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David Golder
In 1929, 26-year-old Irène Némirovsky shot to fame in France with the publication of her first novel David Golder . At the time, only the most prescient would have predicted the events that led to her extraordinary final novel Suite Française and her death at Auschwitz. Yet the clues are there in this astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul.
Golder is a superb creation. Born into poverty on the Black Sea, he has clawed his way to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil. When the novel opens, he is at work in his magnificent Parisian apartment while his wife and beloved daughter, Joy, spend his money at their villa in Biarritz. But Golder’s security is fragile. For years he has defended his business interests from cut-throat competitors. Now his health is beginning to show the strain. As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving him to decide which to revenge or altruism?
Available for the first time since 1930, David Golder is a page-turningly chilling and brilliant portrait of the frenzied capitalism of the 1920s and a universal parable about the mirage of wealth.
Golder is a superb creation. Born into poverty on the Black Sea, he has clawed his way to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil. When the novel opens, he is at work in his magnificent Parisian apartment while his wife and beloved daughter, Joy, spend his money at their villa in Biarritz. But Golder’s security is fragile. For years he has defended his business interests from cut-throat competitors. Now his health is beginning to show the strain. As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving him to decide which to revenge or altruism?
Available for the first time since 1930, David Golder is a page-turningly chilling and brilliant portrait of the frenzied capitalism of the 1920s and a universal parable about the mirage of wealth.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1929
37 people are currently reading
1719 people want to read
About the author
Irène Némirovsky
152 books1,805 followersIrène Némirovsky was born in Kyiv in 1903 into a successful banking family. Trapped in Moscow by the Russian Revolution, she and her family fled first to a village in Finland, and eventually to France, where she attended the Sorbonne.
Irène Némirovsky achieved early success as a writer: her first novel, David Golder, published when she was twenty-six, was a sensation. By 1937 she had published nine further books and David Golder had been made into a film; she and her husband Michel Epstein, a bank executive, moved in fashionable social circles.
When the Germans occupied France in 1940, she moved with her husband and two small daughters, aged 5 and 13, from Paris to the comparative safety of Issy-L’Evêque. It was there that she secretly began writing Suite Française. Though her family had converted to Catholicism, she was arrested on 13 July, 1942, and interned in the concentration camp at Pithiviers. She died in Auschwitz in August of that year. --Penguin Random House
Irène Némirovsky achieved early success as a writer: her first novel, David Golder, published when she was twenty-six, was a sensation. By 1937 she had published nine further books and David Golder had been made into a film; she and her husband Michel Epstein, a bank executive, moved in fashionable social circles.
When the Germans occupied France in 1940, she moved with her husband and two small daughters, aged 5 and 13, from Paris to the comparative safety of Issy-L’Evêque. It was there that she secretly began writing Suite Française. Though her family had converted to Catholicism, she was arrested on 13 July, 1942, and interned in the concentration camp at Pithiviers. She died in Auschwitz in August of that year. --Penguin Random House
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January 31, 2012
There are two camps on Nemirovsky. Those who see her literary worth as negligible due to her anti-Semitism. Those who see her as a victim of Auschwitz and of the highest literary merit. I must say, as the capitalist marketing machinery goes, it showed exceptional chutzpah in promoting a person who was clearly first and foremost an anti-Semite as a victim of the anti-Semitic Nazis. But what the hell. It worked. Westerners greedily lapped up the invented idea of Nemirovsky, one of the gas chamber fallen, without the least concern as to the fact that what she wrote about Jewish people could have been cut and pasted into Nazi propaganda, no copy editor needed.
I am shocked at the disingenuity of the introduction of this book, the audacity of its spin.
‘By underminding the assumptions of the anti-Semitic right, Nemirovsky was playing a skilful double game.’
Just to be plain about what we are talking about, here is a description of ‘an old German Jew’, Soifer.
Of course, I could have just pulled out a piece out of context, but this IS the context. The entire book is written like this. She sold her stories to anti-Semitic publications, it was how she made her living. Let’s say, enough said.
But may we not put her anti-Semitism in a broader context? We have a special word for being negative about Jewish people in a way we don’t in general – a word like ‘racist’ doesn’t cover what we mean by it. And yet it is such a common thing when we think about the nature of her attitude rather than the label we put on it. Black people down on black people is an obvious example. My shrinking away in embarrassment in a pub here as I see Queenslanders being, well Queenslanders. Being in an émigré community and living with the sort of thing she deals with, the sponging, the people who are poor thinking their wealthier compatriots owe them something, even if just charity, the ones who are rich and sponge from you too. This is not a Jewish thing specifically, but she is writing about her community.
Stereotypes? Absolutely. But stereotypes exist because they are based on the real world. I know a lot of extremely wealthy Jewish people, Nemirovsky made me picture friends and acquaintances of mine more than once. She IS writing about what she knows. That’s what most writers do, it is so much easier than having the imagination to move past that.
Ruth Franklin wrote in the Guardian:
I’m sorry, I beg to differ. This stuff all rang so true for me. The husbands, the wives, the daughters. For the men it is no different to have the compulsion to make money than it is for a tennis player to have a compulsion to play tennis. One-dimensional? Absolutely. The women live to spend it. One-dimensional? Yep.
Extremely wealthy people are frequently like this, fullstop. Stereotypes are true.
Franklin continues later on:
I completely agree with her, Marnham’s introduction is an embarrassment, but I take issue with her last sentences there. Why shouldn’t Golder’s Jewishness be a defining trait? Is it any great surprise that it would be? As a kid I spent a bit of time in Haifa and a local asked me what I was religiously and I said ‘nothing.’ Our conversation didn’t pick up after that because he had no conception of nothing. Jewishness isn’t just about religion in the way that we Anglo-Saxons pigeonhole our religion, if we have any. It isn’t something one does on Sundays, like religion is at best for us.
But then, I also take issue with the idea that Golder is portrayed as a corrupt villain. He isn’t anything of the sort, he isn’t portrayed that way, he shouldn’t be seen that way either. Being a brutal businessman for whom the meaning of life is collecting money does not make you either a villain or corrupt. The characters are Jewish because she is writing about that community. They are despicable because it is a book about despicableness.
So, Nemirovsky is anti-Semitic. The amazing thing is that in a book where she talks about Jewish pigs and Jews and dirt and Jews and greed and Jews and miserliness and – she still manages to strike a chord. The book is completely engrossing, the main character has you on his side, which is quite an incredible achievement given what we have so far observed here. I guess I’m trying to explain the impact of this book by suggesting that we have to view anti-Semitic attitudes as having colour and broadness to them, ‘anti-Semitic is not anti-Semitic is not anti-Semitic.’ I wish I had a more elegant way of putting that. In the end this is a book about a businessman we could so easily hate, but we don’t. That is a triumph for the author.
Nonetheless, I remain extremely uneasy about liking this book for all the obvious reasons.
I am shocked at the disingenuity of the introduction of this book, the audacity of its spin.
‘By underminding the assumptions of the anti-Semitic right, Nemirovsky was playing a skilful double game.’
Just to be plain about what we are talking about, here is a description of ‘an old German Jew’, Soifer.
Bankrupted by inflation, Soifer had played the money markets and won everything back again. In spite of that, he had retained a mistrust of money, and the way revolutions and wars could transform it overnight into nothing but worthless bits of paper. It was a mistrust that seemed to grow as the years passed, and little by little, Soifer had invested his fortune in jewellery. He kept everything in a safe in London: diamonds, pearls, emeralds – all so beautiful that even Gloria had never owned any that could compare. Despite all this, his meanness bordered on madness. He lived in a sordid little furnished room, in a dingy street near Passy, and would never take taxis, even when a friend offered to pay. ‘I do not wish,’ he would say, ‘to indult in luxuries that I can’t afford myself.’ Instead, he would wait for the bus in the rain, in winter, for hours at a time, letting them go by one after the other if there was no room left in second class. All his life, he had walked on tiptoe so his shoes would last longer. For several years now, since he had lost all his teeth, he ate cereal and pureeed vegetables to avoid having to buy dentures….It was only his gaping, spluttering mouth…that inspired a feeling of revulsion and fear.’
Of course, I could have just pulled out a piece out of context, but this IS the context. The entire book is written like this. She sold her stories to anti-Semitic publications, it was how she made her living. Let’s say, enough said.
But may we not put her anti-Semitism in a broader context? We have a special word for being negative about Jewish people in a way we don’t in general – a word like ‘racist’ doesn’t cover what we mean by it. And yet it is such a common thing when we think about the nature of her attitude rather than the label we put on it. Black people down on black people is an obvious example. My shrinking away in embarrassment in a pub here as I see Queenslanders being, well Queenslanders. Being in an émigré community and living with the sort of thing she deals with, the sponging, the people who are poor thinking their wealthier compatriots owe them something, even if just charity, the ones who are rich and sponge from you too. This is not a Jewish thing specifically, but she is writing about her community.
Stereotypes? Absolutely. But stereotypes exist because they are based on the real world. I know a lot of extremely wealthy Jewish people, Nemirovsky made me picture friends and acquaintances of mine more than once. She IS writing about what she knows. That’s what most writers do, it is so much easier than having the imagination to move past that.
Ruth Franklin wrote in the Guardian:
In David Golder, an appalling book by any standard, Némirovsky spins an entire novel from that stereotype. The title character is an oil magnate who has sacrificed his life to his business and has nothing to show for it but money—money that his wife and daughter are constantly bleeding from him. His wife, Gloria, openly cuckolds him while expecting him to support her extravagant lifestyle. (When he enters the room, she hides her checkbook "as if it were a packet of love letters.") Their eighteen-year-old daughter, Joyce, forces him to gamble until he collapses to win her money for a new car. "It's just that I have to have everything on earth, otherwise I'd rather die!" she tells him. Golder, for his part, is alternately cruel and pathetic. In the novel's first scene, he mercilessly refuses to cut his own partner a break on the sale of some oil shares, showing no pity and offering no explanation: "'Business,' was all he murmured, as if he were naming some terrifying god."
In the hands of Edith Wharton or Ford Madox Ford, these characters might have acquired some complexity—perhaps a redeeming quality, or just a kind word at some point to someone. But Némirovsky's portrayals are relentlessly one-sided. The women come off particularly poorly. After the partner's suicide, Golder overhears his wife, wearing an enormous pearl necklace, negotiating with the undertaker to downgrade the quality of his coffin. Gloria, too, will pursue a bargain at any cost: she haggles with a woman trying to sell a fur coat to help her boyfriend pay off his debts, but while she is waiting for the woman to agree to a better price, the boyfriend kills himself. (Gloria sees herself as the loser here, because now "of course she'll keep the coat.")
