JAY PARINI « Benjamin’s Crossing »

INFORMATIONS PARATEXTUELLES

Auteur : Jay Parini Titre : Benjamin’s Crossing – Le titre renvoie à la traversée que devra faire Benjamin pour se rendre en Espagne, traversée très difficile pour lui qui est faible et malade mais qu’il réussira tout de même, se rendant à Port-Bou où il mettra fin à ses jours. Lieu : New York Édition : Henry Holt and Company Inc. Année : 1996 Pages : 308 p. Cote UQAM: UdM

Biographé : Walter Benjamin, mais aussi tous les personnages historiques qui l’ont entouré, dont Gershom Scholem, Brecht et les personnages moins importants qui ont traversé sa vie. Pays du biographe : États-Unis Pays du biographé : Allemagne

Désignation générique : roman Quatrième de couverture ou rabats : cartonnée… Préface : Aucune, mais un « Author’s Note » à la fin qui précise le pacte de lecture = « This is a work of fiction. As such, it lays no claim to the kinds of truth one expects to find in works of literary scolarship or conventional biography. Nevertheless, I have stuck close to the bare facts of Walter Benjamin’s life, which is to say that names, dates, and localities are accurately presented, and that the events described in this novel happened pretty much described. » (307) Par la suite, il raconte comment il a eu l’idée d’écrire un roman sur Walter Benjamin : par le biais, d’abord, d’une de ses œuvres, Illuminations, puis par la découverte des mémoires de Lisa Fittko et de Gershom Scholem.

Autres informations :

Textes critiques sur l’auteur :

GREENBERG, Udi E. (2008), « The Politics of the Walter Benjamin Industry », Theory, Culture and Society, Vol 25 no 3, p. 53-70.

 Insiste, de façon générale, sur la résurgence actuelle de la figure de Benjamin. Un court passage de l’article est consacré au roman, construit lui aussi, selon la théorie de l’auteur, sur trois pôles : « Thus the three poles of brilliance, social ineptness and self-destructiveness again unite in Benjamin’s figure, and their appealing political meaning is reinforced. » (66)

GARDAPHE, Fred (2004), « Writing As a Reader : The Deserted Village of Jay Parini », South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol 103, no 1, p.159-168.

 Article qui offre une analyse du « dernier roman » de Parini, The Apprentice Lover. Cependant, l’auteur met les thématiques de ce roman en lien avec certains romans de Parini, et spécialement The Last Station et Benjamin’s Crossing. Ex : « The Apprentice Lover is a story about the relationship of history and story, of classic and contemporary, and how they continue to influence each other. History is stasis, it doesn’t change as quickly as we do; stories can change every time they are told and can also alter our sense of history. In this sens, strorytelling becomes an antistatic force. This novel moves along by juxtaposition varying notions of story and history, a pattern not new to Parini’s work. In his historical novel of the last years of Walter Benjamin’s life he wrestled with the very same ideas. » (161)

SYNOPSIS

Résumé ou structure de l’œuvre : Le roman est construit selon une structure analeptique, mais il y a deux lignes narratives principales qui informent le récit. Celui-ci s’ouvre en effet par le récit de Gershom Scholem, en pèlerinage à Port-Bou, Espagne, sur les lieux du suicide de Benjamin, dix ans après celui-ci (qui eu lieu en 1940). C’est l’occasion pour lui de se remémorer sa rencontre et le début de ses relations avec Benjamin. S’en suit une série de quelques lettres. Puis le deuxième chapitre est assumé par un narrateur omniscient mais à focalisation interne sur le personnage de Benjamin. En fait, dans l’ensemble du roman, la narration est assumée par divers narrateurs, dont les personnages qui ont côtoyé l’écrivain : Gershom Scholem [intellectuel et ami], Lisa Fittko [celle qui lui aura permis de traverser les Pyrénées pour se rendre en Espagne], Asja Lacis [une de ses maitresses], Madame Ruiz [la femme de l’hôtel à Port-Bou]. Le narrateur omniscient suit Benjamin à partir de 1940, alors qu’il est en exil à Paris, qu’il sera envoyé dans un camp français pour Allemands puis libéré, qu’il quitte Paris juste avant l’invasion allemande pour se rendre à Lourdes puis à Marseille, sa tentative ratée de se sauver en bateau avant de se rendre à Port-Vendres où il rejoint Lisa Fittko qui l’aidera à traverser vers l’Espagne (Port-Bou). À travers la narration de ces faits, Benjamin se remémore divers moments importants de sa vie. Les autres narrateurs, bien qu’ayant l’occasion de raconter leurs histoires personnelles par bribes, racontent essentiellement les moments où ils ont côtoyé Benjamin. La ligne chronologique est ainsi éclatée mais facile à suivre et il y a deux récits structurants : celui de 1950 et celui de 1940. Le dernier chapitre est d’ailleurs le fait de Gershom Scholem.

