Belle du Seigneur

Les Valeureux #3

by Albert Cohen

"Solennels parmi les couples sans amour, ils dansaient, d'eux seuls préoccupés, goûtaient l'un à l'autre, soigneux, profonds, perdus. Béate d'être tenue et guidée, elle ignorait le monde, écoutait le bonheur dans ses veines, parfois s'admirant dans les hautes glaces des murs, élégante, émouvante, exceptionnelle, femme aimée, parfois reculant la tête pour mieux le voir qui lui murmurait des merveilles point toujours comprises, car elle le regardait trop, mais toujours de toute son âme approuvées, qui lui murmurait qu'ils étaient amoureux, et elle avait alors un impalpable rire tremblé, voilà, oui, c'était cela, amoureux, et il lui murmurait qu'il se mourait de baiser et bénir les longs cils recourbés, mais non pas ici, plus tard, lorsqu'ils seraient seuls, et alors elle murmurait qu'ils avaient toute la vie, et soudain elle avait peur de lui avoir déplu, trop sûre d'elle, mais non, ô bonheur, il lui souriait et contre lui la gardait et murmurait que tous les soirs ils se verraient."
Ariane devant son seigneur, son maître, son aimé Solal, tous deux entourés d'une foule de comparses : ce roman n'est rien de moins que le chef-d'œuvre de la littérature amoureuse de notre époque.

Genres: France, Classics, Fiction, Romance, French Literature, Novels, 20th Century

1110 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Born Abraham Albert Cohen in Corfu, Greece, in 1895, as part of an important Sephardic Jewish community on the island. Albert’s parents, who owned a soap factory, moved to Marseille, France when he was a child. Albert Cohen discusses this period in his novel Le livre de ma mère (The Book of my Mother). He studied at a private Catholic school. In 1904, he started high school at Lycée Thiers, and graduated in 1913.

In 1914, he left Marseille for Geneva, Switzerland and enrolled in Law school. He graduated from Law School in 1917 and enrolled in Literature School in 1917 until 1919. In 1919, He became a Swiss citizen. That same year he married Elisabeth Brocher. In 1921, they gave birth to a daughter, Myriam. In 1924 his wife died of cancer. In 1925, Albert became director of Revue Juive (The Jewish Review), a periodical whose writers include Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. From 1926 to 1931, he served as a civil servant in Geneva. In 1931 He married his second wife, Marianne Goss.

During the German occupation, in 1940, Albert fled to Bordeaux, then to London. The Jewish Agency for Palestine then made him responsible to establish contacts with exiled governments. On January 10, 1943, Cohen’s mother died in Marseille. That same year, he met his future third wife, Bella Berkowich. In 1944, he became an attorney for the Intergovernmental Committee for Refugees. In 1947, Cohen returned to Geneva. In 1957, he turned down the post of Israeli Ambassador in order to pursue his literary career.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Belle du Seigneur is a treatise of human stupidity… Society depicted by Albert Cohen consists exclusively of dunces who find their shelter in sanctimony, hypocrisy, vulgarity and incongruous pretensions… And in this society of fools Albert Cohen draws a classical love triangle…

In the sun-dappled forest, the still forest of age-old fears, he walked through the tangled branches, handsome and no less noble than Aaron his forebear, brother of Moses, walked on with sudden laughter, the maddest of the sons of man; laughing out of blazing youth and love, suddenly uprooting a flower and biting its head off, suddenly dancing a jig, a great lord in high boots, dancing and laughing in the blinding sun among the branches, dancing with grace, with the two unresisting animals at his heels, dancing with love and triumph while his subjects the forest creatures went heedlessly about their business, pretty lizards living their lives beneath the foliate bowers of huge mushrooms, golden flies tracing geometric patterns in the air, spiders rising out of clumps of pink heather to watch the movements of bugs with prehistoric probosces, ants grooming each other and exchanging signals before returning to their solitary tasks, itinerant woodpeckers taking soundings, lonely toads giving nostalgic tongue, shy crickets chirping, screeching owls strangely awakened now.

This is a lucky lover… Poseur and peacock… He has nothing to show except his lustrous tail… He loves nobody but himself. Vanity reigns in his world.

…well my ideal would be to have a large estate where I could keep all sorts of animals, starting with a baby lion with great big paws, paws like fluffy-luffy-duffy balls of wool I’d touch them all the time and when he got big he’d never harm me, the secret is to love them, and then I’d have an elephant, a lovely old grandfather jumbo, if I had an elephant I wouldn’t mind having to do the shopping I’d even go and buy vegetables in the market he would carry me on his back and pass me up the vegetables with his trunk and I’d put money in his trunk so he could pay the lady, and I’d also have beavers on my estate I’d have a river put in just for them and they could build their house in peace…

This is a wondrous mistress… Silly and childish dreamer… She lives outside reality… She’s in love with her reflection in the mirror… Vanity rules her word.

Oh yes, from now on a high-profile social life! New Year cards to all his acquaintances! But not to anybody below member of section! Expensive cards for As and above! And with a short handwritten greeting! It was money in the bank! Contacts, for God’s sake! A man was only as good as his contacts! No: a man was the sum of his contacts! Top priority: rent a villa with cook and valet-cum-butler! Every day, quality guests for lunch and dinner, that was the secret of success! The butler buttling in white gloves! Big spending on these things was money in the bank! Very haute cuisine – more money in the bank!

This is a miserable cuckold… Sluggard and featherbrain… He dreams of an easy career and earthly power… He is a hopeless Narcissus… Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
At last lovers meet and they are in the realm of bliss…

Sacred, obtuse litany, wondrous canticle, joy of poor human kind doomed to die, love’s sempiternal two-voiced unison, the eternal love-duet which makes the earth to multiply. She told him over and over that she loved him. She asked him, for she knew the miraculous answer, asked him if he loved her. He told her over and over that he loved her. He asked her, for he knew the miraculous answer, asked her if she loved him. Love’s first burgeoning, so tedious to others, so engrossing to those concerned.

They have nothing in common… They have no purpose… The only link between them is physiology… Their love turns into farce and it is doomed.
Empty vessels don’t care about emptiness, they are proud to make the most noise.

[Manny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great novel about romantic love; alternately, one could say that it's about what it's like to be a sex and love addict, since it doesn't portray romantic love very positively. The three main characters are Ariane, her husband Didi, and Solal, who later becomes Ariane's lover. The first third is mostly about the young married couple. Didi is one of the great idiots of literature, and everything he does sets Ariane's teeth on edge. She wishes every minute of the day that she hadn't married him; she screwed up badly when she was 20, he rescued her, and she accepted him out of gratitude, and because she didn't have any alternatives. It doesn't make her like him any better.

The book is often described in the francophone world as phallocrate (you guessed that right), but in the first part it's almost the opposite; a lot is presented from Ariane's point of view, including a memorable stream-of-consciousness passage when she's in her bath, thinking mostly about how unbelievably disgusting and stupid it is to have sex with her husband. You are a little startled that this was written by a man. Didi is oblivious to the fact that she can't stand him, and it's clear that this state of affairs won't continue indefinitely.

Solal is Didi's exact opposite: smart, powerful, and irresistibly attractive to women. He's a big wheel at the League of Nations, and Didi's boss. He's fallen for Ariane, who is a babe. Solal has a tendency to fall for unsuitable babes; he knows already that there's going to be trouble, and that he's going to wish he hadn't done it. Being a Don Juan type, he's been round the cycle numerous times, and feels disgusted with the predictability of everyone involved, including himself. At the same time, the author conveys well his delight in Ariane's presence; love transforms his world, and makes him come alive.

To me, Didi and Solal are idealized, complementary halves; I'm guessing the author combined aspects of both of them, though from what I can make out he was most like Solal. It's an interesting way to present what he sees as the artificiality of romance, a theme that becomes increasingly important later. Sometimes you find yourself playing the role of the moronic, despised, soon-to-be-cuckolded Didi; sometimes, you're cast as his dashing rival. Both are just roles, and even though Solal gets the better one he often finds it stifling. I perhaps make this sound like depressing stuff. In fact, the first part of the book is very light and funny. There is foreshadowing, but mostly you're just laughing at all the stupid things Didi does and says.

About a third of the way through, Ariane finally meets Solal. (Though in fact, she's already met him, since I didn't mention the book's very first scene; you'll have to read it to find out what that's about). He tells her that she will be his within three hours, and then spends most of it explaining all the tricks he is going to use to seduce her. I am not enough of a Don Juan myself to be able to say whether they are the most effective ones, but, based on my limited experience, they sound correct. At any rate, they work on Ariane, and we now embark on the second phase of the book, where the focus contracts to include only the two lovers; Solal has sent off Didi on a long work-related trip, so that he will have the field to himself.

What's interesting about this part is the extremely cynical view of romantic love which it presents. Everything depends on appearances; Solal and his Belle take endless pains to present themselves to each other in as favorable a light as possible, agonizing over the tiniest details, and alternating between bottomless despair when they feel that they have made a gaffe, and unbounded happiness when the loved one appreciates the latest little strategem. It is constantly made clear that the whole thing is an illusion, which both parties are working nonstop to maintain. It's made equally clear how wonderful this illusion is for both of them, and how necessary all the contrivances are to keep it alive, given the basic rules of the game. Though, of course, the author is also saying that there is something badly wrong with the game itself, if it has to be played in such an absurd way; sometimes he says it very explicitly.

Writing this down, I'm reminded of a favorite scene from the 1983 movie Terms of Endearment. Jack Nicholson is an aging former astronaut, who spends most of his time drinking and trying to lay as many young women as possible. Shirley MacClaine, his next-door neighbor, has been watching his goings-on for years, with evident disapproval. She's finally consented to enter his house. It's covered with medals, photographs taken from space, what have you; every square centimeter screams "Have sex with me, I'm a famous astronaut". She looks around cooly, and says

"Is all of this really necessary?"

Nicholson, completely unembarrassed, replies,

"Necessary?? Sometimes it's not enough!"

I won't describe the last part of the book, but it follows logically from what has gone before, and is unlikely to leave you smiling idiotically about the beauties of love. So handle with care, but it's a great piece of work, and will almost certainly make you think.

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I picked this up again a couple of days ago and continued re-reading it... now about two thirds of the way through. He's so good at showing you how stupid and crazy and selfish love can make you. But also how beautiful and generous and godlike. Often at the same time.

And I'd forgotten how incredibly sexy the stream-of-consciousness bits are. Here's Ariane in her bath, waiting impatiently for her lover to arrive after a long absence:

... penché sur mon buste enfin quoi sur un de mes snies s'il faut tout vous dire oui snies parfaitment je dis les mots à l'envers quand ça me gêne de les dire à l'endroit moi donc passive reine recevant l'hommage qui fait tant de bien le suppliant que longtemps longtemps à droite puis à gauche puis à droite et moi reconnaissante râlant ronronnant avec distinction bref remerciements inarticulés et un peu le caressant mon chéri dans ses cheveux sublimes en désordre pour qu'il sache que j'approuve et apprécie fort et pour l'amour du ciel qu'il veuille bien continuer oh comme je suis rudimentaire et puis tout à coup je lui dis que je ne peux plus et qu'il me faut le sacre moi noble victime sur l'autel étendue oui son jardin étroit qu'il y entre qu'il y reste je le retiens je l'aspire oh reste toujours mon bien-aimé reste dans ta religieuse oh quand il en moi oui pas de honte de le dire parce que très beau très noble oui oui quand il en moi c'est l'éternité oh quand il quand il se libère en moi se libère à pulsations que je sens en moi alors je le regarde et c'est l'éternité et j'accepte de mourir un jour un soir d'automne peut-être de cancer j'accepte puisque quand il exulte en moi je vis éternelle oh je jouis plus de la joie que je lui donne que de celle que je lui prends ô mon amour dis que tu es bien en moi oh reste reste assez ne plus continuer défense de continuer parce que ça devient véritablement odieux mon amour mais vous comprenez insupportable surtout dans l'eau qui est complice terrible oh aimé venez être bien en moi s'il vous plaît...

