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Първата книга на Триоле, написана на руски „На Таити“ излиза през 1925 г. Първата й книга на френски „Добър вечер, Тереза!“ се появява 13 години по-късно. За сборника си, излязъл през 1945 г. , Триоле получава наградата Гонкур – за първи път от 40 години присъдена на жена. За романа си „Неканени гости“ през 1957 г. получава Наградата на Братството – организация за борба против
расизма, антисемитизма и в защита на мира. Елза Триоле е автор на книга за Чехов, превеждала е негови разкази на френски, тя е сред авторите на сценария на знаменития филм „Нормандия-Неман“. Разбира се, тя превеждала и Владимир Маяковски и пропагандирала творчеството му във Франция.
расизма, антисемитизма и в защита на мира. Елза Триоле е автор на книга за Чехов, превеждала е негови разкази на френски, тя е сред авторите на сценария на знаменития филм „Нормандия-Неман“. Разбира се, тя превеждала и Владимир Маяковски и пропагандирала творчеството му във Франция.
144 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1944
16 people are currently reading
362 people want to read
About the author
Elsa Triolet
75 books38 followersElsa Yur'evna Triolet (September 24 1896 - June 16, 1970) was a French writer.
Born Ella Kagan (Russian: Элла Каган) into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher in Moscow, she and her sister, Lilya Brik received excellent educations; they were able to speak fluent German and French and play the piano. Elsa graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Elsa enjoyed poetry and in 1915 befriended the aspiring futurist poet and graphic artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. When she invited him home, the poet fell madly in love with her older sister Lilya, who was married to Osip Brik. Elsa was the first to translate Mayakovsky's poetry (as well as volumes of other Russian-language poetry) to French.
In 1918, at the outset of Russian Civil War, Elsa married the French cavalry officer André Triolet and emigrated to France, but for years in her letters to Lilya Elsa admitted to being heartbroken. Later she divorced Triolet.
In the early 1920s, Elsa described her visit to Tahiti in her letters to Victor Shklovsky, who subsequently showed them to Maxim Gorky. Gorky suggested that the author should consider a literary career. The 1925 book In Tahiti, written in Russian, was based on these letters.
In 1928 Elsa met French writer Louis Aragon. They married and stayed together for 42 years. She influenced Aragon to join the French Communist Party. Triolet and Aragon fought in the French Resistance.
In 1944 Triolet was the first woman to be awarded the Prix Goncourt.
She died, aged 73, in Moulin de Villeneuve, Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France of a heart attack.
In 2010, La Poste, the French post office, issued three stamps honoring Triolet.
Born Ella Kagan (Russian: Элла Каган) into a Jewish family of a lawyer and a music teacher in Moscow, she and her sister, Lilya Brik received excellent educations; they were able to speak fluent German and French and play the piano. Elsa graduated from the Moscow Institute of Architecture.
Elsa enjoyed poetry and in 1915 befriended the aspiring futurist poet and graphic artist Vladimir Mayakovsky. When she invited him home, the poet fell madly in love with her older sister Lilya, who was married to Osip Brik. Elsa was the first to translate Mayakovsky's poetry (as well as volumes of other Russian-language poetry) to French.
In 1918, at the outset of Russian Civil War, Elsa married the French cavalry officer André Triolet and emigrated to France, but for years in her letters to Lilya Elsa admitted to being heartbroken. Later she divorced Triolet.
In the early 1920s, Elsa described her visit to Tahiti in her letters to Victor Shklovsky, who subsequently showed them to Maxim Gorky. Gorky suggested that the author should consider a literary career. The 1925 book In Tahiti, written in Russian, was based on these letters.
In 1928 Elsa met French writer Louis Aragon. They married and stayed together for 42 years. She influenced Aragon to join the French Communist Party. Triolet and Aragon fought in the French Resistance.
In 1944 Triolet was the first woman to be awarded the Prix Goncourt.
She died, aged 73, in Moulin de Villeneuve, Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, France of a heart attack.
In 2010, La Poste, the French post office, issued three stamps honoring Triolet.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
August 1, 2016
This is a book of three long stories and an epilogue, all concerned with the French Resistance in the Second World War, to varying degrees. The second and third stories are related, in that one of the main characters is present in both stories.
