting in Verdun. A week later, the soldiers-turned-actors returned to the front where, tragically, eighty percent of them would perish (Brownlow 1976, 533). Incidentally, Blaise Cendrars, whose La Main coupée was analyzed in chapter 4, worked with Gance on the movie’s script and served as an assistant director. He makes a brief appearance in “J’Accuse” as a resurrected soldier. While Jean in “J’accuse” is seemingly psychologically destroyed and dies at the end of the film, Jacques

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is, if not cured, at least better equipped to integrate his war experiences into his identity. Jacques awakens just as his nightmare morphs into a violent melee in a courtroom. His dream functions as an accelerated “talk therapy” or, given the previous allusion to his possession by André’s spirit, an exorcism of his guilt. Because Jacques’s dream brings together all the elements that triggered his PTSD, he is able to work through his trauma and his unresolved feelings about his time in the trenches, which leads him to muse on the place of the dead among the living: “leurs ombres malheureuses ne s’étaient-elles pas arrachées au néant pour se montrer à lui . . . ? Les vivants n’exauceront-ils jamais le dernier vœu des morts?” [“weren’t their unhappy shadows torn from the void to show themselves to him? . . . ? Will the living never carry out the last wish of the dead?”] (Dorgelès 2012). In the end, although Jacques resolves to keep the memory of the fallen soldiers alive, he is nonetheless on track to forget one source of his guilt: his relationship with Hélène. Jacques leaves Hélène with no regrets, poised to continue his fight to preserve the memory of the war dead yet fully cognizant of the near certainty of future armed conflict. Once he emerges from André’s spell, Jacques realizes that his marriage is over, but he is not least bit worried about Hélène because “elle sait oublier” [“she knows how to forget”] Dorgelès 2012). Ironically, forgetting his wife allows him to better remember his fallen comrades. The novel’s closing scene features him standing with his back to a pillar recording the names of the men who lost their lives over the years in various battles for that same slice of land, Jacques looks out onto the reconstruction—which French administrators at the time called “reconstitution” (Nivet 2020, 163)—in which he has participated, replacing the crosses marking makeshift graves in the former battlefields with new structures for the victims of war. Although he did not sacrifice his life for his country, his rebuilding of the towns destroyed in the war and especially his remembering of the lives lost is contribution enough. Focusing on the symptomatology of Jacques’s PTSD reveals the complexity of Dorgelès’s portrait of the returning soldier. What triggers Jacques’s psychological trauma is being caught between two opposing forces, namely, the pressure to forget and the need to remember. This opposition is associated with the two fronts Dorgelès portrays. On the one hand, there is the front delineated by reconstruction of the devastated villages and countryside is a manifestation of the urge to forget the war. On the other hand, there is the urgency to remember the fallen, which is part of the front populated by the grieving families that Jacques aspires to help. Indeed, Le Réveil des morts’s strength lies in the intertwined stories of civilians, veterans, grieving families, as well as the environment, which underscores the interdependence of members of the community. Jacques’s true work in Crécy is that of integrating his war experiences and his trauma into his identity. His memories

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and his relationships with the members of the various groups in his community—disabled veterans, grieving families, even the unscrupulous businessmen, contribute to the formation of his new self. One of the architects of the reconstitution of the former Red Zone, Jacques is his own most important (re-)creation. Of all the works scrutinized in this study, Le Réveil des morts best portrays the way war changes not only individuals but also the environment in which they live.

Conclusion

Literature is an important part of memorialization for, as Nicolas Beaupré asserts, “la littérature de guerre témoigne non seulement du vécu de ses auteurs, mais également du statut et du rôle des milieux littéraires et de la littérature pendant le conflit” [“war literature bears witness not only to the author’s experience but also to the status and the role of the literary milieux and of literature during the conflict”] (Beaupré 2014, 55). The conventional French World War I novel deals with the experiences of the poilus on the western front, emphasizing their camaraderie and their heroic actions. My study set out to shift the focus from the infantrymen to the groups whose stories deviate from the dominant narrative of the Great War. Separating the works scrutinized here according to the front where they are set highlights the similarities and differences in their narrative foci on the one hand and the way events and characters are depicted on the other. Applying this methodology to Maxence Van der Meersch’s Invasion 14 draws attention to the hardships the civilian population in towns near war zone faced. Similarly, isolating the various fronts in Colette’s war reporting uncovers the emotional interdependence between the civilians and the poilus. Such an approach allows us to better appreciate the diversity of civilian experiences and bring their stories to the forefront. Viewing combatants as a monolithic unit, as has often been the case, does not do justice to the diverse groups that made up the French armed forces on the western front. The tirailleurs sénégalais whose contributions were, if not overlooked, at least undervalued for many years, have recently attracted political and scholarly attention. Bakary Diallo’s Force-Bonté takes to task the military and governmental authorities’ inability or unwillingness to adhere to the values of the French Republic and to recognize the West African troops’ contributions to the defense of France. Blaise Cendrars’s La Main coupée represents another combat group whose stories were muted, namely, those of the French Foreign Legion. Cendrars categorically rejects the glorification of war and instead strives to rehumanize the poilus, in effect shattering stereotypes. 153

