Copyright
This edition first published in paperback in the United States in 2007 by
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Translation copyright © 1962 by St Martin’s Press, Inc.
Introduction copyright © 2007 Judith Thurman
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ISBN 978-1-46830-778-8
Contents
Copyright
Introduction
Author’s Preface
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
TO SANDI
INTRODUCTION
Many, perhaps most, fans of Luis Buñuel have no idea that his consummately stylish and enigmatic Belle de Jour (1967)—the portrait of a society woman slumming in a brothel—was adapted from a controversial novel by Joseph Kessel, a Russian Jew born in Argentina who wrote in French, that was first published in 1928. Kessel has himself suffered the fate (near-oblivion outside France) of the book that he called the “dearest” of his creations, and the one “in which I think I’ve best caught the accent of life.” But he was among the most widely read French authors of his time, a famously prolific and charismatic storyteller, biographer, travel-writer, reporter, editor, aviator, Resistance fighter, member of the Academie Francaise, and—more to the point, perhaps—a reckless and virile hedonist. “I knew the risk I ran,” Kessel writes in his preface to Belle de Jour—the risk of outrage at the novel’s blasphemous (and, if one is honest, enduringly titillating) premise: that Séverine, a frigid beauty otherwise blissfully married to a handsome surgeon would court debasement in search of ecstasy by freelancing as a whore.
There is not an obscene word or a graphic sex scene in Kessel’s novel, but its subject almost guaranteed that there would be no American edition for decades, and the first English translation of Belle de Jour wasn’t published until 1962. If it scandalized Jazz Age Parisians, what hope did it have of seeing the light in a country that would not only close its borders to Ulysses, Tropic of Cancer, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, but that would—in 1930—stop Voltaire’s Candide at customs, en route to the Harvard library? Buñuel and his screenwriter, Jean Claude Carriere, had the advantage of a liberal, even revolutionary, climate and they attribute fantasies to Séverine that Kessel (who treats her with a gallantry that Bunuel found sentimental) leaves to the imagination. “Séverine’s daydreams are Buñuel’s contribution to the plot-line,” Michael Wood writes in his monograph on Belle de Jour. “Indeed, Bunuel said that the idea of the two levels of reality, where in Kessel there was only one, was what provoked him to film the story in the first place … This was a way of distancing himself from his real debt, perhaps, since the novel already contains a good deal of what he turned out to need. It is shrewd and intelligent throughout, warmly sympathetic to its troubled heroine, only a touch too dedicated, in the end, to the idea of sexuality as a horrible fate.”
If the sadomasochism of Buñuel’s faintly parodic dream sequences is explicit, their meaning isn’t. (And what the devil does Séverine’s brutish Chinese client have in that ominously humming box? According to Wood, the question drove Bunuel crazy—it was all people asked him, he said—and his standard answer was: “How should I know?”) Fifty years earlier, however, Kessel felt obliged both to explain himself and to defend Séverine’s “sick heart.” He did so to counter the charges of “pointless licentiousness, even of pornography” that greeted Belle de Jour when it was serialized in Gringoire.1 Unlike the old Buñuel, who revels with a certain cool, ironic glee in the perversity of bourgeois society, not to say of human nature, the young Kessel (they were born two years apart, the former in 1900, the latter in 1898) was a romantic. His goal, he writes, was to dramatize a common, if tragic, marital predicament: the divorce between “a body and soul,” and between “a true, tender, and immense love, and the implacable demands of the senses.” In that respect, his friend Colette took a page, and perhaps more than one, from Belle de Jour when she wrote The Pure and The Impure (first published as Ces Plaisirs … in 1931).2 “But what is the heart, madame,” asks Charlotte, an orgiast with ladylike manners, when Colette meets her in an opium den. “It’s worth less than people think. It’s quite accommodating, it accepts anything. You give it whatever you have, it’s not very particular. But the body … Ha! That’s something else again.”
In reframing the novel as a high-minded case study, Kessel underplays Séverine’s courage—and perhaps his own. Colette, I suspect, read Belle de Jour more perspicaciously than Kessel read himself, because his real originality (and the novel’s enduring interest) is not vested in Séverine’s noble love for her perfect husband; not in the “aberrant” nature (Kessel’s adjective) of the sex that she volunteers for with the brothel’s roughest trade; not in her infatuation with the seductively thuggish and volatile Marcel; nor the inevitable collision of her double lives. It’s a function of Kessel’s willingness to challenge certain fundamental pieties, taboos, and hypocrisies about erotic life—and in particular, the erotic life of women.
Though Kessel was a rebel and bohemian, he was, like many heretics, a product of the religion he was trying to overthrow, and what he calls a divorce between “body and soul” is, in fact, a split that exists in most civilized people—between a social and a sexual self. Literature, to a large degree, is a chronicle of the lengths that tormented men and women go to in their effort to escape, punish, rationalize, or resolve that conflict. (And it’s worth noting that in his private life, Kessel was more successful than most. He managed to content a harem of mistresses who all, apparently, coexisted in relative peace and adored him.)
