When searching for books for French lessons, one quickly encounters talk of prosaic expressions, of 'complete works' or 'competencies'. Pedagogical and didactic intentions tend to lean towards cultural studies or morally upright aims, but there is also this darker fascination with the abysses of puberty and adolescence, where even a teacher can lose their superior distance and become obsessed. The novel belongs to this category. BelhazarThe opening motto of Thomas Wolfe's coming-of-age novel Look homeward, Angel, French The Exiled Angel, is based on Eugene Gant, an autobiographically tinged adolescent figure in a difficult family, and he is “a ghost to himself as a stranger (…), who is as lonely in his soul as in the world”. 1
Jérôme Chantreau, writing as a teacher, uses fictional form to examine a real-life death in 2013: that of his student Antoine-Bélhazar Jaouen in the Basque Country. Unlike Wolfe, Chantreau doesn't aim to create a social commentary on contemporary society through the young protagonist, but instead focuses on the titular dead student. Bélhazar dies at the age of 18 after a police check; his death is publicly declared a suicide. He is illegally carrying a weapon, and during a brawl among drunks, he fires into the air. He is later arrested by a group of gendarmes. Then a shot rings out, resulting in an unexplained death. The subject matter is not fictional, but it unfolds with the dramatic intensity of a blockbuster film: the lawyers the parents hire meet tragic ends—the first by suicide in 2013, the second later in the Bataclan attack. One of the three police officers also dies. What connection can a novel make here, what meaning can it find?
Je dis que tout est vrai. This detail, the element of the puzzle that is retrouvé, is visible, is tenu in the mains. La seule chose que l'on peut m'opposer, c'est d'avoir tendu un fil entre ces éléments. (…) Now you can see in the life of Bélhazar a succession of coincidences. On peut dire qu'il n'y aucun lien entre ces faits, que tout est hasard. Moi-même, je crois aux hazards et je me méfie du Destin. Je pense que les choses qui arrivent dépendent d'une mathématique infiniment puissante, qui fait surgir les événements comme les boules du Loto. Mais je trouve que Bélhazar gagnait bien souvent. Je dis qu'il ya des hasards qui méritent qu'on les regarde de plus près. La lecture que j'en fais, le roman que j'en tire, je veux bien qu'on me dise que c'est n'importe quoi, mais tout est vrai.
Jérôme Chantreau, Belhazar
I say that everything is true. Every detail, every piece of the puzzle I've found, I've seen, I've held in my hands. The only thing that can be said against me is that I've strung a thread between these elements. (...) In Belhazar's life, we can observe a series of coincidences. One can say that there's no connection between these facts, that it's all coincidence. I myself believe in coincidence and distrust fate. I believe that the things that happen depend on an infinitely powerful mathematics that makes events seem like lottery balls. But I find that Belhazar often won the game. I say that there are coincidences that deserve closer examination. This reading I'm doing, the novel I'm writing from it—if people tell me it's nonsense, I don't care, but it's all true.
Belhazar It is a research novel; it is a very individual portrait of an adolescent by the teacher who witnessed how the student lived in his own world: Olivia de Lamberterie In her review, she characterizes the protagonist as a mysterious and fascinating figure: “Il est de ces êtres qu'on n'oublie pas, mèche noire d'Captain Harlock, pardessus de mousquetaire, bottes militaires, mais surtout un esprit en roue libre, des préoccupations ni de son âge ni de son époque - la Première Guerre mondiale, la peinture, les jeux, le goût de l'ailleurs -, il ya du Rimbaud dans l'air de ce voyant." 2 Bordering on dark legend and Künstlerroman, the teacher gathers clues, for example from the distraught mother Armelle, who remains convinced it couldn't have been suicide, and from the quieter ex-partner Yann. They have succumbed to the young man's enigmatic charisma.
Tu étais l'un de ces enfants dont l'acuité intellectuelle peut mettre mal à l'aise les adultses. (…)
Tu es le Regardeur de soleils, celui qui boit la lumière sans se brûler les yeux, le Petit Diderot, encyclopédiste de douze ans, sachant tout et ne répondant rien, tu es l'Arpenteur, qui trace en marchant la carte d'un monde invisible, le garçon aux cheveux de jais qui Donne à ses amis le courage d'être eux-mêmes. Tu es l'adolescent qui ne dit pas bonjour, mais offre des fleurs, les mange et recrache par le pinceau des terres inconnues, le gamin à l'intérieur duquel survit l'âme d'un Poilu de 1914. Tu es le maître du lapin blanc, devant qui les mensonges s'effondrent.
