André Schwarz-BartReseñas

Des descriptions poignantes, tant d'un hospice parisien des années 1940 que de la Martinique de 1900, où l'esclavage était si proche, si vivant, si douloureux encore dans la mémoire des anciens. Une langue française enrichie de l'épaisseur colorée du créole.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Schwarz-Bart-La-mulatresse-Solitude/32678

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M.1.2

"Da quando ho cominciato a scrivere, il mio sogno è stato di poter trattare un argomento come quello di L'ultimo dei Giusti. Ma per molto tempo non ne ho avuto il coraggio. Non voglio dire che pensassi di non averne i mezzi, voglio realmente dire che non credevo di avere il diritto di scrivere un libro come questo." (fonte: Google Books)

Chef-d’œuvre absolu. Une œuvre d'art !

How common is a phase of Shoah exploration? I found it rather odd and off-outting when I fell into a period in my early 20s, I was nearly obsessed and read constantly from scholarly analyses, memoirs and novels. I found the subject nearly untenable for most people in Southern Indiana: why would you want to read about that? Since then I have encountered a half dozen kindred souls who likewise went inexplicably overboard on this darkest of subjects.

I read this novel in 1994 and was ripped as if by the throat and throttled violently.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Schwarz-Bart-Le-Dernier-des-justes/19779

> Le Dernier des Justes n'est pas un monument de la littérature. C'est une épée que l'on vous enfonce lentement dans le ventre.
—Françoise Giroud, L'Express

> Un livre majeur.
—Elie Wiesel.

> Max Selinger. André Schwarz-Bart. Le dernier des justes. Paris. Seuil. 1959. 349 pages. 1,200 fr.
In: Books Abroad, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Spring, 1960), pp. 134-135. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1F2YwwL7kZ6hSpgHpWDgS6Vnn7MKsqYw8/view?usp=shari...
Stable URL : https://www.jstor.org/stable/40114526

> Naïm Kattan. André Schwartz-Bart : Le dernier des Justes (Ed. du Seuil).
In: Kattan, N., Gauvreau, M. S. & Belleau, A. (1959). Compte rendu de [Les livres]. Liberté, 1 (6), pp. 411-413. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/59684ac

> André et Renée Neher. Le dernier des Justes
In: Revue Esprit, No. 277 (10) (Octobre 1959), pp. 447-449. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/jean-marie-domenach/andre-schwartz-bart-le-dern... ;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Czlx-edSZW3cgu5tD-iKXLkesWR3f89w/view?usp=shari...

> J.-M. Domenach. André Schwartz-Bart : Le dernier des Justes (Ed. du Seuil).
In: Revue Esprit, No. 279 (12) (Décembre 1959), pp. 773-777. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://esprit.presse.fr/article/neher-andre-et-neher-renee/le-dernier-des-juste... ;
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gnSAUKp1PTNdNs87X4MrlnCC_jE2xHPD/view?usp=shari...

> Konrad Bieber. Schwarz-Bart, André. Le Dernier des Justes. Paris: Seuil, 1959. Pp. 346.
In: The French Review, Vol. 33, No. 5 (Apr., 1960), pp. 514-516. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://drive.google.com/file/d/189_KKuE4Cd_Fwr8P8ytNAZ4LDt5Y8Xwl/view?usp=shari...
Stable URL : https://www.jstor.org/stable/383421

> Francion. Le Dernier des Justes, André Schwarz-Bart, Un volume. Editions du Seuil, Paris.
In: Le progrès du Golfe, 25 déc. 1959, p. 5. … ; (en ligne),
URL : https://collections.banq.qc.ca/ark:/52327/2476812

