European Reading Challenge #1

Note: At used book sales, sometimes I just take a chance with an author I never heard of though in this case it’s not really risky since the New York Review of Books is so well-known for giving neglected books new life that if they publish a book, it’s safe to assume it’s worth reading. In this case they commissioned a translation of the most famous work of a four-time nominee for the Nobel Prize, now little read, even in his native France.

Malicroix  - Henri Bosco (tr. Joyce Zonana)

The Camargue is a coastal region in southern France located south of the city of Arles, between the Mediterranean Sea and the two arms of the Rhône river delta. It is wetland, now known for its bulls, horses, flamingoes, leisurely bicycling and nature walks. But back in the early 19^th century, when this novel is set, it was a remote austere environment, vulnerable to storms and floods that come late in the year. This novel is worth reading just for the nature writing. Bosco, a poet, writes flowing prose that captures the heavy eerie atmosphere that reigns on the island that the Rhône erodes every day it is in flood.

The tale stars young Martial de Mégremut. He heads to La Redousse where notary Dromiols has summoned him to collect the inheritance of his great-uncle Cornelius de Malicroix. The notary is not there yet and Martial waits for him for a whole week in the lonely farmhouse assailed by a storm, with only Balandran, Cornelius' taciturn house-man, and the briard Bréquille for company. When he finally shows up, Dromiols has disturbing manner and style of talking and so does his assistant Uncle Rat.

Dromiols wants to give the desolation of the site and the wildness of the elements time to wear down young Martial, because a clause in the will stipulates that the young man will inherit only if he resides on the island for three months without leaving. Dromiols expects the gentle Martial to flee this stern country back to his hothouse flowers and loving relatives. He is wrong: seduced by the wild Camargue, Martial will survive against all odds the quest planned for him by the last of the Malicroix.

One take: This story is the first-person narration of how young Martial becomes a hostage to heritage. A young man takes himself out of his familiar surroundings, cosseted by loving paternal relatives who suffocate him with gentle love and middle-class comforts and trepidation about his health. Alone in a harsh environment, without anybody to tell him he is getting weird, he gradually loses his bearings. He sees himself as the fruit of the soil of a harsh environment and the blood of his rough untamed maternal side. Blood and soil mysticism unbalances him to the point where he sees himself as the guardian of his heritage, the next in a long line of manly men who did it their own manly way. Manlily: vindictive and violent. Writing after the horror of WWII, Bosco may be writing about how young men naturally seek adventures and are thus attracted, mislead, and wrecked by blood and soil nationalism and Spencerian woo-woo like the race-ghost.

Another take: Solitude and silence induce states of mind that may exist in modern bourgeois life only in extraordinary settings. We ourselves discovered in 2020 that in isolating situations, human beings lack social contact that we need for stable mental health. Alone, we begin to feel anxiety, over-estimating threats and under-estimating our ability to cope. In our boredom, uncertainty and fear, we revert to pre-modern ways of explaining and responding to the world. We start thinking ghosts might be behind those thumps in our dark house. In his loneliness, from an extramundane plane, young Martial starts to examine the basics of shelter, fire, warmth, simple food, coffee, dogs, and the superior-retainer relationship.

Bosco, a professor of classics, is dealing in religious and mythical symbols, deeper and more complex than feeling dead chuffed with a membership card in a race. Blind ferryman. Bulls pursuing maidens. Revenge and blood feuds. Harsh truths coming out in dreams. Dromiols as Beelzebub. Dropping into the realm of the dead and returning a la Theseus and Orpheus. Martial’s love interest and nurse in his delirium reminded me of the fox spirits turned nice women who comforted Pu Songling (蒲松齡)'s lonely mandarins and needy Confucian scholars.

 And those are only the symbols and states of mind that I understood. Kind of. There’s much more that was over my head after two readings. 

Comparisons are odious but Bosco reminded me of Faulkner. Strong sense of place - check: the atmosphere of Provence reminded me of Yoknapatawpha’s remoteness, lush climate, unpredictable weather, quiet stoical peasants and their unchanging ways. Lyrical captivating passages nearly unintelligible – check. Bosco’s prose is challenging, requiring quiet and focus to immerse yourself in the experience of reading -  though the grammar isn’t convoluted (unlike Faulkner's) and the vocabulary isn’t difficult. 

It’s that Bosco’s ideas are so mysterious and strange.