Penguin Island by Anatole France

Satire in the tradition of Voltaire

The French writer Anatole France (1884–1924) won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Literature. His novel Penguin Island, published in 1909, is probably his best-remembered work, at least in the minds of English-language readers. In this comedic and critical novel, France establishes himself as the inheritor of Voltaire’s role as the great satirist of French literature.

Some time in the Middle Ages, a Breton monk named Maël (later Saint Maël) decides it is his mission to sail forth to unknown lands and spread the gospel of Christ to the savages. His boat drifts way off course, and he ends up in the Southern Hemisphere, where he lands on an island full of penguins. At 99 years of age, with failing sight and hearing, Maël thinks the penguins are an Indigenous race of people, so he baptizes them into the Catholic Church. The only witnesses to this sacrament are God and His angels in Heaven, who debate how to rectify Maël’s erroneous baptism of animals. God solves the problem by turning all the penguins into humans, albeit naked uncivilized humans. Maël then tows the Penguins back to Europe, where they establish a new nation in the area of what we know as France.

Spanning centuries in the history of the Penguins, the book is divided into eight related stories taking place in eight different time periods. The early chapters of the book, in which the newly humanized penguins are learning the ways of civilization, are the most funny and entertaining. France seems to be lampooning some of the Edenic noble-savage pipe dreams of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, Penguin Island doesn’t aim its mocking barbs at just one target but rather scatters its shots to make different satirical points in every chapter. In this book everything is game for absurdity and worthy of tongue-in-cheek scorn.

After a while, the fact that these people started out as animals becomes irrelevant. The Penguins of Penguinia are simply another nation of humans, often a surrogate for the French. Some targets for spoofing include religion in general and the Catholic Church in particular, capitalism, feudalism, gender roles and sexual inequality, various factions in the modern French political landscape, and even Dante’s Divine Comedy. The most extensive parody is directed at the Dreyfus affair of the 1890s, in which a character named Pyrot is a substitute for Dreyfus and Columban for Emile Zola. To a French reader, the characters and events being satirized in this book would be readily decipherable, but it’s not always easy for an American reader to recognize all the players of every political plot. That doesn’t become too much of an obstacle, however, because enough of the humor and derision is universal to human nature and society, not French-specific.

The early formative years of the Penguins are laugh-out-loud silly at times, but the latter, more modern episodes of their history take the form of more wryly stated indictments of hypocrisy. There is also a science fiction element to the book as the final chapters take place in the future. After all the satire and cynicism, France ends the book on a surprisingly inspirational note of hope. Penguin Island is a work of great insight and much wisdom, but perhaps presented too cleverly for the non-French reader to grasp all in the first read. I think I’ll give it a second look, eventually, because it seems worthy of further scrutiny.   

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard by Anatole France

An old scholar finds there’s more to life than books

The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard, published in 1881, was French author Anatole France’s debut novel, after having previously established his literary reputation as a poet. I have seen several websites that classify this novel as “detective fiction.” It is certainly not that, and despite its title, not crime fiction by any means. It is, however, a very entertaining read. The novel won a prize from the Académie Française the year it was published, and the author would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921.

Sylvestre Bonnard is a 62-year-old historian and philologist whose specific area of expertise is the medieval history of the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Bonnard is a bachelor, lives with a housekeeper and his cat Hamilcar, and spends much of his time in his extensive library, which he has dubbed the City of Books. Browsing through a catalogue of manuscripts, he discovers a mention of the existence of a previously unknown book that would be integral to his studies, one that contains the legends of various saints as written by a 14th century clerk at Saint-Germain-des-Pres. Desiring this volume for his collection, he obsessively sets about hunting for it.

With this beginning, Bonnard calls to mind the scholarly bookworm heroes of novels by Umberto Eco like Foucault’s Pendulum or The Name of the Rose. The plot takes a different turn, however, when, over the course of his bibliophilic pursuits, Bonnard indirectly reconnects with a lost love, a coincidental event that changes the course of his life. Formerly quite set in his ways, Bonnard opens his heart to receive a friend in need. From here, the story turns into a touching story of the platonic relationship between an aged man and a young woman. Though that sounds like the plot description of many a European film, the story of The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard is refreshingly distinctive and unpredictable. France causes the reader to care about his characters through judiciously paced moments of lighthearted humor, suspenseful distress, and heartwarming love, without the narrative ever becoming overly sentimental or sappy.

The most enjoyable aspect of the book is hearing the story told through the unique voice of its narrator, Sylvestre Bonnard himself. The reader gets a glimpse inside the mind of this aged scholar who is in some respects an intellectual giant crossed with an emotional child. At a young age, Bonnard turned away from matters of the heart to sequester himself among his dusty old books, yet among the cobwebs of his soul there still beats a warm heart of gold. Through Bonnard’s voice, France tells his tale with humor and poignancy. To be receptive to Bonnard’s charm, however, the reader should really have an interest in old books, libraries, and arcane areas of study, otherwise the old man’s digressions on books and history might not appeal to you. I for one, however, enjoyed all my time spent amid Bonnard’s City of Books, and at times I envied his quasi-monastic lifestyle.