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The ending is very painful and very beautiful. I was particularly moved by this passage:

Ô les débuts, leur temps de Genève, les préparatifs, son bonheur d'être belle pour lui, les attentes, les arrivées à neuf heures, et elle était toujours sur le seuil à l'attendre, impatiente et en santé de jeunesse, à l'attendre sur le seuil et sous les roses, dans la robe roumaine qu'il aimait, blanche aux larges manches serrées aux poignets, ô l'enthusiasme de le revoir, les soirées, les heures à se regarder, à se parler, à se raconter à l'autre, tant de baisers reçus et donnés, oui, les seuls vrais de sa vie, et après l'avoir quittée tard dans la nuit, quittée avec tant de baisers, baisers profonds, baisers interminables, il revenait parfois, une heure plus tard ou des minutes plus tard, ô splendeur de le revoir, ô fervent retour, je ne peux pas sans toi, il lui disait, je ne peux pas, et d'amour il pliait genou devant elle qui d'amour pliait genou devant lui, et c'était des baisers, elle et lui religieux, des baisers encore et encore, baisers véritables, baisers d'amour, grands baisers battant l'aile, je ne peux pas sans toi, il lui disait entre des baisers, et il restait, le merveilleux qui ne pouvait pas, ne pouvait pas sans elle, restait des heures jusqu'à l'aurore et aux chants des oiseaux, et c'était l'amour. Et maintenant ils ne se désiraient plus, ils s'ennuyaient ensemble, elle le savait bien.

[Lea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has to be one of the best books I've ever read. It's genius. I love writing style where each character has his own distinctive voice, and I adore stream of consciousness bits where we go deep into thoughts of each character in an exploration of their point of view. The psychological characterization is sharp and profound and I would say that the quality of analysis is Dostoyevski level. The story really debunks the typical romantic fantasy of finding life's meaning in passionate love and shows ambivalence in lovers attitude and sort of cynicism that intelligent people have towards amorous relationships, having the knowledge of hollowness of their pursuit of happiness in obsessive love but still being too hot-blooded not to dive deep into their erotic desires. The main characters are narcissistic, self-absorbed, raw, beautiful, intelligent, creative, special, religious, idealistic, sarcastic, contradictory - shallow and deep at the same time, full of unfulfilled potential and painfully conscious of their state without the ability to change it. Their characterization really shows the complexity of balancing emotions, reason and moral values that all humans have to do and the tragic consequences in which wrong decisions lead. In Dante's Inferno lovers, guilty of the sin of carnal lust, are eternally whirled by the winds as they were helpless in life in the temptation of passion, forever in that same scenario, without any progress, purpose, goal and evolution, and this novel is a painting of that hell while being alive. Destruction of obsessive passion is spiritual, psychological and physical. And the brilliant underlying humor in the novel helped transcend the sadness that ending invokes. Truly a masterpiece and I don't understand how it's not more well-known, it's a big book but every second of reading was worth it.

[Oziel Bispo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meados de 1930 Suíça. Ariane uma mulher da alta classe, casada com Adrien é seduzido por Solal, um Judeu rico,com um posto importante: chefe da Liga das Nações, importante instituição da época. Solal era também chefe de Adrien e para se ver livre dele o mandou em uma missão para um país longínquo, igual fez o Rei Davi mandando Urias para o campo de batalha para ficar com sua esposa Bate-Seba.No começo Ariane e Solal viveram um intenso amor, morando em vários hotéis (me lembra Lolita) e por fim adquirindo uma mansão. Entretanto com o tempo começou o desgaste,tudo o que tinha para se falar foi falado entre eles, tudo o que poderia se fazer foi feito, toda forma de sedução.Por mais que as coisas agradem, quando são demais aborrecem. Eles estavam condenados ao amor, ao isolamento à solidão e a um passo de várias tragédias.Apesar de em certos momentos o livro ser tedioso é uma obra-prima da literatura Francesa, um livro que demorei vários meses para ler, mas que valeu muito à pena.

[Katia N · Rating 5 out of 5]

How weary! how dreary! with no friend to ease the heart’s pain
In moments of sorrow of soul!
Fond desires!  But what use the desire that is ever in vain?
And o’er us the best years roll.

To love.  But the loved one?  ‘Tis nothing to love for a space;
And for ever Love cannot remain.
Dost thou glance at thyself?  Of the “has been” remains not a trace,
And all gladness and sorrow are vain.

The passions?  Ah! sooner or later, their malady sweet
Will vanish at reason’s behest;
And life—when the circle of cold contemplation’s complete—
Is a stupid and frivolous jest.
M. Lermontov


What a monumental, sprawling and alive animal of a novel it is! On the one level, everything in this book is built on negation. Negation of climax: in many episodes, the suspense is being built, the scene is being carefully crafted but then something you expected is not happening, total anticlimax. Negation of Proust: the book is almost as big as the famous Proust’s masterpiece. It seems, Proust haunts the author both in literary and personal sense. The most interesting chunks of this novel is written as a stream of consciousness. But it cannot be more different from Proust. Instead of having one narrator strongly associated with the author, Cohen inhabits a dozen of his characters. In the process, he is creating a very memorable, distinctive cast, each of them with their unique voice.

And the most devastating negation is that of romance. The poem by Lermontov I’ve started with quintessentially summarises the doomed love story at the core of this novel. A beautiful but married heroine Ariane, the heir of disappearing nobel Genevan protestant family, is falling for a sparkling alpha-male Jew, Solal. She is blinded by passion. He is cynical, knows everything in advance, but cannot resist. In the novel, she is compared to Anna Karenina. But we made to believe that she is too submissive and too naive to be like Anna. If he is a Don Juan, he is the failed one. He seems to struggle whether he is really alpha-male or he is just convincing himself to pretend for her love to last. In any case he in confused, tired and insecure. And they both persistently and painfully perform an act in front of each other. In this respect, the novel is more like 19th than the 20th century one.


“Passion, alias, love, was a complete and utter shambles too. If unaccompanied by jealousy, it meant boredom. If attended by jealousy, then it was sheer, animal hell. She was a slave and he was a brute. Novelists were a disgrace: a gang of liars who dressed up passion and made brainless males and females chase after it. Novelists were disgrace: they were the suppliers and flatters of the owning class.”

In spite of this, the book contains a few chapters of the most beautiful odes to love, youth and melancholy in I’ve read:

“I stand alone upon ice floe, says he who once was young, broken-bodied and already dying on the ice floe which carries me oh I know whither through the night, I hold up my feeble hand and bless the young who on this night grow drunk on words of love beneath the infinite, hushed music of the spheres. Alone I stand upon my ice floe, and yet the rustle of spring is still in my ears. I am alone and old upon an ice floe, and night has fallen. So says one who once was young.”

But the romance does not start until you are well into the book. The first third is a brilliant and merciless satire on the society with its ridiculous norms and aspirations. Cohen leaves us in the company of unforgettable, set of characters - the Deums, the family of Adriane’s husband. His adopted parents, petty bourgeoisie, are almost poignant in their feeble attempts to enter the noble society. Deum the young is trying to climb the ladder in the League of Nations. Those scenes made me properly laugh. There is also a bunch of wandering Jews, the relatives of Solal, eccentric and unique in there life-loving. They brighten the pages.

So, i said it is like the 19th century novel. But it is not the 19th century novel. All those negations are just the surface layer. The book cuts much deeper than this. It goes all the way into the underbelly of the 20th century. Or maybe, even deeper than that back into many centuries, something primordial and sinister. The year of the story is 1936. It is Europe. Solal is a Jew. But he is French as well, he is cosmopolitan and he represents the power in the society. That is until the ground starts to crumble under his feet. That is until he is made to choose. He is made to perform this artificial and cruel choice by picking up one part of his self and discarding with the other. And he has to act in a way that is only honourable one left. But as a result, he is trapped and his mind unraveling. He ends up as an outcast from the society he was shining in. He is also trapped within the role he made for himself in relationship with Ariane. And then, how wide is the gap between being a victim and the cruelty equating to being a murderer? Not very wide it appears.

When talking about this novel, the Chapter 35 is often mentioned where Solal seduces Ariane by lecturing her on different seduction techniques and the animal spirit of human nature. I did not like that chapter and found it quite superficial and dated. For me the most important is chapter 93 and everything that follows with the speed of a train no-one can stop. Farewell to the anticlimax. It is when Solal is trying for the last time to change something in his situation, trying to find hope in vain. On the streets of Paris surrounded by walls covered with anti-Semitic trash:

“Standing motionless with his back to the wall, he moves his lips. “Christians, I thirst for your love. Christians, let me love you. Christians, fellow creatures doomed to die, companions on the earth, children of Christ whose blood I share, let us love one another,” he murmurs, and he stares at those who past by and love him not, and furtively he holds out a begging hand, and knows that he is acting foolishly, that nothing will do any good.”

I’ve seen comparison of Ariane and Solal to Francesca and Paolo from Dante’s Inferno. I think the comparison to Zweig and his wife is more poignant, even if it misses on the forbidden romance and jealousy.

The novels dwells on the issue which has resurfaced acutely in our time - the question of belonging, the question of identity. When the rising bigotry and intolerance in our societies, makes us face impossible choices of discarding with a part of ourselves to conform, what is our collective future? Why do we need us and them, be it the Jews, the Muslims, refugees, immigrants, the other. This is the novel not so much about the doomed romantic love, but about the eternal struggle between the animalistic and the divine within the human nature. It deserves to be widely read. It is an outstanding work of literature.

Ps
That is the one of those cases I wish I could read in French. I suspect this novel is very difficult to translate as it contains so many different voices, colloquial and poetic language. And I am not overblown by the English translation. I think it has lost the music, though I could see it was a big effort. I alternated between the English and the Russian translations, so it took me even longer than usual to read this thousand pages. I am sure I’ve missed a lot but I do not have regrets. Kudos to French speakers.

[William2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thirty years in the writing. Published by Gallimard in 1968; English translation by Viking in 1995.

[Leonard Gaya · Rating 5 out of 5]

On raconte qu'un rosier et une vigne entremêlés poussent sur les tombes de Tristan et Iseult. Belle du seigneur est probablement l'une des fleurs de cette double plante. L'impression que je garde de ce gros volume, lu il y a quelques années, est celle de deux récits successifs : le premier, satirique, celui d'une femme dépressive, mariée à un fonctionnaire ridicule et arriviste ; le deuxième, dramatique, celui de cette même femme, poursuivant un amour impossible et fatal avec un homme séduisant dont le destin est menacé. Je retiens en particulier les situations et expression comiques de la première partie et les longueurs intolérables de la seconde. Le clou reste le discours central de Solal sur les babouineries humaines, auxquelles n'échappent ni l'écriture multicolore de Cohen, ni le lecteur qui s'efforce d'arriver au bout de son roman.

[Guillermo Jiménez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fue en la presentación de No voy a pedirle a nadie que me crea, de Juan Pablo Villalobos, en el Centro Cultural Bella Época, en donde Juan Pablo mencionó varias obras y autores que de alguna manera influyeron en su escritura de la novela con la que ganó el Premio Herralde, una de ellas fue Los Esforzados, de Albert Cohen.

Nada más salir de su plática, me abalancé a los estantes de la Librería Rosario Castellanos con la esperanza de encontrar esa novela o algo de su autor, que me era totalmente desconocido. Como era de esperarse: no tenían nada.

Semanas después, descubrí que Anagrama había reeditado otra novela de ese autor, Bella del Señor, y para esas fechas, ya había leído algo sobre él, y con asombro descubrí que Bella del Señor estaba considerada como una “gran novela francesa”, y su autor, comparado con un Shakespeare, un Proust, un Céline, un Musil y un Chaplin, por repetir los nombres en la contraportada de este librote.

