Unfinished Symphony

Let me second Linda's "thank you" to Kerry for picking such a great book. I was overwhelmed, as the length of this post will attest. Please bear with me.

The framework for Suite Francaise, literally an "unfinished symphony", was written "real time", an incredible achievement considering the stress, personal and collective, Irene Nemirovsky was experiencing and observing. Not only was Irene a writer, she was a wife, a mother, and a Jew in Occupied France. Her achievement boggles the mind.

The first part of SF, "Storm in June", opens with the shelling of the outskirts of Paris by the Germans. This sets the scene and sets up an atmosphere of dread. "To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before its wailing filled the sky." Poetry indeed... What would you do? You would probably do the same thing the Pericands, Charlie Langelet, and Gabriel Corte do. Panic, throw together a few possessions, and flee. This is where Irene shows real genius. She takes a few characters from across the "class" spectrum, and tells their stories using spare elegant prose. Her characters join thousands of others on the road headed "out of town". The few represent the whole.

Never again will you wonder how the "civilized" human animal responds to unbelievable stress. The thin veneer of civilization falls away. Would you forget your invalid father-in-law in your panic? Maybe you would. Would you steal gasoline from a young couple for your own selfish reasons? Maybe you would. I am sure we think we would not, but this is where Irene pushes through the veil and uncovers our naked fear for all to see.

Like Linda, I was having a little trouble at first keeping track of who was who. But as the story unfolded, the pages turned. Two characters stood out for me. Charlie Langelet, the gasoline thief, who stole to return home to his prize possessions ends up losing his most precious one...his life, in a random accident. No one can be prepared for life's endless possibilities, I guess.

My favorite character was the writer, Gabriel Corte. He is so full of himself, so superior, he oozes arrogance. I pictured him played by Max von Sydow in Linda's movie. Remember him in "Hannah and Her Sisters"? After Gabriel returns to Paris, "That winter Gabriel Corte's terrace was covered in a thick layer of snow; he and Florence put the champagne out there to chill. Corte would write sitting next to the fire, which still didn't quite manage to replace the lost heat of the radiators. His nose was blue; he could have cried from the cold. With one hand he held a piping hot-water bottle against his chest; with the other he wrote." But, he had champagne on the terrace! I wonder if the scene by the stove is Irene's own and the champagne is a dream.

The second part, "Dolce", is much more restrained. This is a story of interiors. We spend much of the time indoors or inside the minds of various characters. We are introduced to the German occupiers as individuals, undergoing their own traumas and dramas. We almost sympathize with the plight of these young men, away from home, lonely, disappointed by the war's intrusion into their lives. This is exactly the point of "Dolce". Irene gets to the nub of how easy it is to "sympathize", and then, eventually, to "collaborate".

I found "Dolce" less interesting than "Storm in June" but no less compelling. The young Madame Angellier, early on, while saying a rosary for her captive husband, Gaston, lets her mind wander and "Lost in thought, she let the rosary slip from her fingers and fall to the ground..." A portent of the familiar, the accepted, falling away in the Occupation. As Irene says in her notes, "People get used to everything..."

Finally, the Appendices. I was very interested in Irene's notes about the craft of the writing, her doubts and frustrations. I see her sitting alone in the woods, among the fallen leaves, reading Anna Karenina and writing in her tiny script to preserve paper. And, in the last Appendix, letters tell the sad story of Irene's final days and her husband's frantic efforts to find her.

As we know, the symphony was unfinished. However, its melodies will live on and that is the gift she left to the world.