Bove Emmanuel – One evening at Blutel

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Bove Emmanuel – One evening at Blutel: Maxime Corton arrives at the Gare de l’Est in Paris, back from Vienna where he lived for some time. He hopes to live in peace in Paris. He takes a very modest room. He meets Madeleine, a prostitute. After some hesitation, he decides to visit his former friend Blutel, whom he has not seen since the end of the war. When they are facing each other, they do not know what to say. Blutel invited other people, who arrive during the evening. It is a meeting of petty bourgeois, people stuck in their behavior, accepting their destiny without rancor or revolt. The great war hovers over all these destinies, and what its characters could have become without it. Bove carves their portraits without taking sides or judging.

It is felt that Maxime will remain outside this society in which he can no longer recognize himself. But it’s late. Maxime has the faculty, at night, of not suffering. We will see tomorrow. For the moment, in the middle of the night, everything is fine. Since, until the morning, no regret, no fear would haunt him, why would he suffer? “.

Released in 1927, Un soir chez Blutel is Emmanuel Bove’s third, after “Armand” and “Bécon-les-Bruyères”. In 1928, Bove explained his literary approach as follows: “A novel must not be a completed thing in itself: that is to say, we should not be able to isolate a novel from the work of its author, neither that a beautiful verse can not be detached from a poem. This should not give the impression of a finished work in itself, but be part of a whole. Balzac and Proust have succeeded in producing this impression by circulating the same characters throughout their work. Could we not get there without the same characters coming back, in order to avoid being limited, or by only bringing them back by accident? That’s what I would like to do if I succeed in writing the books I want. ” (Candide, February 9, 1928).

Prolific writer, revealed by Colette, Emmanuel Bove was successful in his lifetime, before falling into oblivion, and to be rediscovered by Peter Handke in the 1980s. He was born in 1898 in Paris, but made a part of his studies at Calvin College in Geneva, then lived in Vienna and again in Paris, where he died in 1945.

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