Belle du seigneur

I finished Cohen’s Belle du seigneur last weekend. Half way through the novel, the Seigneur wins over his Belle and they flee together. The other half consists of their perfect love, a love that depends only on each other, their dual company. They are cast-aways. The deserted island the Seigneur offered his Belle was a real one. You see, this novel couldn’t be considered one of the Twentieth Century’s Great Love Stories without taking on one of the Twentieth Century’s greatest points of contention: the identity of the Jew.

We learn towards the end of the novel that it takes place in 1936. The Nazi regime has branded Jewish people, their commerce, and their homes. Anti-Semitism is mounting, or, rather, is becoming aggressively straightforward. The Seigneur has lost his job at the United Nations because of his stance on international immigration laws regarding Jews. To meddle in countries affairs is risky, but to reproach these democratic states of anti-Semitism is unacceptable. He loses his position, which means that he loses everything because as a Jew he has no other back-up than money. His family and friends don’t occupy powerful seats. He was the exception. His fire causes a free-fall. He becomes nothing more than a rich filthy Jew, the lover of a beautiful woman he lies to, deception being the only way they can continue living their fairy tale life.

To escape their charades, he goes to Paris. This trip is his last effort to regain what was lost: his French nationality and a position, any position, that could give him a place in the social realms of the world. He is refused. Rich yet spat on. He walks the streets of Paris with a wandering eye that glimpses all the “Kill Jews” painted on alley walls. He drinks in pubs with unknowing men who, in their drunkenness, swear to friendship, and then hiss their disgust of Jews. Unassuming. “It’s all the fault of the Jews.” And the Seigneur agrees, because how could he disappoint them? He questions these Jews, the Jew himself. A none-believer yet ostracized for his race, or his religion, or his lack of nationality. He becomes the Wandering Jew and drags his innocent Belle along with him. They are perfect in their beauty, and that’s all they are.

The novel’s critique would not be complete without a critique of love stories. The Seigneur, a man who loves his Belle beyond passion, a man who longs for hugs and kisses on cheeks, knows that what maintains her love is the role he plays, the Don Juan he assumes. He actually sees little interest in sex and “deep-mouth” kissing, but he knows that women do. He knows that with women, passion must be kept high in order to hold their interest. He even hits her once to disorient her. He does this because he knows that her sub-conscious is getting bored. Bored with love and passion and their desert island where no one from “good society” might tread. Bored with him.

Eventually, her sub-conscious catches up to her consciousness. She then becomes base. She plays her own games to try to keep his interests, games that he agrees to only to please her and that actually sicken and sadden him. Sex games, for the most part. Dressing up like a little girl. Inviting another woman to their bed. Soiling the purity of their love to keep things interesting and passionate, the fairy tale finally comes to an end. After a day of sniffing ether, she swallows a glass half-way filled with sleeping medication, and offers such a glass to her Seigneur. He had predicted during his raving Paris trip that their relationship could only end in suicide. Is does so a little over two years of their being together. They die lying next to each other on a bed in the Ritz.

I don’t really feel like spending too much time on the twists and turns of this novel. A thousand and one hundred pages gives ample space and time for the author and reader to get to know each other. To be honest, apart from enjoying the ride, I don’t really know what to say about it. A suicide because of perfection, which is fake and disappointing. Like a morbid look at the “ever after.” Yet 50 years removed from the writing of this novel, it gives both a good view of one person’s struggle with racism while being deceptively anti-climactic about love. He spends half the novel explaining the mediocrity of the “normal” man (the Belle’s legal husband) and the viciousness of “good society” (her mother-in-law) to then spend the latter half explaining the angst of ideal love. It then takes the lovers 20 pages to kill themselves. Did the author get bored with the subject? Did he want to hasten the end to spare the reader its negativity? Was he unable to write in detail the detriment of the relationship? Are we supposed to imagine it? It might be strange to say, but the author could have made this book longer. His novel didn’t make me disappointed in love. I just thought the two characters were disillusioned, and that I find sad. They could have worked so well together if only they had been reasonable. (Who wants reason? What does reason have to do with love? ) Fifty years removed, I come from a very different time, it seems. And I’m still looking for the love story that glorifies it not in its passion, but in its frankness. A real love story. Not a fairy tale nor a fling. Some might doubt that such a story could make for good reading, but I’m sure there’s something interesting to be made of it.