“Adieu tristesse,Bonjour tristesse.Tu es inscrite dans les lignes du plafond.Tu es inscrite dans les yeux que j’aimeTu n’es pas tout à fait la misère,Car les lèvres les plus pauvres te dénoncentPar un sourire.Bonjour tristesse.Amour des corps aimables.Puissance de l’amourDont l’amabilité surgitComme un monstre sans corps.Tête désappointée.Tristesse, beau visage.”Paul Éluard, “À Peine Défigurée” “Adieu TristesseBonjour TristesseFarewell SadnessHello SadnessYou are inscribed in the lines on the ceilingYou are inscribed in the eyes that I loveYou are not poverty absolutelySince the poorest of lips denounce youAh with a smileBonjour TristesseLove of kind bodiesPower of loveFrom which kindness risesLike a bodiless monsterUnattached headSadness beautiful face.”Paul Éluard, “Barely Disfigured”As in Paul Éluard’s poem, sadness and foreboding soak this short narrative tingeing it with subtle melancholy disguised in frivolous characters and superficial undertone. The irredeemable burden of selfishness, the strain of a guilty conscience, the disillusionment of unveiled truth, the weight of wrong decisions taken on impulse impregnate the voice of capricious and pampered Cécile, a precocious seventeen year-old girl , who discloses a confession rather than the memories of a summer spent in a paradisiacal villa in the south of France. Céline’s charming and irresponsible father Raymond treats her with the courtesy and tenderness more becoming of a lover than a paternal figure and his refusal of all notions of fidelity and serious commitment defines Cécile’s approach to relationships as passing, rapid, violent and passionate affairs as well as a lifestyle full of free love, lavish luxury, debauchery and hedonistic pleasures. “Although I didn’t share my father’s aversion to ugliness, which often led us to associate with stupid people, I felt vaguely uncomfortable with anyone devoid of physical charms.” (p.5)None of her father’s numerous and shallow mistresses has ever threatened to disrupt Céline and Raymond’s unshakable duo until the arrival of Anne, a perspicacious and discerning old friend of Cécile’s deceased mother. Anne’s more traditional, serious and sensible conduct, which represents the conventional idea of love, marriage and responsibility that Céline so much detests, jeopardizes her precious freedom and carefree existence when her father unexpectedly announces his intention of marrying her. Blinded by her self-interests and unconscious jealousy of Anne for banishing her from being the apple of Raymond’s eye, Cécile starts plotting a plan with Cyril, his young and golden skinned summer lover, to recover her former bourgeoisie and unorthodox life with her father. “I feared boredom and tranquility more than anything. In order to achieve serenity, my father and I had to have excitement, and this Anne was not prepared to admit.” (p.82) Bonjour Tristesse was published in 1954, when Françoise Sagan was barely eighteen years old after having failed her foundation-year examinations at the Sorbonne. She replaced her original surname by a nom de plume taken from Proust’s character the Princesse de Sagan and her rebellious coming-of-age novel became both a huge success and a scandal for the underlying skepticism regarding conventional institutions like marriage and family as well as for the subtle hint of a disturbing incestuous nature of father-daughter relationship that impregnates the story. Sagan soon became representative of the bored and disillusioned young generation whose main focus was a superfluous existence immersed in self-indulgence and decadent pleasure. But both the confessional timbre and the satirical tone of Sagan’s voice reverberating in a controlled, even austere writing style, which doesn’t succumb to lyricism or redundant literary ornaments, shows me otherwise. There is sadness in lonely people trying to fill their artificial relationships with glib gratification. There is sadness in daily conversations revealing the meaninglessness of a life dissipated, with no clear direction. There is sadness in evoking a decisive moment lost in time, when silence became too heavy