French literature carries the trace of a “ Jewish fact As evidenced by three Goncourt prizes between 1955 and 1962. Souvenir of the Holocaust and the lost Yiddish, Judeity is written in less identity than memorial and political terms.
In The imagined JewNelly Wolf is interested in two main questions: “ How to account for the Jewish fact in literature in French -speaking space ? How to describe the mark that the Jewishness of authors prints in French literature ? (P. 9). Wolf analyzes the literary texts written by Jewish authors of French expression at the XXe century, as well as their reception. For Wolf, this literature is not reduced to a genre, a style or a language. Rather, it is a process of imagination and self -utterance, as much as in a way of inserting between the lines, within a text written in French, the use of Hebrew or Yiddish, or to leave traces, effects, ghosts of these two Jewish languages.
Judeity is written
Wolf studies French -speaking Jewish literature in the prism of the notion of judeity. Term from Portrait of a Jew Albert Memmi (1962), Judeity indicates “ The fact and the way of being Jewish ». Judeity is distinguished, according to Memmi, from Judaicity (“ All Jewish people “) And Judaism (“ The whole Jewish doctrines and institutions »). Wolf thus establishes the starting point for his book: “ Judeity is written and by writing is imagined (P. 11). The expression therefore does not refer to “ Imaginary Jews », Title of the book by Alain Finkielkraut published in 1980.
In a first chapter, “ Is Jewish literature of French expression a Jewish joke ? “, Wolf examines successive attempts to define French Jewish literature – this” obsessive return of the ontological question applied to this sub-champ ” – Even to decide on his very existence. This rehearsal is “ A French Jewish exception ». Wolf highlights two examples of the interwar period: on the one hand, the publications of Benjamin Crémieux in Literary news (1925) and in The Jewish Review of Geneva (1932) ; on the other, those of André Spire in The Jewish question seen by twenty-five eminent personalities (1934). Spire, a central figure in Jewish awakening, has argued that a Jewish literature in French existed. For Cremieux, however, we cannot identify any “ Jewish specificity In French letters.
Even if various approaches of the subject proliferate after the Second World War, the field of university study was developed until after the 1990s. The early 2000s marked another change: a preponderance of studies in the Holocaust literature, which “ tends to cover Jewish literature (P. 29).
Wolf’s study demonstrates the existence of a French -language Jewish literature, literature which is in a perpetual dynamic of oscillation “ Between an invitation to appear and an injunction to erase “,” Between appearance and disappearance ” And “ legitimate illegitimacy (P. 85-86). This in-between was born from the heritage of the French Revolution and the emancipation of the Jews. The coexistence of two realities materializes in republican universalism. According to The imagined JewJudeity in French literature is written in terms of political contract. This universalism, which does not erase Judeity, is at the heart of several American university studies.
Visibility and invisibility of Judeity
The second chapter of Imagined Jew“ To be (or not to be) a Jewish writer of French language “, devotes itself to multiple ways of presenting oneself – or not – as a Jewish writer, and this through the cases of Bernard Frank, Nathalie Sarraute and Elsa Triolet. Sarraute maintains “ The minority social contract », By choosing neutrality – in other words, Judéity does not be part of its literary work (p. 150).
Frank on the other hand, who describes himself as “ Imaginally Jewish and really French (P. 109), breaks with this contract. In its texts, Judeity appears above all under the effect of anti -Semitism. In this sense, Wolf emphasizes Frank’s Sartrian reading. In his use of self -fiction and the first person singular, and in his idea of literature as mythomania, Frank reveals that “ Judeity is not a literary posture, it is literature that is a Jewish posture (P. 111).
Elsa Triolet is rarely examined in the context of Jewish literature, mainly because of her political positioning. Wolf, however, demonstrates that Triolet does not spread Judeity, but rather that it develops a “ camouflage (This term is also the title of the latest novel she wrote in Russian, before adopting French as a literary language). In the public sphere, Triolet does not mention his Judéity, but in her novels and in her newspapers, she approaches him in the Russian context of her childhood, then, after her immigration, in her Parisian framework. In The foreign meeting (1956) In particular, Triolet writes about (and sometimes denounces) the Jewish identity of the French and immigrants after the Shoah, as well as within the Zionist movements. Camouflage operates through writing, which seeks a point of view of the universal and dismisses, “ even in the intimacy of a self-feared writing, the hypothesis of a selective compassion (P. 125).
