Les esprits de la terre

by COLOMB CATHERINE, Anne-Lise Delacrétaz (Preface)

Après Châteaux en enfance (1945) et avant Le temps des anges (1962), Les esprits de la terre (1953) compose le deuxième volet de la trilogie romanesque de Catherine Colomb. Mettant en scène une famille de propriétaires terriens vaudois, Les esprits de la terre raconte la spoliation – matérielle et affective – de César, héritier indésirable et marginal. En face de lui, sa terrible belle-sœur, «?Madame?», qui règne sur le château familial au bord du Léman, incarne l’avidité et la soif de pouvoir. Ce duel, où interviennent de nombreuses autres figures, tantôt veules, tantôt aimantes, est retracé dans un récit envoûtant à la composition audacieuse, rythmé par l’alternance du registre grotesque avec des moments de grand lyrisme. Le présent volume propose une nouvelle édition annotée, accompagnée d’une préface inédite d’Anne-Lise Delacrétaz, maître d’enseignement et de recherche à l’université de Lausanne. Née à Saint-Prex, Catherine Colomb (1892-1965) a passé la majeure partie de sa vie dans le canton de Vaud. Vivant à l’écart des milieux littéraires, elle consacre à l’écriture le temps qu’elle arrache à sa vie de mère de famille et de maîtresse de maison. Saluée de son temps par Gustave Roud et Jean Paulhan, son œuvre est aujourd’hui considérée comme l’une des plus novatrices dans la francophonie du XXe siècle.

Genres: Fiction, France

168 pages, Pocket Book

First published March 1, 1953

Reviews

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is wonderful--inventive and interesting. The Virginia Woolf/Proust analogies are quite misleading; this is much closer to Josef Winkler and Ivy Compton-Burnett (all indirection and repetition), but I guess those names are even less likely to generate sales. I very much hope John Taylor translates Colomb's other novels, which would be far too much for me in the original.

Anyway, you have to pay attention, but it rewards that attention. It's a real shame that so few seem to be reading this book!

[Pascale · Rating 3 out of 5]

Propelled by misanthropy, this book is a bit of a stylistic tour de force. In a deliberately jumbled way, it tells the story of 4 siblings who lost their mother while still children. César, the eldest and his mother's favorite, was hit hardest, and never really recovered. Eugène and especially Adolphe couldn't care less. Zoé is the least developed character. Eugène and Adolphe marry early in a successful effort to squeeze César out of his inheritance. Eugène marries Madame, a tight-fisted snob who believes she made a poor bargain with Eugène, whose vineyards are not as prosperous as she imagined. Adolphe marries Mélanie, who gets attracted to César the minute she meets him. César himself is too dreamy and indecisive to ask for his childhood sweetheart's hand in time. Eventually, tired of being played by his brothers, he marries Blanche, at random. To Madame's great satisfaction, Blanche dies in a accident during her honeymoon. Zoé never marries and pretends to be mad in order to escape from further persecutions from Madame. The novel starts dramatically with yet another failed attempt by César to take revenge on Madame by pushing her son Abraham, his own nephew, to his death. The novel then throws light on this aborted infanticide by highlighting the pettiness and cruelty of Madame through a series of grotesque vignettes alternating with lyrical descriptions of the countryside to which César has a strong connection. Like Colomb's first book "Pile ou Face", this is powerful stuff somewhat marred by a relentlessly gloomy view of mankind.