THE FRENCH TESTAMENT BY ANDRE MAKIN, OR THE ART OF EQUIVOCATION

This bildungsroman, or novel of initiation, is written by the FrancoRussian author Andrei Makine in which he recounts the story of Charlotte, a woman of French origin, who emigrated to Siberia with her mother in the interwar period between the two World wars. Taking a walk down memory lane, she describes Paris, the city where she spent her childhood, to her grandson Aliocha. In her mind’s eyes, Paris was a place of gastronomical refinement and literary profusion, which she memorized through books, poems, press clippings and photos neatly stored in a suitcase she paradoxically called the “Siberian suitcase”.

Each and every item in the suitcase carries a memory, but which one is it? Is it that of the native culture or the adopted one?

This abstract outlines the content of my paper, which is guided by the following rationale. First, I intend to study the representation of these sign objects while accentuating their equivocation manifested in both the book’s title and body.

My objective is to first examine whether this testament, which calls itself French is genuinely French, or is it merely a Russian testament after all.

Secondly, I will look for what is at the origin of this equivocation, which is perceived here as an expression of a two-way thought susceptible to double interpretation. The equivocation differs from ambiguity because it is a voluntary act. It is a contrapuntal writing, made of overlapping and echoing narratives that have triggered a textual polyphony. The latter will lead us to accept more the “Russian testament”, and to discover a section of the history of Russia, its language, its customs, its dramas, but also the drama of the narrator himself who never knew his mother.

By referring to the hermeneutical triad of H-P Jauss, I will try to analyze this equivocal text and writing using three axes. In the first one, I will show how the interweaving of intrigues and themes like peace/ war; love / rape; Belle Époque / communism etc. has placed the narrative under a pattern of repetition. The second axis highlights the superposition of places and the mixing of eras until they coincidentally meet (Paris / Saranza; Seine / Volga; Occident / Orient). The last axis dwells on the ventures of doubling the Subject in the two languages and the two cultures. These three levels allow this Testament to be read as a celebration of Charlotte, the woman-mentor, the incarnation, at the same time, of the Memory of French Literature, the Belle Époque, the 1917 October Revolution and of the drama of the narrator’s mother.

My examination of the text will accentuate the act of testamentary of a Russian migrant who expresses his last wish of not forgetting the Russia he left.

Keywords: Intertextuality, Equivocation, Counterpoint, Memory, Oblivion