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In Le Réveil des morts, Dorgelès portrays the psychological, physiological, and economic challenges demobilized veterans coped with. In short, the works in this book reveal the reality behind the idealized narrative of the Great War, thereby contributing to the de-centering of the World War I novel. The individual chapters in this study centered on the way in which the five authors portray the Great War. Invasion 14 stands as an homage of sorts to the novels of the Rougon-Macquart series, for, like Zola, Van der Meersch uses physiognomy and psychosomatic maladies to develop his characters as well as to describe the psychological toll war takes on civilians. Cendrars remains true to his avant-garde literary beginnings in La Main coupée, constructing a collage by juxtaposing prose “snapshots” of his gallery of characters with objects and places associated with them and borrowing from the human types of Honoré de Balzac’s La Comédie humaine. In this way, Invasion 14, and La Main coupée illustrate Henri Mitterand’s assertion that realism, rarely disappearing entirely from literary history, instead adapts to each period’s zeitgeist and aesthetic (Mitterand 1994). Flora and fauna metaphors and comparisons are the means by which Colette, Diallo, and Cendrars depict situations and individuals impacted by war that readers might never have encountered before. Colette’s use of personification in her portraits of military war dogs, for instance, goes beyond creating human equivalencies to establish them as individuals with distinct personalities. She and Diallo maintain a close connection to nature, which determines in part how they portray their respective fronts, reminding us to not lose sight of the fact that war threatens all living creatures. Cendrars takes environmental awareness to the next level by underscoring the interdependence of humans and nature in wartime. Nature occupies a prominent position in Dorgelès’s Le Réveil des morts as well, for it models resiliency and renewal to the wounded veterans and traumatized civilians in the former Red Zone. Van der Meersch is the one outlier in the use of nature imagery, for at the heart of Invasion 14 is the chronicling of the war’s effect on the minds and bodies of the civilian populations, which he conveys through the psychosomatic symptoms which the main characters present with. The narrative elements I have analyzed here can be found, significantly, in World War II novels. A comprehensive comparison of the French novels of World War I with those of World War II is of course beyond the scope of this book. My intent here is simply to show a thematic similarity between the French World War I novel and that of the Nazi occupation. Historian George L. Mosse’s writing on the myth of the war experience in France and Germany from the nineteenth century through World War II provides context for this brief overview. In general lines, he observes that the myth promoted the war as “as a meaningful and even sacred event” and intended to sanction the war

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while also sanitizing the violence and destruction of war (Mosse 1991, 7). During the Great War, the major French newspapers, subject to military and government censors, perpetuated its mythology, transmitting the message that the government wanted disseminated. World War I memory did not develop organically, and instead was manipulated for use in government publications and in school curriculum (Offenstadt 2020, 13). Aware of the “spin” French authorities put on the war, the public lost trust in the newspapers and instead looked to the works penned by écrivains-combattants [soldier-writers] to learn what the war was really like (Beaupré 2011). The mythology of war was reflected in the obsession during and after the Great War with the fallen soldier, a mainstay of contemporary mainstream fiction and newspaper reports. Mosse emphasizes the religious symbolism and sanctification of the fallen soldiers on the one hand and the trivialization of the war through battlefield tours, tchotchkes, and other mass-produced commemorative items on the other (Mosse 1991, 7). These cultural phenomena continued up to the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. Stéphane AudoinRouzeau and Annette Becker point to the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Great War in 1988 as a turning point in its memorialization. Controversy arose during the commemoration from the proposed inclusion of resisters and mutineers and the transformation of the poilus from heroes into victims of the war machine (Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker 2014, 15). The ensuing national debate over whether to diversify the World War I narrative prompted scholars to turn their attention to marginalized groups such as the tirailleurs sénégalais. The centenary of the end of the Great War led to a further diversification of the narrative, including Jean-Michel Auxiètre’s pioneering L’Homosexualité au front durant la Grande Guerre: Le Témoignage dérangeant du caporal Moret (2020). Future scholars will surely build on Auxiètre’s work on the participation of the LGBTQ+ community in the Great War, rarely a part of official records (except in cases that came before a military tribunal) or of personal correspondence and journals from the western front. Similarly, while the Roma Holocaust in World War II (in Romani “porjamos,” translated as “devouring”) has garnered more attention in recent years, relatively little has been written about the internment of members of the Sinti, a Roma subgroup, during World War I (Filhol 2007, 145). For decades, the World War I veteran was held in high esteem by the French. But that changed after World War II brought about a change in public and scholarly interest (Beaupré 2014, 41). If the poilus were widely admired in the years leading up to World War II, they were replaced soon after by the national hero of that conflict, namely, the Resistance fighter and the participants in the liberation of France (Offenstadt 2020, 18). The myth of World War II glossed over the collaborationist Vichy regime and the cooperation between the Nazi occupier and the civilian population (Offenstadt 2020,