"Da quando ho cominciato a scrivere, il mio sogno è stato di poter trattare un argomento come quello de L'ultimo dei Giusti. Ma per molto tempo non ne ho avuto il coraggio. Non voglio dire che pensassi di non averne i mezzi (anche se più d'una volta ho provato questa sensazione): voglio realmente dire che non credevo di avere il diritto di scrivere un libro come questo.
"Vi ho dedicato quattro anni. Il libro ha avuto cinque versioni, tutte molto diverse tra loro, o per contenuto o per costruzione, o per la traiettoria che esse delineavano. Originariamente, la prima versione era limitata ai tempi nostri, cioè a ciò che avevo visto di persona. E poi, a poco a poco mi sono reso conto che per cogliere appieno un personaggio ebraico, bisognava far uso d'altri mezzi. Bisognava far intervenire un'altra dimensione, una dimensione storica.
"I rapporti fra il romanzo (che è uno strumento di apprensione del mondo) e il mondo stesso cambiano. Ai tempi di Balzac, per esempio, bastava situare un essere umano in un ambiente. La psicologia era - per così dire - consustanziale all'ambientazione. C'è rapporto tra la poltrona del cugino Pons e la psicologia del cugino Pons.
"Oggi invece il problema si pone diversamente. Ma la questione è anche più 'scottante' quando si tratti di personaggi ebraici, non soltanto perché un personaggio ebraico esprime i problemi del tempo, le difficoltà del tempo, ma anche perché è difficile definire un essere ebraico in un momento dato, giacché non esistono in rapporto né un ambiente dato, né un territorio particolare e neanche una tradizione chiara. Non c'è che una specie di continua deambulazione attraverso l'Europa e attraverso il tempo; né ci si può contentare di mettere mano esclusivamente agli ultimi anelli della catena, perché in sé tali anelli non significano nulla e il personaggio singolo può addirittura non sapere d'essere l'anello d'una lunga catena. Questa considerazione mi ha dunque condotto a risalire nel tempo. Scrivere questo romanzo è stato per me, se volete, una vera e propria avventura. Strada facendo mi sono accorto che a questa catena storica bisognava aggiungere un filo spirituale che desse una definizione della storia ebraica, perché senza questo filo spirituale la storia ebraica è incomprensibile. Ciò mi ha portato a risalire al medioevo e a strutturare spiritualmente il romanzo con la leggenda dei Giusti. La leggenda dei Giusti fonde insieme, per così dire, due necessità: quella di dare al libro, sul piano della struttura formale, un filo storico, romanzesco, lineare; e la necessità di conferirgli una 'direzione' spirituale.
"Mi si è mossa l'accusa di aver plagiato quindici righe da un racconto dello scrittore yiddish Mendele Mochèr Sefarìm e di aver utilizzato documenti sui campi di sterminio. Alla prima accusa rispondo che non sono nato nel 1185, l'anno da cui inizia il racconto de L'ultimo dei Giusti, non ho mai conosciuto la Polonia chassidica, né la Germania hitleriana. Ho cercato di rivivere tutto questo leggendo, accumulando una quantità di appunti. Ora mi vedo accusato di plagio. Ma se fossi stato un plagiario 'cosciente e organizzato' avrei certamente saputo rimaneggiare e dissimulare meglio le fonti delle mie informazioni. A proposito del secondo punto d'accusa, non ho niente in contrario ad ammettere di aver utilizzato direttamente l'opera di Poliakov, Il nazismo e lo sterminio degli ebrei, e quella del mio caro e vecchio amico Michel Borwicz, Écrits des condamnés à mort sous l'occupation allemande. Nell'uno e nell'altro caso, si tratta di documenti. Io non sono stato in campo di sterminio. Non ho visto con i miei occhi la 'selezione' dei condannati. Si trattava di dimostrare il carattere storico di quei fatti, mal noti comunque al gran pubblico. Ma non è certo nell'inserire tali testimonianze dirette nel mio libro, che io ho avuto degli scrupoli. Anzi, gli scrupoli mi sono venuti quando si trattava di inventare, di proseguire la narrazione romanzesca, di rivivere quei fatti per mezzo dei personaggi del romanzo. Da principio, avrei voluto fermarmi al campo di Drancy: e poi ho sentito la necessità assoluta di seguire il mio eroe fin nella camera a gas. Quelle pagine sono state scritte in una specie di delirio, perché se mi sentivo appunto autorizzato a far storia, a riprodurre brani di testimonianze di deportati, una sorta di orrore sacro mi impediva di 'fare della letteratura'. È per questo che, quando la finzione romanzesca cedeva il passo alla storia dei campi di sterminio, io ho lasciato, fin dove m'era possibile, quelle testimonianze allo stato bruto. Centinaia di libri sono stati pubblicati sui campi di concentramento. Avrei potuto amalgamare le varie descrizioni della 'selezione,' rifonderle in una maniera romanzesca. Ma non mi sentivo proprio il diritto di 'fare della letteratura', a quel punto. Chi è ebreo, mi capirà."
André Schwarz-Bart

A difficult and harrowing read--but well worth it.