of a burden to carry and the sound of fear overcame the music of righteousness, creating a dissonant path of no return. There is sadness in shame and remorse. There is sadness in a sense of loss.Oscar Wilde implied deceit inherently thrives in modern times: “ “Sin is the only note of vivid color that persists in the modern world.” Both Céline and Sagan knew decisions can’t be unmade and that they come with burdensome and sometimes unpardonable consequences. One can be courageous and face past transgressions with integrity or elude guilt and create a groundless existence based on self-deception and forgetfulness while being condemned to never get rid of the unbearable lightness of perennial sadness. Reality might prove to be as complex as human beings are ignorant, but Céline’s preference to tread the second path proved such an anticlimax that I couldn’t get over the irony of choosing sadness to avoid remorse while bearing the ignominy of it all with a distorted smile plastered on Céline's pretty and tanned face. “A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sadness.” (p. 3)
O carte ce poate fi ușor comparată cu Lolita, fiind o versiunea din perspectiva feminină, aproape la fel de dramatică și plină de o grămadă de elemente bolnăvicioase, vanitate și gelozie. Aș putea de asemenea să o compar cu seria Gossip Girl, cartea Mincinoșii de E. Lockhart și multe altele a căror acțiune are loc într-un cadru din înalta societate iar personajele sunt obsedate de banii lor. Cecile e o tânără de șaptesprezece ani, orfană de mamă, care pleacă împreună cu tatăl său într-o vacanță. Amândoi duc vieți pline de alcool și aventuri amoroase dar toate acestea îi convin Ceciliei, neputând să-și imagineze o altfel de viață. Intriga este marcată de apariția Annei, o prietenă a mamei sale. Deși tatăl său, Raymond, era pe atunci cuplat cu Elsa, el o cheamă și pe Anna în vila lor închiriată de pe malul mării. Anne este diferită de toate femeile din viața lui de până atunci, fiind inteligentă, frumoasă și foarte responsabilă. Cei doi își propun să se căsătorească iar Anne își ia în serios rolul de mamă vitregă a Ceciliei, încercând să o îndepărteze de stilul ei de viață dezordonat. Folosindu-se de existența lui Cyril, un bărbat cu aproape zece ani mai mare decât ea care îi este și partener în timpul vacanței lor, Cecilia își plănuiește răzbunarea. Cele cinci personaje sunt în continuu contact iar finalul este teribil dar și foarte clișeic, din punctul meu de vedere. Cecilia încearcă să înțeleagă ce e cu adevărat iubirea luând drept model relația tatălui său cu Anne. Ea recunoaște de foarte multe ori că urăște introspecția, că nu-i place să gândească, că se urăște pe sine și ăsta e un simplu fapt. Este varianta feminină a lui Holden Caulfield, dar spre diferență de acesta, ea nu caută nimic, nu încearcă să schimbe nimic - ci doar să trăiască la nesfârșit în lumea ei fără probleme, fără sentimente prea profunde, în paradisul ei interior. Deși rezonez la perfecție cu un stil de viață hedonist, mi-e imposibil să nu văd stările depresive din condiția Ceciliei și să cred cu adevărat că ea e fericită - nu după ce Anne i-a răstălmăcit fiecare cuvânt și i-a dat în vileag fiecare acțiune ce intenționa a fii discretă. Deși ultimele ei cuvinte spun altceva, eu cred că Anne îi înțelege de la bun început planul Ceciliei. Cecile și tatăl său Raymond formează un duo perfect, amândoi ținându-se cu ghearele de tinerețea lor și încercând să evite viața. Întreaga atmosferă este una foarte tristă, însă Bonjour Tristesse e o lectură perfectă pentru vară, plajă și soare. Recomand această carte tuturor sufletelor pierdute, celor care cred în puterea tinereții, care se găsesc sau se regăsesc în adolescență, materialiștilor și iubitorilor de "păcate". Genul acesta de carte va fi mereu plăcerea mea vinovată și mă voi regăsi mereu în această lume. Acum mă aflu în punctul în care vreau să citesc tot ce a scris Francoise vreodată pentru că Bonjour Tristesse m-a intrigat cu adevărat. Sunt curioasă referitor la stilul ei dar și cu privire la ce alt gen de poveste a mai scris.
What do You think about Bonjour Tristesse (2004)?