I’m sorry, I beg to differ. This stuff all rang so true for me. The husbands, the wives, the daughters. For the men it is no different to have the compulsion to make money than it is for a tennis player to have a compulsion to play tennis. One-dimensional? Absolutely. The women live to spend it. One-dimensional? Yep.
Extremely wealthy people are frequently like this, fullstop. Stereotypes are true.
Franklin continues later on:
David Golder appeared in 1929. Would it be too much to say that such a book published in such a year was complicit, as many similar books were complicit, in the moral degradation of culture that became one of the causes of the imminent genocide? It has been painful to watch Némirovsky's contemporary defenders tying themselves into knots to explain this racist travesty of a novel. In his introduction to the British edition of David Golder, Patrick Marnham sets the context with his first sentence—"Irene Némirovsky died in Auschwitz in 1942"—and argues that "Men like Golder existed, and no doubt still exist. They had come a very long way, just how long we discover in the novel's devastating climax." He makes the book sound like merely a Continental version of William Dean Howells. And what does it mean to say that David Golder is true to life? To which part of life, exactly—the harshness of the arriviste's lot, or the Jew's love of money? "Golder is Jewish because Némirovsky was Jewish," Marnham writes, persisting in his argument that the book's ugliness is nothing but realism, "but her choice of an unsympathetic Jewish character did not make Némirovsky an anti-Semite any more than Robert Louis Stevenson was anti-Scottish because he created the diabolical figure of Ebenezer in Kidnapped." This lets Némirovsky off too easy. For Golder's Jewishness is not simply one of his many traits; it is his defining trait, the very essence of his being, the root from which his character and his corruption grows. And he is hardly an isolated case: all the novel's primary characters are Jewish, and all are despicable.
I completely agree with her, Marnham’s introduction is an embarrassment, but I take issue with her last sentences there. Why shouldn’t Golder’s Jewishness be a defining trait? Is it any great surprise that it would be? As a kid I spent a bit of time in Haifa and a local asked me what I was religiously and I said ‘nothing.’ Our conversation didn’t pick up after that because he had no conception of nothing. Jewishness isn’t just about religion in the way that we Anglo-Saxons pigeonhole our religion, if we have any. It isn’t something one does on Sundays, like religion is at best for us.
But then, I also take issue with the idea that Golder is portrayed as a corrupt villain. He isn’t anything of the sort, he isn’t portrayed that way, he shouldn’t be seen that way either. Being a brutal businessman for whom the meaning of life is collecting money does not make you either a villain or corrupt. The characters are Jewish because she is writing about that community. They are despicable because it is a book about despicableness.
So, Nemirovsky is anti-Semitic. The amazing thing is that in a book where she talks about Jewish pigs and Jews and dirt and Jews and greed and Jews and miserliness and – she still manages to strike a chord. The book is completely engrossing, the main character has you on his side, which is quite an incredible achievement given what we have so far observed here. I guess I’m trying to explain the impact of this book by suggesting that we have to view anti-Semitic attitudes as having colour and broadness to them, ‘anti-Semitic is not anti-Semitic is not anti-Semitic.’ I wish I had a more elegant way of putting that. In the end this is a book about a businessman we could so easily hate, but we don’t. That is a triumph for the author.
Nonetheless, I remain extremely uneasy about liking this book for all the obvious reasons.
May 21, 2020
Vite che si smarriscono dietro sogni che sanno di non poter realizzare. Vite che inseguono frivolezze. Vite che inseguono le esistenze che il destino non ha concesso loro. Vite che desiderano sempre esser altro da ciò che sono e che, quando la consapevolezza e un pizzico di sincerità le coglie, riescono solo a contemplar un'infinita solitudine.
July 14, 2015
I didn't enjoy this, not just because Golder is such an unsympathetic character, and not just because I'd heard good things about Nerimovsky's writing that seemed unjustified, but because I constantly felt uncomfortable with the ways Jewish people are portrayed - even though I'm not Jewish, but Nemirovsky was. Also, the sections about finance and commodity trading, though not extensive, were somewhat tedious.
Anyway, this short novel concerns the very wealthy, self-made (more than once) David Golder, in the 1930s, and his selfish, shallow, and avaricious wife and twenty-something daughter. They're all as bad as each other!
The pressure of providing for their lavish lifestyle, though enjoying few of the benefits himself, takes its toll on Godler's health, and there is a painfully vivid section describing his physical collapse.
There is heartbreak at the core of the book, but it's hard not to feel it is deserved. I don't mind a book with unsympathetic characters, but I like some light and shade.
The descriptions of Jews are invariably harsh (and red hair is mentioned oddly often, though I don't know if that is significant), even when quoting the speech or paraphrasing the thoughts of Jewish characters. And if that weren't bad enough, the whole thing is based on longstanding negative stereotypes, particularly about the Jewish affinity for money and meanness. It doesn't pretend that all Jews are like that - and yet there aren't any in this book who are appealing characters.
Overall, a strange, unpleasant and slightly boring book.
Anyway, this short novel concerns the very wealthy, self-made (more than once) David Golder, in the 1930s, and his selfish, shallow, and avaricious wife and twenty-something daughter. They're all as bad as each other!
The pressure of providing for their lavish lifestyle, though enjoying few of the benefits himself, takes its toll on Godler's health, and there is a painfully vivid section describing his physical collapse.
There is heartbreak at the core of the book, but it's hard not to feel it is deserved. I don't mind a book with unsympathetic characters, but I like some light and shade.
The descriptions of Jews are invariably harsh (and red hair is mentioned oddly often, though I don't know if that is significant), even when quoting the speech or paraphrasing the thoughts of Jewish characters. And if that weren't bad enough, the whole thing is based on longstanding negative stereotypes, particularly about the Jewish affinity for money and meanness. It doesn't pretend that all Jews are like that - and yet there aren't any in this book who are appealing characters.
Overall, a strange, unpleasant and slightly boring book.
March 15, 2015
Romanzo fortemente autobiografico e da considerare, come è già stato osservato, in stretta relazione ai tempi in cui è stato scritto. Infatti, l’accanimento con il quale David Golder persegue, sino all’ultimo, l’idea di fare denaro non per costruire qualcosa di duraturo, bensì semplicemente perché venga sperperato da persone spregevoli mi lascia alquanto perplessa. Si vede che l’etica protestante è proprio ben radicata dentro di me. :-)
Tuttavia, la scrittura della Némirovsky è davvero molto espressiva, sia pur nella sua nudità. Benché voluta e frutto del suo stesso modo di essere, la disperata solitudine di David Golder mi ha, in un certo senso, commossa.
Tuttavia, la scrittura della Némirovsky è davvero molto espressiva, sia pur nella sua nudità. Benché voluta e frutto del suo stesso modo di essere, la disperata solitudine di David Golder mi ha, in un certo senso, commossa.
June 4, 2009
If Suite Francaise was known more for its chequered 64-year journey of as a manuscript seeking a publisher, David Golder is the book that launched Nemirowsky's career and is a much more powerful novel.
A short engrossing semi-autobiographical read, David Golder proves that good novels do not need sympathetic characters in order to entertain and enlighten. Everyone in this book is a pretty wretched person, almost caricaturish in their enslavement by money, except perhaps for the young Jewish man who is the last to see Golder alive, but even there we do not know if he will also "take the money and run" and not deliver on his promise to the dying anti-hero.
Golder is a tragic character, unbscrupulous in his drive to acquire wealth due to his impoverished origins, but also the only one who sees through lucre's fleeting nature, and is weighed by the burden of the breadwinner, while his family members lavishly spend, cheat on him, and openly blame him for falling ill and not being able to keep the money machine running.
I also liked the fact that the business deals that are central to Golder's character but could be boring in their minutia, were concluded off-stage, except for the final negotiation where Golder adopts Russian negotiating tactics (temper tantrums and threats to walk out) with his counterparts - the Russians themselves.
Short chapters, incisive dialogue that resemble lines from a play as they paint action and character, a tight plot that moves to is inevitable end, and the gratings of Golder's failing heart, grip the reader in a page-turner.
Having recently visited Auschwitz, the message was re-iterated while reading this book that the world lost many brilliant minds and artists in that holocaust - Nemirowsky: reluctant Jew, assimilated Frenchwoman and Catholic convert, included.
A short engrossing semi-autobiographical read, David Golder proves that good novels do not need sympathetic characters in order to entertain and enlighten. Everyone in this book is a pretty wretched person, almost caricaturish in their enslavement by money, except perhaps for the young Jewish man who is the last to see Golder alive, but even there we do not know if he will also "take the money and run" and not deliver on his promise to the dying anti-hero.
Golder is a tragic character, unbscrupulous in his drive to acquire wealth due to his impoverished origins, but also the only one who sees through lucre's fleeting nature, and is weighed by the burden of the breadwinner, while his family members lavishly spend, cheat on him, and openly blame him for falling ill and not being able to keep the money machine running.
I also liked the fact that the business deals that are central to Golder's character but could be boring in their minutia, were concluded off-stage, except for the final negotiation where Golder adopts Russian negotiating tactics (temper tantrums and threats to walk out) with his counterparts - the Russians themselves.
Short chapters, incisive dialogue that resemble lines from a play as they paint action and character, a tight plot that moves to is inevitable end, and the gratings of Golder's failing heart, grip the reader in a page-turner.
Having recently visited Auschwitz, the message was re-iterated while reading this book that the world lost many brilliant minds and artists in that holocaust - Nemirowsky: reluctant Jew, assimilated Frenchwoman and Catholic convert, included.
July 16, 2015
Chi è causa del suo male.
Eppure, dietro quella corazza di cinismo spietato, dietro quella maschera senza altra emotività che gli scatti d'ira, c'è una crepa: David Golder soffre, e la sua non è solo la sofferenza di un uomo vecchio e malato che si avvia inesorabilmente al declino; non c'è solo la consapevolezza di un tramonto nella solitudine, di una vita trascorsa senza seminare e conseguentemente senza nulla da raccogliere: David Golder si rende conto di essere diventato, agli occhi della moglie Gloria e della figlia Joyce, degli amanti di entrambe e del suo entourage, solo l'incarnazione del denaro.
David Golder è la mercificazione dei rapporti umani e niente di ciò che lo circonda è spontaneo: tutto è mistificato e calcolato.
La sua è una parabola discendente: il povero ebreo russo, emigrato sino a New York a commerciare stracci e ricomparso in Francia finanziere di successo, adesso è alla resa dei conti.
