La mort difficile

by René Crevel, G.P. Ballin (Editor)

Description Pierre Dumont, homosexuel et toxicomane, personnage central de La mort difficile, aime Arthur Bruggle l'Americain, venu en Europe comme laveur de vaisselle, maintenant dandy capricieux et insolent. Pierre est aussi aime de Diane, sa s ur d'ombre . Quand Arthur trompe Pierre, ce dernier trouve, un temps, consolation aupres de son amie. Entre la douce compagne comprehensive et attentive et son frere de lumiere, representant d'une jeunesse embellie par les fetes et les griseries de toutes sortes, Pierre hesite, desoriente, trouble, fragile. Au cours d'une soiree, Arthur, humilie Pierre; ce qui le conduira au suicide. Pris de remords, Arthur pleurera sur son cadavre et trouvera le reconfort aupres de Diane. Roman poetique et desespere, La mort difficile brasse a la fois le reel et l'imaginaire a coups de phrases breves et de notations ironiques qui saisissent de l'interieur les motivations des personnages. Ce roman temoigne de l'obsession autobiographique et de la bisexualite de Rene Crevel et delivre un document essentiel sur une certaine jeunesse des annees 1920.

Genres: Fiction, France, Queer, Literature

68 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Crevel was born in Paris to a family of Parisian bourgeoisie. He had a traumatic religious upbringing. At the age of fourteen, during a difficult stage of his life, his father committed suicide by hanging himself.

Crevel studied English at the University of Paris. He met André Breton and joined the surrealist movement in 1921, from which he would be excluded in October 1923 due to Crevel's homosexuality and Breton's belief that the movement had been corrupted. During this period, Crevel wrote novels such as Mon corps et moi ("My Body and Me").

In 1926, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis which made him start using morphine. The 1929 exile of Léon Trotsky persuaded him to rejoin the surrealists. Remaining faithful to André Breton, he struggled to bring communists and surrealists closer together. Much of Crevel's work deals with his inner turmoil at being bisexual. Crevel killed himself by turning on the gas on his kitchen stove the night of 18 June 1935, several weeks before his 35th birthday.
-from wikipedia.org

Reviews

[Mariel · Rating 4 out of 5]

His own thoughts, his own nerve-ends, were they the brightest corals of the spirit and flesh, amounted to so little in relation to the whole. No more than a peninsula, not even that, a mere antenna rates the name Pierre Dumont and experiences the surprises of this singular ocean. But out of the sea of adventures has come a fleet of guilty boats which even now his blood is sweeping along in quest of he knows not what harbor. Mangled thoughts, shapeless desires, garbled secrets- are all these heading for some less-than-final shipwreck?

"All aboard Ratapoilopolis!" Pierre's mother holds her unforgiving nature on nurture over her young Pierre's head. Eighteen years in the womb is enough for any animal. It's the same old fight in casa Dumont-Dufour. You look like your father so you are his packed bags. What is left upstairs of that man, anyway? Amputated appendages with a memory like it was today, perhaps a sex sweaty mustache. It's never ever today or tomorrow, only ever yesterday today. The parents share that, at least. I can't get rid of an idea of a slaughter-house for the mad. The Ratapoilopolis (he may be crazy but that's no doubt true enough of those places) he writes from keeps the flailing heads to dangle for cheese. There's a spot for you with him in Ratapoilopolis, Pierre, room for good for nothings. Papa's body will eventually catch up to his mind in pieces, but for now he's writing the same haunting. Leave her in ashes fires, forget her revenge. Does insanity choose some people like in one of those haunted house movies? Open the pandora's box and it's too late. You were seen.

