Marianka
Jean Malaquais
A Note on Malaquais-by ]ustm O'Brietl
THERE ARE SOME
of us who would read anything on Gide's recommenda·
tion, the New Testament or Simenon, Blake or Giraudoux or Nietzsche,
because we know his critical work, some of it fifty years old now,
and
respect his keen judgment. We know from experience that when Gide
champions an unknown writer, no ulterior motive oolors his appreciation.
It was Andre Gide, in the summer of 1939, who first spoke to me of
La
I
avanais.
I was not disappointed.
To begin with, it has nothing to do with the East Indies. It gets its
title from the local name for a city of shacks at the head of a mine-shaft
in Provence-the island of Java-probably so called because of ·its isola·
tion from the rest of the world. Dealing with migratory mine-worken,
refugees from all countries, the novel reveals a social consciousness
that
we are unaccustomed to find in contemporary French literature outside of
Andre Malraux and Jean Giono. The characters and the life depicted
obviously derive from experience, and the scenes of violence, related
in
a
brutal style that often recalls Faulkner and Steinbeck, make this a very
moving story which is also a social document. In fact, were it only for
the
idiot girl and the occasional rape scenes, one could be fairly sure that
the
author had read Faulkner. In
Books Abroad
for 1940, Albert Guerard
said of
Les /avanais:
"As a tale of misery, it challenges comparison with
Little Man What
Now
and
The
Grapes
of
Wrath.
From the literary point
of view, it is better than either.
It
is as realistic, as human; it has more
genuine humor; and it rises without effort to the level of poetry."
Les /avanais
was too good to win the Goncourt Prize, possibly too
juicily realistic for the academicians who timidly perpetuate the memory
of Naturalism by electing Sacha Guitry to sit among them. But it did
win
the Renaudot Prize, awarded by a group of Parisian critics who have no
money, but much publicity, to confer. Its young author, Jean Malaquais,
became famous overnight. But this was in December 1939 when Malaquais
was already somewhere at the front with the French army.
There even sprouted a legend that, come recently from Poland, he
had learned French in three years and then written his novel. Now
any·
one who has ever taught French, anyone who has ever learned French
knows this to be impossible. In three years Malaquais might,
a
la
rigueu.r,
have learned to speak French adequately and to handle the special idiom
of his "Javanese" with its intermingling of all the dialects of Europe. But
as for writing of them as he does, that is not possible in so short a time.
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