Vietnamese Literature in French by Jack A. Yeager (review)

L ’E sprit C réateur David G. Bevan. M i c h e l T o u r n i e r . Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986. Pp. 72. Provocative, exciting, well written, and deeply sensitive—are epithets that can be used to describe Bevan’s new book on Michel Tournier. Dividing it into three sections (from philosophy, via the myth, toward the novel), he explains with clarity and point, the evolu­ tion of Tournier’s talent and thought. Formerly a professor of philosophy, having studied in Germany for four years, Tournier turned to novel-writing after having failed his aggregation in 1949; using this literary technique as a device capable of helping him pursue his metaphysical inquiry. One of Tournier’s main preoccupations, as delineated in his novels, Le Roi des aulnes, Les Météores, Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar, is the problem of human solitude. His choice of Robinson Crusoe as his first hero and victim, make this evident. Bevan writes: “Toutes ces liaisons, cependant, homosexuelles et hétérosexuelles, apparaissent manifeste­ ment comme des versions dégradées, quoique à des stades différents, de la seule intimité authentique qui mérite peut-être ce nom: celle qui peut exister entre des jumeaux iden­ tiques...” Even here, solitude knows no bounds. The problem of sexuality, explored equally well by Bevan, is manifest in everything written by Tournier. “Tournier, voyant dans l’érotisme l’exercice de la sexualité comme fin en soi,” Bevan notes, “ se permet de suggérer que l’homosexualité est donc ‘plus innocem­ ment érotique que l’hétérosexualité’.” Childhood as well fascinates Tournier: for its beauty, innocence, clarity of vision. He even wrote a second version of Vendredi ou la vie sauvage, narrating the Robinson Crusoe story for youngsters. Completely polarized, Robinson and Friday are dressed as they should be; and are serious people as well. Initiation rituals, considered more emotional and moral, even magical, than intel­ lectual, are of extreme import for Tournier. In Le Vent paraclet, he condemns the fact that corporal punishment, religion, ethics, classical studies, literature have diminished in impor­ tance. These rituals are an introduction into the life process. Indeed, life itself is a rite of passage. Sections on inversion, “le mythe-matrice,” scatology, humor, semiotics, as well as careful analyses of Vendredi ou les limbes du pacifique, Le Roi des aulnes, Les Météores, Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar, Gilles et Jeanne, Le Coq de bruyère, are included in Bevan’s excellent study. Tournier’s novels, among the most popular in France today, have been both con­ demned and praised. Critics, such as Robert Poulet, who, although castigating him for the destructive, unbalanced, monstrous and evil creatures peopling his novels, writes that he is without a doubt “ le meilleur écrivain, néanmoins, de sa génération.” Readers should explore Bevan’s very rich and far-reaching study and decide for themselves. B e t t i n a L . K n a p p H unter College and the Graduate Center, C U N Y Jack A . Yeager. V ie tn a m e s e L i t e r a t u r e in F r e n c h . Hanover: University Press of New England, 1987. Pp. 237. Intended to introduce Vietnamese Francophone literature and to explain the existence and elucidate the character of extended narrative prose pieces in French from Viet Nam, this is to date the most thorough, sensitive and profound study of a subject often elsewhere given to outright errors of authorship and other matters of fact. Among other things, parallels of the Vietnamese French colonial experience to those of West Africans and other 1 0 2 F a l l 1987 B ook R eviews cultural groups are occasionally drawn here, while unique differences are also made apparent. Professor Yeager sets the stage for his analyses of specific works by offering, in Part I, two concisely written chapters in which he outlines the politics, culture and recent history of Viet Nam, as well as its linguistic and literary heritage, all of which influenced the shape of Vietnamese Francophone literature. Showing how traditional forms and aesthetic values persist in the...