Ce livre est indéniablement bien écrit et comporte des passages très réussis. Oscillant entre narration épique et romanesque, le texte m'a paru pourtant souvent inégal et parfois ennuyeux en dépit de l'intérêt évident de son histoire et de l'importance de son message. Le dernier tiers du livre m'a semblé de loin le plus réussi par sa beauté effroyable et tragique.
Une œuvre-témoignage de la persécution et du calvaire de millions de juifs à travers les âges qui s'évertue à compenser la noirceur du sujet par son humanité et son style non larmoyant.

קראתי בהשפעת אבי, אבל עלי לא עשה רושם גדול. אולי עוד לא הייתי בשל.

...the ancient Jewish tradition of the Lamed-Vov, a tradition that certain Talmudists trace back to the source of the centuries, to the mysterious time of the prophet Isaiah. Rivers of blood have flowed, columns of smoke have obscured the sky, but surviving all these dooms, the tradition has remained inviolate down to our own time. According to it, the world reposes upon thirty-six Just Men, the Lamed-Vov, indistinguishable from simple mortals; often they are unaware of their station. But if just one of them were lacking, the sufferings of mankind would poison even the souls of the newborn, and humanity would suffocate with a single cry. For the Lamed-Vov are the hearts of the world multiplied, and into them, as into one receptacle, pour all our griefs.

I have read many novels, memoirs, and histories about the Holocaust, but this may be the most literary that I've encountered. It is beautifully written and weaves history, legend, and religion into a fascinating story about the transference of the Just Man from one generation to the next within the Levy family, culminating in the life and death of Ernie Levy. The story begins with the horrific tales of Rabbi Yom Tov Levy and his progeny who suffered death and martyrdom over and over throughout the centuries in most of the countries of Europe. It is a seemingly endless cycle of persecution bringing us into the present with the story of Ernie's grandfather, Mordecai.

As an adolescent, Mordecai was forced to leave the shtetl of Zemyock, Poland and hire himself out as a farm hand in order to keep his parents and siblings from starvation. They would rather starve, because to the Hasidic Levy family, nothing is worth turning from the study of God. Furthermore, on every job, Mordecai is forced to fight in order to establish his place in the hierarchy. Eventually, he becomes an itinerant peddler and meets and falls in love with a fiery young woman named Judith. Although his family doesn't approve of her, eventually Mordecai and Judith settle in Zemyock and raise a family. Finally, Mordecai is able to devote himself to religious study.

Their oldest son, Benjamin, doesn't seem to fit the bill as the next Just Man. He is skinny and small with a large head, unlike his three more robust younger brothers, and Mordecai fairly ignores him. A vicious pogrom forces Benjamin to leave Zemyock and move to Germany, where things seem much safer than in Eastern Europe. Ah, do you see the shadow of destiny falling? Benjamin becomes a tailor and eventually earns enough to bring his parents to live with him and soon his wife. Completely cowed by the headstrong Judith, Fraulein Leah Blumenthal is the mother to a large brood of children, yet remains naive and impotent of power.

And so we come to Ernie, neither the oldest or youngest, small and unassuming, but possessed of an undeniably sensitive soul. Nurtured and protected by his family, especially the patriarch Mordecai, Ernie nonetheless suffers from the growing Nazi presence in Stillenstadt. The story of his childhood is sweet and horrible and a window into the suffering of Jewish children in 1930's Germany. Ernie's innocence is gnawed away until he is only a shell filled with despair and hopelessness. As a young man he wanders, believing himself to be nothing more than the dog the Nazi's have labeled him. The story of his redemption in Paris and his ultimate fate, I will leave you to discover, but needless to say, as a Just Man, Ernie's destiny is not an easy one.

I loved the language of this book, although it is not an easy read emotionally. The author writes beautifully of the tortures of a sensitive soul, affinity with nature, the trials of childhood relationships, and the bleakness of losing your way in life. And arching over all of this, humanity, lies the Holocaust. It's as awful as you might imagine, but even worse is the idea you are left with. What if we have murdered the Last Just Man? To what brink have we brought ourselves spiritually, and is it possible to recover?

Highly recommended.½

This is a very sad, but true partial history of the Jews until the Holocaust. Schwarz-Bart kept my interest, but i would have preferred no magic realism. he follows one family for centuries, and ends with ernie, a lamed vovnek, murdered in the holocaust.½

I finally got around to reading a book that's been waiting for me: A Morning Star by Andre Schwarz-Bart, posthumously finished and published by his wife Simone, whom I identify, rightly or wrongly, as the subject of the only other book (A Woman of Solitude) he wrote after the prizewinning The Last of the Just, the incredibly moving and mystical account of the Holocaust written decades ago.

