Simon, Claude

Claude Simon

Considered one of the most important French authors of the twentieth century, Claude Simon (born 1913) won the Nobel Prize in 1985. Unlike many writers, Simon tried out a myriad of occupations before he wrote his first book and many of his works are based on his real-life experiences. Simon never tells a tale in a straightforward fashion; rather, he writes in the noveau roman style and dispenses with regular conformities of time to move forward and backward as he chooses. He has been considered one of the most essential writers of the French "nouveau roman" style that emerged after World War II and which includes such authors as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Michel Butor.

Born on October 10, 1913, in Tananarive, Madagascar, Simon was the son of a cavalry officer. His father was killed in World War I when Simon was not yet a year old, forcing Simon's mother to move the family to a relative's home in Roussillon. There, Simon attended public school and then went on to attend the Collége Stanislas in Paris where he received his B.A. He also went on to do postgraduate work at both Oxford and Cambridge Universities before returning home. To please his family, Simon then undertook naval career studies at the Lyceé Saint-Louis, but was soon expelled because of his lack of drive and disinterest. What he really wanted to do was study art, and after a bit of effort he managed to get his family to agree to allow him to explore his artistic side. Simon attended the André L'hôte Academy and for a time he was very happy. However, he soon tired of this too, when he realized he was not progressing as he wished. Believing himself to lack artistic aptitude, he gave these studies up—something he later regretted—although he learned just enough to create the drawings and collages he would include in his later literary work. Without a particular path to follow Simon spent some time traveling extensively throughout Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Greece.

Joined French Military

In the mid-1930s Simon joined the cavalry in the Dragoons at Luneville, and was also a volunteer soldier and gunrunner during the Spanish Civil War. He returned at the end of that war, in 1939, to take his place in the French Cavalry and joined the front lines during the early battles of World War II. He was almost killed at the Battle of Meuse in May of 1940, but was instead captured and interred in a German prison camp. This was a particularly significant experience for Simon as his capture took place on the same field of battle where his father had been killed years earlier. Simon was transferred to a prisoner-of-war camp in France in 1940, from which he escaped, and he took part in the French Resistance movement for the remainder of the war. Wartime seemed to bring out some of his creativity; Simon has recalled that during these years he spent his days painting and nights writing. It was at this time that he finished his first novel, Le tricheur (The Cheat), which was published in 1946.

Following the war Simon contracted tuberculosis and was bedridden for some time, with nothing to occupy his time but memory and vision, and this period is thought to have influenced his subsequent literary pursuits. Simon has even claimed that his inability to leave his bed enabled him to appreciate more fully the uncomplicated pleasures to be found in life, and he developed an ability to notice and talk about details that others might miss. This love for the minutiae of life led to his absorption with the microscope and the infinitesimal worlds visible through it. He spent quite some time with his microscope, and this fascination with the microscopic appears in many of his novels.

Joined French New Novelist Movement

After returning to good health Simon started writing, and soon found himself classed with a number of other young writers in the so-called French "New Novelist" style that emerged in the 1950s nouveau roman style of writing, in which traditional time dissolves. Simon experimented with reality from a myriad of distinct view points. He refused to force order on what he saw as the chaos underlying human existence, and instead allowed his style to reflect that chaos. His novels are not structured in a linear time line, but flash backward and forward in an accurate reproduction of the way the mind works. Simon had been a fan of proto-cubist painter Paul Cezanne since attending art school, and he attempted to imitate Cezanne's style of art in his writing. It is not surprising then, that critics have often noted visual effect in Simon's novels. In his 1957 novel Le vent (The Wind) Simon gave readers a further clue as to what his purpose for writing is: to reevaluate what is truly lasting by assessing what survives the fluctuations of modern history.

La route des Flandres (The Flanders Road), another noted novel by Simon, was published in 1960. Containing a version of Simon's own experiences of being captured after the Battle of Meuse, it is considered one of Simon's best novels. The themes of love and death pop up throughout the novel as the hero, Georges, recollects scenes from his past, flashing backward and forward in time in the best nouveau roman style. Georges appeared in several of Simon's novels, possibly because Georges is, in some way, representative of Simon himself.

