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August 13, 2006 
Suite Francaise By Irene Nemirovsky Alfred A. Knopf, 2006 
Memories of the German Occupation of France bodyI had been reading "Suite Francaise," Irene Nemirovsky's unfinished, posthumously published novel that's been dominating the current bestseller lists when my air conditioner refused to resume work following a four-hour blackout. "Suite Francaise" is about World War II. The first novella focuses on people fleeing Paris on the eve of the Germans' entry into the city. The second part is about life in a French village under German occupation. Two questions began to form in my mind as I was reading about insurmountable hardships endured when food, electricity, water, medications, petrol and numerous other basic necessities for survival disappeared while the bombs kept on falling down. I wondered how is it possible for the United States, a technologically advanced superpower not to be able to produce sufficient amount of electricity at a time of crisis and how did we lapse into this complete dependence on electricity and gas, this artificial way of sustaining life? The people in "Suite Francaise" not only survived but also managed to have a life - to fall in love, have children. What are our chances of doing that if we had to make do without electricity and gas for several years? In "Storm in June," the first part of the book, the imminent occupation of Paris by the Germans throws the population into a panic. People from all walks of life scramble to flea the city. They pack in haste whatever they could - the family silver, mementos of happier times. The panic turns into chaos and despair. The road out of Paris is thick with people walking, people on bicycles, broken down cars, cars without petrol, wagons, carts, baby carriages, trucks with wounded soldiers. Meanwhile the Germans, already victorious, continue to bomb relentlessly. The dead and wounded are strewn all over the road. Night falls. The nearby villagers hide behind their locked gates and high walls. Everyone is starving but there is no food to be found. Dolce," the second novella, is about the people of a village and the surrounding farms, living under German occupation. Aristocrats, the rich middle class and the tenant farmers all have to find their own way of dealing with the occupier. Each vignette reveals an unsavory part of human nature not obvious under normal circumstances. Staunch moralists connive to steal; shrill patriots collaborate secretly with the Germans; the rich hoard food with heightened cruelty. And all along, people search for a moment of happiness, for someone to love. There are three important characteristics of human nature that Nemirovsky brings out with crystal clarity. Without any political rhetoric, she portrays the class struggle that dominated the first two thirds of the twentieth century: the rich exploiting the poor, despising them for their lack of manners and gentility, refusing to see their plight. Nemirovsky also shows us that not all Germans were vicious and brutal and not all French were good patriots or charitable towards their countrymen. There is the cultivated German officer whose music career is cut short by the war. There is the young French woman, trapped in a loveless marriage, living with a controlling mother-in-law, gently falling for the German billeted at their home. Then there is the local dressmaker who flaunts her liaison with a German soldier: "So what?" She taunts her critics. "German or French, friend or enemy, he's first and foremost a man and I'm a woman. He's good to me, kind, attentive…" In her notes for the rest of the book, Nemirovsky writes about the need to "stress the struggle between personal destiny and collective destiny." Time and again she makes this point in the first two novellas: "This is the principal problem of our times," muses the cultivated German officer. "What is more important, the individual or society? War is the collaborative act par excellence. We Germans believe in the communal spirit - the spirit one finds among bees, the spirit of the hive." Irene Nemirovsky was born in imperial Russia whose wealthy family escaped to France during the Russian Revolution. She was also Jewish. She was arrested on 13 July 1942 and died in Auschwitz on 17 August 1942. Her husband was deported to Auschwitz on November 6, 1942 and was sent immediately to his death. Their two small daughters were saved by a friend who hid them by taking them from one place to another while the police searched for them. The girls carried with them the manuscript of what would become "Suite Francaise" as well as the detailed notes Nemirovsky had made for the rest of the novel. Ophelia Georgiev Roop Library Director San Bernardino Public Library |
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