Leviathan (Julien Green)

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Leviathan ( French : Léviathan ) is a novel by the French writer Julien Green . It was published in 1929 in the Librairie Plon in Paris.

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In a French provincial town, Madame Londe consistently entertains men in her inn. But the gentlemen don't sit at the table primarily for the drinks and food: Madame Londe takes turns providing her very young and beautiful niece Angèle to her customers for a fee. Their motivation for this is not greed for money, but their pathological curiosity, which makes up their whole self-righteous, domineering and incapable of compassion being. Only when she knows everything about her fellow human beings and thereby gains a certain power over them does she feel inner peace in her otherwise empty life. Every time Angèle has to tell her what she learned during the dates. Madame Londe is not interested in the fact that she is sexually abused by the guests.

Guéret, who is employed by the wealthy Grosgeorge as a tutor, disturbs the matchmaker's circles. He loves and desires Angèle, but is rejected by her. He mingles with the crowd and learns from the table neighbors that Angèle is a whore. When he realizes that she is available to everyone and only he is rejected by her, a world collapses for him. He pursues the girl and hits her face with a branch so brutally that it remains forever disfigured by deep scars.

Angèle no longer dares to talk to people. She knows that Guéret was the only person who really loved her. That's why she begins to feel drawn to him and covers him from the police.

Of necessity, Madame Londe, who melts in self-pity, has to hold off the guests and at the same time deals with the further "training" of an adolescent as a "replacement".

On the run, Guéret kills an old man whom he feels unjustly threatened by. There is no going back to his aging, unloved wife. He avoided people for almost four months and hid in Paris and its suburbs and in the surrounding forests. He detests himself. He is amazed to find that his crimes have not changed him. However, he is now even more hungry for Angèle.

Eva Grosgeorge, still quite attractive despite her middle age, was impregnated years ago by her husband, a wealthy upper-class citizen, unwillingly. She hates her son André, the result of that rape in the marriage bed. On the one hand she cares for the son, on the other hand she beats him mercilessly when the cause is trivial. To make matters worse, she delights in the plight of the high school student. A man she could love is not in sight - except for the manslaughter Guéret, to whom she feels strangely drawn, because he is just as unhappy and desperate for life as she is. She searches for him on long forays through the winter cold. In front of the entrance to her villa, she meets Angèle, who wants to turn to her husband (who also used her company for money) to ask him for money. She wants to leave to start a new life. Intercepted by Madame Grosgeorge, she now asks them for money. However, this only shows undisguised glee about the disfigured face. Her hatred turns against her botched life and all people, but especially against Angèle, whom Guéret desired in contrast to her.

Guéret intercepts Angèle, who always covers her face with a scarf, on the street. Having overheard the conversation between her and Madame Grosgeorge, he found out that she had not betrayed him to the police and concluded that she had forgiven him. He assumes that the wounds on Angèles face have not left any scars and wants to flee abroad with her. Angèle agrees.

Guéret turns to Madame Grosgeorge, who had signaled that she wanted to help him in order to receive money from her for the escape. She lures him into her villa and hides him there overnight from her husband and the staff instead of giving him the money directly. She enjoys the feeling of knowing that he is locked in one of her rooms and that she has power over him.

She wants him to believe that Angèle hates him in order to win him over. Her desire, however, turns into mad hatred when he confesses his love for Angèle. In revenge, she then puts his fate in their hands by writing her a message that Guéret is hidden in her villa and that Angèle should inform the police. She continues to believe that Angèle hates Guéret.

Madame Londe intercepts the message and promptly turns to the gendarmerie. Angèle tries to save Guéret and tells him to flee. Madame Grosgeorge locks himself up with Guéret in the room from which he was unable to escape, and throws the key out of the window. She tries to shoot herself, but survives seriously injured because Guéret does not follow her instructions to shoot her again.

Angèle, terminally ill and shaken by a fever, sets off into the freezing winter night to find Guéret at the agreed meeting point for the joint escape. However, the latter does not appear, she loses consciousness and is found half-frozen, too late to survive.

How Guéret fares is left open by the author.

Titling

The word " Leviathan " cannot be found in the text of the novel. That mythical creature is a twisted sea monster that embodies chaos . Guéret, Mme Londe and Eva Grosgeorge are undoubtedly ruled by the Chaos Dragon. Both and supporting characters, like Mme Londe's clients, are driven by the chaos of their sexual lust, which expresses the embodiment of the monster on a metaphorical level. Attached to this, one can also address Angèle's external transformation through Guéret's outbreak into a Leviathan that is regarded as such a monster.

Translations into German

The novel was published by Verlag Kiepenheuer in a translation by Gina and Hermann Kesten one year after it was published. In 1986 a new translation by Eva Rechel-Mertens was published by Hanser-Verlag .

expenditure

Julien Green: Leviathan. Translated from the French by Eva Rechel-Mertens. Series dtv Literatur 12384. August 1997. 320 pages, ISBN 978-3-423-12384-6

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