Blood Dark (originally titled Black Blood, Le Sang Noir is its original title) is a "lost" (at least to English readers) tragic, shockingly relevant, black comedy, satire, philosophical discussion, and blindingly colorful novel from 1935 by Louis Guilloux. The book was hugely successful in France but received a rather poor English translation and release under the title Bitter End and subsequently did not cause much more than a ripple amongst English language readers.
Thankfully, this NYRB edition features a simply amazing new translation by Alice Kaplan, which has finally allowed the novel and all its nuances of speech, colorful characters, and shockingly brilliant prose to be accessed by English readers. This book is a masterpiece. I am not being hyperbolic, Blood Dark is literally the best novel I've read this year. And 2018 was a perfect year for this gem to be "rediscovered".
I'm not going to get into the plot too deeply, aside than to say the novel takes place in a small provincial French city (Saint-Brieuc) in 1917 during the bleakest moments of the First World War, when some elements of the French army were in active mutiny following the disastrous Chemin des Dames campaign.
The novel's main character is a frustrating but likable middle aged, large-footed, high school philosophy teacher named Mr. Merlin, though his students refer to him in a derogatory manner as "Cripure" (or "creep"), a play off of Kant's Critique Of Pure Reason, a treatise which Mr. Merlin is particularly fond of referencing. Cripure is a difficult character. He is at times very unpleasant, misanthropic, hypocritical, and nearly always in a state of self-loathing, while at the same time he is tragic, inspiring, and sympathetic.
The majority of the novel's other characters are fellow teachers and administrators (and their families) who work with Cripure, most notably the unforgettable Nabucet, a character whom Guilloux describes with such ease as to bring him to life before your eyes. In a cauldron of phony patriotism, bourgeoise indifference to the realities of war, Cripure and Nabucet end up embroiled in a duel when Cripure slaps Nabucet during a riot of mutineering troops at a train station. This puts in motion a a series of events in which the novel's key figures are forced to face reality and do a bit of soul searching.
The novel is filled with other very colorful and memorable characters such as Madame de Villaplane (a troubled spinster and boarding house owner) and her politically radical tenant Kaminsky, as well as a local sex predator, a corrupt prefect and his mischievous, nihilistic daughter Simone, a hesitant young soldier wishing to flee to Britain and become a revolutionary, the school's principal who is in a race against time to attend the execution of his son for "mutiny" and a cast of many other vivid characters whose lives intersect in the city of Saint Brieuc.
The translation itself is a work of art. Guilloux's many characters all speak in very unique ways, from the harsh, working class directness of Cripure's wife Maia to the suffocatingly arrogant rhetorical flourishes of Nabucet to Cripure's often frantic, halting, misanthropic thoughts and speech.
While Blood Dark was written in 1935 (and is considered by some a "reply" to Celine's Journey To The End Of The Night) it is strikingly poignant almost a century later. It is everything masterful literature should be: thought-provoking, entertaining, and timeless. It is not a difficult novel to read, despite the many characters, many of whom are not necessarily vital to the plot. but serve to provide a needed color in Guilloux's pallet of provincial French humanity or to provide a vivid picture of the times, such as the horribly disfigured ex-student whom Cripure bumps into during the train station riot. This novel is politically left of center, however, in some ways (through Cripure) the author transcends politics in favor of grappling with the absurdities of life and our existential plight.
Blood Dark is a novel which I am looking forward to reading several times. Its depth is great and there is much to laugh and cry simultaneously about. Guilloux's work is of the highest order and I feel that had this new translation been published in 1935, Blood Dark would be one of the most respected French novels of the 20th Century...
It is a novel which is still cutting-edge and subversive, featuring characters of a type who are all too common today and likely will remain so as long as man resorts to wars of conquest, and money, power, and image remain the standards by which success is judged.
I cannot recommend Blood Dark strong enough. Thanks to New York Review Books for this fine new addition (which features notes as well) and Alice Kaplan for the amazingly vivid and accurate translation. Reading Blood Dark was akin to visiting a buffet where all the food is made by expert chefs. It is rich beyond belief yet leaves the reader wanting more. Guilloux's craft is mind-blowing and his tone is simply brilliant. His ability to find humor in mankind's greatest weaknesses while offering a ray of hope makes Blood Dark an unforgettable experience.
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