Is suicide contagious? Crevel and his father died by their own hands. (I don't want to make that connection. There's another unspooling here, exercising or exorcising I'm not sure which.) The seven suicides in the Hemingway family. Maybe the idea became a carnivorous plant in the mind, eating all of the light the other idea plants needed to survive. Pierre's cool hand on his forehead is the daughter of a suicide. Everyday when her daughter leaves for the world outside their apartment Diane's mother memorizes the signs. Suicides appear in families like blue eyes or red hair. The father's death-wish shadow over her head, though not Diane's levitations. It made me sad as the mother longs to sit a little closer to the young life, the busy bustle she never had. I knew that Diane's heart is only in Pierre. Art classes Pierre takes, his streets, his rotational pull. Call it maternal love, a blanket to bundle in. Prayers of nothing else can touch me. Their mummified love, layers of gauzy connections from the hand he reaches for, slaps away. It makes me suspicious and sick as much as Pierre is afraid of inheriting insanity. To be a human and this is what you get. What if all any of this was is just how someone feels about themselves when they are with you? What a bunch of nothing that would be if it were true.... Pierre hates Diane, despises her more for hating himself. I wonder if his buttons push themselves as much as his mama ripped his organs that do stuff and shoved them in his face. The wounded puppy and kittens whenever he pulls away because he no longer wants to need her. Sure, blame it all on Diane. I think it's all crap that it's between the thuggy American Arthur Bruggle. He wants to fuck Arthur, because he's sex to him, and why not, go somewhere, that limitless place where "I will always love you" lives before it's born and where it goes when it dies. And Diane is the old story of anyone who has ever been settled for. I don't care if it is someone who can't fool themselves they aren't homosexual. Any "just right now" placeholder, backburner passion for the (oh I hate this so much) the dream lover who makes the world worth living again. As if this is all there is. You're doing it wrong if one person is responsible for everything. Did you really wake up every day and go through the way days blur and what you can't forget, won't forget and STILL choose to make it all hang on one romantic partner? I call bullshit on this like any easy answer on nature and nurture as a hurricane. If you didn't want to get out of its way that's the story (I hope). Pierre had prowled the streets, heart in lighted windows and a free soaring shadow. The battle drums, homes that could go anywhere. Of course they don't. The faces of strangers are the hunted and the prey. Oh Pierre, you had had it. He knows what Arthur smells like when he has sex. The shivering timbers of Diane's hand, the almosts. It's all fucked up when you have to say it means everything. I say he knew what he looked like when he sold himself too. Not just Arthur of the next-next-next big thing, theatre world scenesters, rolling around in patronage and give me smiles. Arthur wasn't too good for it for me but he was for Pierre and that hurts me. Don't leave me just yet, ever, don't look good on the arm of those whores. I don't care if it's fair, nor the outcome, I'm looking for the relief. It gives me this falling no escape (I can't resist seeing it again) when he gives and takes away the halos. Why does anyone do this? The pieces look so damned good to me. The veiny bloody bony part within what you call it. No one is above it and why does it happen that some parts of people's today dies and others cling on for dear life.

This is what got to me. Diane's father. There's no use lamenting that some have fathers who love them and others don't (it's the wish for things to be fair just this once. Supposed-to-bes don't get up every day, they only lie their head down at night). What digs in more than that, for me, is the Russian man's only desire to go home. His wife and child he won't taste. To the Volga boatman, bleeding hands and faces carved from starved stone. To breathe their air he would be home. Did he truly stop living in exile, unreached by their brothers where that still happens? You could always go home to other people this way. Didn't he see that?! It IS contagious, in all you could touch. I know what Pierre thought, in how it all went down (dammit why?!). It's all in the sun named in vain. What will outlive. Crevel said that "poetry is the high road of freedom". I have mourned clarity, feared the precipice of insanity and the death option. I could be night crawling the streets in search of Pierre (not just him. Diane's mother got to me in her it's not fair and the wish is more alive than oughtabe), attempting the outrun of.... Yeah, when the desire is more alive than oughtabes. I don't care about fair, I WISH that it wasn't Diane eye and Arthur eye and nothing else, or else. Crevel's freedom is a relief I need way too much. I don't know how to get at anything any other way than just feeling it out. This feels.
He was alone. He was empty. The adventure had begun when those ruby-and-felt birds, his lungs, had flown out of his petrified throat and soared up in the middle of the sky, sweeter than angels, which however as everyone knows are boneless creatures, and his chest, prouder than the hull of a brand-new ship, had rejoiced as if at last rid of a rather stupid virginity.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Difficult death, difficult book. Written after the death of author Rene Crevel's mother, he endlessly pounds into protagonist Pierre’s mother all through the book. There are also numerous mentions about suicide, which Crevel eventually committed at the age of thirty-five. In other words, there's a black cloud that hangs over this novel.