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18). To be sure, not everyone collaborated because of identification with or sympathy for the Nazis; some merely had to do so to survive. Henry Rousso’s Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours [The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944] details the various stages of Resistancialism, a term he coined to refer to the popular but false belief, promoted by the French government after the Second World War, namely that most of France had resisted the Nazi occupation. In the aftermath of the protests of May 1968, Resistencialism began to be challenged as the voices from marginalized groups who suffered because of Vichy complicity with the Nazi occupiers, including Jews, Roma, and political dissidents, began to emerge. The memory of any significant event undergoes regular revision, and this is true of research into the Nazi occupation of France. Indeed, as Debarati Sanyal observes, scholars in recent years have “sought to open a more decentered and multidirectional perspective on the era by interweaving its history with other histories and memorial legacies” (Debarati 2009, 95). This is another point of convergence between the respective representations of the two world wars. The literary memorialization of World War I and World War II, fairly uniform at the outset, has undergone a transformation in recent years. The pluralistic model of traumatic memory provides a framework for understanding the decentering of the narratives of both conflicts. According to this paradigm, traumatic memory does not necessarily impede its recollection or processing, which means that it is externalized. Once externalized, narrative is shaped by outside forces, including cultural and historic events (Balaev 2018, 367). French culture, more specifically, literature, has shaped the memory and memorialization of the Great War, as we have seen. Memorialization is central to all the works in the present study but the way in which a given author chooses to depict the war is of course dependent on their values but above all on their artistic vision; realism, romanticism, and cubism have influenced the imagination of those whose works I have scrutinized in this study. We find this same tendency in World War II literature, most notably in JeanPaul Sartre’s war trilogy, Les Chemins de la liberté [Roads to Freedom], composed of L’Âge de raison [The Age of Reason] (1945), Le Sursis [The Reprieve] (1947), and La Mort dans l’âme [Troubled Sleep] (1949), all of which bear the imprint of the author’s Existential philosophy. Because of censorship, some novelists during the Nazi Occupation used allegory to indirectly target the war and the Occupation and thus avoid censors. Sartre’s Les Mouches [The Flies] (1943), based on the Orestian myth, and Jean Anhouilh’s Antigone (1943), inspired by Sophocles’s play, create parallels to the Nazi Occupation of France and to the Resistance. These are just two of many other examples. Several authors used the plague as an allegory to depict the Occupation; Albert Camus’s La Peste (The Plague] (1947), about an outbreak in the Algerian port of Oran; Louis Aragon’s Resistance poem “Le Musée

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Grévin” [“The Grévin Museum”], the among the first literary references to death camps at Auschwitz in (1943), and Robert Desnos’s Resistance poem “La Peste” [“The Plague”], in which the poet proclaims his opposition to the atrocities of the Nazi Occupation (Sanyal 89).1 The theme of resistance in the aforementioned World War II novels and poems is associated with the occupation but may also be understood as part of the de-centering of the dominant government-sanctioned narrative. The novels of both wars amply illustrate Nathan Bratcher’s observation that, “literary narratives of the past are . . . often received and evaluated in terms of their contribution to memory” (Bratcher 2018, 38). This is certainly the case with the war novel genre, since many readers are seeking insight into what war is like. Some critics, like Jean Norton Cru, believe that war novels should be testimonials that provide a faithful rendering of combat without artistic embellishment. My analysis shows otherwise, establishing that literature can and does further the cause of preserving the memory of the Great War. As Antony Rowland declares in his examination of the writing by Charlotte Delbo, a French Resistance member who was deported to Auschwitz and was one of the forty-nine returnees from the original group of two hundred twenty-nine, “the most memorable forms of testimony . . . , such as Delbo’s books, do not rely on the illusions of reality” (Rowland 2014, 70). The de-centering of the narrative of the Great War has opened new avenues of research and deepened our understanding of how those on the margins of that narrative experienced the war. Such an examination reminds us that war is never confined to the battlefield, as recent events in Ukraine and the Middle East have shown us. Preserving the stories of noncombatants is a moral imperative. The collective memory of war, especially of the Great War, often does not even begin to tell the whole story of human suffering. Whether deliberately or unintentionally, national memory frequently drowns out the voices of a significant portion of the population. It behooves us all to listen to those voices and expand and build a more diverse, inclusive narrative of World War I. NOTES 1. Holocaust testimonials are in their own category; whether the Shoah should or could be a subject of a literary work remains controversial to this day. For more on the debate over the representability of the Shoah, see Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer (2001), James Young (1998, 1993), and Lawrence L. Langer (1991).

