The Devil in the Flesh (14 page)

One of the most perceptive comments about this, Raymond Radiguet’s first of only two novels, was made by Julien Gracq in 1980, in his book
En lisant en écrivant
. Gracq was thirteen when
Le Diable au corps
was published in 1923, and, unlike its author, who died that same year at the age of twenty, was to live long enough to witness the whole of the twentieth century, its literature as well as its appalling events. In addition to his works of fiction, Gracq produced a body of literary criticism of the highest, most disinterested kind. He noted that when Radiguet’s short, semi-autobiographical novel first appeared it was surrounded by the scent of scandal; whereas sixty—or as now, almost ninety years later—it produces the sharp, combustive effect of a “miniature 1968”.

It would be too easy, perhaps facile, to view
The Devil in the Flesh
from a perspective of
autre temps, autre moeurs
; besides, that was not what the clear-sighted Gracq had in mind. Despite its shortcomings—and even masterpieces have them—it is as salient at the beginning of this century as it was in the first part of the last. For those who care, or dare to look, it still holds up a mirror to us today. If Radiguet was a literary genius, as Cocteau claimed at the time and many continue to assert, then it was predominantly in this that his talent found expression.

In the blaze of publicity with which the book was published, there are clear similarities to the media events that are a feature of contemporary publishing. Yet although Radiguet appears to have cooperated with and enjoyed, albeit not actively connived in, his overnight notoriety, it was orchestrated by the publisher Bernard Grasset. Grasset’s later comment, that “he hadn’t discovered a great novelist, simply a seventeen-year-old one” gives an indication of the underlying nature of the interest shown by readers and critics alike, whether outraged or otherwise. Above all it was the narrator’s (who is never named in the text) youth, as well as that of his creator, that was the most significant and attractive aspect of the novel.

If Radiguet had a talent for writing a work of lasting relevance, he also showed considerable insight in creating a character who seems to lack redeeming features. In reply to those who claim that
Le Diable au corps
is wholly autobiographical, this is arguably the strongest evidence that it is not; at least, not in terms of the sixteen-year-old narrator’s personality. For if it were an autobiography, Radiguet portrays himself as someone who is self-centred to the extent that he apparently chooses not to remedy the faults that he sees in his own behaviour. On the contrary, he seems to glory in them. While Louis Seynaeve, Hugo Claus’s young hero in
Het verdriet van België
,
¹
Béla in János Székely’s
Kísértés
²
and Martin in Harry Martinson’s
Nässlorna Blomma
³
—to cite just three examples from other novels depicting rites of passage—all behave equally shamefully, at times immorally, they are not only
more honest with themselves about their serious failings as well as their innocent weaknesses, but they also make endearing if not always successful attempts to redress the balance. In contrast, Radiguet’s narrator appears to bask in an aureole of self-satisfaction, possibly on the basis of the convenient yet ambiguous precept
tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner
, ‘to understand all is to forgive all’—particularly when it applies to himself.

If, however, as seems to be the case, it was Radiguet’s intention to create such a character, then his powers of observation and literary expression were undoubtedly acute. For in the corrosively cynical atmosphere of post-Great War France, people who saw no wrong in themselves (or who saw it but regarded it as acceptable, perhaps even admirable) were to be found at all levels of society. Yet it could be said that his greater achievement was to foresee behaviour that is now almost the rule in our contemporary society, where self-criticism and self-effacement have become virtually unthinkable, relics of the past.

This is not to credit Radiguet with the power of second sight, although in all great writers there is something of the seer. They have the uncanny knack of being ahead of their time, identifying the phenomenon, described by Søren Kierkegaard in
Repetition
, by which certain situations seem foreordained to repeat themselves indefinitely, bringing the eternal into the present (and with it, at least potentially, happiness). The narrator symbolizes the generation who witnessed the Great War from the safe distance of their “four-year-long holiday”, resenting how it intruded on their personal gratification in the same way their suburban calm was occasionally spoilt by the echo of serious events in the capital. In this it is impossible not to
see a reflection of the hedonistic, predominantly suburban Western society of the present day, its spiritual vacuity that seems content to consume while creating little of lasting value.

