Writers have often drawn inspiration from news items to better understand their society or to delve into the depths of the human soul. Here, a novelist takes on the case of Violette Nozière, parricide poisoner in 1933, to make her a life companion, a heroine, an enigma, actress and author of her own life. Meeting between the writer and his character.
The material for many literary fictions is made up of true stories. Among these are the news items, which, since the press took hold of them, have inspired novelists. But what does literature do with this raw material? ? What happens to news heroes when literature appropriates them? ?
Crime and literature
Novelists have invented their heroes by taking inspiration from real criminals, without the initial news item appearing in the story: thus, Stendhal for Julien Sorel, based on the obscure crime of the seminarian Berthet (The Red and the Black1830), or for Valbayre, from the assassin-poet Lacenaire (Lamiel1889) ; similarly Mauriac, for Thérèse Desqueyroux, was inspired by a Bordeaux poisoner whose affair he followed in the newspapers (Therese Desqueyroux1927).
Other writers have chosen to make a news item the subject of their work to offer another reading: a few months after the parricide committed by Violette Nozière, in August 1933, the surrealists published a poetic collection in the form of homage to the young criminal, who deconstructs the media intertext to propose a new intrigue, on the basis of a new causal chain: the free sexuality of the young girl, far from being at the origin of her crime, has been the instrument of a liberation which was accomplished in parricide (Violette Nozières1933).
Bringing out a hidden meaning of crime by linking it to social criticism is another possible path, taken by Genet in The Goodbased on the crime committed by the Papin sisters in 1933. This dimension is very present in contemporary fiction which, refusing the romantic exploitation of the news item, strives to highlight the inaudible as the hidden source of the act criminal, like Bon or Sallenave.
Raphaëlle Riol’s novel stands out from these methods of literary appropriation of news items. The author does not invent a criminal character based on a news item: the heroine ofUltra Violet is indeed the Violette Nozière who poisoned her parents (her mother survived the tragedy, but not her father) and who became the heroine of one of the most sensational news stories of the interwar period. Nor does it aim to question the news item differently than the journalists of the time did, by emphasizing its social resonance or by making the impossible words at the origin of the crime heard. So what is the subject of his book? ?
“ A character lives »
Questioning novelistic creation, Ultra Violet is the story of an experience, which consists of an author resurrecting a character and living with him for the duration of a book that is being written. The character portrayed is therefore not a historical character, but a literary character, the objective being to “ rehabilitate Violette in her status as a literary character “. This literary character is not, affirms the author, a “ paper character “. “ A character lives. It follows you. Everywhere. It arouses happiness, it creates worries for you, it makes you share yours. It changes your life “.
The novel tells of this life shared between an author and a character present in spectral mode. We will therefore read about cohabitation in the author’s Parisian two-room apartment, which recalls the one where Violette Nozière lived, rue de Madagascar in 12e arrondissement, the left bank wanderings in the footsteps of the cafes where the young girl once hung out, the purchase of a pair of shoes or makeup, because Violette Nozière was flirtatious and consumerist.
In the first part of the novel (“ Violet side A “), the story of this companionship is an evocation of the life of Violette Nozière, nourished by the research that Raphaëlle Riol did, by delving into the archives and the press of the time. Through the back and forth between the past and the present, a play of echoes between the life of the character and the life of the author – thus the loves of Violette Nozière are an opportunity to evoke a difficult breakup experienced by the author – emerges the portrait of a young girl who is suffocating in a mediocre family, who is bored and dreams of another life, who is looking for love and whose “ legitimate desire to live stronger » constantly comes up against the “ Reality » whom she dreams of killing.
The narration alternates between a second person story, the author addressing the ghost who accompanies him by telling him about his life, and a third person story, when the author explains his relationship with the character who invades him, the he obsesses and manipulates her.
The mysterious friend
Inviting your character to your writer’s table in this way is risky. The character, in fact, has expectations that the author fears disappointing, he makes demands, demands his autonomy and disagreement arises. This crystallizes around the question of writing the end of the story, a prelude to the end of the relationship which will see the author accompany her character to Rue de Madagascar.
