Marthe E-Book

Joris Karl Huysmans

• Herausgeber: Dedalus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

One of the first French novels to deal with prostitution in Paris. First published in 1876, Marthe was an important landmark in J.-K. Huysmans's literary career: it was the 28-year old writer's first excursion into the novel form and propelled him into the growing ranks of the Naturalist movement, then beginning to take shape under Zola's direction. Marthe was one of the first French novels to tackle head-on the subject of prostitution, a theme that was to become a central preoccupation in the work of many novelists, painters and poets. Set in and around the demi-monde of the Parisian music hall, it centres on a would-be actress, Marthe, who works in one of the lowest dives in Paris, and tells the story of her brief and ultimately doomed relationship with Léo, a romantic searching for something to take the place of his lost illusions. Marthe will appeal to admirers of French Naturalism and the novels of Zola. Huysmans is particularly good in evoking the Paris of his days.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title

The Translator

Introduction

Note on the Translation

Author’s Preface to the French Edition, 1879

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Plates

Copyright

THE TRANSLATOR

Brendan King is a freelance writer, reviewer and translator, with a special interest in late nineteenth-century French fiction. He has just completed a PhD on the life and work of the novelist and art critic J.-K. Huysmans.

His previous translations for Dedalus include Huysmans’ Là-Bas (2001) and Parisian Sketches (2004), and in 2006 he revised and annotated the second edition of Robert Baldick’s classic biography The Life of J.-K. Huysmans.

He lives and works in Paris and on the Isle of Wight.

INTRODUCTION

Marthe, histoire d’une fille (Marthe, the story of a whore) was J.-K. Huysmans’ first published novel. Although it has little of the thematic and structural complexity that mark his later novels, notably A Rebours (1884), En Rade (1887) and Là-bas (1891), it nevertheless remains a key text in any analysis of his development as a writer. Moreover, with its Naturalistic handling of emblematic issues such as prostitution, and its lively evocation of low-life Paris with its seedy theatres and even seedier actors, the novel provides a fascinating insight into the social attitudes and conventions of late nineteenth-century France.

When Huysmans began writing the novel in late 1875 or early 1876, he was an aspiring young writer on the fringes of the literary world. His first book, a collection of prose poems entitled Le Drageoir à épices (The Spice Box), had been published at his own expense in 1874 in an edition of just 300 copies. Although it had sold poorly – only four copies in the first month according to Huysmans himself – it had nevertheless attracted the attention of a handful of critics and influential writers of the period, including Arsène Houssaye and Théodore de Banville, the latter describing the book as ‘a jewel cut with the light but firm hand of a master goldsmith’ (Le National, 18 January 1875). On the strength of this debut work, Huysmans had begun to contribute articles and short sketches to papers such as Le Musée des Deux-Mondes and La République des Lettres, and to forge links with other writers and artists both in Paris and in Brussels.

Marthe was not Huysmans’ first attempt at writing a novel. Sometime in late 1874 he had conceived the idea of writing an epic novel about the Siege of Paris (1870–71) which would draw on the experiences of his mistress, Anna Meunier, during that traumatic period in the capital’s history. Huysmans himself hadn’t witnessed the Siege at first hand – as a government employee he had been moved to Versailles for the duration – but he had been greatly affected by his first visit to Paris after the hostilities had ended and seen the devastation that had been inflicted on the city he loved. Provisionally entitled La Faim (The Hunger), the novel had stalled at the first chapter and been banished to a drawer in his desk. Although he would periodically take it out and work on it over the course of the next ten years, it was never completed, and he burned the manuscript a few months before he died.

The impetus for Marthe came in the autumn of 1875. At one of his Wednesday night get-togethers with other literary hopefuls such as Ludovic Francmesnil, Gabriel Thyébaut and Henry Céard, Huysmans amused his friends with anecdotes about his tragi-comic liaison with a Bobino soubrette, and his undistinguished adventures in the Garde Nationale during the Franco-Prussian war. Céard, who thought Huysmans should write fiction rather than the prose-poems he seemed so obsessed with, told him he should use the stories as material for a novel.

Huysmans took his advice and picked up his memoir of the Franco-Prussian war, Le Chant du départ, which he hadn’t touched for three years, and rewrote it as a novella, Sac au dos (Backpack). Then he embarked on a fictionalised account of his first love affair, in which he reworked his own experiences of brothels, theatres and journalism, as well as utilising Naturalistic documentary techniques in his account of the manufacturing process for artificial pearls and his description of an autopsy room.