I found all three stories to be very enjoyable, although I think I liked the second one, "The Private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter" the best of the three. It was very interesting to read about the various facets of the French Resistance, whose members risked so much to fight against the Germans. Indeed, the author, herself, was decorated as an heroine of the French Resistance, and these stories were originally published illegally during the war.
All in all, an excellent book, one which won the Prix Goncourt in 1945, making Triolet the first woman to have won France's most prestigious literary award.
I found all three stories to be very enjoyable, although I think I liked the second one, "The Private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter" the best of the three. It was very interesting to read about the various facets of the French Resistance, whose members risked so much to fight against the Germans. Indeed, the author, herself, was decorated as an heroine of the French Resistance, and these stories were originally published illegally during the war.
All in all, an excellent book, one which won the Prix Goncourt in 1945, making Triolet the first woman to have won France's most prestigious literary award.
October 25, 2016
A Fine of Two Hundred Francs for which Triolet is actually four interlocking stories dealing with life in Occupied France during World War II. The title is the code used to signal that the Normandy landings were imminent and also evokes pre-war France where the phrase would be seen posted on the walls of cafes and bars everywhere warning of the consequences of infractions such as ripping the billiard table felt. The stories, which recount the experience of life under occupation, were originally published illegally by an underground press then republished together when the occupation and censorship ended. Triolet was awarded the Prix Goncourt for the book, the first woman to win this most prestigious French literary prize.
The stories are set in and around Lyons which, although it was in unoccupied Vichy France, was very much under German control. The first story “The Lovers of Avignon” tells of Juliette Noëll, a typist. Learning that her brother has been killed fighting for the allies in Libya she decides to join the Resistance. She becomes a courier carrying messages that tell of safe houses for parachuted-in soldiers, that warn resistance workers that they need to flee, now, and carries orders and money to where they are needed. Triolet quickly establishes an atmosphere of surveillance and constant fear. The suspense that she builds when Juliette is under pressure to reveal the whereabouts of her co-worker and lover clearly owes its strength to Triolet’s first-hand experience of narrow escapes when she worked for the resistance.
The second story “The Private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter” was apparently written as a criticism of those who used their wealth and prominence to avoid involvement in liberating their country. Supposedly the painter in question was Matisse. Although he leaves Lyon with his mistress and travels from one plush inn to another in the Basse-Alpes, the only way he can evade the war is to close his ears and eyes and ignore what the risks his friends and neighbors were taking in the cause of liberating France. “He wanted to stop up his ears, not to have to hear all this talk about the war and war-controls.” When Louise Delfort, a journalist he knew in Paris, shows up he is more interested in her as a woman than in her journalism. He slowly comes to realize that she must be working for the underground. and in effect is using him as cover when she hosts him and his companion. When Louise is captured the reality of the war around him begins to dawn on him. Triolet draws a strong contrast between Juliette and Louise’ engagement with the realities of war and Alexis’ attempts to avoid it. It’s a harsh indictment of such people written and published secretly to stir people to action.
“Notebooks Buried Under a Peach Tree’ is narrated by Louise Delfort. This part is strongly influenced by Triolet’s own life particularly where it deals with her early life in Moscow and exile to France because of the shifts in the political winds that made her father persona non grata. Triolet was interrogated in the way that Louise recounts. Like Louise she was recruited by the Resistance to write about life under occupation, something that only could be published illegally. Under an assumed name Louise has ended up near Lyons and ultimately becomes Alexis’ host/landlady in a villa belonging to the manufacturer who is her protector. Louise’s notebooks, buried for safety when she goes away for her work, and as it turns out to her death, are the stories Triolet wrote and published at great risk.
Triolet has created such an atmosphere of loneliness, hunger, fear and desperation that you understand the courage it took to work for the Resistance. She uses Louise’s reminiscences about her underground life to paint a picture of the mixture of people, activities and motives involved in the work of the Resistance. Triolet saw writing as a political act and her stories portray the variety of tasks and risks people took on, such as being couriers like Juliette and Louise, locating safe houses, carrying out raids to procure supplies and arms and setting up sites for parachute drops of men and munitions.
