Memory with wings

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Memory with wings is a novel by Romain Gary published in 1980 under the title Les Cerfs-volants . It is the last of his books published during his lifetime.

The book is set in the milieu of the Resistance in France during the German occupation and is about the first love among young people, building and playing with toy kites and the war in Normandy in 1944 on the eve of liberation . It is dedicated to "memory".

content

Ten-year-old Ludovic began to tell about his uncle, old Ambroise Fleury, in a remote village in Upper Normandy, Cléry near Les Andelys , from the early 1930s . The old man delights the village children with new dragons that often represent characters from French history, e.g. B. Jean-Jacques Rousseau . It continues to be about Ludo's early youth, his first love, later about his work for the French Resistance, in particular rescuing downed Allied airmen, then about the landing of the Allies in Normandy and the fierce fighting between them and the Germans, finally about the Liberation of the country and the return of the unharmed uncle from the Auschwitz concentration camp .

Ludo lives in a Norman village. At the age of ten he met Lila, the daughter of a Polish nobleman who has his summer residence here in a manor house, and also her two brothers and the German nephew Hans. Fierce competition for Lila breaks out between Hans and Ludo. When the Germans conquered the country in 1940, his uncle, the pacifist Ambroise, used his kites more and more for political demonstrations until, after the raid on Vel 'd'Hiv , which also killed many Jewish children, he put seven yellow stars in the Sky rise. He had to move south to the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in the Cevennes , whose inhabitants, under the direction of their pastor André Trocmé, hide thousands of Jewish children and thereby save their lives. He also builds many kites for these children.

Ludo joined the Resistance at the age of 19. His group retrieves Allied planes that have been shot down and smuggles them abroad. With the help of a Jewish agent, a matchmaker and brothel landlady, the group infiltrated the local Nazi apparatus and was able to give information to the government in exile in London. Ludo and Lila experience the bombing of Normandy after the Allies landed in close proximity. In 1944, her hair was shorn as a punishment for getting involved with German occupiers to raise money. Ludo demonstratively marries her in the same village, freshly shorn, which fulfills her love after 14 years. The uncle comes back from the concentration camp, his newest dragon announces his return from afar.

Literary classification

As in his book "European Education" from 1945, Gary makes an impressive commitment to humanity and Europe, here in the constellation France-Poland-Germany. Although he fought against the Germans as a fighter pilot on the Gaullist side, Gary describes the situation at the time in a differentiated manner and without black and white painting. The rivalry between the two young people, the German Hans and the French Ludo, for Lila's favor is intensified by the war. Gary clearly describes the horrors of war and the survivors' difficulties in relearning life and love after the war and in respecting the human dignity of others.

The book is a little known work in Germany by Gary, a Jewish author of Lithuanian-Polish origin and bestselling author of the French post-war period. It is fed by his personal experiences, it summarizes the worldview of its author and is at the same time a declaration of love for his adopted home France. The question is what makes France a nation, since the people there are no better than others in the world? For Ambroise and Ludo, they are the great thinkers of the Enlightenment and respect for human rights , symbolized in the novel in the dragon figures that soar in the sky of Cléry. The dragons as works of art also show us the redeeming power of art, a continuous motif in Gary.

The novel pays homage to hope, courage and memory.

In 1979 Gary completed this novel. At the same time, his wife Jean Seberg committed suicide. Gary now stopped writing new books. A good year later, the novel was published in the fall of 1980, Gary also died of suicide. In his suicide note he refers to the final sentence of "Memory with wings" as his motto in life. In a radio broadcast from 1979 he also emphasized the key role this book played in his life's work: I don't always succeed in applying the recipes from my books to my life, but this book is actually the story of people who cannot despair.

He emphasizes his ideal of writing even more clearly, namely an identity of author and work that is as extensive as possible, which is particularly applicable to the statements in "Memory with Wings", in his short essay Vie et mort d'Émile Ajar , written in 1979 , the (again, after the huge work Pour Sganarelle) in brief his literary theory contains:

The ideal narrative is the "total narrative" where it would be impossible to distinguish between the writer in his real life and his fictional heroic character. This hero figure bears the traits of Picaro , the adventurer of the 18th century, who is known for his extraordinary (legendary) personality as well as for his successful (beautiful) works.

Film adaptations

The novel was made into a four-part film in 1983 directed by Pierre Badel for French television, starring Anne Gautier, Jacques Penot, Jean-Marc Thibault, Paul Crauchet and Rosy Varte. In 2007 the book was filmed again for TV, with Marc-André Grondin as Ludo and Gaëlle Bona as Lila, a Franco-Belgian co-production.