Séverine and Pierre may have an idyllic marriage—a union, in other words, with a high index of compatibility—but sex thrives on the thrill of otherness. The social self seeks a consort, the sexual self an accomplice—and how often do they coincide in the same partner? French fiction has always been obsessed with that conundrum, and readers of the late 1920s were fairly blasé about dangerous liaisons and dramas of adultery, even when the heroine’s other “man” was a woman. So what nerve did Kessel shock, and Buñuel after him, in Belle de Jour, and why is it still raw?
To discover the answer, read the book, though before you do, a word of caution. Art and pornography may both draw the curtains on a stirring, troubling, and forbidden scene, but in a work of art, there’s no voyeurism with impunity.
—JUDITH THURMAN
1 Gringoire, which published the Belle de Jour serial in 1927, was a journal of culture and politics with a mass circulation, some six hundred and fifty-thousand readers. It was funded by a rich Corsican, Horace de Carbuccia, and Kessel, one of its co-founders and the literary editor, recruited a distinguished roster of contributors. By the mid
-thirties, however, Carbuccia had become an apologist for Hitler, and Kessel departed. (He later fled France to serve as de Gaulle’s aide-de-camp in London). Gringoire’s readers apparently made no objection to the obscenity of rabidly antisemitic caricatures and pro-Nazi propaganda, but obscenity, of course, is subject to “community standards.” Nouvelle Revue Francais, an irreproachable French company, publlished Belle de Jour in book form a year later.
2 Kessel bought it for serialization in Gringoire, though after three installments, Carbuccia abruptly suspended publication, without notifying Colette. He simply cut off the text in mid-sentence with the word “Fin.”
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
I don’t much like prefaces that explain books and I’d especially dislike seeming to use one to make excuses for myself. None of my books is dearer to me than this one, in which I think I’ve best caught the accent of life. Yet it seems such language may be wasted, for I’m well aware that there is a misunderstanding about the book, which I’d very much like to clear up.
When Belle de Jour was first serialized in Gringoire the readers of that journal reacted with a certain liveliness. Some accused me of pointless licentiousness, even of pornography. To them there is no reply possible. If my book failed to convince, then so much the worse for them or me, I don’t know which; in any case there’s nothing I can do about it. To me, it seems impossible to lay bare the drama of spirit and flesh without speaking frankly of both. I don’t believe I’ve gone beyond the limits permitted a writer who has never used lust as bait for his readers.
From the moment I chose to write on this subject I knew the risks I ran. But when the novel was finished, I couldn’t believe anyone might mistake my intentions; otherwise, Belle de Jour would never have appeared.
One must despise false modesty as one scorns poor taste: prudish complaints don’t bother me, intellectual attacks do. It was to disarm them that I decided to do something I hadn’t thought of before, namely, write a preface.
“What an exceptional case!” people commented, and several doctors wrote me that they’d run across Séverines in their practice. It became clear that according to such people Belle de Jour was a successful piece of pathological observation. Now that is precisely what I didn’t mean to convey. Painting the portrait of an ogress wouldn’t interest me, even if I could do it perfectly. What I tried to do in Belle de Jour was show the desperate divorce that can exist between body and soul; between a true, tender, immense love and the implacable demands of the senses. With a few rare exceptions, every man and woman who has loved over a period of time has been burdened by his conflict. It is recognized or not, it tears one apart or it sleeps; but it’s there. A banal conflict described how often! I think, though, that the existence of an extraordinary situation can force this conflict to such a degree of intensity as to allow the instincts to be shown in the fullness of their eternal greatness. Thus, I constructed my story deliberately, not for any meretricious appeal, but as the sole means of touching surely and sharply the depths of every human soul hiding this latent tragedy. I chose my subject as one examines a sick heart: in order better to know how a healthy one functions; or as one studies mental illness, in order to understand how the mind operates.
The subject of Belle de Jour is not Séverine’s sensual aberration; it is her love for Pierre independent of that aberration, and it is the tragedy of that love.
Shall I be the only one to pity Séverine, and to love her?
PROLOGUE
To reach her mother’s room from her own, Séverine who was eight had to go down a long hallway. She disliked the trip, and invariably ran all the way. But one morning Séverine was brought up short halfway down the corridor. A door leading to the bathroom had just opened. A plumber appeared: short, squat. From under sparse reddish lashes his eyes contemplated the girl. Bold as she was, Séverine was scared, took a step back.
Her movement decided him. He glanced around sharply and grabbed Séverine with both hands. An odor of gas, of animal strength closed against her. Two ill-shaven lips burned her neck. She fought back.
The workman laughed silently, sensually. Under her frock his hands slipped over the soft flesh. Suddenly Séverine stopped struggling. She was stiff, white. The man put her on the floor and left noiselessly.