“Some are scarcely more than boys, and these are the ones who delight in playing Indian, whose desire for danger and adventure finds satisfaction in these hazardous attacks, while for the others it is the exalting idea of liberating the country that comes first.”
Born Elsa Yureyevna Kagan to privileged Jewish intellectuals in Moscow in 1896 who were allowed to live beyond the Jewish Pale she grew up mixing with leading political thinkers. She was at the center of the Russian Futurist avant-garde until restrictive government policies put an end to cultural freedom. 1918 she married Andre Triolet and left the country with him. When they divorced she joined the Russian colony in Berlin and then moved to France joining the surrealists there including the husband she married in 1939 after a ten year relationship, Louis Aragon. After France surrendered Triolet and Aragon fled to Vichy France. The pro-German Vichy press was the only publisher so writers like Triolet, who saw writing as a necessary political act and wrote what they saw happening during occupation, were forced to resort to illegal underground presses. In 1942 Triolet and Aragon were forced to go underground for the remainder of the war but continued to publish accounts of life under Occupation.
The last story/epilogue is an account of what happened when the code message “A Fine of Two Hundred Francs” was broadcast as one of the many personal messages transmitted by the BBC every night and listened to on clandestine radios all over France, the phrase that meant the D-day landings were taking place. The Resistance rise up to overt action now and the fleeing Germans leave a trail of violence and destruction.
“They left havoc behind them; yawning doors, windows smashed by rifle butts. Everyone suffered his share: those who liked the Boches and those who didn’t, those who had ‘nothing to reproach themselves for’, and those who had.”
Triolet gives you a vivid, even terrifying sense of what war and occupation involves and the chaotic and unmoored society that is left in its wake. If you read, as I do, to learn about times and events you cannot experience directly this book will not only give you a first-hand account of events in France in WWII but also illuminate how individual reactions to such times of conflict are more complex and varied than you might imagine.
The stories are set in and around Lyons which, although it was in unoccupied Vichy France, was very much under German control. The first story “The Lovers of Avignon” tells of Juliette Noëll, a typist. Learning that her brother has been killed fighting for the allies in Libya she decides to join the Resistance. She becomes a courier carrying messages that tell of safe houses for parachuted-in soldiers, that warn resistance workers that they need to flee, now, and carries orders and money to where they are needed. Triolet quickly establishes an atmosphere of surveillance and constant fear. The suspense that she builds when Juliette is under pressure to reveal the whereabouts of her co-worker and lover clearly owes its strength to Triolet’s first-hand experience of narrow escapes when she worked for the resistance.
The second story “The Private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter” was apparently written as a criticism of those who used their wealth and prominence to avoid involvement in liberating their country. Supposedly the painter in question was Matisse. Although he leaves Lyon with his mistress and travels from one plush inn to another in the Basse-Alpes, the only way he can evade the war is to close his ears and eyes and ignore what the risks his friends and neighbors were taking in the cause of liberating France. “He wanted to stop up his ears, not to have to hear all this talk about the war and war-controls.” When Louise Delfort, a journalist he knew in Paris, shows up he is more interested in her as a woman than in her journalism. He slowly comes to realize that she must be working for the underground. and in effect is using him as cover when she hosts him and his companion. When Louise is captured the reality of the war around him begins to dawn on him. Triolet draws a strong contrast between Juliette and Louise’ engagement with the realities of war and Alexis’ attempts to avoid it. It’s a harsh indictment of such people written and published secretly to stir people to action.
“Notebooks Buried Under a Peach Tree’ is narrated by Louise Delfort. This part is strongly influenced by Triolet’s own life particularly where it deals with her early life in Moscow and exile to France because of the shifts in the political winds that made her father persona non grata. Triolet was interrogated in the way that Louise recounts. Like Louise she was recruited by the Resistance to write about life under occupation, something that only could be published illegally. Under an assumed name Louise has ended up near Lyons and ultimately becomes Alexis’ host/landlady in a villa belonging to the manufacturer who is her protector. Louise’s notebooks, buried for safety when she goes away for her work, and as it turns out to her death, are the stories Triolet wrote and published at great risk.