The Jew “ shy »»
In chapters 3 and 4, Wolf continues its analysis of changes in Jewish literature of French expression after the Holocaust. According to the thesis of François Azouvi exhibited in The myth of great silenceWolf demonstrates that in the years following the Second World War, Jewish writers have published on the Holocaust. His study of the three “ Jewish Goncourt Almost successive reveals a change in attitudes with regard to the Holocaust, and its growing importance in Jewish identity, as in literature. If the Shoah is not the central theme of Mixed waters by Roger Ikor, winner of the Goncourt in 1955, it became an essential element in The last of the righteous by André Schwarz-Bart (Goncourt Prize in 1959). Anna Langfus, who won the prize in 1962 for Sand luggageelaborates a Judeity which is almost entirely entirely to its relationship with the Shoah.
If Wolf warns against a narrow definition of Jewish literature of the Holocaust as a function of generations (literature of the “ second generation “Or” third generation ), It shows the relevance of this approach by speaking of “ generation 1.5 “, As Susan Suleiman theorized through writers such as Georges Perec, Sara Kaufman, Hélène Cixous, Serge Doubrovsky, among others. She quotes Place de l’Étoile by Patrick Modiano as “ The birth certificate of the second generation “, And the 1960s as the second wave of Holocaust literature.
A third wave begins in the early 2000s, while the authors of French Jewish literature were moving towards archaeological surveys, testimonial fictions, cross stories and self -fiction, which put the Holocaust at the heart of the text. It should be noted that the turning point towards self -fiction is generally present in contemporary French literature. In the context of Jewish literature in France since 2000, “ The imagined Jew is a shotable Jew (P. 370). Wolf even notes a “ routine »From the representation of the Shoah in contemporary French Jewish literature, in particular in books and in consumer films.
This striking expression invites us to ask the question of Henry Rousso, specialist in the history of memory and author of the Vichy syndromeon the occasion of the 70e Birthday of the HIV vel roundup:
The idea-perhaps naive, but in any case well present at the origin-was that these commemorations contribute to the eradication of anti-Semitism. However, there is a resurgence of the phenomenon. There is therefore a question to ask.
Wolf also notes the persistence of anti -Semitism, despite (or even “ nourished »By) the representation of the Shoah. The American writer Dana Horn is more critical of the result of contemporary representations and commemorations of the Holocaust. In his study, provocatively entitled People Love Dead Jews And written after the murderous attack of the Synagogue Tree of Life in Pennsylvania in 2018, she writes: “ I had confused the enormous public interest in the past suffering of the Jews with a sign of respect for living Jews (P. XVIII).
Yiddish, trace of a lost world
If Jewishness can be both visible and invisible, Yiddish plays on this same duality. The last chapter looks at the role of Yiddish, or rather on the heterogeneous roles of Yiddish. The Yiddish – whether by the presence of words in Yiddish translitted into French, by Yiddish accent or by the reference to the speakers of Yiddish – constitutes a marker of Judeity. The choice of the writer to translate him or leave him without explanation in French is linked to Yiddish as an index of difference. It also represents an object on which self -hatred is projected.
In her novels, Irene Némirovsky uses Yiddish as “ soundtrack »From a series of anti -Semitic stereotypes (p. 303). If, in the case of Némirovsky herself, self-hatred is disputed, Yiddish acts as an essential revealer of the characters’ self-hatred, in particular in David Golder (1929). Wolf also shows that Yiddish can also reveal a French regional identity, as with Jean-Richard Bloch. Finally, Yiddish is the persistent trace of a lost world. In the texts of Georges Perec and Serge Doubrovsky, he is present by his absence – it is the language that the authors know, but do not know how to speak.
The imagined Jew gives a heterogeneous image of the texts of Jewish writers of French expression of the XXe century, whether it is what is actually written on the page or what is slipped between the lines. Wolf also refers to writings of XXIe century, more contemporary therefore, noting in particular a theme and an approach that predominates. We are waiting for the rest of this literary story. The Yiddish has not disappeared from this story ; And the multilingualism of Jewish literature is perpetuated actively, for example within the Medem Center in Paris.