Far lesser tragedies -- and all too often, greater ones -- than the one led up to during the ritzy summer Mediterranean vacation described in Bonjour Tristesse occur constantly because people want to preserve a way of life or gain some advantage in love or power or materialism.In this book, the young, carefree protagonist, Cecile, fears the loss of a way of life, preferring it to the uncertainty of the future. Perhaps she fears even more the loss of the true love of her life, her father. As long his romances are frivolous and non-committal, there is nothing to threaten this dynamic. The potential rival and Cecile's soon-to-be stepmother, Anne, is the interloper about to make good on that threat. Almost guilelessly, and half-disbelieving that her machinations could possibly work, Cecile's plans to preserve the lifestyle of her youth and nip in the bud the authoritarian, moralistic structure promised by Anne prove to be all too successful. And yet, even with Cecile's regret, there is also a relief that is downright amoral.This is the story of an adolescent, written by an adolescent, expressing as well as any young writer ever has the struggles and mysteries of being a young girl, of a life still to be lived, of an amorphous POV, of how one relates to other people and the world; of trying to find a balance between the responsible and the carefree -- of feeling the powers of youth and its parallel impotencies. Of making the first tentative steps into the mysteries of love. Of holding onto youth and fearing adulthood. Of wanting to be true to oneself while not being sure of oneself.It's exquisitely expressed and an unconditional pleasure to read.My Goodreads friends here who have read this and bothered to review it, and who happened to once be 17-year-old girls, have probably gotten at the essence of this better than I could have. I defer to them.Sagan writes about a milieu she knows, and even though her settings and attitudes are those of the idle rich, this book is far more interesting than most novels that aim to be critiques of the amorality of the wealthy -- mainly because it doesn't overly emphasize those things and because Sagan is more interested in feelings and motivations. This makes the book more universal to me.The character of Anne in this book strikes me as far more complicated and enigmatic than that presented by actress Deborah Kerr in the 1958 film version. The reader's feelings about her shift as frequently as Cecile's own constant reassessments.This book is no B.S.; no dicking around; no showing off. At the end of the day and when all is said and done, and all the goofy, annoying literary experiments have been tried and foisted upon me, I point to Francoise Sagan -- what she did in this debut novel and her second one (A Certain Smile) -- as prime examples of what good, thoughtful writing really is, to me.
—Evan
First, a digression. (How can one digress before the story has even begun? Surely for a digression to take place, a tangible thread needs to be established? Well, what is this parenthesis exactly, if not a digression? Point proven). So: that digression I promised. My first brush with love was with a Scottish lassie named Emma (not a very Scots name, but if local flavour is required, let’s call her Agnes). So Emma-Agnes was the victim of my affections and the entire “passionate” encounter is best described a “polite” encounter. In fact, excessive politeness was responsible for our inevitable separation.It happened thus. I had been friends with Emma-Agnes for a few years in school and decided to write a page-long summation of my feelings toward her, apologising for my inappropriate biological urges impeding on our friendship. I expressed regret that I was attracted to her, and understood entirely if she’d want to sever our union and banish me, even though we took the same train daily, the same classes, and a few tutorials. To my surprise, she wasn’t repulsed and we carried on as friends. A few months later I wrote a second letter asking if we might go to lunch together, if that wasn’t too forward, and I would pay for her meal, if that wasn’t too sexist an attitude to take. She agreed.And it progressed at this pace over the year. I eventually wrote her a letter requesting a lip-to-lip exchange, which occurred a month after the letter had been sent. Emma-Agnes already had a boyfriend at this stage, and would fall pregnant a few months later, but she kept up her side of the agreement. On an empty train carriage, I leaned in for the exchange. I hovered close to her face, then stopped to ask her if this was the correct angle for a satisfying “kiss.” She nodded and egged me on cordially. There was contact: her lips were a little sticky from lipgloss, so it was like kissing a Jelly Baby’s innards. After the peck, I was on the point of collapse. She was offering a second, more fuller exchange, but I decided that was enough for one afternoon. Absolutely marvellous. (You may baulk, but we shy people take what we get in this life, and when we love, we love like dying men crying out for morphine).She left to have her baby a few months later and I didn’t see her again. It seemed she preferred the father of her child to me. I guess he was a little more assertive a lover. Ah well, the delirium of young love! This book is good.
—MJ Nicholls
- Hello. I'm Cécile.- Manny.- You as bored with this party as I am?- How bored are you?- Very.- I believe I'm enjoying it slightly more than you. - Were you often this bored when you were my age?- How old are you?- Seventeen.- Um... I'm trying to remember. I think so. - So what did you do?- I read a lot. - Me too. Anything you'd recommend? - Category?- Something for a cynical girl who wants to be a famous author?- You've read Bonjour Tristesse?- Uh-uh.- It might inspire you. She published it very young, and it's excellent. And the heroine's first name is the same as yours.- Any other reasons?- You don't like your stepmother much, do you?- You got that one right.- Well, it has detailed, step-by-step instructions on how to kill her and get away clean. - Hey! Now I really must read it. Thanks.- You're welcome.- Want to come upstairs for a bit?- You won't be offended if I say no?- It's okay. I'll find some other middle-aged man to seduce. How about him over there?- He looks promising. Good luck.- Okay, well, nice talking. And I'll check out the book.- I enjoyed meeting you too. Let me know what you think.- I will. Bye.- Bye.
—Manny