Given the close parallels that would later be drawn between his fiction and the events of his life, Marthe is significant as the first instance of Huysmans fictionalising his own experience in novel form. This is not to say that Marthe is a straightforwardly autobiographical book, or that all the incidents in it have a correlation with the events of Huysmans’ actual life. Although it became a commonplace of Huysmans criticism to see all his central characters as thinly disguised portraits of himself, the relationship between autobiography and fiction in his work is never a simple one. It is true there are many parallels between Léo’s life and that of the author – his relationship with a Bobino soubrette, his journalistic work for The Monthly Review, and so on – but it is nevertheless a mistake to read back from the work into the life. If the episode in which Marthe’s lover watches their new-born daughter die is based on personal experience, Huysmans never mentioned it elsewhere, either in his correspondance or in his conversation with friends.

Following the death of his mother on 4 May 1876, Huysmans was granted a long leave of absence from the Ministry of the Interior, where he had worked since the age of eighteen, and he took the opportunity to concentrate on his writing. By July his novel was progressing well. Convinced that his was the first novel about the life of a prostitute in a licensed brothel, Huysmans was understandably irritated when he read in a newspaper that Edmond de Goncourt was writing a novel on a similar theme and with a similar title, Le Fille Élisa. Even worse was the news that it was due for publication in November of that year. Fearing that he would be accused of plagiarism if his novel appeared after Goncourt’s, Huysmans extended his leave from the Ministry and at the start of August went to Brussels to arrange the book’s publication. In the preface he added to the French edition of Marthe of 1879, Huysmans wrote that he had already finished the book when he learned of Goncourt’s plans. However, the date and place of composition given at the end of the first edition – ‘Brussels August 1876’ – seems to infer that the book was still unfinished when Huysmans left Paris to search for a publisher, something which might explain the novel’s brevity and its somewhat hurried ending.

Huysmans’ decision to look for a publisher in Brussels was not simply a matter of contacts – his friend and fellow contributor to Le Musée des Deux Mondes, Camille Lemonnier, had suggested Callewaert as printer and Jean Gay as publisher. Nor was it entirely one of cost, for like Le Drageoir, Marthe was published at its author’s expense and printing was cheaper in Brussels than in Paris. Rather, it was one of political expediency. An insecure French government had begun clamping down on what it saw as threats to the moral health of the nation. In July, the poet Jean Richepin had been fined and sentenced to a month in prison for publishing a collection of poems, Chanson des gueux (Ballad of the Down-and-outs), one of which, ‘Fils de Fille’ (‘Son of a whore’), had been singled out for particular condemnation by the prosecuting magistrate. Huysmans, who had bought Richepin’s book and greatly admired it, feared a similar fate for himself if his novel was published in France and he was keen to avoid the serious consequences this would have had on his job prospects at the Ministry.

The decision to publish in Brussels created more immediate practical problems, and as soon as the book was printed on 12 September 1876, Huysmans set about the difficult task of trying to get copies into France. Somewhat unwisely, he decided to take 400 copies through French Customs himself, with the result that all but a handful were impounded by customs officers.

Although this represented a severe set-back – the total print run would not have exceeded 1,000 and was probably much fewer – Huysmans nevertheless managed to keep hold of a few copies, one of which he sent to Edmond de Goncourt in order to establish his prior claim to the theme of the novel. Somewhat disingenuously, given that he had known about Goncourt’s proposed novel since June or July, Huysmans included the following covering letter:

[1 October 1876]

Monsieur,

I have just learned that you are working on a novel called La Fille Élisa.

By an unfortunate coincidence I myself have been working for the past year on a book whose subject matter is, it would seem, the same as yours.

This volume, Marthe, has just been published in Brussels. It was immediately confiscated in France as an outrage on public morals.

I don’t understand it. I had thought in my soul and in my conscience, that I was writing a moral, anti-erotic work of art. Be that as it may, I thought this unfortunate episode might be of interest to you. When I asked the censor to give up the impounded books, he replied: ‘It is useless, the subject itself is sufficient to justify their seizure …’

The news came as something as a shock to Goncourt – and not just because of the fact that he, one of the fathers of the modern French novel, was being pipped to the post by an obscure newcomer. As the entry in Goncourt’s Journal shows, the news that Huysmans’ novel had attracted the attention of the authorities raised fears and anxieties in his own mind about what might happen to him as the author of an equally scandalously titled novel:

3 October 1876

Yesterday I received a book by M. Huysmans, Histoire d’une Fille, with a letter which told me the book had been impounded by the censors. That evening, in the back room at the Princess’ salon, I talked for a good hour with Doumerc the lawyer about a dispute with my honest solicitor.