Tardé meses en sentarme a leer este novelón, pero, cuando comencé, no pude parar. Para comenzar, es exigente desde el inicio con el lector, y tardé un poco en agarrarle el ritmo a su humor, a su estilo, y de sobreentender que era una traducción del francés, versión que ha de ser un deleite comparable a un Huckleberry Finn o un The Sound and the Fury. Imagino.

Bella del Señor es la hipérbole de las novelas románticas, lleva al exceso la idea de la pasión amorosa, de los amantes al límite del amorío, de la idea más extrema y absurda del amor; todo esto en una Ginebra de mediados y finales de los años 30; una Europa en donde el antisemitismo --entre otras cosas-- permitió la escalada al poder del nacionalsocialismo, aunque esto solo es un trasfondo muy, muy lejano en la trama, pero no por ello deja de tener un peso significativo en la trama, puesto que Solal, el protagonista y antihéroe de antihéroes donde los haya, es judío.

El amor pulverizado, el amor machacado beso a beso, caricia a caricia, palabra a palabra. Lo irracional e incoherente de los sentimientos humanos, el actuar descabellado de un par de seres que se han entregado a su enajenación, creando una burbuja de un material tan transparente, pero, al mismo tiempo tan endeble, que pareciera que en cualquier momento va a hacerse pedazos dejándolos expuestos al escarnio, a la burla, al ridículo y la deshonra de una sociedad esnob, una sociedad construida sobre apariencias y palabras vanas y carentes de valor, pero no exentas de significado.

El humor que se encuentra casi en cada página de esta novelota, es un humor lacerante, que hiere, que entierra sus uñas y da risa al mismo tiempo que lastima. Soltamos la carcajada con las visiones ficticias que se crean algunos personajes que desean seguir sumergidos en sus ensoñaciones, que se niegan a aceptar la realidad aplastante de un mundo que los rebasa.

Bella del Señor, es una terrible y triste historia de amor, un fresco de un periodo negro de la historia occidental, un preámbulo al periodo negro, una anticipación al asombro tétrico que llevaría a decir a Adorno “escribir poesía después de Auschwitz es un acto de barbarie”, eso es, barbarie, el amor y los sentimientos de los futuros cadáveres que somos.

El desaliento y el pesimismo no son tanto una visión desencantada del mundo, sino más bien, una exploración similar a la que realiza un entomólogo frente a un insecto que cree conocer, pero al cual se acerca con una nueva capacidad de asombro, como si entendiera de antemano que ese frágil cuerpo conocido aún es capaz de decirle algo más, de averiguar algo más de la vida que lo rodea.

Eso lo escribo porque leí que Cohen comenzó la escritura de esta novela en los años previos a los que está ubicada la acción, y que tuvo que interrumpirla cuando estalló la guerra, es decir, no soltó el dedo del renglón; y cuando por fin pudo publicarla a finales de los años 60, él consideraba que era necesaria, que aún estaba vigente, y no se equivocó.

El mundo diplomático, la aparente inutilidad de la Sociedad de las Naciones que viene a ser un precedente para las Naciones Unidas, esa idea de universalidad y convivencia de la diversidad de las naciones, que parece que ignora que dentro de cada país hay un riquísimo universo multicultural que cambia y evoluciona y que es plástico y flexible y no rígido y consistente. Nuevamente la idea anquilosada de que cultura es algo que podemos comprender y estudiar como un objeto fijo, ¡pero si ni las esculturas o columnas griegas permanecen inmutables al paso del tiempo!

El amor como degradación del yo, como aniquilación de la identidad del ser enamorado que se sublima al acto del poder del amado, a la voz del amado, a las miradas y pensamientos inventados de quien ostenta nuestros sentimientos como un bien suyo. El autoalienamiento, pues carecemos de valor propio ante aquellos que deseamos que nos deseen, que nos amen y admiren, aunque tengamos que construir un mundo teatro alrededor de ese enamoramiento, de ese ideal insensato.

Luego, logré encontrar Los Esforzados, una primera edición en Panorama de narrativas de Anagrama que se empolvaba en los estantes del Péndulo de Álvaro Obregón, casi brinco de alegría y emoción. Luego leí que Gallimard decidió retirar algunas partes “burlescas” de esta novela, y que estas terminaron siendo Los Esforzados que ahora leo, y que agradezco que el editor francés haya sacado de esta novela extrema y arriesgada y sublime y soberbia.

[Jorge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uno de esos tesoros que las arenas del tiempo han ido ocultando y con los que uno tropieza sólo por casualidad. Albert Cohen (1895-1981) fue un escritor nacido en Grecia (Isla de Corfú), de nacionalidad Suiza, de familia judía y de lengua francesa. Como tantos otros, este escritor y su obra han caído gradualmente en el olvido, pero me parece que tiene tantos méritos como todos aquellos que han podido sobrevivir al olvido y que han sido inmortalizados por posteriores generaciones.
¿Cuáles serán los elementos que hacen que sólo algunos escritores estén presentes en la memoria colectiva de la literatura, que sus libros se sigan buscando como referencia, que sus textos aún sean motivo de estudio, en fin, que permanezcan vivos?

Albert Cohen es un gigante de las letras y esta novela en particular en una obra descomunal, empezando por su extensión. Descomunal por su profundidad sicológica, por la introspección del ser humano, por el análisis del banal comportamiento humano en sociedad, por la diversidad de su prosa, por su imaginación, creatividad, sarcasmo e hilaridad.

Aunque muchos consideran ésta como una novela de amor, también creo que es una crítica severa e irónica a la sociedad y a la burocracia diplomática en la que el propio Cohen trabajó en Ginebra. Es importante destacar que esta obra se escribió en su mayoría a mediados de los años 30 del siglo XX, pero por diversas causas se concluyó 30 años después y publicada en 1968, teniendo un gran éxito y siendo acreedora al Gran Premio de la Novela de la Academia Francesa.

Además de la acerba crítica a la sociedad, la obra también sirve como una censura a la ineficacia de los Organismos Internacionales creados para fomentar la paz y la concordia entre las naciones y que sólo se erigen como feudos de poder y de privilegios para quienes forman parte de ellos, fracasando mayormente en sus labores ante la fuerza de los nacionalismos y ante el antisemitismo que emerge y crece con fuerza desmedida en esos años 30 del siglo XX, de lo cual nos da cuenta el autor en esta misma obra.

El libro comienza detallando los juegos de poder, las pueriles aspiraciones sociales y las fatuas jugarretas a las que se recurre para mostrarse ante los ojos de todos como una persona privilegiada e importante. Una gran parte de las personas sólo buscan relaciones sociales por interés, relaciones que las beneficien para escalar en la sociedad y para poder pertenecer a un estrato privilegiado.
En este sentido, el autor aborda con profundidad y un gran sentido del humor los artificios del comportamiento humano, siempre motivado por el deseo de quedar bien con la gente de la que se puede obtener un beneficio; siempre actuando con el deseo de impresionar para que todos se enteren que es una persona valiosa e importante. ¿Importante para qué o para quién?

Albert Cohen tiene los suficientes recursos para mostrar prolija y claramente ese espurio entramado psicológico que se desarrolla internamente y que se exterioriza hasta el paroxismo como una herramienta para ascender en la escala social y laboral.

Los caracteres que crea son una especie de radiografías del hombre burgués del siglo XX, con aspiraciones sociales y económicas siempre ilusorias, todo contado con un filón de humor muy fino. En la primera parte del libro destaca la personalidad de Adrien Deume, el lamentable Didi, un hombre interesado, falso, servil, apocado, con aires de grandeza, siempre pensando en cómo beneficiarse de las relaciones personales. Su padre, su madre y su esposa, Ariane Cassandre Corisande d’ Auble, viven bajo el mismo techo y muestran todas las implicaciones que supone el desfase entre su realidad y sus deseos de ascenso social. La madre de Adrien es un personaje inolvidable ya que frente al marido pusilánime, ella carga con el peso familiar y trata de mover los hilos sociales para no perder su posición o incluso para lograr un ascenso. Estos capítulos son realmente divertidos con un gran contenido de hilarante mordacidad lo que nos estimula a leerlos con avidez.

Durante la primera tercera parte del libro el personaje principal llamado Solal, un alto funcionario de la Sociedad de Naciones y la antítesis de Adrien, permanece entre las sombras y lo conocemos sólo de referencias y de dos o tres escuetos diálogos. Posteriormente se desarrolla un abrasador romance entre Solal y Ariane, esposa de Adrien Deume, que rompe con los esquemas románticos convencionales. Esta relación de amor se convierte en una parodia del romanticismo ya que es llevada a extremos de cursilería y de monotonía, apareciendo el ridículo y la miseria humana, pero también algunos momentos que rozan lo sublime. La extraña relación entre Solal y Ariane es también una invectiva al amor, llegando irremediablemente a la asfixia y al aislamiento de la sociedad.

De ser un poderoso funcionario de la Sociedad de Naciones, Solal, judío de nacimiento como el autor, cae en la desgracia, en el aislamiento, se vuelve un apestado; tal vez el autor hace un símil con el linaje judío ya que también esta cuestión la aborda con algún detalle, mostrando a este pueblo a través de la historia como un pueblo desarraigado, perseguido, aislado de alguna manera y que no se siente cómodo en ninguna parte del planeta.

La narrativa es un agente provocador que dramatiza las relaciones hombre-mujer, ya que da cuenta de los titánicos esfuerzos de las parejas por mantener las apariencias entre ellos mismos, lo que contribuye a desgastar la relación y a un no conocimiento real del otro, resultando en auténticas mascaradas; detalla los complejos ritos y obligaciones que se imponen mutuamente y pone de manifiesto la falta de evolución en estas relaciones que siguen atadas a la tradición más rancia y ancestral que las convierten en algunos casos en pesos muertos con los que hay que cargar, perdiendo la individualidad.

La relación de Solal y Ariane cae en lo abyecto y en lo denigrante; en esas horas bajas Solal siempre se remite a la primera noche con su amada, momentos que nunca más se repetirían a la luz del desarrollo de la relación. Por su parte Ariane siempre recuerda su niñez al lado de su hermana como los únicos momentos felices de su vida. Momentos que nunca regresan y que uno siempre los ve a la distancia con grande nostalgia. Se trata de ese único lugar de la felicidad y me recuerda la afortunada frase del cantautor y poeta español Joaquín Sabina: “En Comala comprendí que al lugar donde has sido feliz no debieras tratar de volver”.

Albert Cohen también trasluce marginalmente su preocupación por la muerte, ya que en varias partes del libro toca esta temática: el inexorable transcurso del tiempo que conduce a la vejez, a la decadencia y a la muerte. Estamos prometidos a la muerte. Igualmente aprovecha para darle una pasadita a “la miseria de las religiones magias del miedo”.

El autor domina plenamente su oficio y su lenguaje, utilizando diversas formas o estilos en su prosa para contarnos ésta muy larga y original historia. Gran parte de ella se lee con interés y tranquilidad. En algunas partes utiliza figuras retóricas variadas; por ejemplo, hay algunos capítulos específicos en los cuales no hay ni puntuación ni interlineado que implican grandes flujos de conciencia. Estas repentinas y agobiantes elucubraciones (cada una de 20 o 30 páginas), en donde puede hablar de dos o tres temas en un solo renglón, son poco menos que ensayísticas y me han dejado exhausto. Para penetrar estos capítulos tuve que hacer uso de algunas dosis de cafeína.
Otra figura narrativa a la que recurre Albert Cohen en algunos capítulos es hacer hablar a alguna persona del pueblo, con todo lo que conlleva esto: palabras mal empleadas, sonidos cacofónicos, frases coloquiales, jerga popular, frases enrevesadas. Aquí vale la pena destacar la sobresaliente labor del traductor que es Javier Albiñana (Valencia, 1944) quien acometió esta labor titánica de traducir fielmente una vasta obra llena de retos para un traductor.

