Book Review : Ambivalent Portrait of a Love Triangle

Difficult Death by Rene Crevel: translated and with an introduction by David Rattray;(North Point: $10.95)

Rene Crevel’s “Difficult Death” is the chronicle of a young man’s failure to avoid the psychological booby traps set by family and society, and his resulting failure to achieve spiritual and sexual liberation. It is the ambivalent portrait of a love triangle; the hero Pierre agonizes over his affection for an art student, Diane, and his obsessive passion for a young American bohemian named Bruggle. The chic, arty Paris of the ‘20s is wonderfully evoked, even more convincingly than in Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” But the real pleasure of the novel is that we witness the transition from a more conventional novel of situation and social analysis to lyrical surrealist flights which look forward to masterpieces such as Breton’s “Nadja,” Aragon’s “Paysan de Paris” and Crevel’s own “Babylon.”

In the first pages we find characters who would fit well into any number of 19th-Century novels: Pierre’s parents--the insane sex maniac father, inventor of floating cannons propelled by palm leaves, and the skinny, hateful pretentious bourgeois mother; Diane’s parents-- the manic-depressive Russian intellectual father, who hangs himself during a dinner party, and the plump French sensualist mother. Even the elaborate, circuitous style and intrusive narrator have a 19th-Century ring.

As we begin to focus on the Diane-Pierre-Bruggle triangle, and the novel scrutinizes the psychological basis for the hero’s sexual struggle, we know we have arrived in the 20th Century. The Oedipal theme is reminiscent of Lawrence’s “Sons and Lovers,” but the conflict is even more strongly emphasized here. For most readers this is familiar territory, even though Crevel navigates the territory well. Then come the explosions of energy that illuminate the book. Dreams, nightmares, hallucinations transform Pierre’s world into a state of dazzling transcendence, even if it is often violent and grotesque in nature.

Fear of Hereditary Madness

Pierre has a fear of hereditary madness, but the “madness” of surrealism could become his salvation: “A new world is bursting into a flower over the wreckage of the old. The body is no longer a bundle of flesh condemned to misfortune . . . It leaps, flies, weighs no more than a song under the midnight sun.” Pierre’s visionary moments, in a telephone booth or at dinner with Diane, are when he attains real freedom: “The adventure had begun when those ruby-and-felt birds, his lungs, had flown out of his petrified throat and soared up in the middle of the sky, sweeter than angels . . .”

Unfortunately, neither Pierre nor the novel can stay in this realm permanently. Even Bruggle, who at first seems to be the embodiment of the surrealist liberation of desire, turns out to be little more than a shallow and opportunistic male prostitute. The trendy Paris bohemians are poseurs. The dichotomy between the bourgeois and the wild animal, Diane and Bruggle, doesn’t hold up. Both lead Pierre to impotency rather than liberation. But the passion of pursuit, in both theme and style, make “Difficult Death” an important and fascinating book, in spite of its flaws.

David Rattray’s translation from the French, the first in English, is energetic and lively. He also included an insightful introduction to Crevel’s work and a piece by Salvador Dali on the author. Here, Dali avoids his usual megalomania, showing genuine affection for and understanding of his friend, many years after his suicide. Crevel was, indeed, one of the greatest luminaries of the original surrealist group.