Umwege

by René Crevel

»Und wenn man seinen Lebenszweck nicht in einem Menschen gesucht hätte, sondern in einer Idee?«.

Daniel verlebt seine Jugend im Schatten einer freudlosen Mutter und träumt davon, dem reglementierten Alltag des bürgerlichen Milieus zu entfliehen. Diese Welt aber bricht schon bald zusammen, als sich seine engsten Familienangehörigen infolge eines öffentlichen Skandals nacheinander das Leben nehmen. Auf der Flucht vor Trauer und Schuldgefühlen gerät er in eine ambivalente Beziehung zu zwei Frauen, der exzentrischen Léila und der biederen Professorentochter Scolastique Dupont-Quentin. Am Ende dieser Prüfungen steht nicht etwa die feste Identität eines Selbst, sondern dessen Verschwinden.

André Breton zählte Crevel zu jenen, die sich zum »absoluten Surrealismus« bekannt haben. Dennoch blieb er in der surrealistischen Gruppe ein Außenseiter, dessen Werke wegen ihrer vermeintlichen Nähe zur traditionellen Romanform bei den anderen Mitgliedern Kritik und Irritation erregten. Sie sahen nicht, inwiefern gerade das spielerische Ineinander von Autobiographie und Fiktion die gängigen Formen des literarischen Schreibens auflöste.

176 pages, Paperback

First published August 22, 2007

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

[josé almeida · Rating 4 out of 5]

foi o livro de estreia de crevel, um autor que esteve com os primeiros surrealistas. individualista e polémico, nunca convencional, foi mais tarde rejeitado pelo grupo e juntou-se ao movimento dada. o mesmo aconteceu depois com os comunistas: adesão voluntariosa e posterior expulsão. quando pensamos nele como mundano, toxicómano, bissexual assumido e tuberculoso, percebemos melhor a sensação incómoda que o enredo tortuoso desta novela deixa em nós. é uma biografia de iniciação, da descoberta do que define os relacionamentos e condiciona as emoções. nota-se em crevel a intenção de "desviar" o texto de uma estrutura mais clássica (talvez "romântica" como ele próprio achou), com o recurso a frases longas e monólogos febris. e, no retrato da relação entre o narrador e cyrilla, notei um paralelo curioso com o amor de swann por odette descrito por proust no primeiro volume da "recherche", um sentimento que começa por parecer apenas um flirt inconsequente mas que se aprofunda e cresce de modo inesperado, tornando-se denso, irresolúvel - e, na verdade, sem desvios possíveis.

[Joana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally written in french, "Detours" is the debut novel of Cravel, a short romance novel reflection on the struggles of suicide, depression and sexuality. Daniel, the main character, has faked happiness since childhood in an attempt of indifference to life, until eventually he reaches a depression state that doesn't lead that doesnt imminently lead to suicide only due to the need to explore his sexuality and need for love.
The main character reflects the author's own believes, so much so that 11 years after it was publish, Cravel commits social in a similar fashion described for the main character's father.
Think of this novel as a mirror of Cravel's mind and you will, too, understand the harshness of the world a bisexual men in the 1900s had to live through.

[João Pinho · Rating 4 out of 5]

Divertido e com uma pitada de perversidade burguesa...