The Spanish war and generations

5 reading minutes

written by Diana-Alice Ramsauer · February 15, 2022 · 0 comment

We need more books like this. Not a page too long. Multiple reading levels. Fine, original narration. Descriptions we'd like to tag on our walls. Revolutionary enthusiasm. Madness. And a point. And yet they exist by Thierry Froger manages to tell the story of Jean Jaurès' assassin, the Spanish Civil War and the twists and turns of cultural heritage all at once, without shortcuts.

The stories, the chronology and what the author prefers to call «figures» are presented like ratatouille. Nothing follows. A multitude of characters speak, one after the other, without respecting anything except perhaps the rule of «one chapter, one point of view». We move from 1920 France to 21st-century Spain.^th century. From Jean Jaurès' funeral to Aragon's forehead. Pure anarchy. And it works.

Thierry Froger ties all these elements together to make an enjoyable, clear and stimulating read. Almost unbelievable.

They killed Jaurès

In the style of the film Babel (telling four different stories that eventually converge), the French author uses some thirty figures spread over a hundred years to tell a story that could be divided into three main categories: the murderer of Jean Jaurès, the Spanish war and generational memory.

Let's begin, then, with the life of Raoul Villain, the assassin of Jean Jaurès, acquitted on March 20, 1919 by a justice system in the throes of a nationalist awakening. The killer himself never takes the floor in the story. His story is told by Paul René Gauguin (of the painter's family), his one-time neighbor and the prison guard who watches over him while he awaits trial.

Léon Blum intervened to pay tribute to his dead socialist friend, as did the militant Ernest Poisson and his wife, both of whom were present at the funeral at the Café du Croissant in Paris. Those who don't know the ins and outs of this story will find themselves enlightened.

«Would you like me to tell you the difference between the working class and the bourgeois class? It's that the working class hates war collectively, but doesn't fear it individually, whereas capitalists, collectively, celebrate war, but dread it individually.»

This absent hero

But Thierry Froger's novel is above all about the Spanish Civil War. An anti-Franco struggle driven by the figure of Florentin Bordes, an anarchist who was involved in all the European rebellions. Comradeship, the fight for an ideal, disillusionment in the face of Russian Communist domination of the civil conflict, the role of men, but also of women, in this war. These are all themes that tell the story of this decisive interwar period.

The memory of Florentin Bordes' Spanish wrestling has endured through the ages. For And yet they exist is also the story of a passing of the baton between generations. The story flows over his daughters, who have little interest in the fate of this often absent father, busy saving the world... One of them (Yvonne) even proves to be in total opposition to this (falsely) modest hero figure.

«When she dared mention Aunt Yvonne to Grandpa Florentin, he invariably replied that we didn't talk about the Gaullists nie their brave wives in his house.»

Souvenirs, the real thing

On the contrary, Ariane, Florentin's granddaughter and the story's central figure, becomes the standard-bearer of the revolutionary flag. Passionate and crazy, she goes so far as to develop an obsession with the Spanish Civil War, becoming radically involved in memory of her grandfather. Finally, Rose, the great-granddaughter, grows up in the midst of these memories, fascinated and nourished by these stories... to the point of nausea. One character after another illuminates the lives of each.

«In the Bordes and Pierre families, political commitment has always been a way of knowing who we are. My maternal great-grandfather, Florentin Bordes, was a militant anarchist during the Spanish Civil War, a member of the Resistance and a libertarian. He's the family hero who can't be touched. His granddaughter, my mother Ariane, helped to keep his legend alive. She was a tireless transmitter of his chanson de geste, even if it meant leaving in the shadows what couldn't be verified.»

The story romanticized of the 1936 Civil War, passed down from generation to generation, is mixed with nuance. What really happened in this great historical kitchen? Thierry Froger, Rose Pierre Bordes and even we are beginning to doubt. Complexity as a synonym for beauty.

Write to the author: diana-alice.ramsauer@leregardlibre.com