Calvaire des chiens

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Calvaire des chiens is the fifth novel by the French author François Bon and was published in 1990 .

The novel is about the experiences of a small Franco-German film team who researches in an abandoned village in the French Cévennes about a man who keeps numerous dogs abandoned by their owners on an abandoned farm and who finally begins to kill them.

The title of the novel alludes to the original meaning of the word calvaire (Eng. Calvary ) and refers in the novel to the abandoned village and the dogs killed and buried there.

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Jacques Barbin, a French writer, spends the year before the fall of the Berlin Wall in Berlin. He is involved as a screenwriter in a film project directed by a filmmaker from Eastern Europe. Barbin works with the German writer Andreas Herlitz.

Together they develop a story, inspired by a fait divers that attracted Barbin's attention the previous summer: A young couple, Louis-Marie Raymond and his girlfriend, lived in an abandoned village in the French Cevennes. It made its living taking care of dogs whose owners no longer wanted to keep them. As they were soon overwhelmed by the steadily growing number of dogs, the young man began to kill the dogs while his girlfriend left the village.

In preparation for the shooting, the film team travels to the Cevennes and meets the young man and Étienne Hozier, a crazy older man who also continues to live in the deserted village. Little by little, the film people immerse themselves in the whole tragedy of the story that is hidden behind the fait divers . The actress who was supposed to play Louis-Marie's girlfriend eventually refuses to take part in the project. First the film team returns to Berlin. Then Barbin is fired, whereupon he leaves Berlin and goes back to France. There he tells a friend about his experiences in long conversations.

subjects

First of all, the novel addresses the loneliness of the protagonists in many ways, be it Barbin in Berlin or Raymond in the deserted village.

In addition, Calvaire des chiens thematizes cinema in a variety of ways: It plays an important role at the level of the plot, but also in the form of reflections on the relationship between literature and film and right down to the literary aesthetics of the novel itself. Indeed, one can understand the novel as a reflection on the relationships between the real, perception and artistic representation. Both the question of the authenticity of writing and images and the reception of books and films are reflected on. This happens not only through the special narrative style (see below), but also through the special role of cinema in the novel. Dominique Viart summarizes this problem as follows:

“Beyond the 'story' that the novel tells, Calvaire des chiens is particularly convincing through the way this story is presented: through the prism of research and the film project, which lead to every perception and every understanding confrontation with the Real ones are questioned. The meeting, indeed the confrontation, between the 'raw material' of fait divers and the representation that one begins to make of it opens up a space for a critique of the artistic act itself. "

Narrative

The text of the novel consists of a long conversation between Barbin (the protagonist) and his friend, as if the latter had written it down. From the conversations, the subject of which changes again and again between the time in Berlin and the stay in the Cevennes, the reader gathers both the course of Barbin's gradual understanding of the fait divers , the progress in the work on the script and, thereby conveyed, the History of Louis-Marie and the abandoned village. This results in the special narrative style of the novel, which consists in the fact that the voices of the numerous people who have their say do not alternate unconnected, but overlap in the voice of the superordinate narrator. Evelyne Sinassamy speaks of the fact that these insertions recur in the text like a drum kit or a drum rhythm. Through this narrative situation, the high degree of communication of the novel is brought to the fore, which in turn establishes a reflection on the relationship between reality and fiction. Dominique Viart writes about this: "It's about never allowing the reader to immerse themselves in the story being told, except in the awareness of the mediation and refraction, which is always remembered."

Background information

Origin context

The novel was written as a result of a one-year stay in West Berlin and is shaped by impressions from Berlin. The writing phase only began after returning to the French Vendée. After the fall of the wall, with which the historical situation had changed so radically, the book no longer seemed to make sense: "le bouquin n'avait plus de sens", explains Bon in an interview. At the urging of his publisher Jérôme Lindon for Editions de Minuit, Bon decided to revise it and then publish it.

During the same period as Calvaire des chiens and also partly in Berlin, an extensive essay with the title La Folie Rabelais (1990) was created. A short story with the title "Berlin, l'île sans mur" also addresses Berlin.

Classification in the overall work

Calvaire des chiens is François Bon's fifth novel. Although the novel opens up new subject areas on the surface with Berlin and the Cévennes, it remains true to the principle of paying attention to things and people that have been neglected.

Another innovation compared to the previous novels is that the reflection on the representation of the real, which has played an important role for François Bon from the beginning, is incorporated in Calvaire des chiens differently than in the previous novels through the medium of film (see above ). The novel has this in common with the novel Un fait divers (1994) , published a few years later . For Wolfgang Asholt the novel is above all a criticism and a deconstruction of the novel in the novel itself "and therefore represents a decisive stage in the development of Bon's work, away from the novel and towards the narrative.