Difficult Death, written in 1934, takes place during the Twenties about a young Parisian artist's love for both a female art student and an American hustler. The American hustler isn’t really made flesh until the last twenty pages, making him a sort of human climax. It’s too bad he doesn’t turn up until the end because that’s when Difficult Death really comes alive, and I think the novel would have benefited if he had more presence through the rest of the book.

Difficult Death is audacious for tackling issues like bisexuality during the Thirties but unfortunately rumbles at a laggard pace, weighing every emotion and sentiment with four pages of endless ruminations. I wouldn't mind reading something else by Crevel as long as it was pitched a little higher.

[Alexiel Dubois · Rating 4 out of 5]

La morte difficile di René Crevel è un romanzo pubblicato nel 1926 e riedito in Italia da Ventanas a cura di Gianni Forte. Il testo si distingue per la sua prosa poetica e per l’intensa analisi della psiche dei personaggi.

Crevel, scrittore e poeta surrealista, esplora, nel libro, le tensioni interiori e le contraddizioni dell’amore e dell’identità, portando alla luce la complessità delle relazioni umane in una Parigi degli anni 20’.

LA STORIA

Il romanzo segue il protagonista, Pierre Dumont, un giovane artista di sensibilità raffinata, che si trova diviso tra il suo amore appassionato per la fragile Clementine e la fascinazione per Arthur Bruggle, un giovane americano che rappresenta una figura di evasione e conflitto interiore per Pierre. La storia di sviluppa come una discesa nei sentimenti più oscuri e inconfessati, portando il protagonista a confrontarsi con il desiderio, la gelosia e la ricerca di una propria verità interiore.

Il rapporto tra Pierre e Clementine è segnato da una lotta costante tra il bisogno di possesso e la disperazione, tra idealizzazione e distruzione. Parallelamente, Pierre si lascia attrarre dall’enigmatico straniero, che incarna per lui una trasgressione sia affettiva che morale.

Crevel riesce a indagare così la bisessualità e la tensione sessuale di Pierre in modo onesto e proibitivo per l’epoca, libro che gli costerà l’espulsione dal movimento surrealista di cui faceva parte, mescolando elementi autobiografici e toccando il tema del rifiuto e dell’autodistruzione.

L’ELEMENTO CENTRALE DEL ROMANZO

Uno dei temi centrali del romanzo è il conflitto tra amore e identità, come pure la difficoltà di vivere la propria sessualità in un’epoca in cui i sentimenti queer erano marginalizzati.
La morte difficile del titolo, allude sia alla ricerca incessante dell’autenticità, che sembra desinata a non essere mai raggiunta, sia all’incapacità di Pierre di conciliare i suoi desideri con la realtà.

Questo romanzo esplora non solo il dolore delle relazioni, ma anche il suicidio e l’alienazione, con uno stile che si avvicina a André Breton e alla filosofia dell’assurdo.

LO STILE SURREALISTA

Crevel scrive con uno stile che mescola prosa lirica a introspezione psicologica, in una narrazione che sfuma spesso nella sperimentazione.
La sua vicinanza al surrealismo traspare nell’uso di immagini visionarie e di simboli, come se il mondo interiore dei personaggi esplodesse attraverso parole che lasciano intravedere la loro sofferenza nascosta.
Troviamo flusso di coscienza che mostra l’angoscia e la sensibilità di Pierre, e il tono del romanzo alterna momenti di bellezza e di crudezza, proprio come l’amore tormentato dei due protagonisti.

MODERNO PER I SUOI TEMPI.

La morte difficile è un romanzo estremamente moderno per il modo in cui tratta i temi della bisessualità, dell’amore distruttivo e dell’autodistruzione, anticipando tematiche che sono state poi sviluppate da scrittore come Jean Genet e Marguerite Duran.
Questo testo può risultare complesso per il lettore contemporaneo, proprio per l’intensità lessicale e simbolica, ma è un’opera imprescindibile per chi vuole esplorare la letteratura queer e surrealista del primo novecento.

IN CONCLUSIONE

La morte difficile è un’opera che racchiude il dolore e la bellezza dell’amore non corrisposto, della ricerca di sé e della consapevolezza della propria fragilità. Un libro che sfida il lettore, invitandolo a confrontarsi con i propri limiti e i propri desideri attraverso un linguaggio potente e suggestivo.
Rene Crèvel con La morte difficile edito in Italia da Ventanas, offre una visione poetica e dolorosa della morte, un romanzo che resta testimonianza vibrante della sofferenza e della ricerca di autenticità umana e che ancora oggi è in grado e dovrebbe farci riflettere.