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Index

Works written in French are listed by their original titles here. Abortion: Colette on, 2, 69; in Invasion 14, 13, 33; Rabier on, 68–69; views on, 67–68 African Literature, 78 African troops: racist stereotypes, 77; relations with French, 86 agriculture, resumption of, 132, 135 allegory: in Force-Bonté, 86; in Invasion 14, 15; in World War II novels, 156 All’s Quiet on the Western Front, 8n3 Anhouilh, Jean, 156 animals: activism on behalf, 55; anthropomorphizing, 52–53, 88; in Colette, 2, 45, 47–51, 53, 55, 88, 109; experiments on, 54–55; in film, 71n1; in Force-Bonté, 87–89; in La Main coupée, 103, 109–11; as pets, 71, 111; scholarship on, 48, 53, 110; in trenches, 40, 49; and war trauma, 40 animals. anthropomorphizing, 50, 52 Antigone, 156 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 46, 92, 94 “Apollon, Déménageur,” 41 Aragon, Louis, 156 The Art of Survival, 95

Association des Écrivains Combattants (AEC), 123 L’Assommoir, 29 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane: on memorialization of war, 155; on militarization of children, 62, 64; on ongoing interest in WWI, 1; on parental grief, 16; on sexual relationships, 30; on wartime abortion, 32 Auschwitz, 157 Auxiètre, Jean-Michel, 155 Bailey, Paul J., 135, 137, 139 “Bakary Diallo: Mémoires Peules,” 85 Balaev, Michelle, 5–7, 71, 73, 92, 143 Balzac, Honoré de: and Cendrars, 93, 99, 114–16; influence, 154; and physiognomy, 12, 17, 38; and Van der Meersch, 2, 10, 14, 23, 37 Bambara, 78, 80 Baratay, Éric, 106, 109–11 barbarian children. See enfants barbares Barbier, Mary, 10 Barbusse, Henri, 4, 7n2 Baudelaire, Charles, 101 Baudelaire’s poem, 101 175

176

Index

Baudelairian spleen, 101 Bausinger, Tobias, 128–29 Beaupré, Nicolas, 153 Beauvoir, Simone de, 71n2 Becker, Annette, 1, 9, 26, 155 Bel-Gazou, 61–65 “Bel-Gazou et la guerre,” 62, 64 “Bel-Gazou et la vie chère,” 64 Bienvenu, Reine, 48 biological warfare, 101, 128, 140 birds: in Colette, 45–47, 86; as common trope, 106; in Force-Bonté, 86–87, 105; in La Main coupée, 86, 105–6, 108–9, 119 “Blessés: L’Aube,” 61 Bleu horizon, 123 blindness: hysterical, 15; as psychosomatic symptom, 12, 15 Le Bochofage, 101 Bogousslavsky, Julien, 120–21 Boisdeffre, Pierre de, 24 Bolognaro, Eugenio, 52 Bonnaire, Eric, 128 Borgeaud, Madeleine, 146 “Boule de Suif,” 37 Bourgeois, Marc-Louis, 16 Bourlet, Mélanie, 78–79, 85 Bourlinguer, 91 Braque, Georges, 94 Bratcher, Nathan, 157 Brault-Dreux, Élise, 120 Brière, Eloise, 75, 78 British army: and immigrant labor, 134–35; and war dogs, 50 Brosman, Catharine Savage, 4, 94, 121 Brücker, Burkhart, 27 Bursey, Jeff, 91 Calligrammes, 46 camaraderie, as literary theme, 3, 109, 153 Camus, Albert, 11, 156 canines. See war dogs Carden-Coyne, Ana, 121, 125, 138 Carton, Paul, 26

cats, in trenches, 109 “Celle qui attend,” 32 Cendrars, Blaise: amputation, 119–21; and animals, 106, 110; antiwar stance, 3, 46, 92–93, 118–19, 121, 153; and Balzac, 93, 99, 114–16; and cubism, 3, 94–95, 99, 107, 112, 118, 121–22, 154; early career, 91; as foreign combatant, 61, 89, 91; German heritage, 99, 120; in J’Accuse, 150; nature imagery, 6; and realism, 93; and Zola, 6 Ceux de 14, 4 Cézanne, Paul, 119 Chaîne, Pierre, 100, 111–12 La Chambre éclairée, 1–2, 39–40 Champly, Henri, 124 Charcot, Jean-Martin, 15 “La Chasse aux produits allemands,” 42 Chateaubriand, René de, 85 Les Chemins de la liberté, 156 Chernet, Meklet Tariku, 127 Chevallier, Gabriel, 7n2 Le Chien auxiliaire de la police, 48 “La Chienne,” 55 “Les Chiens sanitaires”: Hiver 1913/1914,” 52; Mai 1915,” 50, 52 children: in Colette, 2, 40, 43, 62–64; impact of war on, 40, 62, 64–65, 81; and propaganda, 62 Chinese laborers, 134–39, 148 Christmas 1914 truce, 96, 107, 115 Les Cicatrices Rouges 14–18, 9 civilians. See noncombatants Clausewitz, Carl von, 102 Cocteau, Jean, 94 Colette: on abortion, 69–70; and animals, 2, 45, 47–56, 88, 109; bird imagery, 45–47, 86; and children, 2, 40, 43, 62–65, 68; economic themes, 40; general themes, 2; journalism, 39–40, 43, 48, 57–58, 61; nature imagery, 6–7, 46; and readers, 58; on veterans, 40, 60–61; on war rape, 18, 68–70; on women, 38, 57, 59

