There is, as in David Golder, an intimation of the autobiographical in Snow in Autumn: the Nemirovskys did not have a large country estate or the former serfs who would have remained on such properties; but their fraught removal to France, and the agonies of starting over, are at least somewhat reflected in the Karine family’s trajectory. Loulou, the Karines’ twenty-year-old daughter, is, like Joyce Golder, a hard, cold young woman, cynical and greedy for pleasure; but unlike Joyce, whose petulance is that of a spoiled child, Loulou’s ferocity is born of all she has endured. At one point she breaks down, like a child, with her nanny: “Nianiouchka… I want to go home! Home, home!…Why have we been punished like this? We didn’t do anything wrong!” The Karines are different from the Golders in genuinely having had a home, and in having lost it, rather than having left voluntarily in search of something better. The strangeness of Nemirovsky’s life is that she could identify with both the Golders and the Karines, and she could write their stories with equal authenticity. She could even inhabit the mind of Tatiana Ivanovna, for whom the loss of identity—an identity bound up in a place, and in things, and in a long life’s history—proves insurmountable.
The CourilofAffair is a political novel; but its analysis of politics is ultimately, as another biographer, Jonathan Weiss writes, “a reflection on the moral corruption of all politics and ideology.” Weiss further maintains, “It is clear that for Irene, the motivation for political action is not substantially different from the motivation of the businessman; in both cases, self-preservation and the willingness to sacrifice others for one’s own profit take precedence over human kindness and generosity,” but this reading is, I think, inaccurately harsh: the trajectory of Leon M.’s story records, in fact, a growth from unthinking political zeal into humanity and compassion, and thence into sorrowful cynicism, a recognition that it is possible fully to feel the agonies of the enemy and yet still to be forced, by history and circumstance, to show none of the mercy one feels. Leon says, “As long as we are on this earth, we have to play the game. I killed Courilof. I sent men to their deaths whom I realized, in a moment of lucidity, were like my brothers, like my very soul…”
The range of emotions that Leon experiences for Courilof anticipates, clearly, the emotions experienced by Lucile for her German soldier in “Dolce,” the second section of Suite Francaise. Nemirovsky could evoke, so effectively, the contradictory emotional ramifications of war, even in the midst of war, because she had already known those contradictions in the Russian Revolution: they defined her life and her work. The Courilof Affair is not a direct antecedent to Suite Francaise, but it anticipates many of its themes. And in our own time of political instability and terrorism, it offers both a window upon the revolutionary mindset and, powerfully, hope for an antidote to that mindset. It is a book that, rather like Dostoevsky’s fiction, seems almost troublingly contemporary in its understanding of ressentiment and anomie.
Readers discovering Nemirovsky in these pages for the first time will thrill to her acuity and her frankness, and will marvel at her ability to evoke scenes, both externally and in their unspoken interiority. Even though she considered herself a French writer—and much about her work, formally and in its subject matter, is emphatically French—Nemirovsky also remains a deeply Russian writer, whose gifts draw upon the examples of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. She remains, as a woman and a writer, a contradiction who embraced her contradictions. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Nemirovsky’s entire life and her literary output were about reality’s duality, or multiplicity, and they constitute a stand— true, often beautiful, and in her own case, tragically doomed— against limitation, singleness, and impossibility. Fitzgerald went on to say, “One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.” In the courage of her writing, Nemirovsky undertook just that task. If, in our times, we need an example of why literature matters, even in the face of adversity and death, then Nemirovsky stands as that example. Already in these early works, she reveals herself to be a writer of the utmost seriousness, and of considerable importance, whose clarity in the face of complexity enlarges our capacity for compassion and expands our humanity. You can’t—in fiction or in life—ask for more than that.
Claire Messud
CHRONOLOGY
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1903 Irma Irina (Irene) Nemirovsky is born in Kiev on February 11, the only child of Leonid (Leon) Nemirovsky, a prosperous Jewish banker, and Anna (Fanny) Margoulis. Balmont: Let us be like the Sun. Bryusov: Urbi et Orbi. Zola: Verite. Huysmans: L’Oblat. First Prix Goncourt awarded (to Force Ennemie by J. A. Nau).