Irène Némirovsky si presenta così, illustre sconosciuta ventiseienne, al pubblico francese; il suo è lo sguardo impietoso di chi ha vissuto tutto sulla propria pelle e non è disposto a fare sconti a nessuno, nemmeno a se stessa.
Pubblicata anonimamente e assente dalla scena parigina perché giunta al termine della sua prima gravidanza, sarà causa per un breve periodo delle scommesse e dei tentativi di identificare lo sconosciuto autore (perché di maschio deve trattarsi vista la durezza del romanzo!) da parte di critici e letterati dell'epoca, fino alla sua rivelazione: donna, ebrea, russa, giovane: quanto di più lontano dall'immaginario francese, abituato fino a quel momento a tutt'altro tipo di letteratura.
Irène Némirovsky inizia così la sua sfida: uno sguardo acuto e spietato sulla società ebreo russa trapiantatasi in Francia dopo la rivoluzione d'ottobre, quella che tanto ben conosce: la sua.
Non sarà difficile dopo aver letto poche note biografiche sulla vita di Irène Némirovsky, come ho avuto già modo di scrivere in occasione del commento ad un suo racconto, riconoscere nei suoi personaggi le persone che hanno avuto influenza (spesso negativa) nella sua breve esistenza e accorgersi così che David Golder è sì la rappresentazione dell'uomo in carriera spregiudicato e privo di scrupoli di quel periodo, ma è anche e soprattutto suo padre; così come Gloria, fredda e calcolatrice e incapace di nutrire per alcun essere umano un sentimento superiore a quello che nutre per il denaro e per i gioielli, non è altri che la tanto odiata madre Fanny.
Forse è proprio per questo che, nonostante tutto, nonostante scavi a fondo e lucidamente nella moralità del protagonista, Irène Némirovsky non riesca mai ad affondare completamente il personaggio di David Golder, ma cerchi di riservargli qua e là, impercettibilmente, una delicata e compassionevole carezza.
Eppure, dietro quella corazza di cinismo spietato, dietro quella maschera senza altra emotività che gli scatti d'ira, c'è una crepa: David Golder soffre, e la sua non è solo la sofferenza di un uomo vecchio e malato che si avvia inesorabilmente al declino; non c'è solo la consapevolezza di un tramonto nella solitudine, di una vita trascorsa senza seminare e conseguentemente senza nulla da raccogliere: David Golder si rende conto di essere diventato, agli occhi della moglie Gloria e della figlia Joyce, degli amanti di entrambe e del suo entourage, solo l'incarnazione del denaro.
David Golder è la mercificazione dei rapporti umani e niente di ciò che lo circonda è spontaneo: tutto è mistificato e calcolato.
La sua è una parabola discendente: il povero ebreo russo, emigrato sino a New York a commerciare stracci e ricomparso in Francia finanziere di successo, adesso è alla resa dei conti.
Irène Némirovsky si presenta così, illustre sconosciuta ventiseienne, al pubblico francese; il suo è lo sguardo impietoso di chi ha vissuto tutto sulla propria pelle e non è disposto a fare sconti a nessuno, nemmeno a se stessa.
Pubblicata anonimamente e assente dalla scena parigina perché giunta al termine della sua prima gravidanza, sarà causa per un breve periodo delle scommesse e dei tentativi di identificare lo sconosciuto autore (perché di maschio deve trattarsi vista la durezza del romanzo!) da parte di critici e letterati dell'epoca, fino alla sua rivelazione: donna, ebrea, russa, giovane: quanto di più lontano dall'immaginario francese, abituato fino a quel momento a tutt'altro tipo di letteratura.
Irène Némirovsky inizia così la sua sfida: uno sguardo acuto e spietato sulla società ebreo russa trapiantatasi in Francia dopo la rivoluzione d'ottobre, quella che tanto ben conosce: la sua.
Non sarà difficile dopo aver letto poche note biografiche sulla vita di Irène Némirovsky, come ho avuto già modo di scrivere in occasione del commento ad un suo racconto, riconoscere nei suoi personaggi le persone che hanno avuto influenza (spesso negativa) nella sua breve esistenza e accorgersi così che David Golder è sì la rappresentazione dell'uomo in carriera spregiudicato e privo di scrupoli di quel periodo, ma è anche e soprattutto suo padre; così come Gloria, fredda e calcolatrice e incapace di nutrire per alcun essere umano un sentimento superiore a quello che nutre per il denaro e per i gioielli, non è altri che la tanto odiata madre Fanny.
Forse è proprio per questo che, nonostante tutto, nonostante scavi a fondo e lucidamente nella moralità del protagonista, Irène Némirovsky non riesca mai ad affondare completamente il personaggio di David Golder, ma cerchi di riservargli qua e là, impercettibilmente, una delicata e compassionevole carezza.
September 29, 2019
Recensione originale: https://sonnenbarke.wordpress.com/201...
David Golder ha l’oro già nel nome. Un libro sulla passione selvaggia per il denaro, che contagia tutti, nessuno escluso.
David Golder è un uomo d’affari che, all’inizio del libro, a seguito di una speculazione finanziaria, praticamente spinge al suicidio il suo amico e socio Simon Marcus. Ma David Golder non sarà particolarmente toccato da questo avvenimento, anzi. L’importante è fare soldi, soldi, soldi, senza guardare in faccia nessuno. E questo è il motto di tutti i personaggi del romanzo, da quelli principali a quelli meno importanti, compresi quelli che vediamo appena di sfuggita, come può essere ad esempio la moglie di Marcus, che cerca di risparmiare il più possibile sulla bara per il marito.
Ma le più ferocemente avide sono senza dubbio la moglie e la figlia di David Golder, Gloria e Joyce, che non fanno altro che chiedere soldi al marito/padre, benché siano già ricoperte di gioielli dalla testa ai piedi e abbiano già tutto quello che vogliono. Ma, come dice Joyce, lei vuole tutto: amore, soldi, felicità, tutto; altrimenti sarebbe meglio morire. Donne che non indietreggiano davanti a niente pur di avere i loro soldi, che danno per scontati come qualcosa che gli è dovuto.
Nemmeno la grave malattia di David Golder le fa desistere dal loro scopo, ed è così che David Golder ha iniziato a farmi un po’ pena, perché sebbene sia vero che anche lui è avido e spietato, ci sono delle scene in cui non ho potuto evitare di, quasi, soffrire per lui, schiacciato dal peso di queste due donne orribili. Ci sono pagine di un’intensità tremenda, dove viene fuori tutto il veleno di Gloria, tutta la frivolezza malvagia di Joyce.
Per questo non ho capito fino all’ultimo se questo libro mi fosse piaciuto o meno, perché sicuramente è un libro estremamente disturbante nel suo ruotare incondizionatamente intorno al dio denaro, ma proprio per questo possiede una forza rara. La forza di mettere il lettore di fronte all’orrore dell’avidità più estrema, di farlo riflettere, di farlo indignare, di farlo addirittura schifare di fronte a questi personaggi. E allora il libro è bellissimo, se si riesce ad andare oltre allo schifo che questi personaggi e queste situazioni suscitano.
David Golder ha l’oro già nel nome. Un libro sulla passione selvaggia per il denaro, che contagia tutti, nessuno escluso.
David Golder è un uomo d’affari che, all’inizio del libro, a seguito di una speculazione finanziaria, praticamente spinge al suicidio il suo amico e socio Simon Marcus. Ma David Golder non sarà particolarmente toccato da questo avvenimento, anzi. L’importante è fare soldi, soldi, soldi, senza guardare in faccia nessuno. E questo è il motto di tutti i personaggi del romanzo, da quelli principali a quelli meno importanti, compresi quelli che vediamo appena di sfuggita, come può essere ad esempio la moglie di Marcus, che cerca di risparmiare il più possibile sulla bara per il marito.
Ma le più ferocemente avide sono senza dubbio la moglie e la figlia di David Golder, Gloria e Joyce, che non fanno altro che chiedere soldi al marito/padre, benché siano già ricoperte di gioielli dalla testa ai piedi e abbiano già tutto quello che vogliono. Ma, come dice Joyce, lei vuole tutto: amore, soldi, felicità, tutto; altrimenti sarebbe meglio morire. Donne che non indietreggiano davanti a niente pur di avere i loro soldi, che danno per scontati come qualcosa che gli è dovuto.
Nemmeno la grave malattia di David Golder le fa desistere dal loro scopo, ed è così che David Golder ha iniziato a farmi un po’ pena, perché sebbene sia vero che anche lui è avido e spietato, ci sono delle scene in cui non ho potuto evitare di, quasi, soffrire per lui, schiacciato dal peso di queste due donne orribili. Ci sono pagine di un’intensità tremenda, dove viene fuori tutto il veleno di Gloria, tutta la frivolezza malvagia di Joyce.
Per questo non ho capito fino all’ultimo se questo libro mi fosse piaciuto o meno, perché sicuramente è un libro estremamente disturbante nel suo ruotare incondizionatamente intorno al dio denaro, ma proprio per questo possiede una forza rara. La forza di mettere il lettore di fronte all’orrore dell’avidità più estrema, di farlo riflettere, di farlo indignare, di farlo addirittura schifare di fronte a questi personaggi. E allora il libro è bellissimo, se si riesce ad andare oltre allo schifo che questi personaggi e queste situazioni suscitano.
July 29, 2017
Reviews of David Golder on Goodreads and elsewhere have been so forceful and the controversy so vigorous that there must be something strong about the book to arouse such passions, and indeed there is.
Its achievement is, in part, to take a fundamentally unlikeable character as its protagonist and to arouse the reader’s sympathy for him. But beyond that it is to show some of the causes of anti-Semitism without restraint but without justifying them. A ruthless Jewish financier who places the value of money above the value of people to such an extreme degree that the accumulation of extraordinary wealth—more wealth than any person can need or sensibly use—at the expense of love, affection, fairness and human decency is the kind of fictional character that is caricatured in anti-Semitic literature. But David Golder is not a caricature because he is seen by the author from deeply within his tortured mind. This makes things hard for the reader: a caricature would be easy to dismiss, but a depressed, confused and deeply troubled human being cries out for our sympathy.
Neither is it simply the case that Golder is being deservedly punished for his merciless treatment of others. In that case we could say, “He got what he deserved,” and pass on to other matters. But in this case we are more likely to be haunted by him for days.
