The Peninsula

La presqu'île #2

by Julien Gracq, Elizabeth Deshays (Translator)

Julien Gracq's short fiction The Peninsula is a deceptively simple work with regard to plot. Simon is at the Brévenay train station in Brittany waiting for his lover, Irmgard, although she has warned him that her arrival at midday is "very unlikely." As expected, she is not on the train, and he has a whole afternoon to while away before the next one gets in that evening. A methodical man, Simon determines to spend the time driving along the Brittany coast and arranging for their journey. He returns that evening to the train station to meet her. Little else "happens"... if one defines plot as Americans usually do. But in Gracq's beautifully lyrical tale, everything happens on the emotional level as the reader participates in Simon's psychical journey which leads him through the harsh and uncompromising Brittany landscape, scene of his childhood vacations, into the mythological world of Tristan and Isolde. Author of The Castle of Argol, The Opposing Shore, A Dark Stranger and numerous other books, Julien Gracq (1910-2007), initially part of the surrealist movement, went on to become one of the major figures of French twentieth century literature. He lived as a recluse, refusing numerous awards that were bestowed upon him during his life. In 2006 he was awarded The America Award for a Lifetime Contribution to International Writing.

Genres: France

117 pages, Paperback

Published August 2, 2023

About the author

Julien Gracq (27 July 1910 – 22 December 2007), born Louis Poirier in St.-Florent-le-Vieil, in the French "département" of Maine-et-Loire, was a French writer. He wrote novels, criticism, a play, and poetry.

Gracq first studied in Paris at the Lycée Henri IV, where he earned his baccalauréat. He then entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1930, later studying at the École libre des sciences politiques.

In 1932, he read André Breton's Nadja, which deeply influenced him. His first novel, The Castle of Argol is dedicated to that surrealist writer, to whom he devoted a whole book in 1948.

Reviews

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A minor work by Julien Gracq that's uncharacteristically set in the modern world, though it still traffics in his major themes of waiting, anticipation, and liminal spaces. Lovely scenes throughout as the narrator drives through the Breton coast during off season, but it's not the place to start with this author. Instead try "The Balcony in the Forest" or "The Opposing Shore."

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

The evening was settling in, grey and sickly, pouring fine dust into the tiniest cracks of the closed room until it was as exactly filled with silence as an aquarium with water.

(3.5) At first I felt uncertain about this short Gracq work that seemed unlike the others of his that I've read. The contemporary setting, the banal premise, and the distracting typographical errors in this edition all conspired against me. However, I soon fell once again under the narcotic spell of Gracq's figurative language as he carefully sets the landscape before us. Here, Simon ponders his relationship with his lover Irmgard as he meanders around the region of Brittany where he vacationed as a boy, passing the time as he waits for Irmgard's arrival on the evening train. Once again, with Gracq, we are waiting—living through a long, languorous period of waiting. The landscape takes on the form of a character in itself, as it always does in Gracq's work, tending to dominate the prose, looming much larger than the humans within it. As Simon drives and walks around the seaside towns of Brittany the shifts in light and topography mesh with his own rapid inner twists of mood, generating a mesmeric flow of thrilling upswings coupled with anticipatory dread. A dreamlike haze suffuses the text, which remains Gracq's least otherworldly that I've read so far, yet still quite strange in its presentation.

No one is expected, he thought, again. No one, nothing is ever expected anywhere. He felt a sort of calm absence of hope. The world remained opaque, there was no opening, no road cut out for what he was waiting for — only these cold red shooting stars, this numbed and inattentive world, this dreamy station torpidly waiting to go to sleep.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another anticipation-drenched fest of prosey delights. This one more modern. A dude named Simon anticipating the arrival of a lady named Irmgard at an off-season seaside locale. Reminded me of Bolano's The Third Reich, minus war games. Difficult to return to fundamental phrases on pages with their corners turned down because I also turned down most corners on pages with misspellings and missing words etc. Conceived is spelled like that: i before e except after c. So many distracting typos. Abandonned. Drearest. On and on. Made me distrust the translation in general. Needs an edit if not a fresh translation -- after a while it sounded like other Gracq but at first seemed rushed. Would recommend this edition for completists only. Almost put it down more than once thanks to such a sloppy text.

[Phinehas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful little book written in a clear and simple prose that I can only describe as luminous. "Yet the heat of the day still oozed from the walls and furniture. The voices that he could hear rising from the terrace of the hotel just below the balcony were like a private and shady hedge protecting the quiet of the room: voices speaking in the shade and which seemed to rise like the vapour off a watered garden. Calmer, steadier than those of the beach, as if decanted through the clear liquid sound of spoons chinking against glasses and the coming and going of the waitresses, they seemed to bathe his ear with a cellar-like coolness."

[Ezekiel · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very bored (and horny) Frenchman wanders the Brittany coast in anticipation of his lover's arrival. Yes, "horny" sounds dismissive, but he's exactly that - so much so that his every surrounding, every township and clearing and tower and broken manse, seems invested with the same eros-driven aura that compels him to and fro. He has a name but it doesn't really matter, nor does his lover's. He's more a shade than an actual person, composed of memory (sensuality's memory) and whose emotions are swayed by whatever area he finds himself in. The world forces itself upon him capriciously, its glories appreciated but never truly savored for long; and by the end, we are cut off from even the desired event's completion, and he is left wondering, hungering, as ever.

An overlong sketch, with some beautiful paragraphs but more evocative than anything really substantive.

[Denty One · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gracq left us with only a handful of these beautiful oneiric landscapes. It's such a shame that this one was was apparently translated half-heartedly, or at the very least, in a great hurry. I've never seen so many typos and grammar issues compressed into such a small space. Please, someone, can we get a proper translation? And while you're at it, how about an edition with at least a little care taken in its presentation?

[Johannes]

J'étais fasciné par la première nouvelle (La Route) qui est vraiment à lire et à relire. Mais pendant la seconde j'ai un peu perdu le fil. À relire.

[Donavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost island, almost there.

[C. de L. · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Simon estaba casi mejor que feliz: dispuesto”.