Inextricable from this, as referred to earlier, is the role played by youth, not only in the book but also in its reception by the public. Grasset was clearly conscious of this when he highlighted Radiguet’s age as having been a key factor in his publicity campaign. Both the novel and people’s reaction to it seem infused with a somewhat ogreish preoccupation with all that is young—with
la chair fraiche
(a perennial topic handled so beautifully, and with such honesty, in Michel Tournier’s novel
Le roi des aulnes
⁴
). This provides yet another parallel with our own society, where the pervasive visibility of youth, and our often hysterical attempts to protect it from the ills we have created, perhaps even from itself, has reached near-epidemic proportions. Radiguet’s deceptively simple prose, so sparing but so precise, so redolent of his own and the narrator’s precocious youth, seems to sound a warning to future generations: this is what can happen when young people are given their head. A society that sends its men off to war while its boys make love to the wives left behind risks simply producing unwanted children as cannon fodder for the next conflict. Hardly what the narrator describes as a ‘decent’ life for his illegitimate son.

If
Le Diable au corps
were to be published for the first time today, it would be unlikely to cause a scandal. For, despite society’s censorious attitude to any hint of what might be under-age sex, works that deal with the subject
generally attract large audiences. A recent example is Bernhard Schlink’s prize-winning novel
Der Vorleser
(translated into English and made into a film with the rather unnuanced title of
The Reader
). It tells the story of a fifteen-year-old boy in 1950s West Germany who has an affair with a woman twice his age who turns out to have been a concentration camp guard; a fact he only discovers later as a law student when he sees his former lover on trial for war crimes. Admittedly, and not-dissimilarly to
Le Diable au corps, Der Vorleser
deals on a deeper level with the theme of war, its consequences for the generation that fought and the one that came afterwards, whether the two can ever be reconciled; yet it is apparent that what arouses people’s interest is the relationship between an adult and a child.

To put Radiguet’s book into its historical-sociological context, in the era in which it is set, the age of consent in France was thirteen (it was raised to its present level, fifteen, in 1945). So despite the narrator’s father’s empty threat to sue Marthe for ‘corruption of a minor’, the politically correct can at least be satisfied that no one was breaking the law. But what almost certainly outraged the French public at the time (a later film of the book was also almost withdrawn) was that the young author, as authors frequently do, dared to tell the truth: during the war, wives whose husbands were away fighting for their country did commit adultery with younger lovers, and often had illegitimate children by them. The fact that the affair takes place between two young people, one of whom is still a schoolboy, in a respectable Paris suburb with the knowledge of, and at times in view of their parents and neighbours, only made the truth harder to accept—although more sensational.

So in a sense, little has changed. Society is still as judgemental and as prurient as in 1923, although for—at least superficially—different reasons: the old, religious values have been swept away by those of the humanist New Age, yet despite the supposedly more enlightened atmosphere, people seem no more fulfilled or at ease with themselves. The suburban society that Radiguet evokes in scant, elegant descriptions and with a wealth of psychological insights, once more foreshadows the society that is still reading his explosive novel today.

A little over halfway through the book there occurs a significant scene that does much to illustrate the relationship between the author, the narrator and the society in which they both live. The narrator discovers that the main attraction of a reception being given by Marthe’s neighbours downstairs is to be the ‘spectacle’ of himself and Marthe making love in her bedroom, immediately above where the party is taking place; an act of indecency which the guests will be invited to witness. Mocking the suburban bourgeoisie for their hypocrisy in using the occasion as a means of gratifying their interest in young people’s sex lives, he deliberately refrains until after the guests have left, disappointed, and then he and Marthe put on a noisier than usual performance to set the seal on their neighbours’ frustration.

