Through love and into war
Geneva and the Palais des Nations are vividly portrayed in Albert Cohen’s romantic Belle du Seigneur
by David Winch, Jan. 2009
Published in UN Geneva literary magazine Ex Tempore
The huge (1,110 page) and hugely ambitious novel Belle du Seigneur is often cited as one of the greatest pieces of Swiss and also European literature. Belle also has a strong claim to the front ranks of romantic writing, although some label it anti-romantic. The Académie française awarded the work its Grand Prix du Roman in 1968 after author Albert Cohen laboured 30 years on the text. His perfectionism weaves a tight fabric that is not easily rent.
A long, elaborate and often stream-of-consciousness affair, Belle du Seigneur unfolds against the background of the routine status-chasing, promotion-hunting and careerism of the petty souls in administration at the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor in Geneva.
Watching the image of the United Nations in popular artistic productions, exasperation is often punctuated by surprise – the films North by Northwest and The Interpreter come to mind – where the image and feel of UN life is often fleeting and contradictory (Do people here really talk/look like that?).
In Belle, by contrast, the details and the tone of Palais life – the whish of crisp memos passing in leather briefcases through the halls, and whispers about missions to exotic capitals – permeates the text. Cohen also vividly portrays the social network of 1930s Geneva, especially the elite Cologny dinner parties and their myriad complexities. A novel of detail and minutiae, it is not a quick read and never facile, despite its comic walk-ons. Cohen employs fools like Shakespeare, to lighten and advance the plot, between all the heavier characters and themes. All in all, a novel that is firmly rooted in the past yet vividly present.
The Palais, then …
Albert Cohen actually worked at the League of Nations in the Palais des Nations, and hence knows of what he speaks. He portrays an ambitious, apple-polishing senior civil servant, Adrien Deume, who aspires through his memos to establish himself as an “A”; he goes through the motions of concern for the broader world, but who is mostly fascinated by petty status-markers.
Deume tries to act out all synonyms for obsequious — abject, overeager, uncritical. He is puppy-doggish in his reverence for authority and eager for a pat on the head from higher-ups. He is enthralled with daily fascination for his stapler, his rug and desk, his non-leather (soon leather?) couch, the view he enjoys from his Palais window, even the way his jacket hangs crisply in the office closet.
A master of petty delay, diplomatic absence and feigned oubli, Deume quietly watches all his colleagues and competitors and calculates the best time to present his reports. He measures the pithy comment that can best accompany his signature as a signed document heads into the Out box. He carefully weighs when and how he can schedule a meeting, one which will cast him in the best light. In preparation, he practices his small talk, and prepares for the ever-daring dinner invitations he feels he must proffer to move up in the hierarchy.
Finally, bonanza! -A mission! And just any mission, one to the Near East. There, Deume can bounce from capital to capital and from hotel to court to imperial drawing room, while all the while his wife back in Geneva is carrying on a torrid, all-embracing affair.
Love and exile…
The core of the novel is a voracious love affair between Ariane Deume, the cosseted daughter of a very Protestant Geneva family, who has never faced any risk or want, and the ambitious deputy Secretary-General of the League of Nations, who is also Jewish and must endure fears and phobias in the 1930s that she cannot imagine.
Ariane, married to the bored and detached fonctionnaire Adrien, is trapped in a life of banal social-climbing in Geneva, with its vivid social taboos. She soon becomes triangularly linked to Adrien’s superior, the very haut fonctionnaire Solal.
Ariane, one critic noted, is a “fervent follower of the god Appearance”, and lomg hours of her many baths and manicures are detailed by Cohen, often preparation for her social apogee, meeting with lover Solal.
Solal, meanwhile, is a brooding and complicated charmer, much less placid than he appears in his hotel-suite home, and is full of gnawing wants.
The writer Cohen combs through the topography of receptions, the social guest list, and all the myriad household accoutrements needed to keep up in the ambitious Geneva bourgeoisie: the plateware, cutlery and caterers, the number, order and quantity of dinner courses (hilariously overdone for Solal’s first, cancelled visit), and the flowers and cards that must follow the event. All intricately described.
Finally, Solal and Ariane make off, leaving Geneva and settling in “exile” from the world, with unspecified yet apparently unlimited funds (Solal has been fired for politically outspoken criticism of League policy towards German refugees).
They take refuge in successive Riviera hotels before finding a well-appointed private hideaway nearby. This cocoon soon leads to the exhaustion of their “total passion”; they asphyxiate themselves in their need to be perfect. The novel carries many echoes of unsatisfied and disastrous love affairs, from Madame Bovary to Anna Karenina. It ends not with a bang but a whimper.
Belle du Seigneur sometimes leaves readers gasping for breath, but Cohen breaks his long monologues and free-form ruminations with comic insight. Still, as a carefully observed romance narrative, it is hard to match.