Triolet has created such an atmosphere of loneliness, hunger, fear and desperation that you understand the courage it took to work for the Resistance. She uses Louise’s reminiscences about her underground life to paint a picture of the mixture of people, activities and motives involved in the work of the Resistance. Triolet saw writing as a political act and her stories portray the variety of tasks and risks people took on, such as being couriers like Juliette and Louise, locating safe houses, carrying out raids to procure supplies and arms and setting up sites for parachute drops of men and munitions.
“Some are scarcely more than boys, and these are the ones who delight in playing Indian, whose desire for danger and adventure finds satisfaction in these hazardous attacks, while for the others it is the exalting idea of liberating the country that comes first.”
Born Elsa Yureyevna Kagan to privileged Jewish intellectuals in Moscow in 1896 who were allowed to live beyond the Jewish Pale she grew up mixing with leading political thinkers. She was at the center of the Russian Futurist avant-garde until restrictive government policies put an end to cultural freedom. 1918 she married Andre Triolet and left the country with him. When they divorced she joined the Russian colony in Berlin and then moved to France joining the surrealists there including the husband she married in 1939 after a ten year relationship, Louis Aragon. After France surrendered Triolet and Aragon fled to Vichy France. The pro-German Vichy press was the only publisher so writers like Triolet, who saw writing as a necessary political act and wrote what they saw happening during occupation, were forced to resort to illegal underground presses. In 1942 Triolet and Aragon were forced to go underground for the remainder of the war but continued to publish accounts of life under Occupation.
The last story/epilogue is an account of what happened when the code message “A Fine of Two Hundred Francs” was broadcast as one of the many personal messages transmitted by the BBC every night and listened to on clandestine radios all over France, the phrase that meant the D-day landings were taking place. The Resistance rise up to overt action now and the fleeing Germans leave a trail of violence and destruction.
“They left havoc behind them; yawning doors, windows smashed by rifle butts. Everyone suffered his share: those who liked the Boches and those who didn’t, those who had ‘nothing to reproach themselves for’, and those who had.”
Triolet gives you a vivid, even terrifying sense of what war and occupation involves and the chaotic and unmoored society that is left in its wake. If you read, as I do, to learn about times and events you cannot experience directly this book will not only give you a first-hand account of events in France in WWII but also illuminate how individual reactions to such times of conflict are more complex and varied than you might imagine.
May 30, 2022
« Le ciel d’orage, le ciel bleu d’azur est traversé de mille éclairs, et quel est ce feu dont il s’embrase ? »
May 5, 2022
Recueil ayant pour toile de fond la guerre et la résistance au travers de nouvelles qui se croisent.
Mon dieu que ce fut long et laborieux, j'ai cru que j'allais jamais en finir avec cette lecture... Si j'ai beaucoup aimé en découvrir sur la résistance, j'ai par contre peiné avec le contenu.
D'abord, les personnages qu'on retrouve avec un angle de vue différent d'une nouvelle à l'autre. Je ne me suis attachée à aucun d'entre eux, qu'ils meurent ou qu'ils vivent, ça m'était totalement égal et c'est la pire chose qui puisse m'arriver quand je lis.
La palme allant à l'indigeste Alexis et sa femme, Henriette.
L'univers des nouvelles aurait pu sauvé le tout mais la plupart du temps j'ai trouvé le récit plombé par une plume atteinte de diarrhée verbale. Dommage parce qu'il y avait de jolis passages mais noyés dans des chapitres de description qui n'apportent rien à l'histoire.
Je pense que les auteurs de cette période là ne me conviennent pas, tout simplement. J'ai déjà calé avec Giono et d'autres avant lui. Triolet vient de me confirmer ce ressenti.
Ca ne reste évidemment qu'un avis tout personnel.
Mon dieu que ce fut long et laborieux, j'ai cru que j'allais jamais en finir avec cette lecture... Si j'ai beaucoup aimé en découvrir sur la résistance, j'ai par contre peiné avec le contenu.
D'abord, les personnages qu'on retrouve avec un angle de vue différent d'une nouvelle à l'autre. Je ne me suis attachée à aucun d'entre eux, qu'ils meurent ou qu'ils vivent, ça m'était totalement égal et c'est la pire chose qui puisse m'arriver quand je lis.