In fact, Golder's treatment of others is not uniformly merciless. We might think so at first, in a kind of prelude, when he drives Marcus, a financier colleague, to a sordid suicide. But Marcus himself is not a figure deserving pity or even much sympathy. And as the story progresses we find that Golder loves at least one person selflessly: his daughter, Joyce. What he loves in her is the life force. She is full of energy and gaiety, so that her nickname “Joy” seems justified. On the other hand, unlike Golder, she has grown up surrounded by wealth, and her up-bringing has given her no skills for living with modest means, a fact that will lead to her downfall. Golder’s love for her is blind, but also unselfish: it is her good he wants, not his own, when he thinks of her. Even a doubt of his biological paternity does not cloud that selflessness in the long term.
In fact his own background, and that of his wife, is grinding, cheerless poverty. It is poverty reinforced by anti-Semitism, of a kind that is hard to imagine for anyone who has not had to face it in a dreary village on the borderline between Europe and Asia. Golder’s psychological condition is not “love of money” but desperation at the fear of having to live in the hostile world and cultural vacuity that he knew as a child. There can never be enough money in his coffers to conquer that fear.
Golder and his wife have shared this journey from rags to riches and there are touching moments of reminiscence and understanding between them. However, the journey has broken their relationship as it has broken so much else.
At the heart of anti-Semitism is a fearful symmetry. Golder has the characteristics that turn predisposed people into anti-Semites, but it is anti-Semitism that creates the conditions for the development of those characteristics. In a vicious cycle the anti-Semites create the Jews that they hate. But it must be said that the cycle begins on the anti-Semitic side, not on the Jewish one. It would take a long historical account to demonstrate that in full, and this short review is not the right place for that. Irene Nemirovsky can use the symbolism of fiction to achieve much more.
David Golder is short, but it covers so much ground so skilfully that it feels long. Not a word is wasted; everything contributes to the portrait at its centre, including the secondary characters, such as the miserly Soifer, who serves to show that miserliness is not at the heart of Golder’s condition, Joyce, who contrasts the child who grows up in wealth with the one who grew up in poverty, and the boy in the final pages who could be beginning the cycle again, the cycle of human development that his driven Golder’s life more powerfully than his own will.
Its achievement is, in part, to take a fundamentally unlikeable character as its protagonist and to arouse the reader’s sympathy for him. But beyond that it is to show some of the causes of anti-Semitism without restraint but without justifying them. A ruthless Jewish financier who places the value of money above the value of people to such an extreme degree that the accumulation of extraordinary wealth—more wealth than any person can need or sensibly use—at the expense of love, affection, fairness and human decency is the kind of fictional character that is caricatured in anti-Semitic literature. But David Golder is not a caricature because he is seen by the author from deeply within his tortured mind. This makes things hard for the reader: a caricature would be easy to dismiss, but a depressed, confused and deeply troubled human being cries out for our sympathy.
Neither is it simply the case that Golder is being deservedly punished for his merciless treatment of others. In that case we could say, “He got what he deserved,” and pass on to other matters. But in this case we are more likely to be haunted by him for days.
In fact, Golder's treatment of others is not uniformly merciless. We might think so at first, in a kind of prelude, when he drives Marcus, a financier colleague, to a sordid suicide. But Marcus himself is not a figure deserving pity or even much sympathy. And as the story progresses we find that Golder loves at least one person selflessly: his daughter, Joyce. What he loves in her is the life force. She is full of energy and gaiety, so that her nickname “Joy” seems justified. On the other hand, unlike Golder, she has grown up surrounded by wealth, and her up-bringing has given her no skills for living with modest means, a fact that will lead to her downfall. Golder’s love for her is blind, but also unselfish: it is her good he wants, not his own, when he thinks of her. Even a doubt of his biological paternity does not cloud that selflessness in the long term.
In fact his own background, and that of his wife, is grinding, cheerless poverty. It is poverty reinforced by anti-Semitism, of a kind that is hard to imagine for anyone who has not had to face it in a dreary village on the borderline between Europe and Asia. Golder’s psychological condition is not “love of money” but desperation at the fear of having to live in the hostile world and cultural vacuity that he knew as a child. There can never be enough money in his coffers to conquer that fear.
Golder and his wife have shared this journey from rags to riches and there are touching moments of reminiscence and understanding between them. However, the journey has broken their relationship as it has broken so much else.
At the heart of anti-Semitism is a fearful symmetry. Golder has the characteristics that turn predisposed people into anti-Semites, but it is anti-Semitism that creates the conditions for the development of those characteristics. In a vicious cycle the anti-Semites create the Jews that they hate. But it must be said that the cycle begins on the anti-Semitic side, not on the Jewish one. It would take a long historical account to demonstrate that in full, and this short review is not the right place for that. Irene Nemirovsky can use the symbolism of fiction to achieve much more.
David Golder is short, but it covers so much ground so skilfully that it feels long. Not a word is wasted; everything contributes to the portrait at its centre, including the secondary characters, such as the miserly Soifer, who serves to show that miserliness is not at the heart of Golder’s condition, Joyce, who contrasts the child who grows up in wealth with the one who grew up in poverty, and the boy in the final pages who could be beginning the cycle again, the cycle of human development that his driven Golder’s life more powerfully than his own will.
October 11, 2012
Un romanzo a tinte molto forti, la cui lettura non può prescindere da una contestualizzazione accurata. Uno degli aspetti più sorprendenti è che a scriverlo sia, all'inizio del secolo, una ragazza di soli vent'anni.
Figlia di una famiglia facoltosa, che ha lasciato la terra d'origine (una Ucraina austera, dolente, ottocentesca e umana - si vedano altri scritti dell'autrice) per insediarsi nella Ville Lumière, la scrittrice è una giovane donna, singolarmente matura, cresciuta sola, pur se contornata da amici e da una certa goliardia abbiente, con cui spesso condivide feste, vacanze, e serate mondane. Contrariamente a quanto leggo in altri commenti, questo suo scritto di esordio ha - secondo me - il sapore della denuncia intima, prima che sociale. Vi si intuisce un richiamo privato, disperato, quando non un vero anatema, nei confronti proprio di quell'isolamento umano e di quella freddezza di rapporti che lei stessa sta respirando in casa sua, dai suoi stessi genitori e parenti; cui - non è un mistero - si ispira per tratteggiare i personaggi. E' credibile che il ritratto della protagonista diciottenne, Joyce, sia tratteggiato osservando bene... lo specchio.
Un secondo aspetto da considerare attentamente è quello stilistico.
Il romanzo viene pubblicato nel 1929, contemporaneamente al Fronte Occidentale di Remarque; o mentre Leblanc diverte i lettori dalle pagine de "Le Journal" con i romanzi a puntate del suo Arsène Lupin, ladro gentiluomo (La demoiselle aux yeux verts - Einaudi 2007 - è del 1926). Rispetto alla scrittura del suo tempo, lo stile della Némirovski è quasi lapidario: rapido, ma non frettoloso; privo di orpelli e riverenze, eppure musicale e fluido; diretto e poco compassato, seppure educato ed elegante. Senza per questo perdere un grammo di peso, o di profondità, nell'analisi introspettiva. Anzi, conferendo a questa un'incisività maggiore, proprio perché scevro da ogni compiacimento letterario. Uno stile innovativo per l'epoca; elegante e godibile ancora oggi, dopo tutto un '900. Coincidenza vuole che l'economia, la borsa, gli affari, la ricchezza e la miseria siano, oltretutto, argomenti all'ordine del giorno, nel 1929. Ciò sancisce il successo immediato del libro; che è certamente un buon romanzo, ma secondo me solo un lontano preludio rispetto alla Suite Francese, che da pochi anni conosciamo.
Figlia di una famiglia facoltosa, che ha lasciato la terra d'origine (una Ucraina austera, dolente, ottocentesca e umana - si vedano altri scritti dell'autrice) per insediarsi nella Ville Lumière, la scrittrice è una giovane donna, singolarmente matura, cresciuta sola, pur se contornata da amici e da una certa goliardia abbiente, con cui spesso condivide feste, vacanze, e serate mondane. Contrariamente a quanto leggo in altri commenti, questo suo scritto di esordio ha - secondo me - il sapore della denuncia intima, prima che sociale. Vi si intuisce un richiamo privato, disperato, quando non un vero anatema, nei confronti proprio di quell'isolamento umano e di quella freddezza di rapporti che lei stessa sta respirando in casa sua, dai suoi stessi genitori e parenti; cui - non è un mistero - si ispira per tratteggiare i personaggi. E' credibile che il ritratto della protagonista diciottenne, Joyce, sia tratteggiato osservando bene... lo specchio.
Un secondo aspetto da considerare attentamente è quello stilistico.
Il romanzo viene pubblicato nel 1929, contemporaneamente al Fronte Occidentale di Remarque; o mentre Leblanc diverte i lettori dalle pagine de "Le Journal" con i romanzi a puntate del suo Arsène Lupin, ladro gentiluomo (La demoiselle aux yeux verts - Einaudi 2007 - è del 1926). Rispetto alla scrittura del suo tempo, lo stile della Némirovski è quasi lapidario: rapido, ma non frettoloso; privo di orpelli e riverenze, eppure musicale e fluido; diretto e poco compassato, seppure educato ed elegante. Senza per questo perdere un grammo di peso, o di profondità, nell'analisi introspettiva. Anzi, conferendo a questa un'incisività maggiore, proprio perché scevro da ogni compiacimento letterario. Uno stile innovativo per l'epoca; elegante e godibile ancora oggi, dopo tutto un '900. Coincidenza vuole che l'economia, la borsa, gli affari, la ricchezza e la miseria siano, oltretutto, argomenti all'ordine del giorno, nel 1929. Ciò sancisce il successo immediato del libro; che è certamente un buon romanzo, ma secondo me solo un lontano preludio rispetto alla Suite Francese, che da pochi anni conosciamo.
March 7, 2014
et voila un altro capolavoro di questa grandissima scrittrice. Per niente d'accordo sulle note di copertina circa il "grondare odio" di queste pagine. Semplicemente lo stile è adeguato alla materia trattata (i soldi !) e David Golder anzi, dall'odiosissima prima scena con il socio, si evolve fino ad essere quasi uno zio paperone, magari non da amare, ma da comprendere e compatire.
La cosa che più mi ha impressionato è come un'autrice poco più che ventenne sia stata in grado di rappresentare le dinamiche emotive di un vecchio tra rimpianti, rimorsi e volontà di non arrendersi al declino ed alla fine. Stupefacente.
Più la leggo e più mi incanta, specialmente (impossibile non farlo) se si contestualizza la sua opera nella vicenda della sua vita.