Index

“La Colombe poignardée et le jet d’eau,” 47 Le Colonel Chabert, 116 colonialism, in Diallo, 2, 75, 78, 81 colonial troops, 2, 5, 73–74, 76–79, 82, 86, 89 combatants: dehumanization, 98, 108, 119, 121; and disease, 100, 104–5; glorification of, 92, 115; and head wounds, 60–61; and isolation, 101, 122n3; and marraines de guerre, 58; and Military War Dogs, 48–51, 53, 55; and power dynamics, 30; and PTSD, 59; and war widows, 58; as writers, 92, 122–23, 155 La Comédie humaine, 2, 10, 93, 114, 154 Commission for Relief in Belgium. See CRB Connolly, James E., 9 “Conte de Bel-Gazou à sa poupée,” 65 Corps et âmes, 11, 26, 103 Cottier, Christine Le Quellac, 96 countryside: destruction of, 127–29, 133, 150; recovery, 132; as setting, 3 Cousturier, Lucie, 84 CRB (Commission for Relief in Belgium), 21–22 Crocq, Louis, 124 Les Croix de bois, 3–4, 7n2, 8n3, 123; and critics, 157 Cru, Jean Norton, 3, 157 cubism: collage technique in Cendrars, 3, 93–94, 96–101, 103, 105–9, 111, 113–16, 118–19, 121–22, 154; and literature, 94; and upended chronology, 3, 6, 94–95 Cuveline, Marie-Rose, 34 Dadaism, 94 Darrow, Margaret H., 39, 89 Das, Santu, 76 De Boever, Maarten, 127 Debruyne, Emmanuel, 18, 30 degeneration, theory of, 26–27

177

DeLargy, Pamela, 66–67 Delbo, Charlotte, 157 Delesalle, Charles, 18 Demangeon, Albert, 128 depression, portrayals of, 25, 101, 134 Derex, Jean-Michel, 49, 103 Descaves, Lucien, 125 De Schaepdrijver, Sophie, 21 Des Inconnus chez moi, 84 Desnos, Robert, 157 determinism, 6, 24, 32, 37 De Wael, Gaston, 49 Diallo, Bakary: admiration for French values, 74–75, 81; and animals, 88–89; as character in film, 76; and colonialism, 2, 75, 78, 81; and conflict resolution, 82; convalescence, 84; critiques against, 75, 78; on equality, 74, 78–82; and French language, 74, 77–78; and French Republic, 74, 79–80, 89, 153; humanism, 74, 78, 89; and intolerance, 81–82; and marraines de guerre, 58, 84; and Peuhl culture, 75, 79, 81–83, 85; and pulaaku, 2, 75, 79–84, 88–89 Dialogues de bêtes, 47–48 disempowering them, 66 Dorgelès, Roland: autobiographical elements, 146; career, 123; on patriotism, 141; on trauma, 6, 127– 28, 139; on veterans, 123–24, 126, 132; and Zola, 125, 148 Dos Passos, John, 93 Doumer, Paul, 131 Dujardin, Marc, 10 Dumont, Paula, 56 Du Pont, Koenraad, 122 Dvořák, Marta, 94 Echenberg, Myron, 75 Écrivain de Lubine, 23 écrivains-combattants, 92, 123, 155 education, and propaganda, 62, 79, 155 L’Élu, 11

178

Index

L’Empreinte de Dieu, 11 endam, 75, 82–84 “L’Enfant de l’ennemi,” 9, 68, 70 enfants barbares, 2, 19, 33, 39, 66–68, 70 environmental awareness, 128, 154 Les Éparges, 4 Eurocentrism, 5 facial injuries, 60–61, 82, 121 “Fantômes,” 65 farmland, 44, 128–29. See also countryside Fear, 7n2 Feo, Katherine, 60 Le Feu, 4, 7n2 films, 1, 8, 8n3, 71, 76, 107, 112, 149–50 food insecurity, 2, 14, 21–22, 42, 135–36 Force-Bonté: animals in, 87; as bildungsroman, 88; bird imagery, 86–87, 105; and colonialism, 7, 78; and critics, 75, 77–79, 88; egalitarianism, 79–80, 82, 84, 88; endam, 75, 82–84; fotuki, 79, 81–82, 84, 88; as imperialist critique, 78–79; laddabu, 75, 80–81; munyal, 75, 81, 83; nature imagery, 7, 86; ngoru, 75, 83; as proto-Senegalese literature, 73; pulaaku, 2, 75, 79–84, 88–89; semteende, 75, 79, 84 Forest, Philippe, 94–95 fotuki, 79, 81–82, 84, 88 La Française, 70 France: central, 86; collective memory of WWI, 1, 6; and colonial troops, 75–77, 80, 86, 153; and immigrant laborers, 134–35, 139; journalism in, 39; Nazi occupation, 118, 154–57; sensitive, 80; treatment of veterans, 61, 63, 123, 126 La France occupée: 1914–1918, 9 Franco-Prussian War, 16, 102, 142 French Foreign Legion, 91–92, 110, 153