1904 Chekhov: The Cherry Orchard. Death of Chekhov. Bely: Gold in Azure.
1905 Anti-Jewish pogrom in Kiev (October 18). Irene is hidden by the family’s cook, Macha. Tolstoy: “Alyosha Gorshok”; “Fedor Kuzmich.” Kuprin: The Duel. Merezhkovsky completes trilogy, Christ and Antichrist. Blok: Verses on the Beautiful Lady.
1906 Attends the Carnival of Nice, on the French Riviera, which becomes her earliest memory. Travels regularly in the winter to France until the war: Paris, Vichy, Plombieres, Cannes, Biarritz, etc. Summer holidays are spent in Yalta and Alushta, on the Ukrainian Riviera. Tolstoy: “What For?” Andreev: “The Governor.” Bryusov: Stephanos. Blok: The Puppet Show. Rolland: Jean-Christophe (to 1912). Claudel: Partage de midi.
1907 Gorky: Mother. Sologub: The Petty Demon. Conrad: The Secret Agent.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Russian Socialist Congress in London; schism between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Father Georgi Gapon forms Assembly of Russian Workers. In France, the Bloc Republicain, an alliance of left-wing and center parties, has been in power since 1899, providing stable government after the Dreyfus affair. First Tour de France. First powered flight of Wright brothers.
Russo-Japanese War: Japanese cripple Russian fleet off Port Arthur and defeat army at Liaoyang in China. Assassination of Plehve, Russian minister of the interior. Anglo-French Entente Cordiale. “La belle epoque” in France. Failed revolution in Russia. “Bloody Sunday” in St. Petersburg: troops fire on peaceful workers’ procession led by Father Gapon (January). Widespread strikes and sporadic rioting follow. Universities closed (February). Union of Unions formed by professional classes, demanding constitutional reform (May). Mutiny on battleship Potemkin (June). After further Russian defeats, Peace of Portsmouth with Japan (September). General strike; first Soviet formed by workers in St. Petersburg, followed by 50 others; Witte appointed Russian premier, persuading Nicholas II to capitulate to demands for an elected assembly with legislative powers (October). Reactionary backlash: more than 600 pogroms around the country. Insurrection of workers in Moscow (December) brutally suppressed by military force. Completion of Trans-Siberian Railway (begun in 1891).
Separation of Church and State in France—culmination of a series of anticlerical reforms. Withdrawal of socialists from the Bloc Republicain and creation of unified Socialist Party (SFIO). Until 1914 and mostly until 1940, France is governed by a series of centre coalitions, generally dominated by the Radicals, while the Socialists remain in opposition.
Fall of Witte (April). Fundamental Laws promulgated, restricting powers of first Duma which meets in May. Conservative Stolypin, new premier, institutes regime of courts-martial to suppress revolutionary terrorism and peasant disorders; hundreds executed 1906-7. Also introduces land reform enabling peasants to leave local communes and own private property (a quarter of the peasantry do so by 1917). Tsar dissolves Duma (July), after the majority party (the Kadets) passes a motion of no confidence in his government.
Dreyfus finally vindicated by a civilian court in France. Clemenceau becomes prime minister (to 1909). His program of social reform is blocked by parliament; industrial unrest is firmly suppressed.
Triple Entente of Great B
ritain, France and Russia. Second Duma proves as anti-Tsarist as the first and is again dissolved. Third Duma (1907-11) elected under a restricted franchise, producing a majority of moderate supporters for the government. Campaign against illiteracy in Russia—number of elementary schools doubles between 1908 and 1913. Cubism begins in Paris.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1909 Gide: La Porte etroite.
1910 Death of Tolstoy. Bunin: The Village.
1911 Irene, dressed as Sarah Bernhardt, recites verses from L’Aiglon by Edmond Rostand for the military governor of Kiev, General Vladimir Soukhomlinov. Hippius: The Devil’s Doll. Conrad: Under Western Eyes.
1912 Remizov: The Fifth Pestilence. France: Les Dieux ont soif. Mann: Death in Venice. Wharton: The Reef.
1913 Leon Nemirovsky moves with his family to St. Petersburg. Gorky: Childhood. Mandelstam: Stone. Proust: Du cote de chez Swann. Alain-Fournier: Le grand Meaulnes.
