Voyages

I confess I had never heard of Jorge Semprun, a prominent Spanish writer, politician and former government minister, until I picked up The Long Voyage (Le grand voyage), an autobiographical novel based upon his experiences in the Second World War. The voyage itself, a train journey, is the framework around which this astonishing narrative is constructed, as the author moves back through memory to times past and times future, always returning to a times present, a cattle truck packed full of men, a present which itself is only a memory. The Long Voyage is also available under the English title of The Cattle Truck which seems to me to miss the whole point.

I bought this book because I have a particular interest in Holocaust literature; it was simply another one in a series. But the reading was not quite as I expected. Translated from the original Spanish, the prose is simple, undemonstrative and superbly crafted. Still, this is no simple tale. In a sense there is no beginning, just as there is no end: the novel’s fractured chronology sifts from one event to another, back and forward across memory and time. The immediate voyage is a journey to Buchenwald; the longer voyage is a passage through fragments of the author’s life, a cross-section of seventeen years.

Manuel, as Semprun appears in the novel, is a Spanish communist who fled the country after the victory of Franco. He is later involved in the French Resistance against the Nazis under the code name of Gerard. In 1943 he was captured. He is imprisoned first in France before being transported with over a hundred other men to a destination ‘near Weimar.’ The truck is so crowded that the men are unable to sit down, let alone move around. The horror is compounded by the slowness of the journey, through five days and nights, a journey without food or water, a journey where even air is a premium.

During this time Manuel’s closest companion is a man only ever identified as the ‘guy from Semur.’ He seems strong and in control; he seems like a survivor. It comes as a jolt, then, when Manuel, shifting between events, simply says that the ‘guy from Semur’ was ‘left behind’ in the boxcar, that it was there that his particular journey came to an end. Later in the narrative we discover that he died on the last night, as the train approached Buchenwald, his final words to Manuel being “Don’t leave me pal.”

Yes, a terrible journey, but there are journeys even more terrible. One of Manuel’s experiences was witnessing the outcome of one that a group of Jews were made to take, even more packed and in the middle of winter. When their car is opened they are found mostly dead, either of hunger or of cold. The car is unloaded as if wood was being transported. And there are more terrible ends than that of the ‘guy from Semur’; the end of a group of Jewish children, beaten and torn apart by the SS and their dogs.

There are other conversations in this tapestry in time other than that with the ‘guy from Semur; conversations in the past and conversations in the future; in Spain, in Holland, in France and again in France. In one, after the liberation in April 1945, when the prisoners can wander around freely, Manuel visits an old lady whose house overlooks the camp, with a clear view of the crematoria. He asks her if she could see the flames in the evening, a rhetorical question, because there is no doubt that she could. Clearly frightened the woman tells Manuel that both her sons were killed in the war;

She throws the bodies of her two sons at me for fodder, she takes refuge behind the lifeless bodies of her two sons killed in the war. She’s trying to make me believe that all suffering is the same, that the dead all weigh the same. As a counter-balance for all my dead friends, for the weight of their ashes, she’s offering the weight of her own suffering. But the dead don’t all weigh the same, of course. No corpse of the German army will ever weight as much as the smoke of one of my dead companions.

“I hope so, I really hope they’re dead”…

I haven’t the strength to tell her that I understand her sorry, that I respect her sorrow. I understand that for her the death of both of her sons is the most atrocious, the most unjust thing in the world. I haven’t the strength to tell her that I understand her sorrow, but I’m happy that the German Army is wiped out. I haven’t the strength to tell her all that.

There is power in words, in the strength to use words; there is power in this remarkable book.

Ana's Favourite Fictions

In no particular order, and confining myself to one book for each author (and restricting myself also to twenty out of hundreds), these are as follows;

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens. A wonderful book with one of my favourite minor charcters, Lavvy the Irrepressible. Like her 'I don't care whether I am a Minx, or a Sphinx.'

Emma by Jane Austen. I adore Jane Austen, but I did say I was confining myself to one book for each author, so Emma it is. Again, she is a lot like me, and I once almost fell into the same trap!

Ulysses by James Joyce. What can I say about this book other than it's certainly the greatest Irish novel, and possibly one of the greatest books ever written. Joyce's insight into the history, culture and psychology of his country is quite breathtaking. If Ireland disappeared off the face of the earth I think it might be possible, in large measure, to recreate it on the basis of the information in Ulysses. My favourite section is Oxen of the Sun, where the author explores the differing modes of literary discourse.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham. The very best childrens' book. I read it when I was seven, and fell in love with the Great God Pan, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. Ah, the wonderful, life-enhancing Holly Golightly, the freest of free spirits. I identify with her more than any other female in fiction.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I read this over a wet and feverish weekend as an undergraduate at Cambridge, and it filled my mind with all sorts of alarming thoughts, Napoleonic in intensity!

Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. A tremendous tour de force, a great whirlwind of images, impressions and ideas. In my view the best English novel of the last century.

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. Most of Hemingway's work leaves me quite cold, but not this little book. It was one of the set books in my forth form English class. Most of the girls thought it silly, but I, being a lover of Greek and Roman myths and legends, saw in it some of the great eternal values. A book that transforms the mundane.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. The greatest of all the Brontë books. I still cannot bring the story of Cathy and Heathcliff to mind without feeling the tears welling up.

Victoria by Knut Hamsun. I love all of Hamsun's early work, but Victoria edges slightly ahead of Hunger and Pan.

Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. His 'fictions' are inspired works of genius.

Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling. I do not give a damm about the imperialism, Kipling is one of the great craftsmen of English prose, now sadly underestimated.

Journey the the End of the Night by Celine. Another 'politically incorrect' choice, but a great book.

The Castle by Franz Kafka. Who could ever forget Arthur and Jeremiah?

Short Stories by Guy de Maupassant. All of them, but The Necklace in particular. The irony is heart-breaking.

Animal Farm by George Orwell. Orwell is a far better essayist than novelist, but Animal Farm deserves a place amongst the very best of English political satire.

The Quiet American by Graham Greene. Every American President should be made to read this before taking office.

Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier. A little book of outstanding lyrical beauty.

The Last of the Just by André Schwarz-Bart. A book that deserves to be far better known. The last few pages tore my heart out.

La Bas by Joris-Karl Huysmans. Satanism in La Belle Epoch! Worth reading for the insight it gives into the career of Gilles de Rais, all the more horrifying because he really lived.

Pan in Anger

In reading about the life of Aleister Crowley I noted with interest that he believed that the Great God Pan is the only one of the ancient deities to have made it into the modern world, which corresponds exactly to my own view. It occurs to me, though, that there is another dimension of Pan that I have not properly explored. I know of Pan the Protector, the Piper at the Gates of Dawn, from The Wind in the Willows. I know of Pan as the elemental force of sexual passion from Knut Hamsun’s novel of the same name. But what of Pan angry; what of Pan alienated from humanity, as humanity is alienated from nature?

What immediately came to mind is Algernon Blackwood’s marvelous short story The Willows, where nature is actively hostile to a human presence. Remember the words of the Swede, the narrator’s companion as the threat closes around them,

There are forces close here that could kill a heard of elephants in a second as easily as you or I could squash a fly. Our only chance is to keep perfectly still. Our insignificance perhaps may save us.

The interesting encounter for me is that the encounter with the God angry is on an island in a river, just as Mole and Ratty encounter him benevolent in exactly the same circumstances. Nature is being tortured; Pan is angry with humanity. To anger the Great God is a mistake beyond all mistakes.