From that persecution of a book so similar to my own, and that séance with a man of law, clean-shaven and dressed in black, it came about that night that I dreamt I was in prison, a prison of big stone blocks, like the Bastille in the stage set at the Ambigu theatre. And the curious thing was this: I was imprisoned simply for writing the book La Fille Élisa, and that without it having been published, without it even having progressed any further than it is now … And I had a vague uneasy feeling, deep down inside me, that the censor had taken advantage of my absence to destroy my manuscript…

When Goncourt eventually replied to Huysmans, nearly a month later, his courteous letter betrayed little of his initial state of agitation:

27 October 1876

Monsieur and dear colleague,

I read your captivating book like a presiding judge and I wish the devil himself would carry me off if I could find the least thing in it which could provoke the persecution which this unfortunate, pretty little novel has been the object…

I have also read your book, Monsieur, as a novelist, and I compliment you on the rare stylistic and descriptive qualities that shine out, on the vibrant tableaux that jump out from every page in front of one’s eyes, and on the delicate whore-ish psychology which runs through the whole volume. The only criticism that I will allow myself to make, and you yourself when you are older will recognise the justice of it, is that, young man that you are, you sometimes cannot resist the temptation of an over-literary expression, the charm of a brilliant, showy or curiously archaic word, and this leads you to kill the reality of a well-formed scene, very skilfully, with a literary pistol shot…

But once again, my compliments for all the excellent things in your study, and receive Monsieur and dear colleague this expression of my very warm literary sympathy,

Edmond de Goncourt.

This letter marked the start of a regular, if not particularly intimate, correspondence between the two writers which lasted until the older man’s death in 1896. Goncourt later invited Huysmans to his grenier in Auteuil – one of the most prestigious and influential literary salons of the period – and appreciated the younger man enough to appoint him as one of the ten members of his proposed Académie Goncourt, a literary cenacle set up with the dual purpose of perpetuating his name (and that of his brother) after his death, and encouraging new and imaginative fiction. In the event, by the time the Académie was legally constituted in 1903, Huysmans was the oldest member and became, ipso facto, its first President.

If Marthe served as a letter of recommendation to one of the leading writers of the previous generation, it was both a calling card for, and a passport into, the circle of writers of his own generation who were beginning to make a name for themselves. Sometime in the autumn of 1876, Henry Céard, who had already taken the plunge and visited Zola in person a few months before, took Huysmans – armed with complimentary copies of both Le Drageoir and Marthe – to meet the man whom he would come to address in his letters over the next few years as cher maître. The visit prompted the following letter in response:

13 December 1876

Monsieur and dear colleague,

I offer my warmest compliments on the novel which you kindly delivered to me. It contains some superb pages. Above all, I like certain bits of description, Marthe and Léo’s life as a couple, the dairy, the wineseller’s, and in particular Marthe’s memories of the whore’s life she has led.

But if you would like my honest opinion, I think that the book would benefit from being written with a lighter tone. Your style is rich enough not to abuse it. I am of the opinion that intensity cannot be achieved through the colour of words but through their value. We see everything too blackly, too over-done.

No matter, I’ve been more than happy to read your book, because you are surely one of the novelists of tomorrow. Amid the dearth of talent there is now, debutants such as yourself should be welcomed with enthusiasm,

Émile Zola

This auspicious beginning was followed by further visits to the Zolas, and through them Huysmans and Céard made the acquaintance of Guy de Maupassant, Paul Alexis and Léon Hennique. Over the course of the following year or so they met regularly every Thursday at Zola’s house in the Rue Saint-Georges, and then later at his country retreat at Médan, in order to discuss their various work projects. In 1880, all six writers contributed to the antiwar collection of short stories put together under Zola’s aegis, Les Soirées de Médan (Evenings at Médan), which alongside Zola’s own L’attaque du moulin (The Attack on the Mill), included Huysmans’ Sac au dos, and the story that made the young Guy de Maupassant’s name, Boule de Suif (Blubber-ball).

Relations between Huysmans and Zola were cemented in early 1877, when Huysmans was commissioned by the Belgian review L’Actualité to write a lengthy study of the older writer and his work. The result, Émile Zola et L’Assommoir, was published in four parts and artfully combined a profile of the author with a literary manifesto. Aside from its fascinating portrait of Zola at home in his study and its lively defence of his work, Émile Zola et L’Assommoir is noteworthy for the discrepancies it reveals between Huysmans’ view of Naturalism and that of the movement’s figurehead. For despite the fact that Huysmans was often typecast by his critics as one of Zola’s ‘disciples’, there were considerable differences between the two men.

Naturalism can be broadly described as a literary technique that relied on a close, almost scientific documentation of contemporary reality, coupled with a resolute refusal to see the world through the distorting lens of Romantic idealism. As Huysmans put it in Émile Zola et L’Assommoir:

Green pustules or rosy flesh, it makes little difference to us; we touch them both, because they both exist, because the lout merits study just as much as the most perfect of men, because fallen women swarm in our cities and have a right there just as much as honest women. Society has two faces: we show them both…