Further use of the novel motif

  • The French cultural center Center Culturel Français Romain Gary in Jerusalem shows an animated children's kite in the French national colors as a logo on its homepage.

expenditure

  • Romain Gary: Memory with Wings. Novel. From the French by Jeanne Pachnicke ("Les cerfs-volants"). Series Cheap Books bb, No. 638. Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin (GDR) 1989 ISBN 3351015003 ; there is no cpl. Translation into English, but see web links
    • in Russian: Ромен Гари: Воздушные змеи. роман (Vozdushnye zmei. roman) Symposium, St. Petersburg 2004 ISBN 5890912666
  • Romain Gary: The Hunt for the Blue. Novel. From the French by Jeanne Pachnicke ("Les cerfs-volants"). Edition Blau in Rotpunktverlag, Zurich 2019 ISBN 978-3-85869-828-5
  • Audio book CD, not available in stores: DAISY audio book , speaker Uwe Schröder. 678 min., E.g. B. No. 6915 at the German Central Library for the Blind , Postfach 100245, D 04002 Leipzig (also at other libraries for the blind )
  • French excerpts in text and SOUND (CD) in Geneviève Baradona Ed .: Littérature en dialogue. Intermédiaire level. ISBN 2090352183 (with teaching material)

literature

  • Tzvetan Todorov : Hope and Memory. Lessons from the 20th century. From the French. Princeton UP 2003 ISBN 0691096589 chap. The Achievement of Romain Gary, pp. 213-228 (in Engl.)
    • First version: Mémoire du mal. Tentation you bien. Inquiry sur le siècle. Robert Laffont, Paris 2000.
    • ders .: La signature humaine. Essais 1983-2008. éd. du Seuil, Paris 2009
    • ders .: Romain Gary: Géographie de la mémoire. in Mireille Sacotte et al. Ed .: RG ou la pluralité du monde. Actes du congrès ... PUF, Paris 2002 ISBN 2130524125 (anthology on the first global congress on Gary)
  • Anny Dayan Rosenman: Des cerfs-volants jaunes en forme d'étoiles. La judéite paradoxale de Romain Gary. in Zs. Les Temps Modernes No. 568, Nov. 1993, pp. 30-54

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Many names in the novel are full of allusions: AF was a mayor of Rouen, he lived from 1789 to 1857, so a street in the city is named after him and his grave can still be visited. Presumably Gary is not referring to him, but refers to the hotel "Coteau Fleury" (Blossoming Vineyard) in Le-Chambon-sur-Lignon, where the villagers accommodated refugees from the Nazis and the Vichy officials. This village was very important to Gary as a symbol.
  2. ^ Nancy Huston : Romain Gray, a foreign body in French literature. In: Delf Schmidt (Ed.): Masks, Metamorphoses. Rowohlt Literature Magazine No. 45, Reinbek 2000 ISBN 3498039083 ISSN  0934-6503 pp. 113-133. The essay provides an excellent introduction to Gary's oeuvre
  3. ↑ see the reference article Le Chambon-sur-Lignon for context. Gary's letter: Peut-être faut-il chercher la réponse dans le titre de mon ouvrage autobiographique: “La Nuit sera calme” et dans les derniers mots de mon dernier roman: “car on ne saurait mieux dire”, je me suis enfin exprimé entièrement. The answer to the question of why he died by suicide lies in the title of his book, literally "In the night there will be silence." and in the final sentence of Les cerfs-volants: "... because there is no better way to express it (a meaning of life)", namely by rescuing Jewish children in Le Chambon.
  4. ↑ Interview with Jacques Chancel, Radioscopie, France Culture, handed down by Nancy Huston: Romain Gray, a foreign body in French literature. In: Delf Schmidt (Ed.): Masks, Metamorphoses. Rowohlt Literature Magazine No. 45, Reinbek 2000 ISBN 3498039083 ISSN  0934-6503 p. 131 (Chancel misspelled there)
  5. ↑ Gary, after the Engl. Version "Life and death of Emile Ajar" by Barbara Wright 1983 in the appendix to "King Solomon"; again in RG pseudo, in the engl. Translated by David Bellos : Hocus Bogus. RG writing as Emile Ajar, appendix pp. 175–194, Yale University Press , New Haven & London 2010, ISBN 9780300149760 . Own transl. To Dt.
  6. ↑ CCF Romain Gary - Jerusalem ( Memento of March 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Since Gary wrote bilingual, he reserved the right to all English editions himself, his son watches over them
  8. ↑ The Hunt for the Blue. Retrieved February 6, 2019 . Translated again.
  9. ↑ See also web links, Todorov
  10. ↑ T. refers to Gary's book for his own conception, with the quote "inhumanity is part of the human", l'inhumanité fait partie de l'humain.

Web links