También en algunas partes el narrador le da voz a diversos personajes, utilizando varios tiempos, recuerdos, ires y venires, casi simultáneamente, sin que por esto se pierda el hilo de la historia. Su lenguaje puede llegar a ser grandilocuente, vasto, rico y en ocasiones cargado con una vena poética que nos cautiva.

“Augusta, caminaba, impulsada por el amor como antaño sus hermana de épocas pretéritas, innumerables y sumergidas en el sueño de la tierra, caminaba, inmortal en su marcha dirigida como las estrellas, legiones que amor conduce en eternas trayectorias, Ariane solemne, apenas sonriente, acompañada por qué celeste música, el amor, el amor en sus comienzos.”

[Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly · Rating 5 out of 5]

You're a married guy. You have more than one college degree. You read voraciously--books, serious magazine articles, newspapers. You are one of the highly respected people in your profession. Whenever you speak your mind, your colleagues listen.


You have a wife. She barely got passed college. She watches TV every time that her favorite soap operas are on. She doesn't read books, or any of the serious stuffs you read, although she browses over fashion magazines every now and then.

Like normal couple you argue. Sometimes in a friendly manner, over breakfast; sometimes in a fight. And behold, after each and every such argument you--the supposed intellectual superior--lay flattened on the kitchen floor, defeated. Now satirize that. You'll never come up with one as good as that by Albert Cohen's in this novel. Here is the beautiful Ariane in an argument with her husband Didi Deume--

"x x x Blithely pursuing her theme, she (Ariane) next dealt with various aspects of her martyr's life. After recalling his (Didi's) crimes against femininity, which she had already brought up in previous scenes, she then moved on, with the requisite wealth of dates and places, to enumerate, for the benefit of the poor bewildered male, other misdemeanours which he now learned he had committed during the course of their marriage. Indefatigable, nothing like a limp rag but firing all pistons, she strode up and down in her red polka-dot jacket which left her thighs bare, paced feverishly, her words warmed by a sacred flame and strengthened too by the exultation of victory, while her spouse, stunned and left reeling by the power of her avenging eloquence, could only stand by and watch open-mouthed as his unsuspecting sins were clearly marshalled and paraded before him.

"They constituted a heavy indictment. Like the best orators, she was sincere, for she believed every word she said. Stirred by a noble indignation, she was utterly convinced of the rightness of her cause. It was her greatest strength, and, admirably sustained by a mixture of aggression and sarcasm, it enabled her to crush her much less skilful opponent. But she was also clever. As skilfully as the ablest of prosecuting counsels, she set out her case in blacks and whites which strengthened it immeasurably, eliminating anything which might count against her and imparting the required twists, warps and amplifications to the words and actions of her guilty husband. And all her unfairness was spoken in good faith, for she was honest.

"He listened in a daze to her tireless outpouring and he knew that she accused him unjustly, with only a semblance of right, as always. But he also knew that he would never convince her she was wrong, that he had neither the talent nor the stamina for it, that he was far too wretched to be able to defend himself properly. All he could do was to repeat--because it was the truth--that she was being mean and unfair, to which she would respond endlessly and always victoriously.

"No, he simply wasn't up to it. Her fire-power was the greater. He laid down his arms and left her without saying a word...

"It was true. The poor man was just not up to it. Throughout the whole of that terrible month...each time he'd tried to stand up to his wife, each time he had put a cast-iron case to prove that she was in the wrong, she had not budged an inch. She always got the better of him in any argument, because she interrupted and talked him down so that he was left, a speechless bystander, to watch helpless and hopeless as the various charges in the indictment were wheeled out before him; or else because she steamrollered him with unsubstantiated but extremely telling thrusts, such as describing his plain, honest arguments as 'a tissue of clever fibs and quibbles'; or because she sidetracked him and mixed him up; or else because she deliberately ignored everything he said and simply went on piling up grievances which, because they were incomprehensible, were also irrefutable.

"The best he could manage, if he ever succeeded in making her listen to his side of things and got her on the wrong foot, was to see her wriggle out of reach by seeking refuge in the tears and sufferings of the helpless, ill-used wife, or by refusing to answer and looking stony-faced if he begged her to admit her faults, or by resorting to the 'I-don't-know-what-you're-talking-about' tactic, a ploy she was capable of repeating indefinitely if he restated his thesis and began once more to explain, as conscientiously and as clearly as he could, exactly in what ways she was to blame. (This was a bee in the poor man's bonnet: he believed in the clarifying power of explanations. It would have been far better for him if he'd never become a husband, for that was his only sin.) Whenever he attempted this, she would let him prattle on without trying to interrupt, but then, when he had finished and was looking at her with hope in his eyes, convinced that this time he'd explained things clearly and made her see them from his point of view, she would simply stand her ground and again scream that she didn't know what he was talking about, couldn't for the life of her see what he was driving at!

"And woe betide him if he let himself be goaded by such patent but triumphant pretences, woe betide him if he were to bear down on her with fists clenched, woe betide him! For then she called him a brute, a wife-beating coward, screamed with terror, with genuine terror too, which was quite diabolical of her, and shouted for help and roused the neighbours. One night, shortly before the Deumes had got back, just because he had told her to stop shouting and had raised his arm, though he had absolutely no intention of hitting her, she had ripped off her pyjama top and run out into the garden, stark naked with rage. The following night, because he had gone so far as to raise hs voice a little and tell her she was mean to him, she had paid him back by shrieking that he was a monster, a tyrant, a torturer, by tearing off a piece of the wallpaper, then by going downstairs and locking herself in the kitchen, where she had stayed put until four in the morning while he trembled with fear at the thought that she might put her head in the gas-oven.

"And that was not all, for she had other weapons in her armoury which the poor devil knew only too well: reprisals for the morning after. These included headaches, sit-down strikes in her room, swollen eyes offered as evidence of tears shed in solitude, a whole battery of ailments, stubborn sulks, an embattled loss of appetite, fatigue, forgetfulness, dejected airs--the complete, fearsome panoply of the helpless but quite invincible female."


Or have you experienced this: tagging along with your boss to a party only to find out, when you got there, that it is a party for big bosses who didn't bring their lowly underlings like you and therefore you are there, all alone, the only one of your kind, and there's no one to talk to (except, perhaps, the waiters who of course wouldn't oblige)? What does one do in such a situation? Cohen's caustic humor in a similar situation had me in stitches--

"No guest talked to Finkelstein, a social nothing who was not only no use to man or beast but, more damningly, could not harm a fly. He was not dangerous, ergo he was not interesting, not the sort who called for careful handling, not someone you need like or pretend to like. Even the four pariahs by their window kept their distance from his degrading, low-caste presence. Ignored by all and having no other Jews to talk to, the wretched leper decided that acting like a man in a hurry would enable him to show a bold front, and his involvement in the reception consisted of elbowing his way firmly through the chattering mob at regular intervals. Head lowered, as though dragged down by the weight of his nose, he would charge across the immense room from one end to the other, occasionally crashing into other guests, saying sorry, though his apologies fell on deaf ears. Launched on his series of lightning, slanting runs, he camouflaged his isolation by giving the impression that it was desperately urgent that he get to someone he knew who was waiting over there, at the far end of the room. It was a gambit which deceived no one. When Benedetti came across him and could not pretend he had not noticed, he kept him at arm's length with a merry, preventive 'All right?' and immediately left him to his unremitting ambulations. Whereupon the doctor of social sciences and supercharged Wandering Jew set off once more, retraced one of his pointless journeys through this land of exile, and with the same haste headed for the buffet and a comforting sandwich, which was his only social contact and the sole right he enjoyed at the reception. For two hours, between six and eight, poor Finkelstein subjected himself to forced marches of several kilometers, which he would not mention to his wife when he got home. He loved his Rachel and kept his griefs to himself. Why these unremitting charges? And why stay so long among these unfeeling people? Because he clung to his annual invitation, because he would not admit defeat, and also because he went in hopes of a miracle: a conversation with another human being. Poor, inoffensive Finkelstein, who wore your heart on your sleeve, a Jew dear to my heart, I hope you are in Israel now, among your people, among our brethren, and touchable at last."

You don't read this novel because of its plot. It could have had an entirely different setting or story, yet it would just have perhaps meant having different targets for the author. In any case, because this novel is set in Geneva, Switzerland in the 1930's; because one of the male principal protagonists, Solal, is a handsome playboy who is an Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations; because the other male character, Didi, is Solal's lazy subordinate whose idea of career advancement is to get his boss to his house for dinner or get a pat on the back from him; because Didi is married to the beautiful airhead, Ariane, who falls in love with Solal; and because this novel took almost 30 long years to write, by the time you finish, regretfully, reading this great novel of 106 chapters you'd feel that you've been exposed to an all-encompassing view of the world of wit, Albert Cohen having been able to satirize and/or expose the hypocrisy of married life, love, relationships, career concerns, high society, sex, the social classes, the death of passion and the limits of lust with such prowess that he left me in awe. Insightful, because Cohen understood the frailty of men and women; biting, because he was simply wicked; and wildly humorous, because he was intelligent.

[Pierre Fortier · Rating 3 out of 5]

On dit de ce livre qu’il est un des plus beaux, sinon grand, roman d'amour du XXe. C’est faux. Belle du Seigneur est un bon roman, lent comme La Montagne Magique, souvent pétillant de monologues vifs et drôles, souvent insupportable par des monologues inutiles et enrageants. Des monologues de 30 à 50 pages sans ponctuation, ni virgule, ni point, ni point virgule…On s’accroche grâce aux moments magiques pour passer à travers les longueurs à n’en plus finir. Il s'agit d'un roman d’amour d’accord, mais aussi une satire de l’amour, des juifs, de la société genèvoise des années 30 avec des personnages fort bien représentés. Maintenant, c’est terminé, passons à autre chose

[İpek Dadakçı · Rating 5 out of 5]

Her ne kadar aşk romanı olarak anılsa da aslında insan doğasının karanlık dehlizlerinin kapılarını aralayarak bu karanlık tarafımızın ilişkilerimizi, algılarımızı ve hatta toplumları nasıl etkilediği ve şekillendirdiğiyle ilgili muhteşem bir roman Efendinin Güzeli.

1930’lu yıllarda Cenevre’de Milletler Cemiyeti’nde yüksek bir pozisyonda çalışan Solal’in ondan daha düşük rütbeli bir memur olan Adrien Deume’nin eşi Ariane arasındaki aşk var kurgunun merkezinde. Albert Cohen’in kendi hayatından da çokça izler taşıyor roman; Solal karakterine baktığımızda adeta Cohen’in hayat hikayesini görüyoruz. Yunanistan’ın bir adasında Yahudi olarak dünyaya gelen diplomat Solal’in Ariane’in odasına kılık değiştirip gizlice girdiği bir sahneyle açılıyor hikâye (ki bu devamıyla çok bağdaştıramadığım için acaba daha ileri bir zamandan kesit mi diye de düşünüp biraz afallattı beni ilk önce), sonrasında Milletler Cemiyeti’ndeki hiyerarşinin işleyişi ve ilişkiler üzerinden devam ediyor. Terfi alma hırsıyla yanıp tutuşan Adrien’in, daha yüksek bir rütbe ve maaş uğruna yapabilecekleriyle beraber insanın güç ve otoriteyle olan ilişkisini irdelemeye başlıyor Cohen. Aslında insanoğlunun ne denli aciz, hatta karaktersiz olabileceği, küçücük çıkarlar için dahi ne tavizler verip neler yapabileceğini oldukça da komik ve eğlenceli anlatıyor ve bunu da inanılmaz başarılı bir şekilde yapıyor. Son derece yerinde eleştirilerini, nokta atışı örneklerle böyle eğlenceli anlatması muazzamdı; ‘insan’ denen canlıdan soğuyup, insanlığı sorgularken güldürebilmek herkesin harcı değil bence. Yer yer Moliere’in Kibarlık Budalası’nı da anımsattı bana.

