NOTES
1 Russian soldiers fought on the French front during World War I, but their presence in Saint-Brieuc (and in the novel) is somewhat mysterious. In 1917, Russian soldiers who were openly sympathetic to the Soviets were removed from the front to avoid sparking more rebellions in the French army after the mutinies. There could have been Russian soldiers passing through Saint-Brieuc that year, but it’s also possible that Guilloux included them to make a connection to Dostoevsky and the Russian Revolution. Guilloux was a great admirer of Dostoevsky and wrote about his work in his letters and notebooks.
2 The name Clopper comes from the French “cloporte,” a derogatory nickname for a building’s caretaker or concierge. Cloporte also means wood-louse or pill bug—insects that live under bark and curl into a ball when touched.
3 The phrase may refer to La Fontaine’s fable of the dog and the wolf. The dog gets plenty of food and affection and tries to sell the wolf on his well-kept life. The wolf is convinced, until he sees the mark on the dog’s neck left by his collar. Then he refuses to give up his freedom.
4 Enemy aliens were held in the prison in Saint-Brieuc during the war. There were also several internment camps for civilian prisoners—one called Jouget in an old factory to the west of Saint-Brieuc, in Plérin, and one in Saint-Ilan. German and Austro-Hungarian soldiers and civilians were imprisoned for the duration of the war, along with other foreigners who were considered a danger to national security.
5 The philosopher Nabucet mentions is Baruch Spinoza, who characterized sadness as a diminishment of the self.
6 Romain Rolland’s Au-dessus de la mêlée (Above the Battle) was published in 1914 in Le Journal de Genève. He was an anti-nationalist writer whose pacifism would have angered Nabucet.
7 In the allied press, “Maximalist” was a term for political movements associated with the Bolsheviks. A radical wing of the Russian socialist-revolutionary party shared the same name.
8 In the spring of 1917, a group of soldiers from northern Vietnam (Faurel calls them “Tonkinese”) supposedly fired on a crowd of antiwar demonstrators and soldiers’ wives at Saint-Ouen. They were under orders to suppress the rebellion.
9 Madame and Monsieur Prudhomme were two late-nineteenth-century cartoon characters, created by Henri Monnier to satirize the Parisian bourgeoisie.
10 Bouclo and Pécuporte/Boucri and Pécupure. With these names Cri-pure plays on his name and the title of Flaubert’s satirical unfinished novel Bouvard and Pécuchet. Flaubert’s novel was originally titled Les deux cloportes (the two woodlice).
11 Punchinello’s secrets are false secrets meant to be spread. Punchinello, a clever hunchback, makes up a lie about a nobleman of the court and tells it to others on the condition that they will swear to secrecy. This vow of silence ensures that everyone repeats the gossip.
12 The Sedantag was a German holiday marking September 2, 1870, the day Napoleon III and 83,000 French troops were taken prisoner after the battle of Sedan.
13 A reference to a passage from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. “And if the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price. I do not, finally, want the mother to embrace the tormentor who let his dogs tear her son to pieces! . . . Besides, they have put too high a price on harmony; we can’t afford to pay so much for admission. And therefore I hasten to return my ticket. And it is my duty, if only as an honest man, to return it as far ahead of time as possible. Which is what I am doing. It’s not that I don’t accept God, Alyosha, I just most respectfully return him the ticket” (translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2002). Guilloux cites the 1888 French translation by Ely Halpérine-Kaminsky and Charles Morice: “Je rends mon billet.”
14 In Madame Bovary, Flaubert’s tax collector, Binet, is so busy working on his carving of a table leg, hollowing out circles within circles, that he can’t hear Emma asking for an extension on her taxes.
15 The man in the square is singing La chanson de Lorette. The anonymous song appeared after the bloody battles surrounding Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, in Artois, and it circulated during the 1917 mutinies. Other battles were added as the war progressed. The lyrics were finally published by ex-artillery captain and militant socialist Paul Vaillant-Couturier in 1919.
16 The riot which occurs on the preceding pages is modeled on a real demonstration that took place at the Saint-Brieuc train station on July 10, 1917. In the actual event, a few “Permissionaires” (men on leave) protested being sent back to the front.
17 An allusion to the words the famous French military commander Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne, Vicomte de Turenne (1611–75) reportedly said to himself when he was heading into battle. The whole quote reads: “You tremble, carcass? You would tremble a lot more if you knew where I am taking you.” Nietzsche used this quote for an epigraph in The Gay Science. Cripure refers to Nietzsche throughout the book, exhibiting an admiration for the German philosopher that would have been dangerous in the nationalist climate of the lycée.
18 The soldiers who have been “officially reported missing” presented something of a mystery, since the Marchandeaus have been notified that their son is about to be executed. Through Alice Kaplan, I was able to get a response from French military historian General André Bach. According to the documentation of the “fusilés” (the executed mutineers), the family would not have been notified of their son’s execution either before or after it happened. Both the family and the local authorities in charge of notifying them received the standard notice, which did not state how the soldier had died. In fact, widows only learned of their husbands’ executions when they failed to receive the standard pensions that were given starting in February 1915 to widows and orphans of men killed in combat, under “honorable” circumstances.
19 Here, the Prudhomme alluded to is Sully Prudhomme (1839–1907), the writer of sentimental poems and essays on philosophy.
20 A famous song about Breton sailors by Théodore Botrel (1868–1925). Botrel was a Breton who spoke Gallo, but the majority of his songs are in French.
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