La palme allant à l'indigeste Alexis et sa femme, Henriette.
L'univers des nouvelles aurait pu sauvé le tout mais la plupart du temps j'ai trouvé le récit plombé par une plume atteinte de diarrhée verbale. Dommage parce qu'il y avait de jolis passages mais noyés dans des chapitres de description qui n'apportent rien à l'histoire.
Je pense que les auteurs de cette période là ne me conviennent pas, tout simplement. J'ai déjà calé avec Giono et d'autres avant lui. Triolet vient de me confirmer ce ressenti.
Ca ne reste évidemment qu'un avis tout personnel.
August 4, 2016
Excellent writing contemporaneous with WWII in France by a woman involved in the Resistance; looking for more of her work now.
Full review at my blog, The Indextrious Reader
Full review at my blog, The Indextrious Reader
January 30, 2019
Thème : Les Femmes du Goncourt - La première femme à être récompensée par un Goncourt !
4 nouvelles, dont deux centrales qui sont liées par le personnage de Louise. Ma nouvelle préférée est celle d'Alexis, la première n'était pas très claire, le style narratif de Louise n'est pas très plaisant et la dernière nouvelle fait office de conclusion.
Concentrons-nous donc sur la deuxième nouvelle. Le couple d'Alexis et Henriette m'a passionnée, j'avais hâte de les retrouver à chaque fois que je devais faire une pause dans ma lecture. Il y a beaucoup de conseils à tirer de la relation entre ces deux personnages, en particulier quand on comprend son asymétrie. Néanmoins, ils restent complètement coupés du monde, malgré le contexte, et c'est aussi absurde que touchant.
On comprend complètement que cette oeuvre ait été saluée par le Goncourt. Qu'il ait été écrit par une femme importe peu, puisque les personnages féminins sont forts, mais pas caricaturalement féministe. Je voudrais croiser plus souvent ce genre de femmes dans la littérature moderne.
4 nouvelles, dont deux centrales qui sont liées par le personnage de Louise. Ma nouvelle préférée est celle d'Alexis, la première n'était pas très claire, le style narratif de Louise n'est pas très plaisant et la dernière nouvelle fait office de conclusion.
Concentrons-nous donc sur la deuxième nouvelle. Le couple d'Alexis et Henriette m'a passionnée, j'avais hâte de les retrouver à chaque fois que je devais faire une pause dans ma lecture. Il y a beaucoup de conseils à tirer de la relation entre ces deux personnages, en particulier quand on comprend son asymétrie. Néanmoins, ils restent complètement coupés du monde, malgré le contexte, et c'est aussi absurde que touchant.
On comprend complètement que cette oeuvre ait été saluée par le Goncourt. Qu'il ait été écrit par une femme importe peu, puisque les personnages féminins sont forts, mais pas caricaturalement féministe. Je voudrais croiser plus souvent ce genre de femmes dans la littérature moderne.
March 11, 2020
Quatre nouvelles dont le sujet central est l’occupation allemande durant la 2de guerre mondiale. Quatre nouvelles qui mettent à l’honneur des femmes fortes. J’ai beaucoup aimé les deux premières nouvelles.
La 1ère: le quotidien d’une résistante, la découverte de Lyon et des traboules qui me donnent envie d’aller voir de plus près à quoi ça ressemble.
La 2ème : un couple tout à fait asymétrique, le mari d’Henriette, Alexis, me sort par les yeux de par son comportement mais histoire passionnante quand même.
La 3ème: retour sur un Louise que l’on rencontre dans la 2ème nouvelle. Le style de cette nouvelle m’a tellement ennuyé, à tel point que je n’ai pas apprécié l’histoire.
La 4ème qui est un épilogue et qui « raconte » la libération, je ne l’ai pas autant apprécié que ce que j’aurai pu, échaudée que j’étais par la lecture de la 3ème nouvelle, dommage...
Ce livre n’est pas un coup de cœur à cause des 2 dernières nouvelles, mais incontestablement Elsa Triolet est une grande autrice que je veux découvrir plus encore!
La 1ère: le quotidien d’une résistante, la découverte de Lyon et des traboules qui me donnent envie d’aller voir de plus près à quoi ça ressemble.