Hikaye ilerledikçe, Solal ile Ariane’nin ilişkisine kayıyor hikayenin odağı ve böylece insanın güç ve otoriteyle olan ilişkisinin iş ilişkilerinden sonra duygusal dünyasına yansımalarına odaklanıyor Cohen. Aşk aslında ne, insan denen varlığın doğası ikili ilişkileri nasıl etkiliyor sorularının peşine düşüyoruz. Bence burada Cohen’in etkileyici yanı şu: Katıldığınız noktalarda çok vurucu, adeta tokatlıyor sizi ve katılmadıklarınızda bile düşünecek, sorgulayacak bir sürü nokta bırakıyor kucağınıza. Bu açıdan, okuduktan sonra dünyaya aynı bakamadığım kitaplar vardır benim, Efendinin Güzeli kesinlikle bunlardan biri.

Son olarak, güç ve otorite kavramlarını bireysellik ve toplumsallık düzleminde ele alıyor Cohen. Hitler’in yükselişte olduğu dönemde toplumlarda antisemitik eğilimi gözlemlerken, insanların özellikle daha güçlü olma, bir diğeri üzerinde üstünlük kurma ya da sadece böyle hissetme ve onu dışlama sebebiyle nasıl gruplaştığını ve bu konuda ne kadar fanatikleşebileceğini kurgunun doğal akışında muhteşem bir şekilde yine çokça tiye alarak işliyor.

Uzun uzun anlatmayı seven bir yazar Cohen; ağdalı bir dili, uzun betimlemeleri, sonuna gelince başını unuttuğunuz cümleleri yok. Ben bunların olduğunu düşündüğüm için ertledim hep, boşunaymış. Yalnızca ayrıntıları anlatmayı, birçok yazarın es geçeceklerini de anlatmayı seviyor. Karakterleri de biraz geveze. Zaman zaman bu kadar uzatmasa mıydı, dediğim de oldu açıkçası ancak ilerledikçe bunun romanın ruhuna ne kadar uyumlu olduğunu fark ettim. Bu ruh sizi yakaladığında inanılmaz keyifli bir yolculuk Efendinin Güzeli’ni okumak. Anlattıklarının yanında karakterlerinin derinliği ve anlatımıyla da büyülüyor sizi zira. Birkaç yerde farklı karakterlerin bilinç akışıyla iç sesini okuyoruz mesela; ben Cohen’in bu kadar farklı insan, bu kadar farklı dünyayı böyle derinlikli inşa edebilmesine hayran kaldım.

Saadet Hanım’ın muhteşem çevirisine de değinmeden bitirmek istemem, metni o kadar lezzetli Türkçeleştirmiş ki, ne desem az.

Kısacası çok etkilendi beni Efendinin Güzeli, bende iz bırakan kitaplardan biri artık.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Indefatigable, nothing like a limp rag but firing all pistons, she strode up and down in her red polka-dot jacket which left her thighs bare, paced feverishly, her words warmed by a sacred flame and strengthened too by the exultation of victory, while her spouse, stunned and left reeling by the power of her avenging eloquence, could only stand by and watch open-mouthed as his unsuspecting sins were clearly marshalled and paraded before him.

It has been lovely here in Beograd. It has been just as lovely reading this in Beograd. I followed Graham Greene's advice to take something to read on holiday which has nothing pertinent to the place or nature of the sojourn. It was GR friend Ilse who noted that my brain might find comfort in something French or Russian; I thank her for that clarity. While it is a thousand page novel it was hardly bulky and I have taken it along on buses, trams and my daily seven to ten mile walks. There was never a regret.

The story is literary, simply so. The capricious wife of a dunderhead diploma falls for the diplomat's superior. It is pure Wodehouse. Everything is rehearsed. Even the rules for seduction are outlined in advance. There is an interiority but it is all somehow outcome oriented. The monologues are often fleeting, scattered but the need to focus-and thus practice is never far from the task. The scenes focusing on the unfortunate cuckold are so human, I did gasp. Cohen outlines the attitudes of Europe in the 1930s as a tacit backdrop until the seducer gives vent to his rage. This is tantamount to the last volume of the Knausgaard. It is impossible to discuss this novel without thinking about Anti-Semitism. I want to also thank GR Friend Mimi for leading me to an article about Simon Schama's appreciation for the novel.

There are a plethora of voices in Cohen's palette and each one contributes to the tapestry. The emotional coloring is also deft. My reduction of a star was due to the fact that the novel chose verisimilitude and I wanted something a bit more nuanced and perhaps sinister. I am not sure what that suggests about me on holiday.

[Lana Cadieux · Rating 1 out of 5]

Le pire livre que j'ai lu. Ce livre sali l'image des femmes en les réduisant a des objets et des petites choses fragile sans cervelle. Et plusieurs chapitres sont consacrés a dire que les femmes de plus de 35/40 ans sont vielle, indésirables, laide. Ce livre pourrais même être dangereux pour certaines femmes qui pourrait commencer à croire que le message de se livre est vrai. Le pire c'est que le public visé par ce livre c'est majoritairement les femmes. Ce livre est vendu comme une des plus belle histoire d'amour je ne suis pas du tout d'accord. Ce n'est pas du tout une histoire d'amour.

[David Carrasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

¿Quién necesita el amor cuando puede aferrarse a la ilusión del amor?

No, en serio. ¿Quién lo necesita? ¿Quién lo quiere? ¿Quién lo entiende? Albert Cohen nos mira desde su torre de marfil y se ríe de nuestras ridículas ilusiones románticas mientras despliega en Bella del Señor una de las sátiras más despiadadas, crueles y al mismo tiempo hermosas que se han escrito sobre el amor. No el amor como lo soñamos, sino como lo vivimos: entre el éxtasis y la humillación, entre la adoración y el hastío. Este libro no es solo una novela; es un campo de batalla, y nosotros, pobres ilusos, entramos en él creyendo que vamos a leer una gran historia de amor y salimos destrozados. Y fascinados.

Estamos en Ginebra, en la Europa de entreguerras, a mediados de los años 30, con Hitler en el poder y las potencias más interesadas en contemplarse su propio ombligo que en pararle los pies. Y con un antisemitismo galopante que se infiltra en todas las capas de la sociedad europea. Un alto funcionario de la Sociedad de Naciones, el carismático y manipulador Solal, se obsesiona con Ariane, una mujer de la buena sociedad ginebrina casada con uno de sus subordinados, un funcionario de nivel medio de la institución. Lo que sigue no es la típica historia de amor imposible, sino la disección brutal de una pasión llevada al extremo. Entre juegos de seducción, idealización enfermiza y un deseo devorador, Bella del Señor se convierte en un estudio clínico de la mecánica del amor, con todo su artificio y todo su horror.

Y mientras uno empieza a leer, no puede dejar de preguntarse: ¿Cohen, qué estás haciendo con nosotros? Porque lo primero que golpea al lector es la prosa. Cohen no escribe: Cohen orquesta, Cohen lanza discursos furibundos, Cohen nos empuja a un vértigo de palabras que se suceden en monólogos internos, en divagaciones que oscilan entre lo sublime y lo ridículo. La novela cambia constantemente de tono y de registro: a veces es una sátira despiadada, otras veces un lamento trágico, otras una ópera barroca llena de excesos estilísticos. Y lo peor —o lo mejor— es que funciona.

El juego de voces narrativas es una de sus grandes bazas. Tenemos una tercera persona omnisciente que se burla de los personajes, los desmenuza y los expone en toda su miseria. Luego, de repente, nos sumergimos en el flujo de conciencia de los protagonistas: entramos en la mente de Solal y su egomanía desatada, en los delirios románticos de Ariane, en los hilarantes monólogos de Mariette, la vieja criada, o en la mediocridad grotesca de Adrien Deume. Y este último, “Didi” para los amigos (y los enemigos), es un espectáculo aparte.

Adrien es el marido de Ariane y, sin duda, uno de los personajes más patéticos que ha dado la literatura universal: la comedia dentro de la tragedia. Un joven funcionario insignificante que se cree destinado a la gloria, un trepador servil que idolatra a los poderosos y desprecia a los que están por debajo de él, el rey del escaqueo. Adrien Deume es la clase de hombre que, si se encontrara con Kafka, le preguntaría si puede conseguirle un puesto en la oficina. Sus monólogos internos son de lo más hilarante de la novela: su fascinación por los detalles más irrelevantes, sus delirios de grandeza, su autocomplacencia desbordante. Pero no es solo un bufón; Cohen lo usa para mostrar la pequeñez de una sociedad que se alimenta de apariencias y jerarquías absurdas.

”Se estiró lanzando un gemido, sonrió al reloj de pulsera que había comprado el mes anterior pero que siempre permanecía intacto en su corazón. Lo examinó del derecho y del revés, restregó el vidrio, lo amó por ser perfectamente hermético. Novecientos francos suizos, pero merecía la pena. Más bonito que el de Huxley, el esnob que apenas te saludaba. Se dirigió mentalmente a su amigo de Bruselas, Vermeylen, aquel pobre licenciado en letras que en aquel momento estaba enseñando gramática a críos pequeños por un sueldo de muerto de hambre, algo así como quinientos francos suizos.
—Eh, Vermeylen, échale un vistazo a este reloj de pulsera, un Patek Philippe, la mejor marca suiza, muchacho, un cronómetro de primera, amigo, con garantía de hora oficial, y despertador, mira, si quieres te lo hago sonar, y hermético cien por cien, puedes bañarte con él, hasta puedes enjabonarlo si quieres, y nada de chapado de oro, oro macizo, dieciocho quilates, puedes comprobar el contraste, ¡dos mil quinientos francos suizos, muchacho!”

Y es que, a través de Didi, la novela destroza sin piedad el mundo de los funcionarios internacionales, con su hipocresía, su mediocridad y su culto al formalismo vacío. Adrien Deume es la encarnación del arribista servil, pero Cohen extiende su crítica a toda la maquinaria burocrática de la Sociedad de Naciones. Porque sería injusto culpar solo a Adrien de su mediocridad: él es simplemente el producto estrella de la Sociedad de Naciones, un lugar donde la incompetencia no se castigaba; se ascendía. Si esta venerable institución hubiera tenido un lema honesto, probablemente habría sido: ‘Excelencia en la producción de memorandos inútiles desde 1920’.

Cohen no necesita exagerar para mostrar el absurdo de esta burocracia: le basta con transcribir su pomposo lenguaje administrativo para que se derrumbe solo, como un castillo de naipes hecho de papel sellado y reverencias serviles.

“El segundo expediente, elegido al azar, resultó ser el N/600/300/42/4, Correspondencia con la Asociación de Mujeres judías de Palestina, ya hojeado la víspera. ¡Ésas siempre quejándose de la Potencia mandataria! ¡Habrase visto frescura! ¡A ver si no había una pequeña diferencia entre una asociación de judías y el gobierno de Su Majestad Británica! Que esperasen un mes o dos, así aprenderían. ¡O mejor ni contestarles! No había ningún peligro, era una organización privada. ¡Hale, al cementerio! Arrojó el parvo expediente al último cajón de la izquierda, reservado a los trabajos que podían ser relegados al olvido indefinidamente y sin riesgo.