The new book makes clear why there have been no more books by this incredibly fine writer. Simone tells us in the foreword that he wrote draft after draft of this semi-autobiographical account of the Tragedy and found them all wanting. He could find no language to adequately convey the true horror of his experiences. What he saw and heard and smelled, imprinted on his brain forever, could not be shared without dishonoring his theme. As he says, in his epigraph for Chapter VII :

Staying silent is not enough and talking is too much: we need to find the right cries, mutterings, or start singing a new song that encompasses all words, all silences, all cries.

It is his sense of inadequacy to do the task justice, his very reluctance to put his observations and reflections into words, that the reader intuits from Schwartz-Barts ironic understatement in relating the nature of the events the protagonist experienced. His descriptions of the tragic events are lean, spare. Relatives disappear in a sentence and are never heard from again. God-awful things happen in parenthetical phrases. For me, reading Schwarz-Bart is like communing with a likeminded soul. I get him, and feel his sadness in my bones, with no need for details. On the contrary, I am relieved by the lack of specificity. A reader who can't read between the lines or doesn't know the underlying history, will not like the book. I do.

An epigraph for Chapter VI quotes Moses pleading with God:

If you have reserved such a fate for me, ah! please, let me die instead if I've found favor in your sight, somay no longer see all this affliction. Numbers 11:15

Exactly.

Powerful and moving. The journey through the generations is exhilirating. The outcome just heartbreaking. A beautiful book you will remember.

Best book ever written about the Holocaust!

The first third of the book is dedicated to the Levy family’s ancestry, an ancestry filled with legendary Lamed-Vovniks throughout the generations. The reader is shown how they have martyred themselves in the name of suffering for mankind. The last two-thirds of the book concerns itself with one person, and his name is Ernie. We watch Ernie grow from a child into a man, and through overwhelming imagery, see him suffer for mankind during the Holocaust.

Antisemitism runs rampant throughout the pages, from one son to the next, each holy man is faced with their own set of trials and tribulations. The reader is shown how the Eastern and Western European Jewish community has paid a price for over 800 years, the years since the eleventh century through the Holocaust. Jewish persecution has had its roots dug deep into the earth throughout the ages. As a cultural and historical resource The Last of the Just is invaluable. It gives the reader an awareness of how antisemitism has steadfastly taken hold throughout the centuries, without a let up.

[A Woman Named Solitude] by [[Andre Schwarz-Bart]] is the next. This one was definitely outside of my usual box. I was attracted by the title, since I have always liked Soledad as a name, and intrigued by the description on the cover: 'A beautiful, heartbreaking story of slavery and the survival of the human spirit.' The book was originally written in French. Certainly a grim topic, but perhaps something I should confront more often. My overall reaction? Ambivalence, uncertainty, confusion, mixed feelings. I'm not sure I like the book well enough to keep it, but I feel like maybe I should make another attempt to wrap my brain around it. I have that same reaction to [A Canticle for Leibowitz] and [A Case of Conscience].

The novel begins in 1755 among the Diola people of West Africa. Part 1 is the story of the young girl Bayangumay coming into adulthood and marriage. The story does an excellent job, from what I can tell, of portraying something of the culture and mindset and general ways of perceiving the world of this young West African girl. It ends with her capture and transport on a slave vessel to the island of Guadeloupe (a French colony). The second part of the book tells the story of her daughter, Solitude. The first chapter is still narrated essentially by Bayungamay. The second chapter is from her daughter's perspective--in this chapter the mother's name is Man Bobette and the daughter's is Rosalie, because of course these things are dictated by the owners. The third chapter is split between the child Rosalie and Louis Mortier, the general plantation manager (de facto slaveowner). It is at the end of this chapter that the heroine names herself Solitude after a series of masters and their marks of ownership. The rest of the book covers the slave revolt, brief independence of the island, and the eventual return of white authority and the arrest and execution of various 'ringleaders' including Solitude.

The opening quote and epilogue make it clear that this story was based on real people and events, including Solitude herself. The information about the author makes his motivation and inspiration clear--he survived the Nazi genocide of Jews of WWII and married a woman from the island of Guadeloupe.

I am not sure if my lack of appreciation stems from my lacking the appropriate literary background or the appropriate cultural background. Most of my reading about slavery (whether fiction or not) relates to its practice on the mainland, here in the United States, so a French island is certainly a different perspective on the ugly underbelly of colonial history. There isn't much in the way of character development or scintillating dialogue. And no plot as such, just vignettes that appear largely unconnected. The choppiest part of the book is the accounting of the revolution and temporary freedom on the island. Solitude somehow becomes a folk legend, but it doesn't seem particularly plausible and the narration isn't particularly coherent.