Yet despite his amused contempt, the narrator is clearly gratified by their interest. It stimulates his auto-eroticism. Throughout the narrative, his and Marthe’s attempts at discretion have been at best half-hearted. They flaunt their youth, their bodies, their freedom to love each other, their insouciant intelligence in front of anyone who cares to look, as well as those who don’t. Radiguet the seer is giving
readers a glimpse,
avant la lettre
, of what might now be described as typical adolescent behaviour—portraying teenagers before the concept was invented. They deliberately attract attention to themselves, then become hostile when others show an interest. In a sense the book is an invitation to voyeurism, even an exercise in self-voyeurism. From the outset the narrator takes pride in being seen as a Don Juan, which flatters his male pride, only to condemn those who enjoy watching him.

A theme that emerges from this is that of sexuality itself. It is not possible to say with any certainty whether Radiguet intended
Le Diable au corps
as a commentary on heterosexual morality, long the predominant culture. But from what is known about his private life, as well as what can be inferred from his other novel,
Le Bal du comte d’Orgel
, it is not out of the question. At the age of fourteen—two years younger than the narrator—he had an affair with a married woman whose husband was at the Front. From fifteen he frequented Parisian artistic circles, and after the publication of
Diable
became a close friend of Jean Cocteau, with whom he founded a literary review. Whether theirs was a sexual relationship has only ever been a subject of speculation based on inconclusive evidence. Judging from the characters in
Le Bal du comte d’Orgel
, it is possible that he saw gender in ambiguous terms. The hero, called François, is given a surname in the feminine form, de Séryeuse; the Count d’Orgel’s first name is Anne, while his forceful wife is equivocally called Mahaut.

Taken together, these elements suggest that Radiguet’s sexuality might have been syncretistic, combining or alternating between several different orientations; the fact that he described his own adolescent affair in a book may
also suggest auto-eroticism, which often takes the place of affection for another.

In broader terms, with its setting of detached villas, tree-lined avenues, Sunday walks and boats on the Marne, commuters, town councillors, pert shopkeepers, observance of proprieties, poorly-paid servants socially little different from their employers, families with neatly dressed children,
The Devil in the Flesh
can appear as a satire of what is regarded as the normal way of life. The narrator, nurtured by and ostensibly part of this culture, at times attempts to overthrow it from within, battling against its constraints while enjoying its benefits. At other times he lives out its traditional ideals of courtship, the worship of mysterious female charms, the art of love, woman on a pedestal, man as her knightly protector—to which he soon, and equally traditionally, adds lies, infidelity, unkindness and even brutality, culminating in an unwanted pregnancy. Adolescent confusion, undoubtedly; the narrator admits as much on the first page, although he fails to put what he learns from his mistakes into practice. He was obviously unfamiliar with the old Jewish proverb: ‘Men should take care not to make women weep, for God counts their tears’.

The idea that while sexual reproduction is essential for the continuation of the human race, the eternal male-female couple and the social norms that have been established around it are not, has been explored recently by Louis-Georges Tin in
L’invention de la culture heterosexuelle
.
⁵
This thoughtful study suggests that by making the propagation of the species the raison d’être of human
relationships, conventional thinking tends to confuse the means, even the origins of heterosexuality, with the end. A specialist in French medieval poetry as well as the history of sexuality, Tin points out that the male-female ideal was not always the norm. Prior to the rise of Christianity, while the need for producing heirs was recognized, the most revered relationship was that of chaste, knightly male love, as found in
La Chanson de Roland
. But out of the Church’s fear of what it saw as inversion grew
l’amour courtois
, or courtly love, in which the knight puts his lady, a substitute for the Virgin Mary, on a pedestal. It was this, Tin argues, that brought about the invention of the heterosexual culture that has dominated Western society ever since. Far from being inherent, it is externally imposed.