![]() ![]() Ebrennac says that he knows all of Europe, because he’s a musician who has visited its major cities, but never France. Ebrennac muses that he loves France, and he had hoped during the Weimar Republic that the nations could be friends. Vercors tackles the possibilities of collaboration indirectly. Ebrennac sees this as a metaphor for the current situation. When Beauty realises she has misjudged the Beast and ceases to hate him, she becomes able to love him. ![]() And he tells the story of Beauty and the Beast-a story of reconciliation between the strong and the weak. He had thought at first that French acquiescence was a good thing, then he despised their cowardice, but now he admires the stoic silence of his unwilling hosts because it means dignity. But now that France and Germany are at war, he thinks this can all be resolved because there will be ‘marriage’ between the two countries. He claims pre-eminence in music, with Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Wagner and Mozart (who was actually born in Austria). In France, it is possible to be subtle and poetic. The winter in France, he says, as he warms himself by the fire, is nothing compared to winter in Germany. Ebrennac attributes it, however, to the climate. As the VSI explains, political and economic aspects of German history were not conducive to the emergence of literary fiction that took place in the 18th, 19th centuries and early 20th century in England, Russia and France. If I hadn’t read German Literature, a Very Short Introduction, I might have thought that this was just French hubris, but it’s true that there’s only one great name in German literature that springs to mind, and that’s Goethe. When Ebrennac discovers the shelves of French literature he goes into raptures about how many eminent authors there are. ![]() They do not share the same culture and values. Vercors makes a point of making explicit the differences between Germany and France. The entire story consists of the narrator’s observations and Ebrennac’s attempts at conversation, with which he persists in good humour even after he has learned the rules by which this silence is maintained.īEWARE: SPOILERS (though nobody reads this book for the plot, such as it is). They do not respond to his knocks on the door, and they sit in dignified silence when in the evening he comes into the room where the narrator reads and the niece does her handiwork. But he is met with total silence, a silence that is maintained throughout his sojourn of over a year. Ebrennac’s arrival is marked by courtesy: he introduces himself and apologises for his presence. There is the unnamed narrator, his unnamed niece, and the German officer, Werner von Ebrennac. There are just three characters, and only one of them speaks. The story shows a non-violent form in which even the weakest can express that resistance. It was easy to detest hateful, violent, brutish Germans, but the gentlemanly types represent an insidious threat that must also be resisted. The point was to show Occupied France that no matter how congenial the occupiers might seem in the early stages, they were invaders who did not share the same culture and values. “Vercors” chose to characterise the German officer billeted in a French home as a handsome, aristocratic, sophisticated and genial man, respectful of French culture and traditions. The Introductions make the significance of this short story clear. The Silence of the Sea (27 pages), translation by Cyril Connolly.La Silence de la mer (30 pages, including footnotes).Literary Introduction, by James W Brown.Historical Introduction, by Lawrence D Stokes.Preface and Acknowledgements, by James W Brown.I read it in French in a bilingual edition that came with additional features: ![]() The Silence of the Sea is a novel of the French Resistance, written and published underground during the German Occupation. This extraordinary story came my way via a mention of it in Caroline Moorehead’s A Train in Winter. ![]()
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