The author did an excellent job portraying the people and the era and making it feel viscerally real and immediate. I was deeply moved by some of the descriptions. For example, in a scene involving the public torture/execution of a slave woman who dared kill her baby (and thus steal profit from the owners):

'The child had looked in amazement from the old man's placid face to Man Bobette's tight, impassive features, and suddenly discovered that they were both observing the scene with the same eyes: two little land crabs darting this way and that, searching, biting the air roundabout. It was very hard to look at the world with such eyes. When you examined it coldly in this way, the claws of your eyes turned back into your head and tore it to pieces.'

Later on, as Rosalie was trained to become a house servant: 'But at other times she would stiffen her neck with rage and let the crabs fly at Man Bobette, or thrust out her belly and hurl the crabs at the big house...' Such imagery!

The book does a good job showing some of the chilling sensibilities and casual atrocities involved in this peculiar institution, and the conflicts it creates within the black communities. Rosalie is given to the manager's daughter when they are both still quite young, perhaps five or six years old. The girl already has four other personal slavegirls. And here is one exchange:

''Didn't To-Souls know that niggers didn't feel pain as white poeple do?...But runaway niggers, Mademoiselle went on in her sweet gentle voice, didn't seem to feel anything at all. There was sorcery behind it, no other explanation was possible. Whatever you did to them, they just smiled or calmly insulted you, as though you weren't worthy of their anger.' It gives whole new levels of meaning to the cluelessness that comes with white privilege.

In essence, this book is a portrait of slavery and its effects on the black people who suffered under it. But it is very unlike most novels in terms of tone, style, plot, etc., at least in my experience. So while I liked the prose, I didn't care for the storytelling.½

Read it as a teenager, was floored by it then, and remains memorable to this day some fifty years later. Firmly grounded in Jewish folklore of the thirty-six righteous men in every generation (in Hebrew called lamed vavniks) because of whom the world is preserved from destruction, a theme which runs through Schwartzbart's novel and gives it its binding cohesiveness to the very end which terminates with the Holocaust. Because of the multi-century progression of the narrative, to me it has never been simply another Holocaust novel per se. It is history, tradition, folklore, changing backgrounds and successions of assorted events along the way, even if the logical evolution of the novel heads towards its horrible denouement.

How sad it is that Andre Schwartbart who wrote this novel (I believe) in his mid-20s, never followed up his precocious ability with anything remotely commensurate with the so-exciting promise he then showed.

Serge.

2978 The Last of the Just, by Andre Schwarz-Bart translated from the French by Stephen Becker (read 6 May 1997) This book was published in 1959 and won France's highest literary award. It tells of a Jewish family in Poland who move to Germany, and go thru the horrors of Hitlerian Germany, with doleful results. There is a lot in the book which is eery and crazy and boring. I was very glad to finish the book. The theme is unrelievedly repellant; there are lots of Jewish nuances which meant nothing to me, and a lot of foolish and insane behavior by Ernest Levy--whose doings constitute the major portion of the book. Not a good read.

nobody i told about this book had ever heard of it and i can't figure out why. it is a fantastic and powerful novel. when people ask me what its about though, i had trouble telling them. it is about humanity - wonderful, vulnerable, broken humanity. it is an agonizing read - made me feel like throwing up at times. made me smile a lot and laugh out loud a few times as well. it should be read.

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. At first glance,the summary on the back of the book seemed promising (SPOILER ALERT): "Conceived aboard a slave ship and bound for the Caribbean, Solitude was born into slavery and sold on the auction block, a black chattel of a corrupt society-- until she heard the ringing of rebellion on the island wind."

The story is based on legends of a real woman named Solitude. The historical facts themselves are fascinating, and the book poignantly depicts the devastating impact of slavery on slave, master and society. Also brilliantly described are the psychological effects of captivity on the slaves.

There was just something missing, and I couldn't fully engage in the story. My edition is translated to English from the original French, so something may have been lost there. But I think what was lacking, for me, was character development. I felt very removed from the character of Solitude throughout the story. Perhaps this was intentional on the part of the author, a means to depict the emotional distance at which Solitude kept others in order to survive, and maintain her as an enigma.

Perhaps a reread in the future will yield a different experience. But for now, this novel just left me wanting something more.