Jérôme Chantreau, Belhazar
You were one of those children whose intellectual acuity could embarrass adults. (...)
You are the sun-gazer, drinking in the light without burning your eyes, the little Diderot, the twelve-year-old encyclopedist who knows everything and has no answer to anything, you are the surveyor who walks the map of an invisible world, the boy with the smooth hair who gives his friends the courage to be themselves. You are the teenager who doesn't greet but offers flowers, eats them, and spits out unknown lands with his paintbrush, the boy in whom the soul of a front-line soldier from 1914 lives on. You are the master of the white rabbit, before which lies crumble.
Is it a book for French lessons? It's at least also a book about their disruption, as when the mother and teacher discuss the son's exceptional talent. The highly gifted child, whom one finds in Belhazar As can be seen, the school system is reaching its limits, and the teacher-author also experiences the period of his writing as a time of disintegration: the end of his own relationship, estrangement from his publisher, the loss of his home, an existential crisis. The investigation into the dead student, this "banished angel," brings numerous surprises to light; it is also a book about his own fear, written in the first person.
Notre dernier rendez-vous a eté memorable.
(...)
Le dernier conseil de classe approchait. Elle a commencé à parler d'un sound ferme, comme si elle avait déjà acté sa victoire. Elle a déballé sur la table des bulletins et des devoirs de son fils. Ciphers à l'appui, elle voulait me montrer à quel point j'avais été incapable d'obtenir le moindre progrès chez Bélhazar. Les aides pedagogiques que j'avais mises en place n'avaient produit aucun effet. Je fendais mollement, quoique persuadé de mon bon droit. Je savais que les hauts potentiels ne réussissent pas toujours. À l'époque, on les appelait encore les "surdoués". C'était n'importe quoi. Que pouvais-je faire? Un examen pour lui tout seul ? Do you have any intelligence that can be used in its capacity? Is it original? Parfaits! Ils voudraient tous être des genies, des Rimbaud. Mais Rimbaud, à douze ans, écrivait en Grec. What is this intelligence that is not potential, what is the QI code in the graph suite, and what is the express null part? Cela aurait été tellement plus simple que Bélhazar accepte, une fois au moins, de jouer le jeu. Cela aurait été tellement plus simple qu'il se décide à entrer dans mes cases.
Jérôme Chantreau, Belhazar
Our last meeting was memorable.
(...)
The final class meeting was approaching. She began speaking in a firm tone, as if she had already declared victory. She unpacked her son's report cards and homework on the table. She wanted to show me that I hadn't been able to make any progress with Belhazar. The teaching aids I had used had been ineffective. I had defended myself weakly, even though I was convinced I was right. I knew that high potentials weren't always successful. Back then, they were still called "gifted." That was all nonsense. What could I do? An exam for him alone? I have no problem with him being intelligent, but what was stopping him from using his abilities? Was he original? Perfect! They all want to be geniuses, Rimbauds. But Rimbaud was already writing in Greek at twelve. What kind of intelligence is this that is only potential, that is only an IQ score following a graph, and that we never see expressed anywhere? It would have been so much easier if Belhazar had at least agreed to play the game once. It would have been so much easier if he had decided to fit into my categories.
This article is written in German and can be found at https://rentree.de. Automatic translations into English and French are available. English, French.
Notes- « … in ses douloureuses et sombres entrailles un étranger avait été porté à la vie, nourri d'éternité par des messages perdus, un étranger qui serait à lui-même son propre fantôme, qui hanterait sa propre demeure ; You're in your family, you're in the world. Ô perdu! »>>>
- "He is one of those people you don't forget: the Albator's black lock of hair, the musketeer's coat, the military boots, but above all a free spirit who is neither suited to his age nor his time – the First World War, the painting, the games, the preference for the unconventional – there is something of Rimbaud in the air about this visionary.">>>
