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Julien Green's Troubled American: A Fictionalized Self-Portrait

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Byron R. Libhart
Byron R. Libhart*
Affiliation:
Wilbur Wright College, Chicago, Illinois
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Abstract

Julien Green's locating numerous fictional works (novels, stories, one play) in America has not been considered particularly significant, as these works share with those set in France common themes, moods, and character types which seem to transcend the specific national settings. In those works set in America there is, however, an unusually close relationship between the personal tragedies and the national milieu, certain problems of American life seeming to engender the dilemmas that lead the characters to tragic outcomes. Yet these circumstances are not so typically “American” as suggestive of problems the French novelist himself, born in France of American parents, encountered during the three crucial years he reluctantly spent in America following World War t. His lengthy Journal and some recent autobiographical works reveal that the principal dilemmas that torment his American characters relate to those which the unusual circumstances of his double nationality created for him: problems centering about the matters of national belonging and personal morality (relative to American puritanism). Green's American heroes are primarily transformations of himself, created partly to purge himself of his own tragic inclinations, partly to recapture a period of his life which, though fundamentally painful, had overtones of sweetness because of his first sexual awakening.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 89 , Issue 2 , March 1974 , pp. 341 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1974

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References

Note 1 in page 352 Julien Green, personnalité et création romanesque (Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1968), p. 153.

Note 2 in page 352 La Littérature et le spirituel, 2 vols. (Paris: Aubier, 1960), ii, 150.

Note 3 in page 352 L'Existence dans les romans de Julien Green (Rome: Signorelli, 1954), p. 16.

Note 4 in page 352 Julien Green (Paris: Editions Universitaires, 1957), p. 65.

Note 5 in page 352 (Paris: Pion, 1926), p. 20.

Note 6 in page 352 Journal l, 1928–1934 (Paris: Pion, 1938), pp. 236, 247. The fragment of this novel is given in the same volume, pp. 247–95. Green's extensive Journal has appeared originally in eight volumes, all published in Paris by Plon, the others being: Journal ii, 1935–1939 (1939), Journal iii, 1940–1943 (1946), Journal IV, 1943–1945 (1949), Journal v, 1946–1950 (1951), Journal VI, 1950–1954 (1955), Journal vii, 1955–1958 (1958), Journal viii, 1958–1967 (1967). Subsequent references to the Journal in this work will merely give the volume number and the page number in parentheses within the text itself.

Note 7 in page 352 Although J. Uijterwaal has summed up Green's characters, male and female, as being generally unattractive physically (pp. 156–58), exceptional physical attractiveness is in fact one of the outstanding—and dramatically significant—traits of certain of the principal male protagonists in this novel as well as in Sud and Chaque homme dans sa nuit.

Note 8 in page 352 Frédéric Lefèvre, “Une Heure avec Julien Green,” Nouvelles Littéraires, 16 avril 1927, pp. 1–2.

Note 9 in page 352 Terre lointaine (Paris: Grasset, 1966), p. 256. Subsequent references to this very important work will be identified by the abbreviation Terre, followed by the page number, in parentheses within the text itself.

Note 10 in page 352 (New York: Harper, 1942), pp. 25–28.

Note 11 in page 352 (Paris: Grasset, 1963), p. 39. Subsequent references to this biok will be identified by the abbreviation Partir in parentheses within the text.

Note 12 in page 352 (Paris: Grasset, 1964), pp. 255–56. Subsequent references to this autobiography will be identified by the abbreviation Mille in parentheses within the text.

Note 13 in page 352 Green stresses the purely escapist motivation—“pour essayer de créer un monde imaginaire où j'échapperais au tourment perpétuel des sens”—behind these first attempts at creative writing (Terre, p. 276); and, although they seem to bear almost no connection with his later, professional efforts (starting with Christine in 1924), it is interesting to observe that these initial literary efforts perhaps give the clue to his basic inspiration.

Note 14 in page 352 It was not until his next trip to America in 1933, however, that Green really fell under the spell of the somewhat savage landscape of the South. See Journal l, p. 184.

Note 15 in page 352 This peculiarly American attitude is perhaps best summed up by the character David Laird in Mdira, who says of fellow student Simon Demuth's homosexuality: “… n'en parlons jamais. Ce sont des choses dont il ne faut jamais parler”—thus leaving Joseph Day completely in the dark as to what Simon's affliction actually is (Paris: Plon, 1950, p. 110).

Note 16 in page 352 Julien Green and the Thorn of Puritanism (New York: King's Crown Press, 1955), p. 138.

Note 17 in page 352 (Paris: Plon, 1953), pp. 51, 71, 195.

Note 18 in page 352 Just as the matter of denominational choice did not seriously recur for Green during his first stay in America, it is rarely a problem for his American characters—perhaps only Wilfred Ingram experiences some self-consciousness about being a Catholic in a predominantly Protestant family. Joseph Day's considering fellow student Terence MacFadden “perdu” because he is a Roman Catholic is more an illustration of the former's problem (intolerance) than the latter's (Mdira, pp. 164–65).

Note 19 in page 352 This exchange between Joseph and David is one of Green's more direct expositions of this most basic of moral problems for him, the two characters embodying very clearly the extremist and the moderate points of view respectively (Mdira, pp. 165–70). This matter of trying to achieve a balance between the two sides of man's nature recalls Gide's treatment of the same dilemma: Joseph's suffering is not unlike Alissa's in LaPorte étroite,and if she has a Jéröme, he has a David—both levelheaded friends offering sound advice that is ultimately unheeded because of a spiritual passion that cannot be contained.

Note 20 in page 352 Freddie's initial expression of his alarm leaves no doubt that Green is here recalling his own exaggerated fear of venereal disease as a boy: “Je ne veux pas devenir fou. Un de mes oncles a attrapé une maladie et il est mort fou cinq ans plus tard” (Chaque homme dans sa nuit, Paris: Plon, 1960, p. 194).

Note 21 in page 352 There were seven such literary “returns” in all: 1924, 1925, 1926, 1934, 1950, 1953, and 1960.