In his 1981 novel Les Géorgiques (Georgics) Simon tells the story of his mother and father as well as their ancestors. Although this history is presented in straighforward fashion, Simon mixes tales from the far past in with tales of twentieth century history, and includes three interlinking plots concerning war. Four years later, in 1985 Simon was awarded one of the highest honors a writer can receive: the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Acclaimed Novels After the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize did much to bring Simon more clearly into worldwide focus, as he was until now not well known outside of French-speaking nations. The Nobel Academy explained their choice of Simon for the award by saying that they admired his ability to combine the creativity of the poet and the painter while at the same time expressing a deep understanding of the human condition and the way time works within it. Simon, in his acceptance speech discussed the importance of the novel as something that can raise an awareness of the world and especially of the way language is used in that world. His goal, as he explained it, was always to show how sounds, images, and words have harmonies. Indeed, Simon gave a speech at New York University in which he said, as quoted in the Review of Contemporary Fiction: "The little I know has been acquired by chance-in reading, traveling, walking round museums and going to concerts, always in a rather desultory way, without ever worrying about studying a subject in depth, obeying solely the rules of pleasure."

Written in 1997, Les jardin des plantes (The Garden of Plants) centers around the Spanish Civil War and the battles between France and Germany at the beginning of World War II. Simon was personally involved in some of those battles, so this novel too melds autobiographical accounts with fictional ones. Valerie Orlando, writing in the Review of Contemporary Fiction, noted of the book that Simon's novel "is a testament to a life's work and a memoir of a century of upheaval, turmoil, and despair, and leaves us torn between hating and loving the words on the page. . . . Simon takes us to another realm of reality by showing us the complexity and the chaos that make up the human condition." The novel deals with the question of whether or not human beings can ever learn to avoid self-destruction, a question that has puzzled great minds throughout history and will continue to do so well into the future.

Le Tramway (The Trolley), published in 2002, epitomizes Simon's style of fragmented time. The novel takes place in a hospital room, with the narrative flashing between the present day and a past world of recollections about a trolley. Steven Daniell, writing in World Literature Today, noted of the story that "Simon creates an interesting interplay between surroundings and memory," and "successfully applies the nouveau roman feature of phrase giving way to an aside or a parenthetical comment to reflect the mental processes surrounding memory."

A Writer Honored

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Simon has garnered several other awards, including the Prix de l'Express in 1960, for La route des Flandres, and the Prix Medicis in 1967, for Histoire. He has also received honorary degrees from the University of East Anglia, Norwich and the University of Bologna. He has been married twice in his life, first to Yvonne Ducing in 1951, and, after that marriage ended, to Rhea Karavas, whom he wed on May 29, 1978.

During his speech at New York University, Simon discussed his career with some candor. "If I am asked the ritual question 'Why do you write?,' " he commented, "well, to tell the truth, I have to admit, to my great shame, that I have never been touched, however lightly, by the ambitious motives of some: it has never occurred to me (and I have never asked myself if it might be the case) to write against the established order, or to challenge it. If I have written (and if I continue to do so), it is because, very prosaically and doubtless very selfishly, I was simply driven (like anyone, I think, working within his field) by a certain need to 'make something,' and if I am still asked why I have 'made things' in the domain of literature rather than elsewhere, and if I want to be sincere, I will reply: 'Because I was not capable of doing anything else.' "

Books

Carroll, David, The Subject in Question: The Languages of Theory and the Strategies of Fiction, University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Characters in Twentieth-Century Literature, Gale, 1990.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 83: French Novelists since 1960, edited by Catharine Savage Brosman, Gale, 1989.

Periodicals

Journal of European Studies, June, 1996.

Publishers Weekly, April 26, 1991; August 9, 1991; November 5, 2001; June 17, 2002.

Review of Contemporary Fiction, fall, 1999; summer, 2002; fall, 2002.

World Literature Today, winter, 2002; spring 2002.

Yale French Studies, number 24, 1959.

Online

"Claude Simon," Nobel Prize Website, http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1985/simon-bio.html.