La 2ème : un couple tout à fait asymétrique, le mari d’Henriette, Alexis, me sort par les yeux de par son comportement mais histoire passionnante quand même.
La 3ème: retour sur un Louise que l’on rencontre dans la 2ème nouvelle. Le style de cette nouvelle m’a tellement ennuyé, à tel point que je n’ai pas apprécié l’histoire.
La 4ème qui est un épilogue et qui « raconte » la libération, je ne l’ai pas autant apprécié que ce que j’aurai pu, échaudée que j’étais par la lecture de la 3ème nouvelle, dommage...
Ce livre n’est pas un coup de cœur à cause des 2 dernières nouvelles, mais incontestablement Elsa Triolet est une grande autrice que je veux découvrir plus encore!
January 14, 2021
Un recueil de nouvelles intéressant : en pleine Occupation, on suit le destin de Résistants, de ceux qui ont vécu dans la peur, de ceux qui se sont battus. Le style est intéressant et les descriptions de la ville de Lyon envoûtantes. Ma préférence va à la deuxième nouvelle.
February 25, 2025
Elsa ily but 400 pages ressenti 700, définitivement plus une écrivaine de vibe que de plot.
1) Les amants d’Avignon : à lire à Noël
2) La vie privée : à lire à Lyon
3) Cahiers enterrés sous un pêcher : à lire après Le Cheval Blanc
4) Le premier accroc coûte 200 francs : à lire pour finir
1) Les amants d’Avignon : à lire à Noël
2) La vie privée : à lire à Lyon
3) Cahiers enterrés sous un pêcher : à lire après Le Cheval Blanc
4) Le premier accroc coûte 200 francs : à lire pour finir
December 11, 2025
J’ai fini par l’abandonner après avoir lu Les amants d’Avignon et Le premier accroc coûte deux cents francs. Je reprendrais peut-être un jour ce livre pour finir de lire les nouvelles qu’il contient mais je trouve le déroulé particulièrement lent bien qu’intéressant historiquement.
March 14, 2022
C'est long et c'est beau et ça transmet une forte sensation de désespoir et d'impatience face à l'occupation et la guerre.
August 26, 2022
Je tombe en amour de cette plume. Chaquz portrait, car chaque nouvelle est un portrait, illustre en profondeur la nature humaine et révèle des facettes des Français.es sous l'Occupation.
September 29, 2025
second story was so up my alley it's actually crazy. ending feels very relevant to the world now, which is kind of unfortunate because it's been 80 years. enjoyed!
November 2, 2025
Bien de nous montrer un aperçu de l'intérieur de la résistance par contre il y a beaucoup trop descriptions et de longueurs. Je n'accroche pas du tout à son style et je ne la lirai plus.
Read
December 20, 2025Beau livre d'histoire
Cela dit je suis passée à travers le livre comme un homme-grenouille dans l'eau, sans en être vraiment touchée
Cela dit je suis passée à travers le livre comme un homme-grenouille dans l'eau, sans en être vraiment touchée
February 21, 2025
Virago Modern Classic publ 1986, intro by Helena Lewis. [I needed this intro, had never heard of Triolet]
Triolet wrote in French, and these four pieces were published in 1947 and one or two maybe a couple years before that.
I was often unsure what exactly I was reading. I think it's classified as fiction, but apparently quite a lot is based on her own experiences.
Most of this volume is about wartime. We follow a young woman who goes on missions for the resistance, sleeping in barns and sheds in remote countryside, traveling by train on false IDs. Gives good impression of the privations, the boredom, the sense of danger.
"The private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter" is said to be based loosely on Matisse during the war [i.e. ignoring the war entirely and being taken care of by a devoted female partner who makes all practical arrangements for his comfort]. It's quite interesting, the psychological aspects of that.
The Notebooks chapter contains some wonderfully described memories of early childhood in Moscow winters, being driven around on a horse-drawn sleigh by the family's coachman.
"A Fine of 200 Francs" seems to show the downside of the Resistance fighters, the maquis, who are young and old peasants who live up in isolated mountainous areas near their villages, trying to prepare for exciting missions which rarely materialize and often end in extermination. A good portrayal of that scene, and the sadness of the futility of it.