Per gli estimatori della Nemirovsky segnalo l' imminente uscita del film tratto da Suite Francese, il cast (soprattutto al femminile) sembra promettente.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0900387/?...
La cosa che più mi ha impressionato è come un'autrice poco più che ventenne sia stata in grado di rappresentare le dinamiche emotive di un vecchio tra rimpianti, rimorsi e volontà di non arrendersi al declino ed alla fine. Stupefacente.
Più la leggo e più mi incanta, specialmente (impossibile non farlo) se si contestualizza la sua opera nella vicenda della sua vita.
Per gli estimatori della Nemirovsky segnalo l' imminente uscita del film tratto da Suite Francese, il cast (soprattutto al femminile) sembra promettente.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0900387/?...
October 14, 2021
Anyone who has been following my reviews for a while will know how much I adore French author Irène Némirovsky, who was tragically murdered at Auschwitz in August 1942. I have been trying to make my way through her works in translation in recent years, but have slowed this project down dramatically, as I know I only have a couple of tomes left to pick up which I can experience for the first time.
David Golder was a novella which I had outstanding, and my library kindly purchased a copy on my behalf. This, Némirovsky's second book, was first published in French in 1929, when the author was just twenty-six. In 1930, the New York Times wrote that David Golder was 'the work of a woman who has the strength of one of the masters like Balzac or Dostoyevsky.'
The book's blurb describes this as an 'astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul'. Born into poverty, by the 1920s, Golder has managed to catapult himself 'to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil'. At the outset of the book, Golder is in his enormous Parisian apartment, filled with treasures, whilst his wife and spoilt only daughter, Joyce, are ploughing through his money at their villa in Biarritz. Nothing is quite as it seems, though. Golder's wealth is volatile, and his health precarious. The intriguing blurb goes on to say: 'As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving him to decide which to pursue: revenge or altruism?'
Golder's trajectory is, of course, disrupted by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the chaos which consequently ensued all over the world. His wealth is lost almost overnight, and he is forced to make some difficult decisions. At the point at which his health really deteriorates, we realise quite how selfish and awful his wife and daughter are; they talk only about the money they feel they are entitled to, and care nothing about Golder as an individual.
When we first meet Golder, he is described as 'an enormous man in his late sixties. He had flabby arms and legs, piercing eyes the colour of water, thick white hair and a ravaged face so hard it looked as if it had been hewn from stone by a rough, clumsy hand.' At this point in the narrative, he has just broken off the relationship with his business partner, who goes on to commit suicide. Whilst at his funeral, Némirovsky describes Golder's almost entire lack of sympathy, or compassion, for a man with whom he had spent so much time: 'It was stupid, just stupid... Yesterday Marcus was sitting opposite him, shouting, alive, and now... No one even used his name anymore... "Why did he do it?" he muttered to himself in disgust, "Why kill yourself at his age, over money, like some little nobody..." How many times had he lost everything, and like everyone else just picked himself up and started again? That was how it was.'
I am always, without fail, struck by the realism in Némirovsky's work. She successfully probes the pressure which comes with wealth, and with keeping up appearances. Golder is constantly lamenting the position in which he finds himself, where so many people expect things from him that he is not always willing to give. He is continually haunted by his loneliness. She writes: 'How expensive this idiotic lifestyle was! His wife, his daughter, the houses in Biarritz and Paris... In Paris alone he was paying sixty thousand francs in rent, taxes. The furniture had cost more than a million when he'd bought it. For whom? No one lived there. Closed shutters, dust?'
Golder is not at all a likeable character - he is a wealthy capitalist, with many of the clichéd characteristics of such men - but by giving us an insight into his life and thoughts, Némirovsky does something quite remarkable. There are snippets throughout of how mercenary and unhappy Golder's personal life is: 'He pictured his own wife quickly hiding her chequebook whenever he came into the room, as if it were a packet of love letters', for instance. He craves a good relationship with his eighteen-year-old daughter, completely in vain: 'Every time he came back from a trip, he looked for her in the crowd, in spite of himself. She was never there, and yet he continued to expect her with the same humiliating, tenacious and vain sense of hope.' His wife and daughter are arguably much worse than he is, and have not been given much humanity; they are truly odious, concerned only with gross wealth and their outside appearances. His wife Gloria, for example, had 'an aging face so covered in make-up that it looked like an enamelled plate', and insists on buying very expensive jewellery which she then laments is still not as good as her neighbour's.
Sandra Smith's translation is, as always, flawless. I also very much enjoyed reading Patrick Marnham's introduction to the volume. He writes that after the novella was published by the leading French house, Grasset, it 'impressed critics' greatly, and catapulted the author to fame. Translations soon followed, and the story was subsequently turned into both film and play.
Marnham gives good biographical background about Némirovsky, and the autobiographical details which she has woven into David Golder. Born in Kiev to a rich, self-made banker father, she had to watch as her family lost all of their wealth, and were forced into hiding following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The family finally settled in Paris, where her father, Léon, managed to rebuild their fortune - by accepting the position of manager in a branch of the bank which he used to own.
Much of David Golder, indeed, is a consequence of Némirovsky's firsthand experience. Markham comments that this 'enabled her to draw such a vivid picture of the extremes to which men like Golder could be driven in order to escape their roots.' He goes on: 'Golder now lives in what seems to be an enviable world, a world of large apartments, spacious villas, sumptuous women and fast cars, where he is feared and obeyed. But it is an empty place. In this society of rootless exiles, money transcends all personal values and becomes the measure of everything - love, strength and self-esteem.' He then compares David Golder to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, suggesting that Némirovsky rewrote the play by 'showing us the vulnerability behind Golder's mask, [and] the humanity of a powerful Jewish villain'.
Némirovsky is an incredibly astute author, and David Golder is another highly evocative and atmospheric work in her oeuvre. The narrative has been so finely tuned, and already shows a great deal of the carefully considered characters, and thoughtful storylines of her later work. There is such attention to detail here, and I found Golder's story so compelling. Némirovsky is highly insightful about his relationships with those around him, most of which are fraught, and filled with tension. The family dynamic portrayed is fascinatingly chaotic and turbulent. Every single character in David Golder is thoroughly unlikeable, but I felt a really compulsive need to read about them. There is immense depth to be found in this novella, and quite masterful storytelling, too.
David Golder was a novella which I had outstanding, and my library kindly purchased a copy on my behalf. This, Némirovsky's second book, was first published in French in 1929, when the author was just twenty-six. In 1930, the New York Times wrote that David Golder was 'the work of a woman who has the strength of one of the masters like Balzac or Dostoyevsky.'
The book's blurb describes this as an 'astonishingly mature story of an elderly Jewish businessman who has sold his soul'. Born into poverty, by the 1920s, Golder has managed to catapult himself 'to fabulous wealth by speculating on gold and oil'. At the outset of the book, Golder is in his enormous Parisian apartment, filled with treasures, whilst his wife and spoilt only daughter, Joyce, are ploughing through his money at their villa in Biarritz. Nothing is quite as it seems, though. Golder's wealth is volatile, and his health precarious. The intriguing blurb goes on to say: 'As his body betrays him, so too do his wife and child, leaving him to decide which to pursue: revenge or altruism?'
Golder's trajectory is, of course, disrupted by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, and the chaos which consequently ensued all over the world. His wealth is lost almost overnight, and he is forced to make some difficult decisions. At the point at which his health really deteriorates, we realise quite how selfish and awful his wife and daughter are; they talk only about the money they feel they are entitled to, and care nothing about Golder as an individual.
When we first meet Golder, he is described as 'an enormous man in his late sixties. He had flabby arms and legs, piercing eyes the colour of water, thick white hair and a ravaged face so hard it looked as if it had been hewn from stone by a rough, clumsy hand.' At this point in the narrative, he has just broken off the relationship with his business partner, who goes on to commit suicide. Whilst at his funeral, Némirovsky describes Golder's almost entire lack of sympathy, or compassion, for a man with whom he had spent so much time: 'It was stupid, just stupid... Yesterday Marcus was sitting opposite him, shouting, alive, and now... No one even used his name anymore... "Why did he do it?" he muttered to himself in disgust, "Why kill yourself at his age, over money, like some little nobody..." How many times had he lost everything, and like everyone else just picked himself up and started again? That was how it was.'
I am always, without fail, struck by the realism in Némirovsky's work. She successfully probes the pressure which comes with wealth, and with keeping up appearances. Golder is constantly lamenting the position in which he finds himself, where so many people expect things from him that he is not always willing to give. He is continually haunted by his loneliness. She writes: 'How expensive this idiotic lifestyle was! His wife, his daughter, the houses in Biarritz and Paris... In Paris alone he was paying sixty thousand francs in rent, taxes. The furniture had cost more than a million when he'd bought it. For whom? No one lived there. Closed shutters, dust?'
Golder is not at all a likeable character - he is a wealthy capitalist, with many of the clichéd characteristics of such men - but by giving us an insight into his life and thoughts, Némirovsky does something quite remarkable. There are snippets throughout of how mercenary and unhappy Golder's personal life is: 'He pictured his own wife quickly hiding her chequebook whenever he came into the room, as if it were a packet of love letters', for instance. He craves a good relationship with his eighteen-year-old daughter, completely in vain: 'Every time he came back from a trip, he looked for her in the crowd, in spite of himself. She was never there, and yet he continued to expect her with the same humiliating, tenacious and vain sense of hope.' His wife and daughter are arguably much worse than he is, and have not been given much humanity; they are truly odious, concerned only with gross wealth and their outside appearances. His wife Gloria, for example, had 'an aging face so covered in make-up that it looked like an enamelled plate', and insists on buying very expensive jewellery which she then laments is still not as good as her neighbour's.
Sandra Smith's translation is, as always, flawless. I also very much enjoyed reading Patrick Marnham's introduction to the volume. He writes that after the novella was published by the leading French house, Grasset, it 'impressed critics' greatly, and catapulted the author to fame. Translations soon followed, and the story was subsequently turned into both film and play.
Marnham gives good biographical background about Némirovsky, and the autobiographical details which she has woven into David Golder. Born in Kiev to a rich, self-made banker father, she had to watch as her family lost all of their wealth, and were forced into hiding following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. The family finally settled in Paris, where her father, Léon, managed to rebuild their fortune - by accepting the position of manager in a branch of the bank which he used to own.