Note : Les circonstances de la mort de Benjamin ne sont pas clairement élucidées : la thèse du suicide est la plus souvent envisagée, mais elle n’est pas la seule. C’est cependant l’interprétation qu’en donne Parini. Lors d’une éventuelle entrevue, il pourrait être intéressant de lui demander pourquoi il a choisi cette hypothèse.

Topoï : Comme le propose Greenburg, les topoï du génie incompris, mésadapté sont centraux. Benjamin est en effet considéré, du moins par Scholer, comme un génie: « Men of genius are like massive continents – wholly bounded by water, and discreet. They have very little to say to one another, and it is usually a mistake to bring them together. » (87) « Benjamin had been defeated as an intellectual force in the world, but he had no fear of death as such. » (184)

Cependant, nous nous retrouvons, comme dans bien des biographies d’écrivain, devant un portrait de l’écrivain en “petit homme”. En effet, le fait que Benjamin ne soit jamais directement narrateur permet de faire prédominer le point de vue des autres personnages sur lui et d’en dresser un portrait souvent peu flatteur bien que sympathique. Les personnages féminins, par exemple, sont des personnages au caractère fort et dont la force contraste avec la fragilité du personnage de Benjamin. Voici quelques descriptions de – mais aussi idées associées à – Benjamin selon les divers narrateurs (voir aussi l’article de Greenburg pour d’autres citations) :

Gershom Scholem : « The death of Benjamin was, for me, the death of the European mind, the end of a way of life. » (18) « Had he been more disciplined (and, my dear, we all know his distracted manner), he might have walked the corridors of eternity with Plato and Moses Mendelssohn. He would still make a welcome guest at their table, would he not? Even if, as usual, he said almost nothing, they would find his aura – the gnomic stare and occasional wisecrack – interesting. And then, suddenly, the way his conversation will lift off vertically, move into strange, unearthly regions… » (23-24) « Benjamin was curiously out of touch with reality, especially when it came to politics and women. His ignorance of the former is what killed him in the end – his refusal to face history in any form unmediated by language; the latter just made his life miserable, although it was not unrelated to his view of history. » (84) « Benjamin was a depressive by nature, which doubtless made it difficult for him to work. » (297)

Narrateur omniscient, focalisation sur Benjamin: « It was Benjamin’s lot, or so he mused, to play guest and suffer. He was the perpetual visitor, the eternal transient. Dare he say it? The Wandering Jew. » (122-123) « He wish he could simply get off at the next station and leave his sister forever. He wanted to separate from the Benjamins of Berlin, from his inherited place in the continuum of pain and responsibility. He wanted the experience of total freedom, that free fall beyond time and place. » (126) « Even it, however, was finally a book of fragments. His life was composed of fragments, quotations from other, better writers. His days were lived between quotation marks, and the high points of his existence merely italicized and familiar phrases. » (192) « If he regretted anything in his life it was the way he allowed himself to disappear in the presence of strong personalities, like Scholem or Brecht. » (130) « “There is no such thing as a famous critic. […] I am a critic, yes. Rather, I was a critic. Now I am, well – a Jew in flight.” » (211)

Asja Lacis: « He seemed idiotic but also compelling. I generally like intelligent men who present a complex argument based on concrete knowledge of the world. Walter, of course, had read everything, most of it twice. He was a walking, breathing encyclopaedia, almost to the point of caricature, with this insane, compulsive, inhuman desire to know everything about everything that could be found in books. » (150) « I could see nothing but felt Walter close to me. And he was hard, his groin against me, his head on my shoulder. It was more peculiar than erotic, although I confess I did not find it unpleasant in any way. Men are men, and one must not expect otherwise. » (152)

Lisa Fittko: « .. I opened the door to find a small, middle-aged and potbellied man in a crumpled woolen suit and thick glasses. » (168)

Également, la vie sexuelle de Benjamin est souvent mise en scène.