Furst, Lilian R., 12 futurism, 93 Gance, Abel, 8n3, 150 Gargantua, 83 Garnier, Xavier, 75 Gautier-Villars, Henry, 39 Geneuil, Guy-Pierre, 112 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, 66 Genevoix, Maurice, 4, 17 German soldiers: and French women, 13, 19, 30, 32–34, 37, 38n3, 66–67; positive depictions, 14, 22, 25 Germinal, 4, 25 Gide, André, 38–39 Gilman, Sander, 61 Giono, Jean, 7n2, 122n2, 122 Giraudoux, Jean, 5 Goldberg, Nancy, 124, 126 Goldblatt, Cullen, 75, 78–80, 87 Good-Bye To All That, 7n2 Graves, Robert, 7n2 Grayzel, Susan, 58 La Guerre des enfants, 9 “Harmonie du soir,” 101 Harris, Corra, 40 Harris, Ruth, 67 head injuries, 60, 116 Hemingway, Ernest, 7n2 Herman, Judith, 6 Herodotus, 66 Les Heures longues, 1–2, 39–40, 43 Higonnet, Margaret R., 5, 40, 65, 121 Hippocrates, 16 Holmes, Diana, 56 Holocaust, 155, 157n1, 157 Homer, 66 L’Homme foudroyé, 91 L’Homosexualité au front durant la Grande Guerre, 155 Hoover, Herbert, 21–22, 38 Horne, John, 66 horses, 44, 48, 87, 109–10

Index

Hugo, Victor, 130 humanitarian crisis, war as, 22, 110 Hurcombe, Martin, 123, 126, 149 hysteria, 12, 15, 124 illness: infections, 15, 19, 100, 104; mental, 26; psychosomatic, 12, 15; as sign of moral corruption, 27 immigrants, 89, 91–92, 135 Inal, Tuba, 66 injuries, aesthetic surgery for, 60–61 Invasion 14, 2; balanced depiction of German troops, 11, 14, 22–23; critiques of, 11, 22; and determinism, 24, 26; as fictional truth, 10; on food insecurity, 21–22, 42; and hereditary defect theory, 28; noncombatants in, 9; and physiognomy, 15; portrayal of psychosomatic illness, 12–13, 26; and realism, 2, 9–10, 12, 38; and trauma, 14, 25; and Zola, 6, 24–26, 30, 154 J’Accuse, 8n3, 149–50 J’ai tué, 96, 98–100, 108 “Jour de l’An en Argonne,” 43–44, 62 Journal de guerre d’une femme dans les Vosges occupées (1914–1918), 23 Journal des régions dévastées, 135 Jouvenel des Ursines, Henry de, 42, 60 Joyeux Noël, 107 Kopp, Ben, 141 Kramer, Alan, 66 “Le Lac,” 129 laddabu, 75, 80–81 L’Âge de raison, 156 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 129 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 12, 23 Le Naour, Jean-Yves, 38, 76, 84 Lectures pour une ombre, 5 Léger, Fernand, 112 Leonard, Matthew, 100 Leroy, Claude, 99, 120

179

“Les Lettres,” 57 Lévesque, Jean-Henry, 92–93, 95 LGBTQ+ community, 155 “Lit 29,” 37 Live, Yu-Sion, 135, 137 Le Lotissement du ciel, 91 Lunn, Joe, 77, 83, 89 Le Lys dans la vallée, 12 Ma, Li, 135 Magnan, Valentin, 27 La Main coupée: 1914 Christmas truce, 107; animals in, 109–11; antiwar message, 92–93, 95; bird imagery, 86–87, 105–6, 108–9, 119; and critics, 94; as cubist collage, 94–96, 99, 101, 106, 112, 114, 118–19, 122, 154; depiction of immigrants, 89, 91; hybrid nature, 94; lice, 103–5; nature imagery, 6, 100, 103; and realism, 93; upended chronology, 95; use of literary allusion, 102–3 Maingon, Claire, 120 Malraux, André, 11 Marquiset, Jean, 19–20 marraines de guerre, 58, 81, 84, 89 Martin, Louis, 67 Martin-Froment, Clémence, 23 maternalists, 68–69 Le Matin, 39 Maupassant, Guy de, 37–38 Mauriac, François, 11 “M’Bala,” 85 Melliez, Mary, 23 Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée, 71 Mémoires d’un rat, 100, 111 memorialization, 153, 155–56 military war dogs. See MWD mind-body connection, 26, 28, 38, 82 Mitterand, Henri, 26, 93, 114, 121– 22, 154 modernism, 93, 125 Montaigne, Michel de, 98–99 Moreau de la Sarthe, Jacques-Louis, 12 Morel, Bénédicte, 27