[Gulliver's Bad Trip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This seems to be the most autobiographical of Crevel's novels. In this regard, his family's semi-biography here is like a reminiscence of Alfred Jarry's own family with madness running amok throughout there. There is also Crevel's contemporary Raymond Roussel and his quasi-incestous relationship with his own mother,something that was vehemently rejected by the first. Hanns Heinz Ewers,by its turn, shared the author's homosexuality and this similar odd relation towards totalitarianism, that is, witty sophistry and cynical sycophantic behaviour leading to an early morbid if not plain suicidal end.

The mad/hack scientist bit at the beginning could ring a bell about the whole scandal on the previous decade about who was the first 'official' inventor of the airplane which ended up being granted to, amongst many other world-wide contenders, the famous Wright brothers despite the frustations of the brazilian Santos Dumont with his self-propelled flight tests a short time after in Paris itself which didn't change his lack of recognition as an ground-breaking inventor native to a Latin American country living enough to see a outburst of a absurd civil war there.

Boris Vian and Jean Genet would, after Crevel, write profuselly about surreal love stories and about the gay and criminal underworld of post-war Europe, respectively.

Cortázar brought me to Crevel in the same way tha Bolaño brought me to his friend Klaus Mann. Like with this two Latin American writers, homossexuality was what alienated me here despite my proximity to the complex relationship of love and hate towards father and mother figures.

[Salvatore · Rating 4 out of 5]

La vita di Pierre è una vita estremamente semplice, se per semplice intendiamo una bisessualità non esplorata, una madre schizofrenica, un padre ricoverato in manicomio e un amore di quelli che dilaniano come possono dilaniare solo fino a una certa età. E Pierre, ovvero René, non ha paura della vita facile, dei silenzi di Diane che ancora lo aspetta e sempre lo aspetterà a ogni cena di consolazione; ha paura della notte e dei morse delle puttane dal cuore rosa, perché la passione non concede esilio lontano dalla vita, ma come una prigione spinge a soffocare ogni ricerca di senso. La paura di René durò 34 anni e, come quella di qualcun altro, gli costò l’allontanamento anche dalle avanguardie che sono spesso più interessate alla fedeltà a un futuro immaginato che a un presente davvero inteso. Di che tratta questa morte difficile? Vorrei potere dire di un povero ragazzo che può scegliere di infliggerai una vita impegnativa, di un Betty condannato a non capire davvero. Eppure sento che questo romanzo continuerà sempre a crescere e a cambiare, che non c’è lettura facile per certi romanzi nei secoli.

[Nik Mag · Rating 1 out of 5]

52\2024 Romanzo ambientato nei primi del 1900 a Parigi. Scritto ad inizio secolo quindi ha uno stile classico francese di quegli anni che personalmente non gradisco. Periodi lunghi, pieni di incisi, che si fa fatica a seguire oltre ad una lingua "datata". I personaggi li ho trovati tutti insopportabili per varie ragioni differenti. Inizia con due signore della borghesia che parlano delle loro disgrazie facendo quasi un confronto tra chi ha avuto la sfortuna peggiore. Il protagonista è il figlio di una delle due donne, succube della madre, che intrattiene una relazione amorosa con un ragazzo americano trasferitosi a Parigi per trovare fortuna. La figlia dell'altra donna è amica del protagonista, innamorata di lui, sceglie di restare sempre al suo fianco come cura dalle bruttezze della vita. Infine il giovane americano cerca in tutti i modi la sua libertà ovviamente trattando con distacco e disprezzo il protagonista. Nessuno dei personaggi apporta niente di buono e sano nella storia, una serie di rapporti disfunzionali.

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very beautifully written, and the agony of Pierre is so palpable, but oh the ending and I don't mean the suicide.

Отдельное спасибо переводчику Валерию Нугатову за доставленное словесное удовольствие (не знаю, что в оригинале, но опоясывающая Пьера радуга уныния навсегда со мной).

[Dylan Kiewel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Insanity? Ratapoilopolis?" crisply brilliant

[Angel · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Muy interesante el personaje del protagonista Pierre