---------------------------
Won Prix Goncourt.
Encouraged [when young, in Russia] by Gorky.
Decorated for her heroic role in French Resistance.
Forced to go underground from 1942 to end of war.
Born 1896 to well-to-do Russian Jewish intellectuals, in Moscow. One older sister. Moved to Paris and spent rest of life in France.
Active in Communist Party, I'm confused about which faction. Postwar active in peace movement.
"loneliness and conscious of being a foreigner in France"
Lived much of adult life with Louis Aragon, very prominent in Communist Party and Surrealist movement. Aragon: "gifted and charming but rather unstable"
Triolet wrote in French, and these four pieces were published in 1947 and one or two maybe a couple years before that.
I was often unsure what exactly I was reading. I think it's classified as fiction, but apparently quite a lot is based on her own experiences.
Most of this volume is about wartime. We follow a young woman who goes on missions for the resistance, sleeping in barns and sheds in remote countryside, traveling by train on false IDs. Gives good impression of the privations, the boredom, the sense of danger.
"The private Life of Alexis Slavsky, Painter" is said to be based loosely on Matisse during the war [i.e. ignoring the war entirely and being taken care of by a devoted female partner who makes all practical arrangements for his comfort]. It's quite interesting, the psychological aspects of that.
The Notebooks chapter contains some wonderfully described memories of early childhood in Moscow winters, being driven around on a horse-drawn sleigh by the family's coachman.
"A Fine of 200 Francs" seems to show the downside of the Resistance fighters, the maquis, who are young and old peasants who live up in isolated mountainous areas near their villages, trying to prepare for exciting missions which rarely materialize and often end in extermination. A good portrayal of that scene, and the sadness of the futility of it.
---------------------------
Won Prix Goncourt.
Encouraged [when young, in Russia] by Gorky.
Decorated for her heroic role in French Resistance.
Forced to go underground from 1942 to end of war.
Born 1896 to well-to-do Russian Jewish intellectuals, in Moscow. One older sister. Moved to Paris and spent rest of life in France.
Active in Communist Party, I'm confused about which faction. Postwar active in peace movement.
"loneliness and conscious of being a foreigner in France"
Lived much of adult life with Louis Aragon, very prominent in Communist Party and Surrealist movement. Aragon: "gifted and charming but rather unstable"
October 17, 2019
Ce recueil de quatre nouvelles d’Elsa Triolet est intéressant et attachant autant de par les histoires mêmes que de par l’histoire derrière ces nouvelles et la biographie de l’autrice. Chaque nouvelle raconte une histoire tout à fait originale, tout en maintenant un lien clair avec les autres nouvelles. De sorte qu’on en vient à avoir l’impression de lire un récit unique plutôt que de lire quatre récits différents. Le style d’Elsa Triolet est sans précédent, et même si poétique, très bien adapté au contenu très sensible et grave qui ne laisse pas toujours de la place à la beauté. Parfois très brut, presque rauque mais par moments aussi très doux et très lyrique, le style d’écriture soutient à tout moment la teneur du récit. J’ai énormément apprécié cette lecture et le génie de cette femme écrivain bien trop méconnue à mon sens. L’expérience de femmes engagées dans la résistance, l’expérience qu’on a pu avoir à la campagne dans une ambiance d’attente interminable, la répercussion de la situation de guerre sur chacun et chacune, la trahison, la course-poursuite, l’engagement idéaliste, l’engagement plus opportuniste, la lassitude, l’espoir contourné… la multiplicité des thèmes abordés fait de ce recueil une très bonne initiation à ce genre de lecture. Pour tous ceux et toutes celles qui s’intéressent à cette période de l’histoire contemporaine. Un bon livre aussi à lire en classe avec ses élèves, il me semble. Un livre qui sera pour ma part lu et relu maintes fois avec beaucoup d’attention. Un incontournable de la littérature française.
July 11, 2013
Nouvelle favorite: Cahiers enterrés sous un pêcher.
May 13, 2025
Love stories amidst the french resistance. Palpable, tragic and humorous! Elsa Triolet manages to write stories as interesting and stoic as herself.
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