Séverine’s governess found her lying in the hallway. She thought the girl had slipped. So did Séverine.
I
Pierre Sérizy was checking the harness. Séverine had just put on her skis.
“Ready?”
She had on a man’s thick blue sweater but her body was so firm, so slim, that her impatient figure seemed not at all burdened.
“Can’t be too careful with you in tow,” Pierre called back.
“Darling, there’s absolutely no risk. The snow’s so clean it’ll be a pleasure to fall. Come on, let’s go.”
Pierre straightened and swung lightly into the saddle. The horse didn’t move, didn’t so much as quiver. A powerful, placid animal with heavy flanks, it was used to pulling rather than being ridden. Séverine held tight to the grips on the long leashes attached to the harness, spread her feet a little. She was trying the sport for the first time, and concentration contracted her features a little.
Because of this, her facial defects, which one usually didn’t notice, stood out: chin rather too square, cheekbones jutting. But Pierre loved absolute determination in Séverine’s face; to be able to watch it a moment longer, he pretended to be adjusting his stirrups.
“Okay,” he called out, finally.
The guide-reins Séverine was holding drew tight. She felt herself slowly sliding forward.
At first she could think only of keeping her balance and not making a fool of herself. To reach open ground they had to go all the way along the one street of the little Swiss village. At this time of day everyone was out. Smiling, Pierre greeted sporting friends, bar acquaintances, some girls in ski-pants, others stretched out on brilliantly painted sleds. Séverine saw no one, aware only of indications that they were getting into the country: now passing the church, with its little square and without any mystery … the skating rink … the stream, dark against white banks … the last hotel, facing the fields.
Once beyond the hotel, Séverine breathed easier. No one would see her fall if she stumbled now. No one but Pierre … for a moment, the young woman felt her love for him like a soft, living creature in her breast. She smiled at her husband’s broad shoulders, his tanned neck. Pierre had been born under the sign of harmony and strength; everything he did was natural, right, assured.
“Pierre!” she called.
He turned. The sun swept across his face, making his gray eyes squint.
“It’s marvelous,” she said.
The snow-covered valley stretched ahead in curves so gentle they seemed artificial. High up, a scattering of clouds drifted on the summits, soft and milky fleece. On the slopes, skiers moved with the winged, unconscious grace of birds.
“It’s marvelous.”
“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Pierre answered. He urged the horse on, and it broke into a trot.
“Here we go,” she thought.
The delicious anxiety she’d felt so far gradually became confidence. She was doing pretty well. These elongated skis carried her by themselves. All she had to do was yield to their movements. Her muscles began to relax. She started to gain control. They met heavy sleds piled with logs; on them, their legs dangling, sat square-set men with sunburnt faces. Séverine smiled at them.
“Fine, fine,” Pierre called out to her from time to time.
Then it seemed to Séverine that this happy loving voice came from inside herself. And when he called “Watch it!” hadn’t some reflex already informed her that the pleasure was about to mount? The noble cadence of the horse’s gallop hammered at the roadway; the rhythm took possession of her. The speed helped her balance, she stopped thinking about it and surrendered herself to a rising primitive joy. Nothing in the world existed but the pulsatio
ns of her body, ruled by the rhythm of their speed. She was no longer being drawn along, she herself controlled this impetuous race; she ruled, and was ruled by it.
And this whiteness shining all around … the iced wind, pure and fluid as spring water, as youth itself.…
“Faster!” she cried. “Faster!”
But there was no need to urge Pierre on; nor did the horse need any prompting. The three of them made one happy animal group.
Leaving the road, they made a sudden swing. Séverine couldn’t make it—dropping the guide-reins, she ended up half-buried in a snow-drift, so soft and fresh that, ignoring an icy trickle down her back, she felt a new joy. Before Pierre could come to help she was standing up, sparkling. They set off again. When they’d reached a little inn, Pierre pulled up.
“We can’t go any further,” he said. “Let’s take a break.”
They were early; the main room was empty. Pierre looked around the room.
“How about sitting outside?” he suggested. “The sun’s warm enough.”
When their table had been set in front, Séverine said, “I knew right away you didn’t like this place. Why don’t you? It’s so clean.”
“Too clean. It’s been scrubbed and scrubbed till nothing is left. In France even the lowest dive has its own character: you can breathe in a whole district. Don’t you see how open everything is here? The houses, the people: nothing mysterious, no life.”
Séverine laughed. “How nice you are to me—every day you tell me you love me for my clarity.”
“Right, but you’re my vice,” Pierre replied; and brushed her hair with his lips.
The waitress gave them country bread, wrinkled cheese, and beer. It disappeared as Pierre and Séverine ate hungrily. Every now and then they glanced down at the narrow gorge winding below. The firs bore flimsy spindles of snow on each branch, which sun and sky turned into ash-blue haloes.
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