Women writing in contemporary France

Germain and the Christian novel 193
dans le jeu, dans l’art, dans les amours humaines. Mais la vraie vie se jouait
encore ailleurs, et autrement. Elle était un drame hors mesure et hors texte’
(p. 192, my emphasis) (These two individuals whose hearts were too enamoured
of the absolute had believed that beauty, that salvation, resided in
the game, in art, in human love. But real life was unfolding in another place,
and in another way. It was a drama beyond any measure, and beyond any
text).
It would appear that the answer, if there can be an answer, ultimately
lies beyond the will of the author, and perhaps the reader. Might it be that
a Christian novel may ultimately be a Christian novel in spite of its author
or indeed reader? Just as the individual cannot will or solicit the grace of
God, so the Christian novelist cannot set out to write a Christian novel.
Grace, as Lucie discovers in L’Enfant Méduse, may be conferred at any
time, and by any means. As the narrator of La Pleurante des rues de Prague
(1992) suggests, the spark of recognition may be flamed by any text (plastic
or written) and at any time: 20 ‘Or les textes aussi sont des lieux, – ils le sont
même par excellence. Ils sont des lieux où tout peut advenir, – l’éblouissement
et les ténèbres, et jusqu’à la Parole de Dieu’ (pp. 85–6) (But texts are
also places – indeed they are places par excellence. They are places where
anything can transpire – dazzling light and darkness, and even the Word of
God).
Notes
1 Sylvie Germain, Le Livre des nuits (Paris: Gallimard, 1985) was awarded le prix
Grévisse, le prix Hermès, le prix du Lion’s Club International, le prix du Livre
insolite, le prix de la Ville du Mans and le prix Passion.
2 Sylvie Germain, Jours de colère (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
3 Cited in P. Tison, ‘Sylvie Germain: l’obsession du mal’, Magazine Littéraire, 286
(1991), 64–6 (65). Translations are mine throughout.
4 Sylvie Germain, Les Echos du silence (Paris: Desclée de Brower, 1996).
5 Sylvie Germain, Immensités (Paris: Folio, 1995), p. 134. First published:
Gallimard, 1993. All quotations are from the Folio edition.
6 Malcolm Scott, The Struggle for the Soul of the French Novel (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1989), pp. 5, 44, 50.
7 Shooting stars are identified as portents of death in Jean Chevalier and Alain
Gheerbrant (eds), Dictionnaire des symboles (Paris: Robert Laffont/Jupiter, 1982),
p. 417; Iona Opie and Moira Tatem (eds), A Dictionary of Superstitions (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 376; Stith Thompson, The Folktale (New York:
Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1964), p. 258; Philippa Waring, A Dictionary of Omens
and Superstitions (London: Souvenir Press, 1978), pp. 209 and 218.