En entrevue, Parini declare : “Obviously, Walter Benjamin's story is the story in many ways a failure to comprehend the severity of the political situation at the moment. For all of his intellectual weight and breadth and depth, there was still a sense in which he was somewhat naive about the Nazi war machine and the trouble he was in. He stayed in Paris way too late. »

Voir aussi section « Vie/Œuvre »

Rapports auteur-narrateur-personnage : Divers narrateur intradiégétique. Cependant, nous n’avons accès au personnage de Benjamin que par le biais d’un narrateur qui agit tout de même en focalisation interne. Qui plus est, entre chaque chapitre, on retrouve des extraits de l’œuvre de Benjamin, ce qui permet de mettre directement en scène la parole de l’écrivain et qui contraste avec le personnage. Mais, en un certain sens, il est amusant que seul l’écrivain n’ait jamais la possibilité de raconter lui-même.

Rapport vie-œuvre : C’est l’histoire contrariée d’un intellectuel qui ne peut mener à terme son œuvre, empêché qu’il est par la guerre et son errance, mais aussi par sa personnalité neurasthénique et dépressive, voire dolente, tout autant que par ses obsessions érotiques et amoureuses. De fait, l’essentiel de l’œuvre de Benjamin est posthume et le personnage rêve souvent, durant son exil, de son œuvre à venir (en particulier the « arcade book ») : « The fact that he had never written a whole book, a “real” book, apart from the Habilitation on German tragic drama, bothered him, but only a little. If the war ended soon, he would publish the arcades book, and that would be his magnum opus. The work on Baudelaire would follow, a brilliant adornment. And a neat, pocket-size selection of his best essays and aphorisms would be lovely, and perhaps some posthumous book would appear. » (130) « His arcades book would appear after the war, too, transforming the way history is written. » (227) « Surely some university would want such a man? This would be especially true after his book on the Parisian arcades was published; indeed he might be well be lured back to Paris. » (251)

L’œuvre prend aussi la forme d’une « briefcase » que Benjamin transporte avec lui, dans son exil, et qu’il chérie plus que sa propre vie. Cette mallette contient en effet le manuscrit de sa grande œuvre à venir, manuscrit qui sera malheureusement perdu… (il s’agit aussi d’un fait avéré qui rend le personnage très attachant malgré le portrait difficile qui en est fait, et sa fin encore plus tragique). Voici quelques extraits sur le sujet : « Benjamin could hardly focus on what was happening. All he could think about was the briefcase, which he clung to fiercely, even as the officer’s henchmen tossed him over the railing. He felt himself dropping swiftly, turning head over heels. The sensation of hitting the water was surprisingly transitory, and the first thing he knew, he was underwater, still holding the briefcase, still dropping, taking for granted the fact of his death. » (141) [Lisa Fittko:] « I had seen Dr. Benjamin at parties and knew him glancingly. Our circle in Paris was, of course, quite small, and Dr. Benjamin had established a reputation among the émigré community as an intellectual. Hans [son mari] occasionally reffered to him as “the man who sits in the Bibliothèque Nationale and produces nothing.” Herr Benjamin (or Old Benjamin, as I took to calling him in my head) had not been as unproductive as Hans imagined. He kept beside him at all times a decrepit leather briefcase containing a huge masterwork. “Everything I know is in these pages,” he said, showing me the manuscript, “and this is the only copy.” » (169) « “As you well know, I have a weak heart. My life is behind me. But you must take the manuscript, my book… It is much more important than I. Do you understand?” He saw that I did not understand. No manuscript could possibly be worth a human life. » (217) [Avant de mourir, il confie le manuscrit à José Gurland, l’adolescent qui a traversé les Pyrénés avec lui et qui tente de se sauver vers le Portugal:] « José tightened his grip on the handle steeled himself to protect this piece of Walter Benjamin still in their possession. He could almost hear the dear man’s voice : “There is so much of me in the book, José. Everything of me is somewhere in its pages.” » (285) [Lors d’un arrêt dans un village près de Madrid, Henny Gurland et son fils sont obligés de se sauver du train et José oublie la mallette dans le train, il est au désespoir:] « José shook his head, letting the tears fall unabashedly now. It didn’t matter what is mother said or what anyone thought. That manuscript had meant so much to him: indeed, it probably contained everything he had ever thought about, the ultimate formation of his experience as a man. He remembered that Benjamin had asked Frau Fittko to take the manuscript and leave him there, dangling on the precipice, in the Pyrenees. And he was not joking. “It is more important than I am,” he had said. More important than life. And he had lost it. » (292)