Anatole France is known for satire and social criticism, but that’s not really evident here, other than he may be gently poking fun at the academicians of the Académie Française, of which Bonnard is a member. France himself would join that club 15 years later. France clearly has an affection for his character, and it rubs off on the reader. The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard is a very well-written and delightfully engaging novel. My only other experience with Anatole France has been his 1912 novel The Gods are Athirst, which I did not enjoy as much, but after reading this book I will certainly delve further into his fiction.
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The Gods Are Athirst by Anatole France

Life under The Terror
The Gods Are Athirst, a novel by Nobel Prize winner Anatole France, was originally published in 1912 under the French title of Les dieux ont soif. The story takes place from 1793 to 1794, during the period of the French Revolution known as The Terror. Évariste Gamelin is a young painter actively involved in the local political activities of his neighborhood. His enthusiasm for the Republican cause is duly noted, and he is appointed to the office of juror on the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Jacobins are rounding up former aristocrats and anyone else who might sympathize with the former king. These offenders are corralled into the courtroom for cursory show trials, wherein Gamelin and his fellow jurors pass judgment upon them, the usual sentence being death by guillotine. Gamelin is fiercely devoted to the Republican doctrine and practically worships the Jacobin leaders Marat and Robespierre. As his judicial office slowly transforms him from an earnest, likeable young man to a cold, merciless executioner, his family and friends begin to fear him, wary they might be next on the chopping block.

I usually think of France as a satirist, but in this historical novel he’s deadly serious. He does, however, contrast Gamelin with the character of Maurice Brotteaux, a former aristocrat who looks askance at the Republican rhetoric with an irreverent viewpoint and humorous sense of the ironic that one might expect from the author. France wrote this book for an audience of his fellow Frenchman, so the reader is expected to come armed with a prior knowledge of the Revolution. For the American reader, it can be tough going at times. France defines his characters by listing off the surnames of the politicians, philosophers, and artists they subscribe to, which can result in passages that read like a Parisian phone book. It’s not quite as confusing as Victor Hugo’s novel of the Revolution, Ninety-Three, but it’s neither as exciting nor as inspiring either. France’s takes on the period is more realistic and less heroic than Hugo’s, yet The Gods Are Athirst still presents a romantic tale that somewhat resembles a tragic opera.

France does a good job of evoking the atmosphere of paranoia and persecution that must have pervaded Paris under the Terror. Beyond its conveyance of time and place, however, the story is less than satisfying. It’s hard to become emotionally involved in a novel when you don’t care for the hero, and from early on it becomes difficult to root for Gamelin. The supporting cast, with the possible exception of Brotteaux, are underdeveloped. They all sort of orbit around Gamelin, but none of them ever steps up to challenge him as the focus of attention. There are some compelling moments around the book’s mid-point, but the first half crawls, and the ending is a foregone conclusion.

While the dramatic potential of the French Revolution is undeniable, The Gods Are Athirst never takes full advantage of that potential. The result is more educational than moving. Ultimately this is one historical novel where the history outshines the novel.
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Stories by Foreign Authors: French I by Alphonse Daudet, et al.

Vive la France!

Guy de Maupassant

In the 19th century, the greatest literature in the world was being produced in France. English-language readers may have been more familiar with British writers, but in terms of stylistic innovation and storytelling skill the French were really in a league of their own. When Charles Scribner’s Sons published their ten-volume series Stories by Foreign Authors in 1898, they devoted three whole volumes to French fiction. This book, subtitled French I, is the first volume of the series.

Of the six stories included here, only one of them misses its mark. “Uncle and Nephew” by Edmond About is about a man in danger of losing his sanity because he can’t summon the courage to propose to the woman he loves. It starts out as a mildly fun romantic comedy and eventually devolves into a confusing and silly farce. Thankfully, the other five stories are much better.

Alphonse Daudet’s “The Siege of Berlin,” takes place during the Franco-Prussian War. If you know anything about that war, you know that there was no siege of Berlin, but all is explained in this touching story of patriotism. “The Juggler of Notre Dame” by Nobel Prize-winner Anatole France, is a funny, satirical tale of a street performer who finds religion. In Paul Bourget’s “Another Gambler,” Claude mourns the loss of his black-sheep cousin Lucien, and fears he may have inadvertently been the cause of the dead man’s downward spiral. It’s a very moving and compassionate study of childhood regrets. These three selections are all strong, but it’s the two excellent stories that finish off the book that really make this collection worth reading.

“The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant is a masterpiece. Madame Loisel is a beautiful and charming woman, but born poor and married poor. She bemoans her station in life, longing for the excitement and luxury of the wealthy class. When her husband, a clerk, is invited to a ball, she seizes the opportunity for one night of lush life, but how much will this one enchanted evening cost the couple in the end? It’s a seemingly simple story that delivers a moral message, but it’s profoundly deep and insightful in its examination of wealth, class, and ambition.

Another great story, Victorien Sardou’s “The Black Pearl,” is set in Amsterdam, for no apparent reason. To prove his enduring love to the woman he wishes to marry, Balthazar must find a preserved flower that he saved from their meeting years before. When he returns home to retrieve the beloved talisman, however, he finds that his desk has been ransacked and his valuables stolen. With the help of his scientifically minded friend Cornelius, and a zealous detective named M. Tricamp, Balthazar searches for the solution to this puzzling case. It’s a great mystery, worthy of Sherlock Holmes. The startling conclusion is truly a surprise, though to some extent it does defy belief. Some confusing passages and overly melodramatic moments keep this story from being perfect, but it’s still a great read. Too bad Sardou didn’t write a whole series of detective novels with these characters; I would certainly read them.

This is one of the best volumes in the Stories by Foreign Authors series and a great collection for fans of classic French literature. These authors may not be as famous as Hugo, Zola, Balzac, or Dumas, but after reading the pieces included here you’ll certainly want to seek out more of their work.

For some reason, neither Amazon nor Project Gutenberg offers ebook files of the French volumes in the Stories by Foreign Authors series, but they can be found for free at Wikisource.

Stories in this collection

The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet 

The Juggler of Notre Dame by Anatole France 

Uncle and Nephew by Edmond About 

Another Gambler by Paul Bourget 

The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant 

The Black Pearl by Victorien Sardou

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