Much of David Golder, indeed, is a consequence of Némirovsky's firsthand experience. Markham comments that this 'enabled her to draw such a vivid picture of the extremes to which men like Golder could be driven in order to escape their roots.' He goes on: 'Golder now lives in what seems to be an enviable world, a world of large apartments, spacious villas, sumptuous women and fast cars, where he is feared and obeyed. But it is an empty place. In this society of rootless exiles, money transcends all personal values and becomes the measure of everything - love, strength and self-esteem.' He then compares David Golder to Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, suggesting that Némirovsky rewrote the play by 'showing us the vulnerability behind Golder's mask, [and] the humanity of a powerful Jewish villain'.
Némirovsky is an incredibly astute author, and David Golder is another highly evocative and atmospheric work in her oeuvre. The narrative has been so finely tuned, and already shows a great deal of the carefully considered characters, and thoughtful storylines of her later work. There is such attention to detail here, and I found Golder's story so compelling. Némirovsky is highly insightful about his relationships with those around him, most of which are fraught, and filled with tension. The family dynamic portrayed is fascinatingly chaotic and turbulent. Every single character in David Golder is thoroughly unlikeable, but I felt a really compulsive need to read about them. There is immense depth to be found in this novella, and quite masterful storytelling, too.
December 15, 2022
”El mundo de los grandes negocios, territorio de personajes sin escrúpulos en el que la voracidad de los hombres es tan grande como la precariedad de sus fortunas.”
Un retrato crudo y áspero de la soledad, la riqueza y algo similar a la familia solo que en este caso no los une la sangre sino el dinero, la avaricia y el desasosiego.
Incluso David Golder podría ser considerada una biografía sobre el padre de Irene Némirovsky, un rico banquero judio-ucraniano que nunca supo acercarse a su hija más que a través del capital que poseía.
Un retrato crudo y áspero de la soledad, la riqueza y algo similar a la familia solo que en este caso no los une la sangre sino el dinero, la avaricia y el desasosiego.
Incluso David Golder podría ser considerada una biografía sobre el padre de Irene Némirovsky, un rico banquero judio-ucraniano que nunca supo acercarse a su hija más que a través del capital que poseía.
August 21, 2014
I romanzi della Némirovsky tendono a dividersi fra romanzi corali e incentrati su singole figure: al secondo gruppo appartiene il bellissimo David Golder, a partire dal titolo stesso. David Golder è un ebreo russo, ex profugo, ora agiato uomo d’affari che si muove nell’ambito della finanza internazionale e tratta prodotti petroliferi: la sua occupazione principale sembra essere l’accumulo di ricchezza fine a se stessa, occupazione che ha svolto con dedizione, abilità, spietatezza e una forte dose di cinismo. Agli inizi del romanzo, tuttavia, si trova alle soglie della vecchiaia (ha oltre sessant’anni) e dall’intenso ritratto fisico che ne fa l’autrice (p. 15) capiamo subito che la sua ossessiva sete di denaro lo ha ormai indurito e devastato fisicamente e psicologicamente: i suoi affari stanno per subire un tracollo e la sua salute sta spegnendosi lentamente. Nonostante ciò, anziché fermarsi e riposarsi, egli continua a comportarsi come se nulla fosse, sicuro di poter superare ogni tempesta.
Ben presto ci si accorge che la febbre del denaro che anima Golder (nomen omen) è la vera protagonista del romanzo: anche se fredda e inanimata, riesce a scatenare i peggiori istinti negli uomini e nelle donne che ne sono vittime. Intorno a Golder si muovono personaggi che come lui sembrano dominati dalla religione delle ricchezze: finanzieri, procacciatori d’affari, avventurieri, gigolò e prostitute, esponenti della nobiltà e della ricca borghesia, politicanti, parassiti e ruffiani etc. Nel romanzo si parla continuamente di somme che cambiano mano, di gioielli e preziosi, di beni mobili e immobili, di azioni e depositi, e ciò lo rende tremendamente attuale. L’ostentazione del denaro e il suo utilizzo a fini più o meno frivoli caratterizza i familiari di Golder, l’avida moglie Gloria e la spensierata figlia Joyce (anche questi nomi non sono scelti a caso), che pensano a lui come ad una specie di bancomat da cui prelevare quanto serve per sprecare inutilmente la propria vita. Se per la moglie, con la quale condivide le umili origini, Golder nutre ormai solo avversione, per la figlia manifesta un amore possessivo e morboso, quasi sensuale e certamente inquietante: è l’unica sua ricchezza che in qualche modo non gli provenga dal denaro, ma come le altre ricchezze non esita a cambiare proprietario quando si creano le condizioni giuste.
Con il procedere della vicenda e con il peggiorare delle sue condizioni fisiche, finanziarie e materiali, il personaggio di David Golder acquista una statura sempre più tragica, che si concretizza nella solitudine umana e morale che lo attanaglia sempre più, e verso la quale tutto sommato egli sembra ben contento di dirigersi. Come tutti i grandi personaggi tragici finisce per doversi misurare con le proprie origini, incarnate da un giovane emigrante incontrato nel viaggio di ritorno per mare dal Caucaso verso Occidente, lo stesso viaggio che tanti anni prima egli stesso aveva affrontato. L’esito del confronto gli sarà ovviamente fatale: e terribili sono i suoi ultimi momenti, divisi tra il desiderio ossessivo di sistemare i suoi affari e la ripetizione del proprio nome (come sottolineava Rodari: “L’uomo il cui nome è detto rimane in vita”). Dice Golder (p. 176): “Alla fine si crepa, […] soli come cani, come si è vissuti…”.
La narrazione procede per brevi scene, spesso incentrate su dialoghi o sul monologo interiore dei personaggi, intervallate da quelle che potremmo chiamare dissolvenze in nero, prendendo in prestito il termine dal linguaggio cinematografico, e che coprono ellissi temporali più o meno lunghe. Ciò è abbastanza tipico della Némirovsky (questo è il suo primo romanzo): l’autrice riesce a dipingere la vicenda con i foschi colori della tragedia senza mai però abbandonare l’essenzialità di una narrazione scarna e tagliente. Si percepisce sotto la superficie una forte partecipazione della scrittrice alle vicende narrate, e in effetti il romanzo è parzialmente autobiografico: la storia di David Golder è vagamente ispirata a quella del padre della scrittrice e il tema dell’ebreo che accumula ricchezze pur vivendo egli stesso nell’indigenza prende sicuramente spunto dalla realtà degli immigrati russi che Irène conosceva benissimo. Per opere come David Golder, alcuni critici hanno ravvisato nella Némirovsky una paradossale tensione all’antisemitismo e alla negazione delle proprie origini: certamente l’autrice è fortemente critica verso il mondo che descrive (e al quale anche lei appartiene) e di cui mette in risalto le contraddizioni, la meschinità e la volgarità. Lo fa con una notevole profondità psicologica: basta leggere il capitolo XXI, che mette in scena un dialogo fra la figlia di Golder e il suo amante, per rendersene conto. Fra l’altro questo è anche uno dei pochi momenti in cui la focalizzazione abbandona il protagonista, in modo abbastanza poco funzionale alla trama: mi sono chiesto il perché, e penso che questo cambio di prospettiva sia una sorte di intervento diretto dell’autrice a sottolineare la vacuità di questa giovane donna che appartiene alla stessa generazione della Némirovsky, contrapposta alla dura materialità della generazione dei loro padri.
Consigliato a chi tende all’accumulo fine a se stesso.
Sconsigliato a chi non ama i personaggi negativi.
Ben presto ci si accorge che la febbre del denaro che anima Golder (nomen omen) è la vera protagonista del romanzo: anche se fredda e inanimata, riesce a scatenare i peggiori istinti negli uomini e nelle donne che ne sono vittime. Intorno a Golder si muovono personaggi che come lui sembrano dominati dalla religione delle ricchezze: finanzieri, procacciatori d’affari, avventurieri, gigolò e prostitute, esponenti della nobiltà e della ricca borghesia, politicanti, parassiti e ruffiani etc. Nel romanzo si parla continuamente di somme che cambiano mano, di gioielli e preziosi, di beni mobili e immobili, di azioni e depositi, e ciò lo rende tremendamente attuale. L’ostentazione del denaro e il suo utilizzo a fini più o meno frivoli caratterizza i familiari di Golder, l’avida moglie Gloria e la spensierata figlia Joyce (anche questi nomi non sono scelti a caso), che pensano a lui come ad una specie di bancomat da cui prelevare quanto serve per sprecare inutilmente la propria vita. Se per la moglie, con la quale condivide le umili origini, Golder nutre ormai solo avversione, per la figlia manifesta un amore possessivo e morboso, quasi sensuale e certamente inquietante: è l’unica sua ricchezza che in qualche modo non gli provenga dal denaro, ma come le altre ricchezze non esita a cambiare proprietario quando si creano le condizioni giuste.
Con il procedere della vicenda e con il peggiorare delle sue condizioni fisiche, finanziarie e materiali, il personaggio di David Golder acquista una statura sempre più tragica, che si concretizza nella solitudine umana e morale che lo attanaglia sempre più, e verso la quale tutto sommato egli sembra ben contento di dirigersi. Come tutti i grandi personaggi tragici finisce per doversi misurare con le proprie origini, incarnate da un giovane emigrante incontrato nel viaggio di ritorno per mare dal Caucaso verso Occidente, lo stesso viaggio che tanti anni prima egli stesso aveva affrontato. L’esito del confronto gli sarà ovviamente fatale: e terribili sono i suoi ultimi momenti, divisi tra il desiderio ossessivo di sistemare i suoi affari e la ripetizione del proprio nome (come sottolineava Rodari: “L’uomo il cui nome è detto rimane in vita”). Dice Golder (p. 176): “Alla fine si crepa, […] soli come cani, come si è vissuti…”.
La narrazione procede per brevi scene, spesso incentrate su dialoghi o sul monologo interiore dei personaggi, intervallate da quelle che potremmo chiamare dissolvenze in nero, prendendo in prestito il termine dal linguaggio cinematografico, e che coprono ellissi temporali più o meno lunghe. Ciò è abbastanza tipico della Némirovsky (questo è il suo primo romanzo): l’autrice riesce a dipingere la vicenda con i foschi colori della tragedia senza mai però abbandonare l’essenzialità di una narrazione scarna e tagliente. Si percepisce sotto la superficie una forte partecipazione della scrittrice alle vicende narrate, e in effetti il romanzo è parzialmente autobiografico: la storia di David Golder è vagamente ispirata a quella del padre della scrittrice e il tema dell’ebreo che accumula ricchezze pur vivendo egli stesso nell’indigenza prende sicuramente spunto dalla realtà degli immigrati russi che Irène conosceva benissimo. Per opere come David Golder, alcuni critici hanno ravvisato nella Némirovsky una paradossale tensione all’antisemitismo e alla negazione delle proprie origini: certamente l’autrice è fortemente critica verso il mondo che descrive (e al quale anche lei appartiene) e di cui mette in risalto le contraddizioni, la meschinità e la volgarità. Lo fa con una notevole profondità psicologica: basta leggere il capitolo XXI, che mette in scena un dialogo fra la figlia di Golder e il suo amante, per rendersene conto. Fra l’altro questo è anche uno dei pochi momenti in cui la focalizzazione abbandona il protagonista, in modo abbastanza poco funzionale alla trama: mi sono chiesto il perché, e penso che questo cambio di prospettiva sia una sorte di intervento diretto dell’autrice a sottolineare la vacuità di questa giovane donna che appartiene alla stessa generazione della Némirovsky, contrapposta alla dura materialità della generazione dei loro padri.
