Romain Gary

A recent talk by a novelist at the English university of the bilingual province of New Brunswick was a talk premised on the audience being ignorant of the work of Romain Gary.

The talk began with an insult to those of the West who failed to grasp that "other Europe" of Milosz. We, the acquisitive, we in our striving for recognition, reward, we who have not read Hamlet (one supposes.)  Or not understood Hamlet.

And surely none of us in the audience displaced, dispossessed, unemployed ...

The one Lithuanian in the audience had not heard of Romain Gary (!) let alone read Education or Cerfs.  Some present may even have seen the film, "Madame Rosa", or heard of it.

In "La Parole" Ge. Gusdorf writes of how we must mistrust the speaker who is too aware of his audience - or perhaps too sure.

In fairness, the opening words which I heard concerned the trove of documents concerning partisans in the years 1944-1948 and the talk closed with an admission that our author had worked from secondary sources.

My initial reactions were posted on Facebook.  At the close of the talk I mentioned The Painted Bird, but this seemed to pass unnoted.  There is a parallel between the story of the re-submission  and rejection of that manuscript and the view Gary took of himself in the hey-day of his Emile Ajar personna.  The gap between 1944 and the 1987 Klaus Barbie trial is almost that which our writer invoked and that of Education and Cerfs.

But Gary was not simply a French novelist.

By 1953, no assassin came stalking Milosz. Or do the KGB records read otherwise?  And then came '54, then '56, '67.  Who are we supposing lived in the sunny light of ignorance? Children?

By 1980 there was no feigning ignorance of the role of Milovan Djilas.

By 1980 we had Nikolai Tolstoi's Victims of Yalta.

What is this requirement for historical documents and "distance". Reconciliation? Truth?

notes:

1945: Éducation européenne
1975 : La Vie devant soi (as Emile Ajar)
1980: Les Cerfs-volants