The Devil in the Flesh

RAYMOND RADIGUET
was born in 1903 in Saint-Maur, a small town outside Paris. He was the son of a cartoonist, but little else is known about his childhood until, at age 16, he dropped out of school after an affair with the wife of a soldier off fighting in the first World War, to go to Paris. Once there he quickly began writing for the magazine
Sic
, alongside writers such as Louis Aragon and Andre Breton, and he befriended many notable Modernists, including Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. Despite his age, he also quickly developed a reputation for fast living; Ernest Hemingway would later accuse him of sleeping with Cocteau, among others, to advance his career. At the age of 18, after writing a collection of poems that would only be published posthumously,
Les joues en feu
, Radiguet moved to a fishing village near Toulon to work on the novel that would become his masterpiece,
The Devil in the Flesh
, which was based on his high school affair. Cocteau would later claim that he’d had to lock Radiguet in his hotel room to keep him from drinking binges rather than writing. The author’s youth and the scandalous story made the book a sensation, but Radiguet did not have long to enjoy his fame. Less than a year later, shortly after taking a trip with Cocteau to the country to finish a second novel,
Le Bal du comte d’Orgel
, Radiguet died of typhoid fever at age 20. Composer Francis Poulenc said of his death, “For two days I was unable to do anything, I was so stunned.”

CHRISTOPHER MONCRIEFF
is one of the world’s premier French translators. He has translated the work of Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, and numerous other French masters.

THE NEVERSINK LIBRARY

I was by no means the only reader of books on board the
Neversink.
Several other sailors were diligent readers, though their studies did not lie in the way of belles-lettres. Their favourite authors were such as you may find at the book-stalls around Fulton Market; they were slightly physiological in their nature. My book experiences on board of the frigate proved an example of a fact which every book-lover must have experienced before me, namely, that though public libraries have an imposing air, and doubtless contain invaluable volumes, yet, somehow, the books that prove most agreeable, grateful, and companionable, are those we pick up by chance here and there; those which seem put into our hands by Providence; those which pretend to little, but abound in much
.
—HERMAN MELVILLE,
WHITE JACKET

I AM GOING TO BRING A GREAT DEAL OF CRITICISM on myself. But what can I do about it? Is it my fault if I turned twelve a few months before war was declared? The turmoil I went through during that most unusual time was undoubtedly of a kind that you don’t experience at that age; yet since, despite outward appearances, there is nothing that has the power to make us get older, I had no choice but to behave as a child in the course of an adventure that would have made a grown man feel awkward. My classmates, too, will have memories of the period that are very different from those of their elders. People who reproach me should try and imagine what the War was for so many young boys—a four-year-long holiday.

We lived at F …, beside the River Marne.

My parents didn’t much approve of friendship between the sexes. As a result, that sensuality with which we are all born, and which expresses itself before it has learnt some discernment, gained rather than lost ground.

I’ve never been one to dream. What to others, more gullible, appears to be a dream, to me seems more real than cheese does to a cat, despite the glass lid that covers it. And yet the glass cover is still there.

If the glass breaks, the cat makes the most of the opportunity, even if its master was the one who broke it and cut his hand in the process.

Until I was twelve I never even thought of flirtations, except with a young girl called Carmen, to whom I wrote a letter which I got a younger boy to deliver, and in which I expressed feelings of love for her. I used this love as an excuse for asking her to go out with me. The letter was given to her in the morning, before lessons. I had singled her out as the only little girl with whom I had something in common, because she was smartly dressed and came to school with her younger sister, like me with my younger brother. In order to keep these two witnesses quiet I had dreamt up the idea of marrying them off in some way. So with my letter I enclosed one from my brother, who couldn’t write, for young Mademoiselle Fauvette. I explained this act of intercession to my brother, and how fortunate we were to happen upon two sisters of our own age who were blessed with such distinctive Christian names. But when I got back to school after lunch at home with my parents, who spoilt me and never told me off, I realised sadly how much I had misjudged Carmen’s respectable upbringing.

The other boys had just sat down at their desks—me in my capacity as top of the class being crouched at the cupboard at the back of the room to get books for reading out loud—when the headmaster came in. The others stood up. He had a letter in his hand. I went weak at the knees, dropped the books and picked them up again while the head spoke to the form master. The boys in the front
row turned to look at me, blushing bright red at the back, because they heard my name being whispered. Eventually the headmaster called me over, and by way of subtle punishment without giving the others any wrong ideas, or so he thought, he congratulated me for having written a letter of twelve lines without any mistakes. He asked if I had written it by myself, and then invited me to come to his study. We never got there. He took me to task in the school yard, in a sudden tirade. What most offended my sense of moral decency was that he judged it just as serious to have stolen a piece of writing paper as to have compromised the young girl (whose parents had passed on my declaration to him). He threatened to send it to my father. I begged him not to. He relented, but said he would keep the letter, and at the first re-offence would no longer be able to keep quiet about my bad behaviour.

This combination of insolence and diffidence disturbed my parents, confused them, in the same way that my apparent ability at school, which in reality was laziness, made people think that I was a good pupil.

I went back to class. In an ironic tone the master called me Don Juan. I was hugely flattered, especially since he had mentioned the title of a book that I was familiar with and my classmates weren’t. His “
Hello Don Juan
” and my knowing smile transformed the class’s view of me. Perhaps they already knew that I had got a boy from one of the lower forms to take a letter to a ‘girl’, as they were known in rough schoolboy parlance. The boy was called
Messager
; I hadn’t chosen him for his name, but it had made me feel confident all the same.

At one o’clock I had begged the headmaster not to say anything to my father; by four I was dying to tell him all
about it. There was nothing that compelled me to. I put my confession down to candour. Because actually, knowing my father wouldn’t be annoyed, I was delighted that he should learn of my exploit.