Cette absence d’oeuvre est ce qui pèse le plus sur Benjamin: « “I couldn’t go on, you know. My heart…” But it was not just his heart. It was the world itself. He could no longer attach himself willingly to its bleak trajectory. » (276) « “I have not been a good man, Gerhard,” Benjamin said. “Your work, I see, is important. The Kabbalah…” The professor wiped the dribble from Benjamin’s chin. “I have completed so little” » (278)

D’ailleurs, le dernier chapitre, narré par Gershom Scholem, et qui offre son point de vue sur la personnalité et la carrière de Benjamin, permet d’insister davantage sur l’absence d’oeuvre que sur la mort de Benjamin. Le roman se conclut ainsi: « No, I was not all right. Walter Benjamin was dead, and his words had scattered like so many spores in the black winds that swept Europe in 1940. No, I was not all right, and I would never be all right again. Unless his words, invisible, were somehow to land in hospitable soil, find nourishment, break into roots, tremble, and flush with life. There was truth in those words, and truth is one thing that cannot be murdered, though it must often be disguised, hidden craftily in places where nobody would care to look. » (306)

On pourra se référer au dernier chapitre (photocopie) pour un portrait plus fouillé de l’écrivain « raté ».

I. ASPECT INSTITUTIONNEL

Position de l’auteur dans l’institution littéraire : Parini est un universitaire (Middlebury University, Vermont) qui est très respecté et qui a une œuvre abondante. Je ne crois pas qu’il soit un auteur populaire par contre, mais la parution prochaine, sur grand écran, d’une adaptation de son roman sur Tolstoï devrait pallier à cela… Qui plus est, selon l’article de Greenberg, ce roman sur Benjamin se serait vendu à plus de 20 000 exemplaires.

Position du biographé dans l’institution littéraire : L’œuvre de Benjamin n’a été publiée et reconnue que très récemment.

Transfert de capital symbolique : J’y verrais, comme le suggère Greenberg, une réhabilitation – et ou réappropriation – par un « Academic ».

II. ASPECT GÉNÉRIQUE

Oeuvres non-biographiques affiliées de l’auteur : plus ou moins…. Du moins je n’ai pas creusé outre mesure. Mentionnons toutefois que Parini est un auteur polygraphe, que son œuvre comprend de la poésie, des essais, des romans, des biographies…

Place de la biographie dans l’œuvre de l’auteur : À ce jour, Parini a publié deux biographies fictives : The Last Station et Benjamin’s Crossing. Il est aussi l’auteur de trois biographies traditionnelles : Steinbeck, Faulkner, Robert Frost.

Stratégies d’écriture et dynamiques génériques : Tirée d’une entrevue donnée par Parini = “I do see Benjamin as an archetype of the Old World intellectual, a man who knew the classics, who read widely in literature and philosophy and politics, who knew the history of the world, and so forth,” says Mr. Parini. “He was not a specialist, and this attracted me to him as well. He wrote stories, and his essays ranged so widely from the personal to the theoretical. He debated the major issues of his time. He was part of the larger conversation of the world of thinkers.