Y así como la burocracia de la Sociedad de Naciones es fría y distante, Solal, su subsecretario general, maneja las relaciones humanas con la misma indiferencia, convirtiéndolas en piezas de su juego de poder. Un hombre que, como el expediente archivado, prefiere desechar los sentimientos y las conexiones reales en favor de su propio control. Solal es el ‘Señor’ de nuestra novela, uno de esos personajes que dejan cicatriz. Brillante, seductor, megalómano, manipulador hasta lo patológico. Un conquistador implacable que no busca amor, sino adoración. Y cuando la consigue, la desprecia. Ariane, en cambio, es la idealista, la que sueña con un amor absoluto, la que cree haber encontrado al Príncipe Azul definitivo... hasta que la realidad la devora. Su evolución es una de las más impactantes de la novela: la vemos pasar de la exaltación romántica a la degradación más absoluta, víctima de la misma pasión que la elevó.

Pero hablemos de Ariane, nuestra protagonista y la 'Bella' del título. Antes de Solal, Ariane era la personificación del capricho burgués, sumida en una vida de comodidades sin sobresaltos. Casada con Adrien, un marido que la adoraba sin exigirle demasiado, su existencia se limitaba a elegir vestidos, perfumes y pasar horas frente al espejo. Una vida sin conflictos, donde las preocupaciones eran un lujo que jamás había tenido que experimentar. Lo suyo era el arte de acicalarse, de dejarse querer, de flotar en una existencia cómoda sin mayor sobresalto que decidir qué ponerse para la cena. No era cruel, pero tampoco era profunda. Una niña mimada atrapada en una jaula de oro.

Y entonces llega Solal. Y con él, la fiebre, el vértigo, la idea de un amor que no es solo un pasatiempo elegante, sino una devoción absoluta. Y Ariane, que hasta entonces solo había jugado a la seducción sin saber lo que significaba el fuego real, se lanza de cabeza. La transformación es brutal. Ya no le basta con ser amada; quiere quemarse viva en la pasión. Quiere que su amor sea un himno, una obra maestra, algo que desafíe el tiempo y la muerte.

“Marcha triunfal del amor. Oh aquella noche, oh la consagración y el bendito peso sobre ella, y el amado rostro inclinado, y las treguas que daban pie a que se uniesen los labios, y por fin el júbilo y los sollozos de ella. Su mujer, era su mujer y lo veneraba, su mujer, su sacerdotisa, su sierva y servidora, colmada con darle su profundidad y que él estuviese en ella, feliz en ella extasiada con la felicidad del amado en ella, monja de su señor. Oh, amaba, por fin amaba. En la banquisa había florecido el agavanzo.”

Pero, por supuesto, en la realidad no hay himnos, solo carne y desencanto. Si Solal es un Don Juan megalómano que destruye lo que toca, Ariane es la última creyente en el amor con mayúsculas, y por eso mismo está condenada. Cohen nos la muestra en toda su exaltación romántica y en toda su miseria final. Porque si Solal busca la adoración y la destruye cuando la consigue, Ariane busca la eternidad y se estrella contra el vacío.

Y luego están los secundarios, caricaturas despiadadas de la alta sociedad ginebrina, todos ellos ridículos en su miseria, grotescos en su mezquindad. Cohen es demoledor. No tiene piedad. Ni con ellos, ni con nosotros.

Y los cefalonios. ¡Ah, los cefalonios! Un grupo de personajes que merecen una mención especial: los primos y el tío de Solal, esos judíos griegos de Cefalonia que irrumpen en la novela como una especie de coro griego trágico-cómico. No uno, ni dos, sino cinco, como si Cohen hubiera decidido destilar siglos de historia judía en un solo comedor bullicioso. Cada uno tan único que parece sacado de una farsa: el anciano entrañable, el avaro, el pretencioso pseudo abogado y médico sin título, el rijoso, el ultraortodoxo… No son solo personajes secundarios. Frente a la hipocresía de la alta sociedad europea, los cefalonios son desbordantes, imperfectos, ruidosos, pero genuinos. Aquí Cohen hace algo brillante: juega con los estereotipos, pero lo hace desde dentro, con una mezcla de afecto y burla que deja entrever su propia lucha con la identidad judía. Con su teatralidad exagerada, sus lamentos melodramáticos y su astucia de supervivientes, los cefalonios son los únicos que no están podridos en esta bacanal de hipocresía. Son la única sangre caliente en un mundo de cera. Cohen los introduce no solo para hacer reír, sino para recordarnos que la identidad no se borra con un cambio de traje ni con el perfume de Ariane.

Y es que nuestros cefalonios no hablan: interpretan. Cada palabra es un gesto, cada frase un alarde, cada conversación un duelo en el que la ironía y la exageración son las únicas reglas. No dicen ‘buenos días’, te los declaman. No cuentan historias, las representan. Han convertido el lenguaje en un espectáculo, y lo mejor es que ni siquiera parecen darse cuenta.

“—¿Y por qué conservar esa carroza móvil de vapor interior, que se desplaza sola pero pagando y con reloj aumentante? —preguntó Mattathias que con su reluciente arpón señaló el taxi aparcado en la carretera con los faros apagados—. ¿Qué locura nunca oída es ésa de ordenar a su hombre y conductor que nos espere? ¿Carecemos de piernas? ¡En cualquier caso, sabrás que no estoy dispuesto a desembolsar, por ínfima que sea la proporción que me corresponda, las cantidades suizas que se suceden, sin tregua ascendentes, en ese reloj del abuso!”

Y en este despliegue teatral, donde cada palabra es un acto de artificio, no es de extrañar que el amor se convierta en otro escenario más. Porque en Bella del Señor, el amor no es solo un sentimiento: es una máscara, un arma, un juego feroz donde nadie quiere perder. Amor, poder, farsa: estos son los grandes temas de esta gran novela. Aquí el amor no es un sentimiento puro ni un ideal noble: es un mecanismo de poder, un teatro cruel en el que los amantes se desgarran mutuamente mientras intentan desesperadamente mantener la ilusión. Cohen nos muestra cómo el amor puede ser un juego de roles, un intercambio de dominio y sumisión donde la felicidad es solo un espejismo.

Y ahí está la clave: el mito de Don Juan. Pero no el Don Juan de capa y espada, sino el Solal moderno, que juega a ser el conquistador, el inmune a las ataduras del amor. Porque, ¿realmente cree que lo que busca es amor? No, lo que Solal busca es el control. El poder de conquistar sin ser conquistado, de llenar ese vacío existencial con la vanidad de saber que puede tener a cualquier mujer, sin importar cuánto lo desee. Pero, como todo Don Juan que se respete, cuando se enfrenta al amor verdadero, a la obsesión que es Ariane, se da cuenta de que ya ha perdido la partida, y no hay más victorias que ganar. Es el mismo Don Juan que se enfrenta al castigo final, no por sus conquistas, sino por la incapacidad de comprender lo que realmente significa el amor. Y ahí está la tragedia de Solal: más que un hombre que ama, es un hombre que teme ser amado.

Porque claro, el tiempo no se vence. Y Solal, que había elevado a Ariane a un pedestal de delirio, la deja caer cuando ya no la necesita. Es casi una ley no escrita en el juego de la seducción: cuando ya tienes lo que quieres, cuando la adrenalina de los encuentros furtivos se apaga y el deseo se convierte en rutina, llega el tedio. Porque Solal no quiere una mujer, quiere una conquista, una musa que se rinda ante su poder. Y cuando el encanto de la caza se desvanece, la emoción se convierte en aburrimiento. Ariane, por su parte, ama con una intensidad destructiva, sin medida ni redención. Y en ese vacío de amor, nos queda una única pregunta: ¿qué duele más, el amor que nunca llega o el que, al llegar, te consume?

Pero Cohen no se detiene ahí. La novela es también una carnicería social: en la alta sociedad, todos fingen. Se finge amor, se finge grandeza, se finge lealtad. La burocracia es un escenario de mediocridad revestida de solemnidad, los matrimonios son transacciones camufladas de romanticismo y la ambición es el único motor real. Y en medio de todo esto, un Solal que juega a ser Dios y unos tíos cefalonios que parecen salidos de una tragedia griega, recordándole que, por más que se disfrace, su historia ya estaba escrita antes de que él naciera.

¿Y el final? Ah, el final: una obra maestra de la crueldad. No diré qué pasa. Solo diré que, cuando cierres este libro, sentirás que Cohen te ha arrancado algo. No hay redención, no hay consuelo, no hay moraleja. Solo una sensación de vacío, de derrota, de haber visto la verdad más incómoda sobre el amor.

“Y he aquí que sonó de nuevo el vals de abajo, el vals de la primera noche, vals de larga estela, y ella sentía vértigo, bailando con su señor que la sujetaba y la guiaba, bailando e ignorando al mundo y admirándose, sin dejar de dar vueltas, en los altos espejos admirándose, elegante, entrañable, mujer amada, bella de su señor.”

Y ahí está la genialidad de Bella del Señor: nos seduce con la promesa de una historia de amor sublime y nos deja enfrentándonos a nuestra propia miseria. Porque el amor puede ser sublime o devastador, puede ser entrega absoluta o solo un reflejo de nuestros propios deseos. ¿Y si lo que llamamos amor no es más que una fiebre, un delirio que confundimos con algo eterno? Por querer serlo todo, acaba siendo nada. Y, al final, uno se pregunta si el amor, ese amor que prometía devorarlo todo, no era solo un espejismo hermoso, condenado a desvanecerse en cuanto se cumplió.

¿Quién necesita el amor cuando puede aferrarse a la ilusión del amor? Nadie. Y todos.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una scrittura elegante, piena di virtuosismi verbali, con continui flussi di pensiero dei protagonisti che ne approfondiscono psicologicamente i caratteri e le personalità, rendendoceli immediatamente presenti e vicini.
Come in poche altre occasioni è capitato che la lettura di un libro abbia suscitato in me emozioni diverse.
All'inizio mi sono divertita, i personaggi vengono pennellati da Cohen con acuta ironia, sottolineandone i difetti, che sono i difetti della società bene ginevrina, che vive solo sull'apparenza senza la sostanza.
Poi la mia attenzione si è concentrata sull'evoluzione della Passione assoluta nata tra i protagonisti, "incatenati giorno e notte nella segreta di un grande amore", e sul come essi hanno scelto di alimentarla.Mi è venuto in mente il commento che ho scritto per "amore fatale" di McEwan, dove parlo di "amore autistico". Ebbene, nel caso di Solal e Ariane, proprio di "amore autistico" si può parlare. Nella solitudine e nell'isolamento l'amore non germoglia ma, al contrario, soffoca, muore, o meglio, si trasforma in qualcos'altro, che non è più passione, desiderio, ma diventa abitudine, noia e anche peggio.
Nella parte finale, la lettura è divenuta angosciante. Solitudine, tristezza, incomunicabilità...nelle pagine del libro queste sensazioni mi hanno travolto. Fino alla fine.
I temi emergenti dalle 800 pagine del libro sono tanti: il primo, cui ho accennato, è la critica alla società benpensante svizzera (e non solo), ipocrita e farisea, in contrapposizione alla condanna alla solitudine e alle umiliazioni, "che non insegnano le buone maniere", del popolo ebreo, sempre estraneo, sempre solitario, fuori dalla comunità.
Ho letto tra le righe l'influenza del pensiero di Freud, laddove Cohen, nel flusso di pensieri che sommerge il lettore come me non abituato a leggere pagine e pagine senza punteggiatura e apparentemente senza senso e legame alcuno tra i pensieri a volte interi a volte interrotti, parla del sentire del "conscio", rivestito di belle maniere e di doveri morali che impongono il rispetto delle forme, che ho avvicinato all'io freudiano, e "dell'inconscio", la sede degli istinti e delle pulsioni, l'es di cui Freud tanto ha scritto.
E soprattutto ho percepito durante la lettura aleggiare ovunque la compresenza di Amore e Morte, questi due opposti apparentemente inconciliabili, ma al contrario infine riconducibili verso un unico equilibrio finale: l'annullamento di sè, unica soluzione possibile.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voilà! 1100 pages lues en deux semaines, un livre qui traînait dans mes rayons depuis 15 ans. Un plaisir de lecture, mais vraiment pas ce à quoi je m'attendais. Je pensais entrer dans une histoire d'amour spirituelle, inspirante et noble. Or, c'est l'histoire d'une passion magnifique qui, parce qu'on tente tellement de la préserver qu'on l'empaille (!), finit en relation à la fois violente, tragique et ridicule.

