Rapporter la Shoah à travers un discours narratif- Célébration de l’écriture
Résumé
Jonathan Littell is a journalist by nature; by the very problematic he develops in his writings;
by the style of writing; and by the treatment of his narratives. While penning the Kindly ones
(Originally written in French with the title, Les Bienveillantes), he adopts the tone of a
Memoir writer thereby informing the reader about the history of anti-Semitism in the pre-war Europe and then delves into its causes and aftermaths. His ambitious novel forms a cusp between literary and journalistic writings: literary because there is a literary pact involved with the reader, in the form of a pseudo-autobiography of a Nazi officer; fiction is thereby a predominant factor, journalistic because the stark reality of the murder camps and the annihilation of the Jewish community stare at the reader like a piece of news. Littell thereby manages to create a new genre in literary writings; a new genre in journalistic writings too.
This genre intertwines history and literature, journalism being the catalyst for the writer to
bring up the story in 2006, almost 60 years after the destruction of those death camps. The
novel in question gets sensationalized both due to the content and the controversy that it has managed to garner at its publication almost 4 years after Front National’s- an extreme right wing party known for its anti-Semitism- first round victory in the French presidential
elections. By the time of the publication of this novel Jonathan Littell has worked with Le
Monde, A French daily, as journalist reporting from war ravaged countries. Digging up
history for literary purposes must already be a professional subversion for him. This journey
from being a committed journalist to a committed writer can also be seen through the prism of ceaseless wars that have been targeting innocent lives. Why choose to write a novel and submit oneself to the scrutiny of historians and literati whereas Littell could have very well come up with a historical account of the events, especially because he had worked on the East European archives to come up with it? Does this approach put Littell in the league of Emile Zola- J’accuse- or more recently Jonathan Safran Foer who put their research work at the service of literature, or does it legitimately provide Littell with an agency on discourse; a voice that he could share with the victims of European anti-Semitism, which would otherwise have been held back due to the use of traditional journalistic tools: Print media?
Journalism thereby manages to locate a writer between the margins of fact and fiction; fiction that allows the permeation of discourse into an otherwise volatile historical event like
Holocaust that reverberates in the present: the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and the right
wing political parties gaining mileage from it. In the Kindly Ones, Littell endows his subject,
a Nazi officer, with speech; with the ability to transcend popular knowledge about Nazism,
often seen through the Hitlerian prism, and to bring it to the pedestal of demystification of the Nazi myth. Littell traces the Nazi system in its structuralist form, the subtext being Nazism was not an overnight obsession of the German extreme right wing; it was a well-planned and well-executed imperial machinery that led to the destruction of the European Jews.
Through this presentation, I aim to analyze the Kindly ones by bringing to the fore its
historical-journalistic approach and to locate the novel in the French literary tradition of
journalistic writings. The core of the novel being destruction, of both victim and executioner,
an interrogation into the narrative strategy adopted for projecting this apocalyptic
phenomenon will form the second part of our scrutiny. We will then investigate the
motivation of the author: what makes him tread into a territory which is both known- writing has been a part of his journalistic career- and unknown- the use of fiction to recreate a discourse?
Jonathan Littell était journaliste par son métier avant de publier son roman intitulé Les
Bienveillantes ; il est écrivain aussi, et il aborde une problématique sur l’aspect mémoriel de
la Shoah qu’il avance dans cette œuvre, grâce à son style d’écriture, mais aussi grâce au
traitement qu’il donne à sa narration estompant ainsi la distinction que l’on croit exister entre
les écrits littéraires et journalistiques. Son roman est littéraire car il y a un pacte littéraire avec
le lecteur, sous forme d’un faux mémoire d’un officier Nazi ; la fiction rentre ainsi au premier
plan ; et son roman est journalistique car la réalité des camps d’extermination est rapporté à
l’instar des journalistes de nos jours. Littell recrée ainsi un genre en littérature, en journalisme
aussi. Ce genre mélange en conséquence une histoire qui date de six décennies, celle de la
Shoah, avec un style de narration novateur.
Nous nous interrogeons donc pour quelles raisons cet écrivain a choisi d’écrire un roman et se
soumettre alors à la critique des historiens ainsi que des littéraires alors qu’il aurait pu écrire
un ouvrage historique sur la Shoah d’autant plus qu’il avait travaillé sur les archives
historiques de l’Europe de l’Est pour son roman. Cette approche de mélanger les genres lui
met-il dans les même lignées d’Emile Zola, ou encore plus récemment, Jonathan Safran Foer,
qui mettent leur travail de recherche au service de la littérature ? Ou cette approche donne à
Littell un point de vue privilégié sur son discours narratif ? C’est donc le journalisme qui
permet de situer un écrivain entre la périphérie de vérité et de fiction ; et c’est la fiction qui
facilite l’infiltration de discours dans un événement historique et violente telle la Shoah.
A travers cet article, j’envisage d’analyser Les Bienveillantes en mettant au premier plan son
approche historique et journalistique et de situer ainsi ce roman dans la tradition littéraire
française de l’écriture journalistique. Je tenterai aussi de souligner la motivation de Littell
pour aborder un tel projet à l’aube du 21ème siècle.
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Licence : Copyright (Tous droits réservés)