Consigliato a chi tende all’accumulo fine a se stesso.
Sconsigliato a chi non ama i personaggi negativi.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 6, 2019
«Tutto per i soldi, solo per i soldi»
David Golder è un ebreo di 68 anni, emigrato in gioventù dalla Russia a Parigi, e arricchitosi con coraggiose speculazioni. Ora ha tutto ciò che può desiderare: magnifiche ville, uno stuolo di domestici, un autista personale, abiti raffinati, varie società e affari redditizi che dimostrano la sua abilità di negoziatore. Basta chiedere, e Golder esaudisce. Sua moglie Gloria e la figlia Joyce lo vedono di rado, ma questo è un bene per entrambe le parti.
La morte improvvisa del suo socio in affari e una diagnosi implacabile lo mettono di fronte alla consapevolezza che la morte è imminente. Golder, ormai accompagnato da una stanchezza che anticipa la nausea sartriana, sveste i panni dell'uomo invincibile il cui unico obiettivo è quello di accumulare ricchezza e fa un bilancio obiettivo della propria vita, per giungere alla lucida conclusione, che Irène Némirovsky sintetizza in questa frase implacabile, pronunciata proprio dal protagonista: «Alla fine si crepa [...] soli come cani, così come si è vissuti».
Golder è un uomo stanco, che, messo di fronte all'ineluttabilità del proprio destino, ha il privilegio di capire che l'affannarsi a cercare l'approvazione altrui e il successo sono solo pretesti, non c'è scampo alla morte e nulla resta dopo di noi. Siamo soli, sia durante che al termine della vita.
Le brevi parentesi in cui affiorano dei ricordi del suo passato (un vicolo scuro, le botteghe che popolavano le vie della sua infanzia, il freddo che entra nelle ossa, una ragazzina che corre senza pensieri) sono fievoli spiragli di una felicità semplice, autentica, che non è più. Golder, sempre più stanco e lontano dal mondo, si rinchiude in un appartamento spoglio e aspetta la morte, con l'unica compagnia di una vecchia domestica e di un altro anziano ebreo, ricchissimo ma così avaro da negarsi ogni piacere per non intaccare il suo capitale.
L'amara metafora del misero ebreo che si riscatta con il proprio lavoro e costruisce un impero è qui enfatizzata dalla Némirovsky, capace di immaginare un personaggio a tutto tondo, che brilla di luce propria, quasi fosse reale. David Golder è un messaggio che l'autrice vuole dare al mondo: non sprecate la vostra vita in inutili preoccupazioni, gioite e godete di ogni attimo, perché nessuno di noi è immortale e, quando termina la nostra storia, cosa rimane?
La traversata finale in nave è un momento simbolico che rappresenta una purificazione e il compimento dell'intera esistenza del protagonista: Golder passa il testimone a uno sconosciuto, un diciottenne ebreo che, come lui tanti anni prima, sta lasciando la Russia in cerca di un futuro migliore in Europa. Come lui, la fatica non lo spaventa, ed è pronto a tutto pur di riscattarsi. E, ancora una volta, l'unico mezzo per riscattarsi appare il denaro: sarà davvero questo il suo destino o sarà in grado di comprendere la lezione offerta da David Golder?
Visita il mio blog e leggi la recensione completa: https://bulimialetteraria.wordpress.c...
David Golder è un ebreo di 68 anni, emigrato in gioventù dalla Russia a Parigi, e arricchitosi con coraggiose speculazioni. Ora ha tutto ciò che può desiderare: magnifiche ville, uno stuolo di domestici, un autista personale, abiti raffinati, varie società e affari redditizi che dimostrano la sua abilità di negoziatore. Basta chiedere, e Golder esaudisce. Sua moglie Gloria e la figlia Joyce lo vedono di rado, ma questo è un bene per entrambe le parti.
La morte improvvisa del suo socio in affari e una diagnosi implacabile lo mettono di fronte alla consapevolezza che la morte è imminente. Golder, ormai accompagnato da una stanchezza che anticipa la nausea sartriana, sveste i panni dell'uomo invincibile il cui unico obiettivo è quello di accumulare ricchezza e fa un bilancio obiettivo della propria vita, per giungere alla lucida conclusione, che Irène Némirovsky sintetizza in questa frase implacabile, pronunciata proprio dal protagonista: «Alla fine si crepa [...] soli come cani, così come si è vissuti».
Golder è un uomo stanco, che, messo di fronte all'ineluttabilità del proprio destino, ha il privilegio di capire che l'affannarsi a cercare l'approvazione altrui e il successo sono solo pretesti, non c'è scampo alla morte e nulla resta dopo di noi. Siamo soli, sia durante che al termine della vita.
Le brevi parentesi in cui affiorano dei ricordi del suo passato (un vicolo scuro, le botteghe che popolavano le vie della sua infanzia, il freddo che entra nelle ossa, una ragazzina che corre senza pensieri) sono fievoli spiragli di una felicità semplice, autentica, che non è più. Golder, sempre più stanco e lontano dal mondo, si rinchiude in un appartamento spoglio e aspetta la morte, con l'unica compagnia di una vecchia domestica e di un altro anziano ebreo, ricchissimo ma così avaro da negarsi ogni piacere per non intaccare il suo capitale.
L'amara metafora del misero ebreo che si riscatta con il proprio lavoro e costruisce un impero è qui enfatizzata dalla Némirovsky, capace di immaginare un personaggio a tutto tondo, che brilla di luce propria, quasi fosse reale. David Golder è un messaggio che l'autrice vuole dare al mondo: non sprecate la vostra vita in inutili preoccupazioni, gioite e godete di ogni attimo, perché nessuno di noi è immortale e, quando termina la nostra storia, cosa rimane?
La traversata finale in nave è un momento simbolico che rappresenta una purificazione e il compimento dell'intera esistenza del protagonista: Golder passa il testimone a uno sconosciuto, un diciottenne ebreo che, come lui tanti anni prima, sta lasciando la Russia in cerca di un futuro migliore in Europa. Come lui, la fatica non lo spaventa, ed è pronto a tutto pur di riscattarsi. E, ancora una volta, l'unico mezzo per riscattarsi appare il denaro: sarà davvero questo il suo destino o sarà in grado di comprendere la lezione offerta da David Golder?
Visita il mio blog e leggi la recensione completa: https://bulimialetteraria.wordpress.c...
October 6, 2022
Balzac +Joseph Roth (o Stefan Zweig) + unas gotas de Scott Fitgerald : David Golder
December 15, 2023
Ai grija ce alegi in viață
August 28, 2022
Il finale è un punteruolo nel cuore.
Per me. Per chi ha vissuto certe cose. Per chi ha visto morire un uomo sotto i propri occhi.
Per tutti gli altri potrebbe essere la degna conclusione per l'ennesimo personaggio della storia che è vissuto solo per accumulare denaro, per rovinare gli altri permettendo a se stesso e alla sua, falsa, crudele e acida famiglia opportunista di vivere di lussi e ricchezza, di frivolezza e cupidigia. Si muore come si vive. Se si vive bastardi come cani, nel senso più spregevole del termine, soli come cani si muore. E se pure trovi uno sconosciuto che ti resti accanto nel momento più fatale, questi lo farà sperando in una ricompensa economica perché qui dentro tutto ruota attorno al vile e sporco denaro. Quanta gente vive e muore davvero così!
Per me. Per chi ha vissuto certe cose. Per chi ha visto morire un uomo sotto i propri occhi.
Per tutti gli altri potrebbe essere la degna conclusione per l'ennesimo personaggio della storia che è vissuto solo per accumulare denaro, per rovinare gli altri permettendo a se stesso e alla sua, falsa, crudele e acida famiglia opportunista di vivere di lussi e ricchezza, di frivolezza e cupidigia. Si muore come si vive. Se si vive bastardi come cani, nel senso più spregevole del termine, soli come cani si muore. E se pure trovi uno sconosciuto che ti resti accanto nel momento più fatale, questi lo farà sperando in una ricompensa economica perché qui dentro tutto ruota attorno al vile e sporco denaro. Quanta gente vive e muore davvero così!
August 21, 2020
Breve quanto intenso, l'ho apprezzato moltissimo. Ho recuperato vari titoli della Némirovsky che mancavano alle mie letture e me le sbocconcellerò nel corso della restante parte del 2020 come piccole perle..
June 2, 2022
Fabulous writing, god awful characters although I do think that was the point.
July 3, 2016
Che rabbia!
Ah... il dio denaro!
Odioso quando genera mostri di avidità, aridità, insensibilità, sterilità.
Mostri assetati solo di potere, di dominio, di ricchezza, di lusso.
Golder, è così... così... menefreghista, inumano!
La moglie, una vipera! Il suo nome è Gloria. Un nome finto. Vana/gloria. Sfruttatrice all'ennesima potenza.
La figlia, Joyce, viziata, ruffiana, buona solo a dire: "Lo voglio lo voglio lo voglio... Me lo prendi, papà???" Che ragazza adorabile...
Mi hanno fatto rabbia, tutti, è vero, ma ancora di più mi fanno fatto pena. Tanta pena. Che povertà d'animo, che grettezza... Mentre leggevo, scuotevo il capo. Perché???
Specchio del loro tempo, della vita della scrittrice? Mah... Ben misero, l'insieme, tutto sommato! Devastante amarezza.
Golder, alla fine, pover'uomo, mi ha commosso e mi fa lasciato un gran senso di vuoto.
Che brutto, finire così...
Ah... il dio denaro!
Odioso quando genera mostri di avidità, aridità, insensibilità, sterilità.
Mostri assetati solo di potere, di dominio, di ricchezza, di lusso.
Golder, è così... così... menefreghista, inumano!
