Annie Ernaux: the origin of the world

However, the French author, whom we have come to know, albeit sporadically, recently, has gained a definite momentum after his great success in his country in 2008 (a book was also translated into English at the same time). Herce disappeared and then Voltaire Cabaret), namely ‘Una mujer’, ‘Pure passion’, ‘Shame’, ‘Other daughter’, ‘The memory of a girl’…, we can’t say that he is a novelist in the true sense of the word.Since these works do not belong to the field of imagination, they are not even designed as fiction in themselves.

On the contrary, Ernaux’s entire career responds to a realistic and autobiographical approach; his literature therefore focuses on the explanation and analysis of his own life path, and is always confined to a concrete and well-defined context (from acquaintance to historical); In this context, he defined his works as “autosociobiographies”. should be understood biographically example of a supreme reality as a sociological testimony. Even when it comes to the most intimate, pure passions, Ernaux wants to reveal himself impersonally, like someone aiming for a scientific goal: for example, he writes, “It’s not my envy, it’s my envy,” and the same emphasis is on ‘The Profession’.

On the other hand, diaries, although the other way the author usually travels, have certain characteristics and are incomparable even personal diaries (‘I didn’t leave my night’, ‘Get lost’…) and are the most external. (‘Outside life’, ‘Diary of the Outsiders’…), both unite in similar domains better than sociobiographical titles.

So the book we are examining today—and insofar as it is presented to us as a novel—is an exception; or rather: a first approach, a dress rehearsal with an audience While – and without a network – is an obvious presence in itself, it’s crucial to what will happen in a more original post soon. In fact, along with ‘Empty cabinets’ (one of which was excluded from ‘Écrire la vie’, where he collected all his work until 2011), Ernaux dedicates two other titles, he says, making up the first phase. , as they are, in fact, still presented under the guise of fiction: invented names, internal monologue… Until 1984, with ‘El lugar’, a text centered on his father figure, the stark and impersonal record that would characterize his production.

Now, Ernaux’s narrative universe is already in ‘The Empty Cabinets’, so much so that some of his main books are clearly visible on these pages. And the story of the hero, the student named Denise Lesur, is the story of Annie Ernaux.

And we don’t do this because we make the mistake of falling into biographical fallacies and confusing the author with the character. no context free text and today this novel cannot be read as if ‘Shame’ or ‘The Incident’, for example Ernaux’s many biographical pages, did not exist.

After all, the importance of ‘Empty Closets’ is not limited to what it can spawn as the seed of a world (a French town in the 1950s and 1960s, working-class parents with a small bar-shop, a college-going daughter…), because the novel is arrogant, arrogant and poignant enough to judge for itself, in every sense. ideological positioning..

Denise Lesur, the only daughter of these uneducated merchants, tells about his life since childhood in that slum bar-shop, the queen of a small universe without setbacks (dirt, cramped and bad housing, quarrels between her parents…), but enviable (chocolate, work, cheese…) with the economic hardships of few customers, many in the neighborhood compared to the misery of the old and drunkard.

However, an order begins to crack and be questioned when the parents, in a major family effort, send the girl to a private school where little Denise discovers another world (talk, teachers, other girls’ behavior: class differences). ), this not only causes tangible insults (even for the uncontrollable: tone of voice, itching), but gradually, puts the girl before her parents: she is ashamed of them. And the distance grows as sexuality (the other side of the world’s origin) conquers its disturbing realms and the books draw Denise (the bright, brilliant student) closer to another sociocultural realm. Life with his college classmates in the state capital documents his status as a renegade.

The story is told in the present tense: the inner monologue of a college resident who evokes his past between guilt, hatred and anger, but also does so with fear and bewilderment, a consciousness of helplessness and failure. We know on the first page that he went to an ex-abortionist and that he had a catheter inside.

The starting point is this: “Explain why I’m locked in a room in college city, afraid of dying, of what might happen to me. See clearly, describe everything between the two contractions. See where the lack of control starts. That’s not it. Right, I wasn’t born with that hatred, of them, of my family, of customers. , the store… I didn’t always hate the others, the cultured, the teachers, the gods, now I hate them too. I’m at the heart of everything. (…) Fucked everywhere“.

Ernaux’s literature built on this first experienceabout the feeling of being left suspended in the middle of two worlds (“ass between two chairs”). And he already takes sides in this first book.

In ‘Regreso a Yvetot’, how his father died in the same year and his first job as a teacher in Savoy, peasant and worker originHe knew what to write: “More from my mother’s death than from the death of my father, an anchor in the workers’ and peasants’ world, and from teaching students, many of whom were like an image of me at the time. Because of his age, his rudeness, his vulgarity, his ignorance of dominant values, I knew what to write from that double experience: Writing about the truth I know, about everything I’ve left a mark on. My existence.

And although every literary genre has its excuses, fables and rhetoric, Annie Ernaux will find the area to measure in my sociobiographical writing. Coming to terms with her parents and her own origin: writing to defend her class and status as a woman. This is its power, its notorious present echo.