What is it? said the mother.
It’s nothing.
Ah! I was afraid for you.
He falls against her …
Then he is arrested for harboring.
They would send to be baked the two francs in the hole
The grandmother, her authority, her energy
He stole the change.
The sense of honor among Algerians.
Learning justice and morality means to decide whether an emotion is good or bad according to its consequences. J. can give in to women—but if they take all his time …
“I’ve lived too long, and acted and felt, to say this one is right and that one wrong. I’ve had enough of living according to the image others show me of myself. I’m resolved on autonomy, I demand independence in interdependence.”
Would Pierre be the actor?
Jean’s father a teamster?
After Marie’s illness, Pierre has an outburst like Clamence (I don’t love anything …), then it’s J. (or Grenier) who responds to the fall.1
Contrast the mother and the universe (the airplane, the most distant countries brought together).
Pierre a lawyer. And lawyer for Yveton.2
“Men like us are good and proud and strong … if we had a faith, a God, nothing could undermine us. But we had nothing, we had to learn everything, and living for honor alone has its weaknesses …”
At the same time it should be the history of the end of a world … with regret for those years of light running through it …
Philippe Coulombel and the big farm in Tipasa. Friendship with Jean. His death in a plane over the farm. They found him with the stick in his side, his face crushed against the instrument panel. A bloody pulp sprinkled with glass splinters.
Title: The Nomads. Begin with a move and end with evacuation from Algerian soil.
Two exaltations: the poor woman and the world of paganism (intelligence and happiness).
Everyone likes Pierre. J.’s success and his conceit make him enemies.
Lynching scene: 4 Arabs thrown off the Kassour.
His mother is Christ.
Have others speak about J., bring him on, show him, through the contradictory picture that together they paint of him.
Cultivated, athletic, debauched, a loner and the best of friends, spiteful, unfailingly dependable, etc., etc.
“He doesn’t like anyone,” “No one could be more noble in spirit,” “cold and distant,” “warm and passionate,” everyone thinks he’s an energizer except he himself, always lying down.
Thus expand the personality.
When he speaks: “I began to believe in my innocence. I was Tsar. I reigned over everything and everyone, at my disposal (etc.). Then I found out I didn’t have enough heart truly to love and I thought I would die of contempt for myself. Then I recognized that others don’t truly love either and that I just had to accept being like just about everyone.
“Then I decided no, I would blame myself alone for not being great enough and be comfortable in my hopelessness until I was given the opportunity to become great.
“In other words, I’m waiting for the time when I’ll be Tsar and won’t enjoy it.”
Or else:
One cannot live with truth—“knowingly”—, he who does so sets himself apart from other men, he can no longer in any way share their illusion. He is an alien—and that is what I am.
Maxime Rasteil: the ordeal of the 1848 settlers. Mondovi—Insert history of Mondovi?
Ex: 1) the grave the return and the []1 at Mondovi
1A) Mondovi in 1848 → 1913.
His Spanish side sobriety and sensuality energy and nada
J.: “No one can imagine the pain I’ve suffered … They honor men who do great things. But they should honor even more those who, in spite of what they are, have been able to restrain themselves from committing the worst crimes. Yes, honor me.”
Conversation with the paratroop lieutenant:
“You talk too well. We’re going to give you the third degree and see if you’re still so smart.”
“All right, but first I want to warn you because no doubt you’ve never encountered any real men. Listen carefully. I am holding you responsible for what’s going to happen in that third degree, as you call it. If I don’t crack, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just spit in your face in public on the day it becomes possible for me to do so. But if I crack and if I get out alive, and whether it takes a year or twenty years, I personally will kill you.”
“Take good care of him,” said the lieutenant, “he’s a wise guy.”a
J.’s friend kills himself “to make Europe possible.” To make Europe requires a willing victim.
J. has four women at the same time and thus is leading an empty life.
C.S.: when the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune …
Cf. History of the Combat movement.1
Darling who dies in the hospital while her neighbor’s radio is blaring nonsense.