La moglie, una vipera! Il suo nome è Gloria. Un nome finto. Vana/gloria. Sfruttatrice all'ennesima potenza.
La figlia, Joyce, viziata, ruffiana, buona solo a dire: "Lo voglio lo voglio lo voglio... Me lo prendi, papà???" Che ragazza adorabile...
Mi hanno fatto rabbia, tutti, è vero, ma ancora di più mi fanno fatto pena. Tanta pena. Che povertà d'animo, che grettezza... Mentre leggevo, scuotevo il capo. Perché???
Specchio del loro tempo, della vita della scrittrice? Mah... Ben misero, l'insieme, tutto sommato! Devastante amarezza.
Golder, alla fine, pover'uomo, mi ha commosso e mi fa lasciato un gran senso di vuoto.
Che brutto, finire così...
October 11, 2012
"Una grande Némirovsky"
Dal commento di Ginny1807, che consiglio di leggere per intero:
Radiografia spietata e dolente della vanità di una vita interamente spesa ad accumulare denaro.
[...]
Stupendo romanzo sulla solitudine, affilato come una lama e pervaso di struggente poesia nel bellissimo, amaro finale.
Una grande Némirovsky.
(grazie Ginny per il consiglio di lettura e... per il commento di cui mi sono appropriata!)
:-)
Dal commento di Ginny1807, che consiglio di leggere per intero:
Radiografia spietata e dolente della vanità di una vita interamente spesa ad accumulare denaro.
[...]
Stupendo romanzo sulla solitudine, affilato come una lama e pervaso di struggente poesia nel bellissimo, amaro finale.
Una grande Némirovsky.
(grazie Ginny per il consiglio di lettura e... per il commento di cui mi sono appropriata!)
:-)
May 14, 2024
There's no one like Némirovsky and it's criminal that much of her work remained undiscovered until recently. Her life story & the rediscovery of her work could be its own book entirely and I am waiting anxiously for someone to write a great big literary biography on the subject!!!!!!
David Golder is the cross-cultural baby of Némirovsky's unique Russo-French-Jewish upbringing. It combines the Russian preoccupation with how to live & close scrutinization of human nature, the lush descriptiveness of French prose, and classic Jewish narratives of assimilation & otherness to create an unforgettable tale of how wealth corrupts & the transactional nature of human relationships. In the lead-up to WWII, Némirovsky remarked that she regretted the antisemitic undertones that readers identified and said that she would've changed the book if she had the chance.
However, in reading the book, I found that label to be simplistic. To me, David Golder is so clearly a character struggling with internalized antisemitism after achieving peak "assimilation" and turning his ire towards those of his ilk who have not. We watch Golder come to the painful realization that his achievements in pursuit of this goal were not only hollow, but robbed him of his identity and any chance at true affection or love or to be truly known.
Anyway, Logan Roy would LOVE this book and absolutely take the wrong message from it.
David Golder is the cross-cultural baby of Némirovsky's unique Russo-French-Jewish upbringing. It combines the Russian preoccupation with how to live & close scrutinization of human nature, the lush descriptiveness of French prose, and classic Jewish narratives of assimilation & otherness to create an unforgettable tale of how wealth corrupts & the transactional nature of human relationships. In the lead-up to WWII, Némirovsky remarked that she regretted the antisemitic undertones that readers identified and said that she would've changed the book if she had the chance.
However, in reading the book, I found that label to be simplistic. To me, David Golder is so clearly a character struggling with internalized antisemitism after achieving peak "assimilation" and turning his ire towards those of his ilk who have not. We watch Golder come to the painful realization that his achievements in pursuit of this goal were not only hollow, but robbed him of his identity and any chance at true affection or love or to be truly known.
Anyway, Logan Roy would LOVE this book and absolutely take the wrong message from it.
August 6, 2025
Esta es la segunda novela que leo de Irène Némirovsky, después de El baile, y no puedo evitar notar los ecos entre ambas. Los escenarios cambian, los conflictos varían en escala, pero el núcleo temático parece girar en círculos: la crueldad emocional dentro del núcleo familiar, el poder devastador del dinero, la frivolidad de quienes lo rodean, y una visión bastante despiadada de las relaciones humanas. Hay algo repetitivo en el retrato que hace de las mujeres jóvenes, de los hombres arruinados por sus ambiciones, de los vínculos atravesados por el resentimiento y la dependencia.
David Golder es una buena novela, pero sin ser impecable, a mi parecer. El personaje principal, un magnate venido a menos, se mueve entre el desprecio y la necesidad de quienes lo rodean, especialmente su esposa y su hija, dibujadas sin piedad. La historia avanza con un fatalismo que no da respiro, como si todos los personajes estuvieran atrapados en una danza amarga hacia el vacío. Hay momentos de gran fuerza narrativa y una agudeza psicológica admirable, pero también cierta rigidez, como si Némirovsky ya hubiera resuelto desde el inicio qué destino le corresponde a cada uno.
Me pregunto si toda su obra gira en torno a los mismos personajes con otros nombres, a las mismas heridas en distinto decorado. No lo digo como crítica cerrada, sino como una duda legítima que despierta este segundo encuentro con su universo.
Es una novela lúcida y cruel, con pasajes memorables, de su tiempo, pero cuya mirada creo que tiende a repetirse. Aun así, seguiré, estoy abierto a leer nuevamente a Némirovsky: su estilo seco y afilado no pasa desapercibido.
This is the second novel I’ve read by Irène Némirovsky, after The Ball, and I can’t help but notice the echoes between the two. The settings change, the conflicts vary in scale, but the thematic core seems to revolve in circles: emotional cruelty within the family, the devastating power of money, the frivolity of those who surround it, and a rather ruthless view of human relationships. There’s something repetitive in the way she portrays young women, men ruined by their ambitions, and ties marked by resentment and dependency.
David Golder is a good novel, though not flawless in my opinion. The main character, a faded magnate, moves between the scorn and need of those around him—especially his wife and daughter, who are depicted without mercy. The story unfolds with a relentless fatalism, as if all the characters are trapped in a bitter dance toward emptiness. There are moments of great narrative strength and admirable psychological insight, but also a certain rigidity, as if Némirovsky had already decided each character’s fate from the outset.
I wonder whether her entire body of work revolves around the same characters under different names, the same wounds in a different setting. I don’t say this as a closed criticism, but as a genuine question that arises from this second encounter with her universe.
It’s a lucid and cruel novel, filled with memorable passages and very much of its time, but one whose gaze, I believe, tends to repeat itself. Still, I remain open to reading more of Némirovsky: her sharp, dry style never goes unnoticed.
David Golder es una buena novela, pero sin ser impecable, a mi parecer. El personaje principal, un magnate venido a menos, se mueve entre el desprecio y la necesidad de quienes lo rodean, especialmente su esposa y su hija, dibujadas sin piedad. La historia avanza con un fatalismo que no da respiro, como si todos los personajes estuvieran atrapados en una danza amarga hacia el vacío. Hay momentos de gran fuerza narrativa y una agudeza psicológica admirable, pero también cierta rigidez, como si Némirovsky ya hubiera resuelto desde el inicio qué destino le corresponde a cada uno.
Me pregunto si toda su obra gira en torno a los mismos personajes con otros nombres, a las mismas heridas en distinto decorado. No lo digo como crítica cerrada, sino como una duda legítima que despierta este segundo encuentro con su universo.
Es una novela lúcida y cruel, con pasajes memorables, de su tiempo, pero cuya mirada creo que tiende a repetirse. Aun así, seguiré, estoy abierto a leer nuevamente a Némirovsky: su estilo seco y afilado no pasa desapercibido.
This is the second novel I’ve read by Irène Némirovsky, after The Ball, and I can’t help but notice the echoes between the two. The settings change, the conflicts vary in scale, but the thematic core seems to revolve in circles: emotional cruelty within the family, the devastating power of money, the frivolity of those who surround it, and a rather ruthless view of human relationships. There’s something repetitive in the way she portrays young women, men ruined by their ambitions, and ties marked by resentment and dependency.
David Golder is a good novel, though not flawless in my opinion. The main character, a faded magnate, moves between the scorn and need of those around him—especially his wife and daughter, who are depicted without mercy. The story unfolds with a relentless fatalism, as if all the characters are trapped in a bitter dance toward emptiness. There are moments of great narrative strength and admirable psychological insight, but also a certain rigidity, as if Némirovsky had already decided each character’s fate from the outset.
I wonder whether her entire body of work revolves around the same characters under different names, the same wounds in a different setting. I don’t say this as a closed criticism, but as a genuine question that arises from this second encounter with her universe.
It’s a lucid and cruel novel, filled with memorable passages and very much of its time, but one whose gaze, I believe, tends to repeat itself. Still, I remain open to reading more of Némirovsky: her sharp, dry style never goes unnoticed.
October 23, 2022
My fourth Irene Nemirovsky, picked up after finishing Suite Francaise last week. I like this author I will read her again.
This was a quick read and I enjoyed it. I thought the characters were well drawn and believable though all rather unpleasant beings. David Golder the self-made hardworking ruthless patriarch, whose vulnerability touched me, and his greedy vain ageing ungracefully wife and his spoilt ‘brat’ (gave me Verruca Salt vibes) of a daughter.
“it’s just that I have to have everything on earth, otherwise I’d rather die! Everything!”.
It was sad. I liked it.
September 18, 2024
This book is about a ruthless Jewish businessman in France who becomes fabulously wealthy. His ungrateful wife and daughter spend his money on themselves and consider this their inherent right.
The book highlights the fragility of wealth and the priceless value of loving and meaningful relationships with other people. The latter point is driven home by the lack of healthy human relationships in this sad story.
I found it depressing the way Nemirovsky, a Jewish woman, wrote in such a derogatory way about Jewish culture and character. She wrote the book a little over a decade before being arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Did she ever regret any anti-Semitic impact her book, which was wildly popular when it was published in France in 1926, may have had on the then-current political climate?
The book highlights the fragility of wealth and the priceless value of loving and meaningful relationships with other people. The latter point is driven home by the lack of healthy human relationships in this sad story.
I found it depressing the way Nemirovsky, a Jewish woman, wrote in such a derogatory way about Jewish culture and character. She wrote the book a little over a decade before being arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she died. Did she ever regret any anti-Semitic impact her book, which was wildly popular when it was published in France in 1926, may have had on the then-current political climate?
March 27, 2020
Todos los personajes son odiosos. No zafa uno. De todo lo que leí de Nemirovsky, este fue el peor.
July 11, 2024
When all the characters are terrible people it's really hard to like the story itself! :-D
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