Les personnages volent hélas moins haut que leur beauté physique (puis un moment donné, ça fera, parler des 32 dents saines et des 3 bains quotidiens)! Ils auraient besoin de modernité et d'une bonne thérapie de couple pour apprendre à se parler et à se comprendre! :) L'histoire se passe en 1938, ce qui explique le manque de libération, d'autonomie et d'accomplissements personnels de l'héroïne, et une partie de ses choix malheureux. Ça explique aussi les réactions et propos misogynes du héros, qui m'ont révulsée (j'ai ma grille de lecture féministe, en effet). L'histoire aurait été différente si cadrée aujourd'hui. Mais la violence conjugale existe encore, et le portrait qu'en fait se livre reste malheureusement douloureux d'actualité.

Cela dit, ce n'est pas un classique pour rien. Même si je ne suis pas d'accord avec la psychologie de ses personnages, ce livre continuera de m'habiter. Les analyses psychologiques sont très fines et bien observées. L'auteur parvient avec pertinence à insérer dans l'intrigue amoureuse des descriptions sociales savoureuses et/ou moqueuses, presque documentaires, sur la paresse de certains diplomates et sur le parler des petites gens, notamment. Et que dire de la montée de l'antisémitisme habilement montrée. Et plaisir de l'écriture maîtrisée, dont de longs passages sans ponctuation pourtant très lisibles. Puis voyage à Genève, en Suisse, ça fait différent. :)

Bref, le bon livre au bon moment, on adore ça, on est reconnaissant!

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Let's get in the mood. Turn on some music, and read the following as the music begins.

Les autres mettent des semaines et des mois pour arriver à aimer, et à aimer peu, et il leur faut des entretiens et des goûts communs et des cristallisations. Moi, ce fut le temps d’un battement de paupières. Dites moi fou, mais croyez-moi. Un battement de ses paupières, et elle me regarda sans me voir, et ce fut la gloire et le printemps et le soleil et la mer tiède et sa transparence près du rivage et ma jeunesse revenue, et le monde était né, et je sus que personne avant elle, ni Adrienne, ni Aude, ni Isolde, ni les autres de ma splendeur et jeunesse, toutes d’elle annonciatrices et servantes.

Doesn't everything sound better with the "Love Theme" from Flashdance? Walking, driving, reading--anything, really. We used to play a game to see who could come up with the best pairing. I think it ended up being a tie between Winston Churchill's memoirs and Justine.

What I'm trying to say is that this novel is essentially all or nothing. It is zero or a thousand and one stars. It is either the greatest love story you've read or or an overstuffed suitcase you quickly tire of carrying. It requires that you meet it on its terms. It out-Don Juans Don Juan. It features the most eccentric cast of Jewish relatives since the story of Joseph. You'll never be able to think of the League of Nations or the Swiss bourgeoisie in the same way again. It is filled with rapturous French prose--and the English translation isn't half-bad either. It is all this and more. Commit yourself--it may not end happily, but you'll come out better for it.

[Milly Cohen · Rating 5 out of 5]

ES MI MEJOR DE TODOS POR MUCHO!!!!!!

Mi único libro releído !

[Bieiris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pero, ¿cómo coño puede darle alguien cinco estrellas a este engendro pestilente? Un desperdicio de buena prosa puesta al servicio de personajes vomitivos. Una historia de amor, por llamar a esta pesadísima broma de alguna manera, que revuelve las tripas. ¿Y se trata de una obra maestra de la literatura francesa del XX? Ne me fais pas chier.

[Philippe Malzieu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book should be read young. There is lightness, air is soft, merry seduction. I am Solal.I imagine Ariane. And then there are the 100 last pages. I reach there not. I read the others quickly, but these last pages, I do not arrive. I slow down. The separation appears inevitable. It's umbearable. It's a form of resistance. When the book is finished there is bitterness. Does happy love exist?

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Wiki:
Belle du Seigneur is a 1968 novel by the Swiss writer Albert Cohen. Set in Geneva in the 1930s, the narrative revolves around a Mediterranean Jew employed by the League of Nations, and his romance with a married Swiss aristocrat. The novel is the standalone third part in a series of four; it follows Solal of the Solals and Nailcruncher, and precedes Les Valeureux.

See this review: The Independent - Vanity made flesh.

It's hard to describe this book for those who hasn't read it yet but I do recommend to all fans of the 20th century French fiction.

A move was made based on this book Belle du Seigneur (2012), with Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Natalia Vodianova, Ed Stoppard and directed by Glenio Bonder.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this enormous book in a charity shop a few months ago, with notices proclaiming it to be 'the last great modernist novel'. It had one of those great 1990s eau-de-nil Twentieth Century Classics covers, and wondered why I hadn't heard of it, and why it appeared to be out of print in English, despite having been a Penguin Classic. A thousand pages later, I can make some guesses. Recall that meme about male writers writing about women that runs something like 'she stared boobily at her boobs and walked with her boobs off to boobville' or whatever it is? The main female character of this apparently romantic novel is described like this, incessantly, in the first and third person, from various perspectives. Empty-headed, vain and silly, she is married to an idiot but then has the poor luck to be seduced by our main protagonist, a grandiloquent misogynist from a Greek Jewish background who works as a diplomat at the League of Nations in Geneva. Needless to say, he gets rapidly bored when he finally manages to fuck her, and tragedy ensues. Do I need to add that the author was from Greek Jewish background and had worked as a diplomat at the League of Nations in Geneva?

I really hated this novel - for its self-importance, its leering, its repetition, its tedium - but it's mostly well-written and imaginatively constructed enough to make you keep going, thinking you're going to find some genuine insight or genuine tragedy in amongst it all, and early on there's a definite sense of the farce of bureaucracy and the pettiness of this famously useless institution, and there are some brutal depictions of casual antisemitism and the unwillingness of the likes of the LON to help German Jews at the time of Kristallnacht but: really, Cohen is much less interested in this than he is in the fact that tits exist, and over time, they sag. So by the end all you have is these two hugely unsympathetic people bickering with each other for a hundred more pages. Its 'comic relief' consists of the main character going on long rants about women's bodies sagging with age and how disgusting it is that people have sex with each other (while apparently being interested in little else), and via four Greek Jewish uncles who are collectively called 'the Valiant', who seem like they might be a sort of chorus for a bit but get dropped, probably because they aren't actually that funny. For 975 pages of frustration I was wondering 'what am I not seeing? Am I the arsehole?' and by the end was fairly sure that the arsehole was the author after all.

[‎ · Rating 4 out of 5]

je ne peux qu’être admirative de l’œuvre et du travail de cohen mais la densité de l’œuvre ? wow
cohen creuse autant que possible les pensées de ses personnages, cela durant des pages entières.
les scènes se répètent, imitent la routine de la vie de couple, ça m’a épuisé.
j’ai l’impression de m’être libérée du poids d’une relation dans laquelle je n’étais absolument pas.

ce qui m’a le plus parlé c’est la place qu’occupent les lettres dans son œuvre.
dès le début de leur relation, les lettres sont empreintes de sacralité ( <3 )

cohen joue et se moque tant avec tendresse que cruauté de la passion littéraire et de ses clichés, ainsi que des illusions que ces lettres entretiennent.

«  il écrivait chaque mot comme on embrasse une main, il écrivait lentement, religieusement. »

l’acte d’écrire est ritualisé, les lettres sont des prolongements du corps, elles deviennent presque des icônes, ariane en fait clairement des objets fétiches.

« le soir, avant de s'endormir, elle la posait sur la table de chevet, afin de la savoir près d'elle pendant son sommeil et de la trouver tout de suite demain matin, lettre tant de fois relue au réveil, puis elle la laissait reposer, avec courage s'en tenait loin pendant des heures pour pouvoir la relire toute neuve et la ressentir, lettre chérie qu'elle respirait pour croire y trouver l'odeur de l'aimé, et elle examinait aussi l'enveloppe, studieusement l'adresse qu'il avait écrite, et même le timbre qu'il avait collé, et s'il était bien collé à droite et tout droit, c'était aussi une preuve d'amour. »

[Yuri Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set mostly in Geneva and the Riviera in the mid to late 1930s (the given dates are apparently fudged), Cohen’s novel charts the two-year affair of Solal, a League of Nations grandee, and Ariane, the product of rich but austere Calvinists. Ariane’s husband, Adrien, Solal’s underling, is a third principal narrative voice.
None of these three are particularly interesting people – they are all fools – yet Cohen keeps the reader’s interest throughout. He does this in good part with offhand social observations. Adrien, for example, reveals the pettiness and utter uselessness of the League’s bureaucrats.
Another narrative voice, a working-class perspective, is provided by Ariane’s maid. Each of these streams of consciousness contributes to a central narrative that any one of them could not understand or describe individually. Cohen’s comedy rests upon the gap between a protagonist’s expressed expectations and what the reader knows to be the reality.
Solal and Adriane are “buried alive under their love”, and Cohen’s view of such “committed” love is quite savage. You wince at the excruciating absurdities created by people assuming and playing roles, which, nevertheless, are firmly rooted in reality. We are shown, all too convincingly, that “a great passion [is] not a many-splendid thing after all”, and that love does curdle – especially when there is one secret too many.

[Dana Al-Basha | دانة الباشا]

I just watched the 2012 movie Belle du Seigneur, it seems like a perfume advertisement.

[Evi * · Rating 5 out of 5]

Belle du Seigneur

Aberth Cohen è un autore defilato, pochissimo letto sebbene Bella del Signore, uscito nel 1968 venne premiato con il Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie Française.
Forse confuso con altri Cohen famosi, si finisce per confonderli perché c'è anche Leonard Cohen il cantante tenebroso dalla voce sensuale, torbata di fumo e whisky, e ci sono anche i fratelli Cohen, che ce li possiamo dimenticare? Ah no loro sono senza h!!
Vero anche che Cohen è un cognome che gronda ebraicità infatti l'autore proviene da una famiglia ebrea di industriali di origini greche.

E sebbene il tema ebraico sia presente a larghe mani non ne è propriamente il tema, perché Bella del Signore è un romanzo dell'amore o sull'amore, sul suo inganno per la precisione, ma non di meno ci sono pagine e pagine che sono affreschi del carattere della psicologia del tipo ebraico con i suoi pregi e difetti, anche fisici.
Perché, nel mondo che ci stiamo mettendo alle spalle cioè l'epoca del non-politically-correct si poteva delineare, per esempio, dei tratti somatici ricorrenti in un popolo senza rischiare apologia di razzismo bensì come segno di un senso di appartenenza ad un popolo, mera descrizione e narrazione fisica di quanto gli occhi vedono, senza sovrastrutture culturali.
Quando oggi gli autori contemporanei devono vedersela costantemente con l'insinuante body shaming che non tenuto a bada finisce per tracimare dalle pagine.

Cohen era un convinto sionista favorevole alla fondazione dello Stato di Israele, anche grazie alle sue frequentazioni diplomatiche perché fu un funzionario della Società delle Nazioni (ONU)
Ne tratteggia dinamiche professionali interne con una verità parodistica anche molto esilarante che potrebbe essere calco di quanto accade oggi nelle nostre realtà aziendali o governative (in questo l'ho trovato di una attualità sconcertante) che si nutrono di gelosie, di arrembaggi nell'ascensione alle piramidi gerarchiche del potere, di amicizie influenti, di ripicche, di rivalse tra colleghi per spartirsi il consenso di superiori.
Avanzamento nel lavoro che diventa avanzamento sociale.