The novel also has an important place in the overall work, because in formal terms it represents “a conclusion and a new beginning” in relation to the previous novels. His special narrative style can be explained as a further development from the three previous novels by François Bons, which ultimately resulted in a new stage in François Bons work. How Limite (dt. Limit ), Le Crime de Buzon and Décor ciment also draws up Calvaire des chiens by the constant change of locations and its chronological disorder of out. However, the previous novels (with the exception of Sortie d'usine ) had no central narrator, but consisted of a chorus of monologues, the merging of which the story emerged like a puzzle. The embedding of the various voices in the voice of the superordinate narrator gives the impression of a greater unity and clarity of the narrative, which, however, is undermined by a complex time structure and the large number of speaking voices.

Reception and effect

Immediately after its publication, the novel was extensively reviewed and later dealt with in scientific publications in France and Germany (see literature). A German translation is not yet available, although it is basically a Franco-German novel in which Berlin plays an important role.

Text output

  • Calvaire des chiens . Paris: Minuit, 1990. (Original edition)

literature

items

  • Asholt, Wolfgang. “Calvaire des chiens, un dernier roman?”, In Dominique Viart and Jean-Bernard Vray (ed.), François Bon, éclats de réalité , Saint-Étienne: Publications de l'Univ. Saint-Étienne, 2010, pp. 283-292.
  • Asholt, Wolfgang. “Modernism of Mourning: François Bon”. In: The French novel of the eighties . Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994, pp. 113-151, there pp. 138-151.
  • Viart, Dominique. “'Théâtre d'images'. L'esthétique de François Bon d'après Calvaire des chiens . ”In: Roman et Cinéma . Lille: Roman 20-50, 1996, pp. 103-123. (Also available online (PDF; 228 kB).)
  • Viart, Dominique. François Bon, étude de l'œuvre. Paris: Bordas, 2008. (The chapter "Repenser la littérature", pp. 46-69 deals with Calvaire des chiens , among others .)

Reviews (selection)

  • Evelyne Sinassamy. “'Je parle d'une ville qui a disparu': Calvaire des Chiens de François Bon”. In: Lendemains 16.62, 1991, pp. 93-96.
  • Claude Prévost. "Une prose de skin vol". In: L'Humanité , October 17, 1990. (Also available online.)
  • René de Cecatty. "La Folie Bon". In: Le Monde , September 28, 1990, p. 24.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Original quote: “Au-delà de 'l'histoire' que le roman raconte, Calvaire des chiens vaut par la façon dont cette histoire est présentée, à travers le prisme du repérage et du projet de transposition cinématographique, qui conduisent à interroger toute perception et toute intellection du réel. La rencontre, voire la confrontation, entre la 'matière brute' du fait divers et la representation que l'on s'apprête à en faire, ménage toute une critique de l'acte artistique. ”(Dominique Viart, François Bon, étude de l'oeuvre , Paris: Bordas, 2008, p. 51.) For detailed information on this topic: Dominique Viart. “'Théâtre d'images'. L'esthétique de François Bon d'après Calvaire des chiens. ”In: Roman et Cinéma . Lille: Roman 20-50, 1996, pp. 103-123. (Also available online (PDF; 228 kB).)
  2. ↑ An example: “'As if you sometimes have trouble separating your own inner existence from the one you live for others', Raymond had said to the actress, as she repeated to me, said Barbin." Frz. Original: "" Comme d'avoir du mal parfois à distinguer sa vie intérieure de celle qu'on vit pour les autres ", avait dit Raymond à l'actrice, me répétait-elle, disait Barbin." ( Calvaire des chiens , Paris : Minuit, 1990, p. 139).
  3. ^ "Comme une percussion" (Evelyne Sinassamy, "'Je parle d'une ville qui a disparu': Calvaire des Chiens , de François Bon", Lendemains 16.62, 1991, p. 93).
  4. ↑ Original quote: "Il s'agit de ne jamais permettre au lecteur de se prendre à l'histoire rapportée sinon avec la conscience d'une diffraction toujours rappelée." (Dominique Viart, François Bon, étude de l'oeuvre , Paris: Bordas , 2008, pp. 53–54.)
  5. ↑ This information comes from an interview: "L'écriture au corps à corps", entretien avec Thierry Guichard, in: Le Matricule des Anges 3, avril-mai 1993, p. 2.
  6. ^ "Berlin, l'île sans mur" , in: Désordre.net (1988).
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Asholt, “Calvaire des chiens, un dernier roman?”, In Dominique Viart et Jean-Bernard Vray (ed.), François Bon, éclats de réalité, Saint-Étienne: Publications de l'Univ. Saint-Étienne, 2010, 283-292, 292, 284.
  8. ↑ Wolfgang Asholt, "Mourning Work of Modernity: François Bon". In: The French novel of the eighties . Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1994, pp. 113-151, there p. 139.