—Heart disease. Living on borrowed time. “If I commit suicide, at least it will be my choice.”
“You alone will know why I killed myself. You know my principles. I hate those who commit suicide. Because of what they do to others. If you have to do it, you must disguise it. Out of kindness. Why am I telling you this? Because you love misfortune. It’s a present I’m giving you. Bon appétit!”
J.: A life that is surging, reborn, a multitude of people and experiences, the capacity for renewal and propulsion—
The end. She lifts her knotted hands to him and strokes his face. “You, you’re the greatest one.” There was so much love and adoration in her somber eyes (under the somewhat worn brow) that something in him—the one who knew—rebelled … A moment later he took her in his arms. Since she, who saw more clearly, loved him, he had to accept it, and to admit that to love he had to love himself a little …
A Musil theme: the search for salvation of the soul in the modern world—D: [meeting] and parting in The Possessed.
Torture. Executioner by proxy. I could never get close to another man—now we are side by side.
The Christian condition: pure feeling.
The book must be unfinished. Ex.: “And on the ship bringing him back to France …”
Jealous, he pretends not to be and plays the man of the world. And then he is no longer jealous.
At age 40, he realizes he needs someone to show him the way and to give him censure or praise: a father. Authority and not power.
X sees a terrorist fire at … He hears someone running after him in a dark street, stands still, turns suddenly, trips him so he falls, the revolver drops. He takes the weapon and trains it on the man, then realizes he cannot turn him in, takes him to a remote street, makes him run ahead of him and fires.
The young actress in the camp: the blade of grass, the first grass amidst the slag and that acute feeling of happiness. Miserable and joyful. Later on she loves Jean—because he is pure. I? Those who arouse love, even if it is disappointed, are princes who make the world worthwhile.
28 Nov. 1885: birth of Lucien C. in Ouled-Fayet: son of Baptiste C. (age 43) and Marie Cormery (age 33). Married 1909 (13 Nov.) to Mile. Catherine Sintès (born 5 Nov. 1882). Died in Saint-Brieuc 11 Oct. 1914.
When he is 45, he discovers by comparing the dates that his brother was born two months after the wedding? But the uncle who has just described the ceremony speaks of a long slender dress …
It is a doctor who delivers the second son in the new home where the furniture is piled up.
She leaves in July 14 with the child swollen with mosquito bites from the Seybouse. August, mobilization. The husband goes directly to his [unit] in Algiers. He gets out one night to kiss his two children. They will not see him again till word of his death.
A settler who, expelled, destroys the vines, lets in brackish water … “If what we did here is a crime, it must be wiped out …”
Maman (about N.): the day you “graduated”—“when they gave you the bonus.”
Criklinski and ascetic love.
He expresses surprise that Marcelle, who has just become his mistress, takes no interest in her country’s misfortune. “Come,” she says. She opens a door: her nine-year-old child—delivered with forceps motor nerves smashed—paralyzed, speechless, left side of the face higher than the right, must be fed, washed, etc. He closes the door.
He knows he has cancer, but does not say he knows. Others think they are fooling him.
1st part: Algiers, Mondovi. And he meets an Arab who speaks to him of his father. His relations with Arab workers.
J. Douai: L’Écluse.
Beral’s death in the war.
How F. cries out in tears when she learns of his affair with Y.: “Me too, I’m beautiful also.” And Y.’s cry: “Ah! Let someone come and carry me off.”
Later, long after the tragedy, F. and M. meet.
Christ did not set foot in Algeria.
The first letter he received from her and his feeling on seeing his own name in her handwriting.
Ideally, if the book were written to the mother, from beginning to end—and if one learned only at the end that she cannot read—yes, that would be it.
And what he wanted most in the world, which was for his mother to read everything that was his life and his being, that was impossible. His love, his only love, would be forever speechless.
Rescue this poor family from the fate of the poor, which is to disappear from history without a trace. The Speechless Ones.
They were and they are greater than I.
Begin with the night of the birth. Chap. I, then chap. II: 35 years later, a man would get off