E Bella del Signore potrebbe sembrare una storia d'amore l'ennesima, in realtà è parabola dell'amore, universale: nascita - sviluppo - stasi - e suo naturale disfacimento.
Il Signore del titolo è tal Solal bellissimo tenebroso di origine israelita con una posizione di privilegio nella sede ginevrina della società delle Nazioni Unite.
Perché buona parte dell'azione si svolge a Ginevra, e l'altra in Francia a Agay, località incantevole della Costa Azzurra.

Solal ama Ariane, la bella del titolo del suo Signore, con una intensità che però è proporzionale al cinismo, o meglio alla chiarezza con cui egli considera i sentimenti dell'amore.
Già nel cominciamento dell'amore Solal ne scorge la sua fine.
Perché:

Vivir, desde el principio, es separarse
- diceva il poeta spagnolo Pedro Salinas -
Vivere dal principio è separarsi.

Solal quando vede Ariane per la prima volta non riesce a non pensare a lei come invasa dai vermi che nella morte la divoreranno, immagine fortemente baudeleriana.
Ariane invece è come cieca non ancora toccata dal virus del disincanto vive il suo ruolo in maniera sottomessa, come diligente schiava che dedica ogni secondo della sua esistenza a prepararsi per gli incontri con Solal, che Cohen descrive con dovizia di particolari sensuali.

I baci...quelle due bocche infaticabili che s'attorcigliano, s'intrecciano lingue in tumulto e affamate con penetrazioni sussultanti e cercano di annodarsi

Ariane

Alta ninfa che camminava a larghe falcate orgogliosa della sua schiavitù era la donna di un uomo, sua proprietà.

Ma l'amore è finzione perché siamo condannati, per perpetuarlo, ad essere continuamente eccezionali e sublimi, a mostrare costantemente la parte migliore di noi mentale o fisica che sia.
Come Ariane che si preoccupa di mostrare il profilo migliore del suo bellissimo volto, profilo in cui crede che il naso penda meno in giù quando ride o la curva del mento meno appuntita.
Ma è estenuante sostenere questa commedia ventiquattro ore su ventiquattro.
La passione tra Solal e Ariane è tossica, nasce clandestinamente e non si evolve, come avendo raggiunto il suo Zenith già dal principio, non può fare altro che impoverirsi, svuotarsi della sua energia.
Come bambino che nasce già vecchio e torna bambino.

Romanzo sul dissolvimento della passione.
Si ama con l'inconscio ma ci si lascia sempre con la parte cosciente di noi.
Libro che fa male, ma prima di arrivare a quell'epilogo amarissimo Albert Cohen ci trasporta in una lettura emozionante, brillante, vorticosa, piena, sontuosa, visivamente sensualissima che incolla alle pagine, prosa che avviluppa.
Paragone con Proust, con Céline e Musil, o Joyce per i lunghi monologhi interiori che aprono al lettore il cuore e l'anima dei personaggi, forse, può darsi non saprei, so che Albert Cohen è Cohen ed è bellissimo e i suoi pregi di narratore superano i suoi difetti.
Come ho letto in altra recensione, difficile rimanere gli stessi riguardo alla propria personale concezione dell'amore, dopo averlo terminato.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cet immense roman est aussi odieux que fascinant - le côté odieux, je connaissais (qui n’a pas entendu parler de ce pavé phallocrate à travers ses moments les plus arriérés ?) mais j’ai aimé découvrir ses qualités, qui sont pour le moins aussi éclatantes que ses défauts.

Je ne suis pas une lectrice qui parvient avec facilité à ignorer la misogynie de ce qu’elle lit. Rien ne me dégoûte plus qu’un narrateur auto-satisfait, joyeux de sa cruauté. La première fois que j’ai ouvert ce livre, j’avais douze ans et je m’étais arrêtée à l’incipit. La seconde fois, j’étais à la fac en lettres et le titre seul suffisait à me faire lever les yeux au ciel. Je suis entrée dans ma troisième tentative de lecture avec circonspection. Je savais que j’allais lire une œuvre suintant la misogynie.

Pour le coup, on peut difficilement défendre Cohen. Commencé dans les années 30 et terminé dans les années 70, ce récit parade une vision rétrograde et abrutie de la femme, dépeinte à mi-chemin entre l’enfant et l’animal. Pensée émue pour les scènes de sexe du point de vue d’Arianne. La description fantaisiste de ce qui peut déclencher un orgasme féminin - un ballotage vigoureux et viril des seins, notamment - m’a bien fait marrer. Oh la naïveté abrutie des mecs sûrs d’eux du XXème siècle !

Cependant, le problème de misogynie du texte est indissociable du vrai projet de ce récit, projet que je trouve captivant : le récit sans concession de l’horreur de la performance de genre au sein du couple.

Situé dans les années 30, le roman de Cohen est une œuvre chorale, traversée en tous points par la forme du discours indirect libre. Les bavardages incessants, hilarants, émouvants de multiples personnages créent une mosaïque infernale et triste - et dans cette cacophonie, nos deux amoureux montent sur les planches et jouent les amants sublimes.

Belle du Seigneur est un titre à gerber - parce que c’est un titre ironique. Aucune belle et aucun seigneur ne viennent prendre la parole. L’espace est occupé par les ressassements anxieux de deux solitudes, prises dans les mailles de l’hétérosexualité dans tout ce qu’elle a d’anti-érotique et d’artificiel.

Ce roman met en scène avec brio le huis-clos du genre, le jeu terrible et triste de performance dans lequel tombent les hommes et les femmes lorsqu’ils tentent de se séduire selon les règles immuables du patriarcat. L’homme doit être fort, viril, indifférent. La femme doit être une poupée docile, sublime et naturellement pure. Dès lors, aucune spontanéité, aucune vie. Une agonie lente du sentiment, qui dégénère nécessairement en abus.

Cette horreur existentielle du genre mise en scène par le récit prend tout son sens dès lors qu’on la conjugue avec la montée du fascisme, cadre historique qui plane au dessus du triste jeu de nos amants. Le dégoût que ressent Solal face à son rôle d’homme et face à l’érotisation du pouvoir masculin est un thème central du roman. Homme juif parvenu au pouvoir comme par hasard, Solal observe avec dégoût et désespoir la violence froide du monde dans lequel il évolue. Cohen décrit avec beaucoup de verve l’obséquiosité empressée et sensuelle des subalternes envers le chef. Ainsi, la vision fasciste du pouvoir est renvoyée dos à dos au script de l’amour passion - la figure centrale étant, dans les deux cas, celle du mâle dominant blanc paternel et protecteur. La dysphorie que ressent Solal face à ce rôle que lui impose son ambition et son amour permet au roman de trouver un véritable sens, par-delà les envolées misogynes et parfois même à travers celles-ci.

Pour Solal, pour Arianne, pour Adrien Deume, la performance de genre est une prison de l’esprit et le roman nous laisse les clefs de la geôle et du cirque. Jusqu’à la mort ! Pas de sortie !

Au-delà du brûlot misogyne sous-jacent, j’ai découvert un grand roman sur la judéité et sur le genre, ainsi qu’une vision d’horreur des années 30.
Judith Butler, stp, écrit un article sur ce pavé un de ces jours, c’est vraiment toute ta théorie sauf que là, ça nous vient d’un vieux monsieur juif traumatisé qui a consciencieusement rédigé son roman dans son coin pendant trente ans et je crois qu’il avait pas tous les outils pour se rendre compte de ce qu’il essayait vraiment de dire. Du coup, on ne semble retenir des 1200 pages que son point de vue (très) dégradé sur les femmes blanches qui l’insultaient de sale juif.

C’est quand même dommage - parce qu’il est presque insupportablement riche de sens, ce roman.

[Jörg · Rating 4 out of 5]

An embarrasing confession first. When I started this book I thought that it's the one the movie 'Belle de Jour' is based on. Googling revealed my error. Hopefully, my intellectual credibility can be partially rehabilitated by the fact that I never saw 'Belle de Jour' and only know it from short glimpses caught in magazines or briefly watching a few scenes while switching channels on TV. Nonetheless, this was sufficient that I had the young Catherine Deneuve before my inner eye as Ariane. Googling further revealed that there is actually a newer movie based on this book that disappointingly seems to be neither very popular nor very good.

This book is huge. So huge that my enjoyment of the excellent characters, the lovingly crafted details and the original scenes was hampered by the pure mass of pages. In its worst parts, I was reminded of Atlas Shrugged - long ramblings on essential subjects failing to make a point and instead repeating the same message endlessly. Specifically, Solal's long inner monologues on Jewry, e.g. when reflecting his wanderings in Paris on his return to Ariane's and his self-afflicted exile, a villa at the Cote d'Azur, could have benefitted from condensation.

It's a thin line though. The best parts are a sprawling tour de force as well. In the more than 70 pages it takes to prepare for the dinner, the Deumes are giving for Solal - a dinner never to take place -, the depiction of the narrow-mindedness and hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie is a literary feast. The 100 pages of following Adrien Deume's work life at the 'Völkerbund' are a lesson in cynicism, remorselessly revealing the absurdity of office politics in little, global politics on a grand scale. Be it the new mechanical pencil sharpener as a status symbol or getting patted on the back by the under secretary general as a sign of rising power.

Belle du Seigneur has two main themes. The impossibility of lasting romantic love and the demise of Jewry. At least three quarters of the book long-windedly take care of the first with in-depth forays into other areas of human relations. The second theme is as important for the development of the plot but restricted to the last part of the book, being almost relegated to a subplot, an excursion seemingly peripheral to the rest.

Romantic love is driving the plot. Solal, the under secretary general of the Völkerbund gets fatally attracted to Ariane, the wife of Adrien Deume, one of his subordinates. In a bold scene, he challenges her that in the following hours she either will fall in love with him or otherwise he will promote her husband. Given what follows, he better had not been successful. To keep up the illusion of romantic love, both are increasingly denying reality up to a level of exiling themselves from participation in society. Lots of times, I longed to shake them hard to just act human, admit to reality. If there's one weakness to this plot, it's the discrepancy between Solal's initial openness when attracting Ariane and the total lack of this trait later on.

Cohen's twist on describing Jewry is two-fold. On the one hand, the Jewish characters are always quirky such as Solal's relatives already known from the two previous books in the 'Les Valeureux' series. They are in sharp contrast to all other characters of the book, being the only honest, true humans, charming despite or rather due to their flaws, while the christian characters all take part in some form of (self-)deception. On the other hand, the situation of the Jews is described in nightmare-like sequences. The border between reality and dream is not always clear when Solal has flashbacks. Ultimately, it becomes clear that his engagement for rescuing the Jews from the looming Holocaust seals his own doom, expelling him from the Völkerbund, reinforcing the fatal downward spiral of the romantic love for Ariane.

[Raphaël · Rating 2 out of 5]

ma déception est à la hauteur des éloges dont on m'a toujours abreuvé... et c'est bien parce qu'on me l'avait tant vanté que je suis allé jusqu'au bout, j'ai même relu le début, puis les fameux chapitres 35 et 36, pour être certain de ne rien rater, essayer de comprendre ce qui n'allait pas chez moi, mais rien n'y a fait...

Lecture globalement pénible, je n'ai pas du tout accroché au style, trop de répétitions, trop d'ellipses, trop de lyrisme... Les personnages sont caricaturaux. Toute l'histoire de la passion amoureuse m'a parue complètement grotesque, incompréhensible... A partir du moment où j'ai failli mourir d'ennui en lisant la leçon de séduction de Solal, je ne vois pas comment j'aurais pu trouver plausible qu'Ariane y succombe! En revanche je reconnais un vrai talent comique; la description burlesque de la médiocrité de la petite bourgeoisie est très réussie, ainsi que la vacuité du travail à la SDN.