180

Index

Morocco, 73–74, 80, 83, 85, 88 La Mort dans l’âme, 156 Morzewski, Christian, 11 Mosse, George L., 154–55 Les Mouches, 156 Mouralis, Bernard, 75 munyal, 75, 81, 83 Murphy: David, 73; Libby, 95, 112–13 “Le Musée Grévin,” 156–57 MWD, 39, 48–52, 87, 111 MWD (military war dogs), 40, 48–54, 56, 71, 87, 109–11, 154 naturalism, 4, 24 naturopathy, 26 Nazi occupation, 118, 154–57 Nécropolis, 124 Négritude movement, 78 Nerval, Gérard de, 59 Newsome, W. Brian, 10–11, 13, 23, 34 newspapers: depictions of occupiers, 22; as matchmakers, 58; public loss of trust in, 155; trench, 122n3; on war rape, 68 ngoru, 75, 83 Nivet, Philippe, 22–23, 30, 135, 137 noncombatants: displacement, 132, 143; food insecurity, 42, 135; and occupiers, 30, 37, 155; and reconstruction, 132–33; representation in novels, 5; scholarship on, 9; and sexual violence, 66; and trauma, 2, 18, 38, 56, 124, 131, 148, 154; wartime conditions, 2, 41, 110 Nord, 2, 11, 13–14, 19, 21–22, 26, 38, 42, 107 “La Nouvelle. AoÛt 1914,” 43 “La Nuit paisible,” 45 Offenstadt, Nicolas, 1 Of Glory, 98 O’Neill, Mark, 135, 138 La Paix chez les bêtes, 54

“Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles,” 93 panic attacks, 7, 145, 147 Papastamkou, Sofia, 61 paralysis, 12; hysterical, 14 parents, 1, 14–16, 18, 62, 76 Paris: aerial attacks, 45; interwar, 3, 7, 108; wartime conditions, 42 Le Parisien, 39 Pascal, Blaise, 103–4 patriotic miracle straightens, 41 patriotism, 19, 32, 58, 62–63, 141 Pau, Béatrix, 126 Pavlov, Ivan, 54–55 Pearson, Chris, 48, 51–52, 106, 109– 11, 128 pensions, 74, 76, 144, 149 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. See PETA Percy, Eustace, 21 Le Père Goriot, 17, 23, 37, 99 La Peste (Camus), 156 La Peste (Desnos), 157 PETA, 55 petite guerre dans la grande, 3, 112–13 Le Petit Parisien, 39 Peuhl culture, 2, 74–76, 79–82, 84–85 physiognomy, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 23, 26–27, 47, 154 picaresque, 95–96 Picasso, Pablo, 94, 112, 119 Pignot, Manon, 62, 65 “Plomberie et Gaz,” 41–42 poilus: and animals, 48–49, 51, 71n1, 109, 111; definition, 8n4; expendability, 108; in film, 8n3; reintegration, 61, 122–23, 126, 137; and tirailleurs, 79–80, 84, 88; trench conditions, 42, 64, 99–101, 104, 111, 138; and women, 56, 58–59; as writers, 122n3 poison gas, 48, 129 post-traumatic stress disorder. See PTSD pregnancies, 2, 32, 67–68 “Présages,” 57

Index

Preuß, Johannes, 128 princesses, 19, 33. See also prostitution prisoners of war, 9, 65–66, 113 Le Progrès de la Somme, 137 propaganda, 61–62, 65–66, 70 “La Prose du Transsibérien et de la Petite Jehanne de France,” 93 prosthetics, 60–61 prostitution, 19, 30, 35 Proust, Marcel, 39 Prrou, Poucette et quelques autres, 48, 54 psychosomatic illness, 10, 12, 14–15, 20, 26, 154 PTSD, 59, 81, 124–25, 127, 129–30, 133–34, 139–40, 142, 145–47, 150. See also shell shock pulaaku, 2, 75, 79–84, 88–89 Rabelais, François, 83, 96 Rabier, Paul, 68–69 race-based traumatic stress (RBTS), 81 racism, 2, 7, 73, 77–78, 87, 136–37, 139; and stereotypes, 135–36 Ragache, Claude-Catherine, 138 rape, 2, 18, 31, 39, 66–70 Rasson, Luc, 24 rations, 21, 23, 42. See also food insecurity realism, 9, 12, 38, 93, 121, 125, 154, 156 Reconstructing the Body, 125 reconstruction, 124, 126, 128–35, 144, 150 Red Cross, 50–51 Red Zone, 3, 126–28, 132, 136, 139, 151, 154 “Le Refuge: 13 avril 1915,” 49, 53–54, 88 Remarque, Erich Maria, 8n3 Resistance, 156–57 Resistencialism, 156 Le Réveil des morts: on Chinese laborers, 135–36; depictions of trauma, 6, 43, 61, 124–27, 130–31,