“This all caught my attention, plus the fact that he was caught in a very bad time, and had to flee from the Nazis. The story seems to me a natural novel, but one rooted in facts. I did a good deal of research to write that book, and spent a lot of time with Benjamin and his work. Of course the man you imagine is always a distance from the actual man; I accept that. The Benjamin of my novel is a work of fiction, a made-up character, but a character with some allegiance to the historical figure. For example, I keep the dates and places the same. The basic outline of his life and his ideas are accurate. But I dig into his mind in ways that a straight biographer could never dare to attempt. Straight biography is fairly rigid in its conventions, and the straight biographer never enters into the subjective consciousness of a subject in the way novelists always do. »

Thématisation de la biographie : aucunement thématisée

Rapports biographie/autobiographie : ne s’applique pas

III. ASPECT ESTHÉTIQUE

Oeuvres non-biographiques affiliées du biographé : L’ensemble de l’œuvre de Benjamin sert de support au roman, afin d’expliquer, de construire une part du personnage mis en scène. Mais la forme romanesque semble surtout permettre la mise en scène de l’homme, davantage que celle de l’œuvre. Nous sommes non pas devant le seul intellectuel, mais bien devant l’être physique, avec ses qualités, ses défauts, ses pulsions. Ainsi, les deux aspects principalement développés par la narration sont la sexualité et la vieillesse du biographé. Sa sexualité : [Scène entre Scholem et Dora, la femme de Benjamin] « Suddenly Benjamin called for her. “Dora!” he shrieked. “I am in bed, and naked.” “You see what a pig he is,” she said. “It is not all Kant and Hegel around here” » (92) [Narrateur omniscient, focalisation sur Benjamin:] « As often happening these days, Benjamin found himself weeping as he wrote, struggling with his own limitations as a thinker, as a human being. One of his limitations was his overwhelming attraction to erotic imagery. He could not think straight if he was sexually frustrated or aroused. » (121) « If he learned one thing in the past few years, it was that he must move beyond the inanity of possession; the lust for women was all part of an outmoded bourgeois desire for property. His desire to own Asja, or Jula, had been retrograde. He would, from this point on, focus on writing. » (197)

La question de sa “vieillesse” est reconduite à meme la narration de sa fuite, ses problèmes de santé qui toujours le ralentissent dans son exil.

Œuvres biographiques affiliées du biographé : ne s’applique pas.

Échos stylistiques : ne connais pas l’oeuvre de Benjamin. J’ai cependant puisé quelques citations qui me semblaient s’appliquer: « He always worked best like this : in the margins, prompted by an urge, an image, a strange tingling that he must satisfy with exact language, with a swirl of letters on a page. His strength as a critic lay in fugitive blasts of insight, not in systematic, massively planned and executed arguments, so the essay was naturally his best form. » (120) « Wasn’t he natural drawn to History, which keeps piling up behind us, wrecked and unruly, demanding backward glance or reappraisal? Wasn’t History – this amalgam of stories and sighs, lumps and hunches – always threatening to reinvade the present and to become the future? » (225-226)

Échos thématiques : Nul doute que Parini a utilisé l’œuvre de Benjamin pour étoffer la pensée du personnage. Nous retrouvons parfois des échos à même le roman : « History, as such, was the dream from which we must awaken, and to understand culture as a dream of history was to understand time as postponement, as that which stands between us and the realization of an eternal kingdom. The task of the anti-historian, as Benjamin saw it, was to render visible the utopian element in the present, working backward toward the pas. “Literary montage” in his phrase, was “the instrument of his dialectic, the act of placing moments of history in apt juxtaposition.” This was what he had tried, in the arcades project, to accomplish: to create the ultimate montage, to recover and dissolve history in one bold stroke. » (63)

IV. ASPECT INTERCULTUREL

Affiliation à une culture d’élection : Bien que les deux écrivains soient de nationalité différente, je ne crois pas qu’on puisse parler d’affiliation, d’autant plus que c’est le Benjamin en exil (le perpétuel voyageur) qui est mis en scène.

Apports interculturels : ??

Lecteur/lectrice : Manon Auger