1914 France and Russia are both at war. The Nemirovskys remain in St. Petersburg. Akhmatova: Rosary. Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (to 1915).
1915
1916 Bely: Petersburg.
1917 During the February Revolution, Irene witnesses the bread riots and attends the sham execution of her concierge, Ivan. In October, her French governess Marie commits suicide after being sent away by Fanny. The family flees to Moscow, then back to St. Petersburg. Jean-Richard Bloch: Et Compagnie. Max Jacob: Le cornet a des. Akhmatova: White Flock. Pasternak: Above the Barriers. Remizov: “Lay of the Ruin of the Russian Land.”
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Diaghilev founds Ballets Russes in Paris (to 1929). Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto.
Assassination of Stolypin. Agadir crisis: Germans resist French attempt to make Morocco a protectorate. Marie Curie wins Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
Fourth Duma elected. Massacre of striking miners at Lena, provoking strikes throughout Russia: industrial unrest continues until the outbreak of war. Fall of French premier Caillaux: Poincare forms a cabinet. Nationalist revival as fears of German expansion grow. Poincare, strongly opposed by antimilitaristic socialists, strengthens the army and reinvigorates diplomatic alliances. Morocco becomes a French protectorate. First Balkan War. Second Balkan War. Poincare becomes French president (to 1920). Stravinsky: Le Sacre du printemps premiered in Paris, provoking riot. “Coco” Chanel opens her first shop in Paris. Victory over the Sun—Russian Futurist opera premiered in St. Petersburg. Goncharova: The Cyclist.
Assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife at Sarajevo (June 28). Allies drawn into World War 1 as a result of championing Serbian independence when this is threatened by Austria-Hungary. Crushing defeat of Russian Second Army by Germans at Tannnenberg (August 26-28). St. Petersburg renamed Petrograd. Assassination of Jaures, French Socialist leader (July 30). Nicholas I takes personal command of Russian army (August), leaving government to the Tsarina who is increasingly under the influence of the “mad monk,” Rasputin. Malevich: Black Square.
Rasputin assassinated. German artillery attack on Verdun (February-June). Brusilov Offensive (June-August) ruins Austria-Hungary as a military power, but Russians suffer over a million casualties. First Battle of the Somme (July-November). Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. February Revolution: troops ordered to suppress bread riots and strikes in Petrograd side with the workers. Abdication of Nicholas II (March 2). Provisional government set up under liberal Prince Lvov, though the Petrograd Soviet is a rival center of power. Lenin returns to Petrograd (April 3). Socialist Kerensky becomes prime minister (April). Bolshevik (October) Revolution. Lenin becomes head of state. US enters war (April). Serious mutinies in French army. Clemenceau recalled to premiership (November). Balfour Declaration: Britain pledges support for aJewish national home in Palestine.
Freud: Introduction to Psychoanalysis. Duchamps: Fountain (The Urinal). Satie/Cocteau/Diaghilev/Picasso: Parade (ballet).
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1918 The family escapes from Russia to Mustamaki, a Finnish village close to the Russian frontier (January). Irene writes her first poems in Russian. Blok: The Twelve. Hippius: Last Verses. Merezhkovsky: The Decembrists. Apollinaire: Calligrammes. Cocteau: Le Coq et l’arlequin. Duhamel: Civilisation. Tzara: Dada Manifesto.
1919 In April, the Nemirovskys flee Mustamaki for Helsinki, then Stockholm. Irene and her mother leave Sweden for France in June. They first settle in a furnished flat in Paris. Leon is able to continue as a banker and to rebuild the family fortunes. Gide: La Symphonie pastorale. Roland Dorgeles: Les Croix de bois. Myriam Harry: Siona a Paris.
1920 Duhamel: Vie et aventures de Salavin (5 vols, to 1932). Aragon: Feu de joie. Mansfield: Bliss. Wharton: The Age of Innocence. Pound: Hugh Selwyn Mauberley.