181

133–34, 138–39, 148–49, 151, 154; main themes, 3; nature imagery, 7, 128–29; on veterans, 122–26, 143, 154 Rêveries d’un promeneur solitaire, 85 Richardson, Edwin Hautenville, 49 Riesman, Paul, 79 Riesz, János, 89n2 Rimbaud, Arthur, 122, 142 Rioux, Jean-Pierre, 149 Robb, George, 77, 81 Roma communities, 155–56 Romagny, Henri de, 104 Romanticism, 7, 129, 156 Les Rougon-Macquart, 2, 6, 10, 12, 14, 24–28, 37, 125, 154 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 85 Rousseau, Louis, 106 Rousso, Henry, 156 Rowland, Antony, 157 Saletes, Jean-Loup, 77–78 “La Salivation psychique,” 54–55 Sand, George, 12 Sanyal, Debarati, 156–57 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 156 The Saturday Evening Post, 40 Sauvage, Juliette, 125, 141 Scènes de la vie orientales, 59 Schiesari, Juliana, 47, 50–52, 55 Schontjes, Pierre, 1 Schwarz, Julien, 27 semteende, 75, 79, 84 Senegal, 74, 77, 81–82, 89n1 Serin, Suzanne, 26 sexually transmitted disease, 19, 33, 116 shell shock, 50, 65. See also PTSD Shenefelt: Debrah A., 15; Philip D., 15 Shoah. See Holocaust Shorter, Edward, 12 Sites of Memory, 9 Sites of Mourning, 9 soldiers. See combatants soldier-writers. See écrivains-combattants

182

Index

Spielberg, Steven, 71 starvation. See food insecurity Stendhal, 38 Stephenson, Jill, 141 suicide, 14, 26 Le Sursis, 156 Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours, 156 Tack, Filip, 127 Taine, Hippolyte, 24, 26, 28–30, 37 témoin, 3, 10, 120–21 Témoins: Essai d’analyse . . . , 3 “La Tête,” 60 Thébaud, Françoise, 58 theory of degeneration, 26–27 Thérèse Raquin, 29, 148 Le Tiers livre, 96 Tinayre, Marcelle, 32 tirailleurs: and colonialism, 75–79, 89; and German propaganda, 83; origin, 89n1; overlooked, 75–76, 153; portrayal of, 2, 73; racist treatment of, 77 Tóth, Orsolya, 12 To The Slaughterhouse, 7n2 Touret, Michèle, 7 trauma: in animals, 54; defined, 5; and healing, 6; and noncombatants, 38–39, 44; and physical symptoms, 12, 30, 82; and place, 7, 14; psychological effects, 3, 62, 124; and PTSD, 59, 124, 127, 145 trauma narratives, 6–7, 10, 71, 73, 92 trenches: animals in, 49, 71n1, 109, 111; filling in, 130–31, 135; illness in, 99–101, 103–5, 138; nature of warfare in, 4, 98, 122 trench newspapers, 101, 104, 122n3 Trente mille jours, 17 “Tristesse d’Olympio,” 130 Tytler, Graeme, 12 Uekötter, Frank, 128, 130 Ukraine, 2, 67, 128, 149, 157

Van der Kolk, Bessel, 127 Van der Meersch, Maxence: and Balzac, 2, 10, 12, 14–15, 17, 23, 37; and Catholicism, 11, 24; childhood, 10; influences, 38n1; literary career, 10–11; and Maupassant, 37; and Zola, 6, 10, 12–14, 23–24, 26–27, 29–30, 37, 154 Van Meirvenne, Marc, 127 Vanoncini, André, 94, 114 Vercel, Roger, 26–27 Verdun, cache, 59 “À Verdun. Décembre–Janvier 1915,” 42, 46–47, 59 Verlaine, Paul, 41 Le Ver Luisant, 104 Verstraete, Samuel, 127 veterans: advocacy, 123, 126, 149; foreign, 76; and PTSD, 124; rehabilitation, 121; reintegration, 3, 40, 60–61, 123, 125–26, 132, 143, 149; and trauma narratives, 7; and war widows, 58–59 Vichy regime, 155–56 war godmothers. See marraines de guerre War Horse, 8n3, 71n1 war rape. See rape war widows, 25, 58–59, 124, 126, 144 Weir, David, 128 Welch, David, 66 West African troops, 74–75, 77, 83, 87–89, 153 widows. See war widows Winter, Jay, 9, 11 women: and abortion, 69; in Colette, 2n2, 40, 56–57; and convents, 36–37; as marraines de guerre, 58, 89n3; and marriage, 57–59; and prostitution, 19–20, 30, 35–37, 116; and rape, 2, 18–19, 66–70; relationships with German soldiers, 23–25, 32, 34, 36–37, 38n3; and sexuality, 19–20, 35

Index

World War II, 76, 91, 154–57 Zola, Émile: and Barbusse, 4; and determinism, 6, 24, 26–27; and Dorgelès, 125, 148, 154; and

183

naturalism, 23; and physiognomy, 10, 12, 38; and Taine, 26; and theory of degeneration, 27; and Van der Meersch, 2, 6, 10, 13–14, 23–25, 29–30, 37

About the Author

Kathy Comfort is a Professor of French at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her book Refiguring Les Années Noires: Literary Representations of the Nazi Occupation was published by Lexington Books in 2019.

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