In the heart of violence
In the heart of violence (French original title: Histoire de la violence ) is an autobiographical novel by the French writer Édouard Louis from 2016 ( Editions du Seuil publisher ). A translation into German by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel was published by S. Fischer Verlag in August 2017 . The book tells an autobiographical incident and follows on chronologically and factually from Louis' debut work The End of Eddy .
action
The plot is a representation of an event lived through by the author, according to his statement, without the addition of fictional embellishments.
Édouard Louis is a homosexual Parisian sociology student who has little contact with his family in a northern French village, whose provinciality he has fled to intellectual, cosmopolitan Paris . He also spends Christmas Eve alone in Paris, where on the way home he meets the hitherto completely unknown Reda, who arouses Édouard from the first moment. After getting to know each other for a short time, they go to Édouard's apartment to sleep together. Reda tells Édouard about his father, who immigrated to France alone from Kabylia in the early 1960s and found shelter in a refugee home. They spend a sexually intense night together.
After showering very early the next morning, Édouard notices that his cell phone is gone and sees that it is in Reda's coat. Edouard confronts Reda and although the attempted theft is obvious, Reda vigorously protests against the accusation of having taken the cell phone. He is not a thief, Édouard insults him and his family. While the level-headed, but also cerebral Édouard tries to calm Reda, but continues to get the cell phone released, Reda climbs into a monotonous scream, apparently fluctuating between sexual desire, shame and hatred. Suddenly he takes a scarf and tries to strangle Édouard with full force. After just under a minute, he lets go again and as a result there is a constant exchange of tenderness and latently violent states of excitement Redas. Suddenly Reda pulls a gun out of his coat. Édouard now believes that he is dead. Reda does not shoot, but rapes the physically inferior Édouard. When Reda pours into him, Édouard knocks him off the bed with a hard blow in the ribs. At Édouard's request to leave, the confused and frightened Reda leaves the scene, taking along some stolen goods.
Édouard remains traumatized, tries to eliminate Reda's traces in the apartment and begins to tell everyone he comes into contact with his experience - in the hospital, his friends, the police, even his older sister, for whom he was the first time has long visited his village.
Subject
In the sense of the original title Histoire de la violence - literally in German: history of violence - various aspects of the experience of violence are dealt with in the book. a .:
- The shock of an act of violence suffered, how it was dealt with and the internal effects on life that was hardly injured on the outside. This emerges even more clearly from the fact that Édouard Louis already had everyday experiences from his youth as a victim of physical and mental violence, the experience of which in no way comes close to what has now happened.
- The phenomenon that victims of violence do not make use of the open opportunities to escape from their tormentor, which is particularly emphasized by an insertion (“interlude”) of a text passage from William Faulkner's Die Freistatt . This motif can also be found in Louis' debut work.
- Prejudice in society and the experience of one's own instinctive disgust for Maghrebians after being strangled, raped and robbed by one himself.
According to the romantic text, the narrated incident happened about a month after his first book, The End of Eddy , was finished.
Narrative technique
The action is narrated retrospectively in non-chronological sections by the first-person narrator, a modern-enlightened city dweller who rejects prejudices and generalizations. However, the protagonist experiences large parts of the plot behind the door of the hallway in his sister Clara’s house, secretly overhearing how this Édouard's story continues to her husband. This narrative trick enables Louis to tell parts of his story in the interpretation of a down-to-earth, non-intellectual woman. Unlike the village population in The End of Eddy , however, Clara does not appear superficial, prejudiced, gleeful and looking for guilty parties, but rather experienced, psychologically mature and sensible. In these passages, the narrator again sprinkles his own comments on Clara's story - highlighted in italics.
Reviews
“That's what Edouard Louis is about. He, who not coincidentally wrote a book about Pierre Bourdieu, is interested in the fine laws that shape every encounter between people and in what happens when someone eludes the traditional patterns of communication and interpretation. "
"Édouard Louis' novel" In the Heart of Violence "is not just an existential, breathtaking struggle over the fragile relationship between language, reality and experience. At the same time, the novel is driven by the gloomy premonition that there may be no escape from the spiral of fear, violence and contempt. "
Individual evidence
- ^ Ce roman n'en est pas un et Edouard Louis le reconnait quand il déclare à la presse: "Dans ce livre, il n'y a pas une ligne de fiction. » Thierry Poyet at L'Internaute. Retrieved October 10, 2017
- ↑ The gangster with the tender skin. Review in the FAZ on October 4, 2017
- ↑ Fear in every fiber. Reviewed in ZEIT on October 4, 2017