The second part of the book (“ Violet side B “) is built in the shape of a treasure hunt. It is based on the facts: having been sentenced to death in 1934, at a time when women were no longer guillotined, Violette Nozière saw her sentence commuted, the day after her conviction, to forced labor for life, then she was benefited from a reduced sentence (twelve years of forced labor), so much so that she was released in 1945.
On August 29, 1945, she left the central house in Rennes. We hear, says the author, a car approaching the prison gate. Who drives it ? Who came to pick up Violette Nozière when she left prison ? The author undertakes to reveal the identity of this mysterious character at the end of the novel. But first, she explores several avenues (a journalist from Police magazinethe saleswoman at the fur store on the Grands Boulevards where Violette had bought a pair of foxes in August 1933, her lawyer, Me de Vésinne-Larue, so devoted to her cause, Éluard who had participated with his surrealist friends in the poetic collection, etc. .).
These avenues are offered in turn to the character who, each time, refuses them. And it is ultimately Violette Nozière who will demand to write the end of the story herself, an end consistent with the outcome of the affair, since the parricide actually started her life again after her release with the son of the court clerk. prison whom she married and had five children. “ A vulgar happy ending » which the author did not want, who refused to see her character “ lying at the foot of the enemy: the Reality “. But her character got the better of the author.
History and fiction (continued)
To the extent that the news item is not only material for a writer, but also an object of history, readingUltra Violet challenges historians. First of all, this novel constitutes in itself material for historical research, concerned with reconstituting the social debates and the various interpretations to which legal cases were the subject in their time, but also to account for the successive appropriations that they aroused and the legendary construction of criminal figures: the book belongs to the history of the construction of the myth of Violette Nozière.
But, more interestingly, Raphaëlle Riol’s novel invites reflection through the way in which it questions the writing of a news item. Let’s clarify. Ultra Violette’s historical contribution is weak, to the extent that it does not allow us to better understand the parricide of Violette Nozière and to understand the reasons for the impact of the affair. We could even say that, far from questioning her criminal gesture in any other way than Violette Nozière’s contemporaries did, it renews the representations of the time (the depraved and mythomaniac coquette), more or less reread in the light of the film by Chabrol (1978) which painted a young girl suffocating in a narrow middle-class family, and it produced an expected evocation of Paris in the 1930s.
On an essential point of the case, capable of renewing the reading of the news item – the accusations of incest brought by the young girl against her father to explain his crime – the author suspends his judgment. It is that the “ meeting pact » between the author and the character is sealed « by the fact, writes Raphaëlle Riol, that the truth of her act did not interest me » ; “ being neither a cop nor a historian, the truth, I didn’t care “. This bias of fiction therefore prohibits judging Ultra Violet in the light of a historical truth posed here as irrelevant. Such statements seem to forcefully dismiss the idea that this book could be of interest to the historian. The historical discipline was formed on the division between history and fiction: while the novelist invents and does what he wants with his character, the historian is required to produce a true and verifiable discourse.
The fact remains that the debate between history and fiction runs through the entire history of history and that it has taken on new vigor since the 1970s. Because, if the rejection of fiction as a statement contrary to the truth is the subject of a consensus, reflection on historical writing is usefully nourished by reflection on fiction as narration.
Today, historians are working to invent new ways of telling stories, to experiment with freer and more reflective writing, thinking together about the narrative dimension and the scientific nature of history. They use in particular a “ I of method » which allows one to deploy reasoning, to expose one’s hypotheses and the reasons for retaining or rejecting them, to report on a journey that is both personal and scientific, this “ I of method » defended by Ivan Jablonka in a recent book inviting us to think about new forms of writing between social sciences and literature. This is why, it seems to me, historians can benefit from reading Raphaëlle Riol’s novel.
Can the historian who has worked for several years on a historical character not recognize himself in this obsessive companionship between author and character, in this dialogue where hypotheses and interpretations are tested? ? In any case, it spoke to me, to me who devoted part of my scientific life to Violette Nozière, just as it interested me in the idea of successively proposing different possible avenues, even if their relevance seems questionable to me. regard to the historical issues of the Nozière affair.
Through the possibilities of writing that he explores and through the meditation that he opens up on the ghosts of history and their effects on the historian, Ultra Violet invites reflection on the fruitful links between history and literature, between writing and truth.