1921 Studies French, Russian and Comparative Literature at the Sorbonne (to 1925). Forms lifelong friendship with Madeleine Avot. The Avots, a well-to-do Catholic provincial family, come to represent for Irene an ideal of French life that imbues her literary work. Publishes the first of her “petits contes drolatiques”—”Nonoche and the Super-lucid”—in the fortnightly magazine Fantasio, under the pseudonym “Topsy” (August). Elissa Rha?s: Les Juifs ou la fille d’Eleazar. Andre Spire: Samael. Chardonne: L’Epithalame. Akhmatova: Anno Domini MCMXXI; Plantain. Tsvetaeva: Mileposts. Gumilyov: The Pillar of Fire. Zamyatin: We. Dos Passos: Three Soldiers.
HISTORICAL EVENTS
Democratically elected Constituent Assembly meets and is dispersed by armed force. Lenin’s cabinet brings Russian calendar in line with Western Europe and moves seat of government to Moscow (January); makes peace— on humiliating terms—with Central Powers at Brest-Litovsk (March). Assassination of Nicholas II and his family (July). “Red Terror”: Soviet police force (Cheka) carry out brutal reprisals against pre-Revolutionary privileged classes. Civil war in Russia and Ukraine (to 1921). Large-scale exodus of refugees from Russia begins—many head for Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, Sofia, Belgrade, Tallin and Riga.
President Wilson’s Fourteen Points for world peace (January). Armistice signed between Allies and Germany (November 11).
Versailles Peace Treaty (US refuses to ratify). Weimar Republic in Germany (to 1933). France regains Alsace and Lorraine. Clemenceau secures 8-hour day for workers in France, but further union reforms are blocked.
Postwar Jewish immigration to France swelled by arrivals from North Africa, Turkey, Greece and Eastern Europe (later from Germany and Austria).
In 1914 there were an estimated i20,oooJews in France; by 1939, c. 300,000. Workers from Poland and Algeria, later refugees from Italy, Armenia, Russia and Spain make France the most popular destination for immigrants in Europe.
Cocteau and “Les Six” frequenting the Gaya bar (soon to become “Le Boeuf sur le toit” after Milhaud’s ballet of 1920, and one of Paris’s most fashionable bohemian nightspots). Sylvia Beach opens bookshop Shakespeare & Company in Paris.
Vast program of reconstruction of devastated north-east France (to 1925). General election (November): huge majority to right-wing coalition (Bloc National), who rigorously enforce the terms of the peace treaty, maintain large standing army and seek to make military alliances with all Germany’s neighbors. French mandate in Syria and Lebanon. Socialist Party splits at congress at Tours: foundation of French Communist Party (SFIC). League of Nations founded. Stravinsky: Pulcinella.
French resist British attempts to lower German war reparations. Start of regular radio bulletins from the Eiffel Tower. Tenth Party Conference: Lenin bans opposition within the Communist Party and introduces New Economic Policy (NEP). Famine in Russia (to 1922).
Paris in the 1920s viewed as the cultural capital of the Western world, attracting artists and intellectuals of many nationalities. Famous expatriates there include Picasso, Man Ray, Miro, Chirico, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Ford, Joyce, Beckett, Durrell, and the “Lost Generation” of American writers, e.g. Hemingway, Pound, Williams, Stein, Dos Passos, Anderson and Fitzgerald. L
es Six: L’Album des Six; premiere of Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel by the Ballets Suedois.
DATE AUTHOR’S LIFE LITERARY CONTEXT
1922 Her grandparents arrive from Russia. She writes “La Niania,” a story set in Russia and Paris. Martin du Gard: Les Thibault (10 vols, to 1940). Vignaud: Nicky, roman de l’emigration russe. Mandelstam: Tristia. Gorky: My Universities. Pasternak: My Sister Life. Joyce: Ulysses. Mansfield: The Garden Party. Eliot: The Wasteland. Cummings: The Enormous Room. Edmond Fleg: Anthologie juive. Colette: Le Ble en herbe. Radiguet: Le Diable au corps. Alexei Tolstoy: The Road to Calvary (to 1945).
1923 Writes L’Enfant genial (The Genius Kid), a novella with a Russian setting and a Jewish protagonist (published in 1927). Moves to her own flat in the rue Boissiere. Leads a wild life: jazz clubs, flirtations, late-night escapades, joyriding and “water cures” to soothe her asthma.