Untold Crimes: The First World War and the Historical Crime Fiction of Jean Amila and Didier Daeninckx

Abstract

This article considers how Jean Amila's Le Boucher des Hurlus (1982) and Didier Daeninckx's Le Der des ders (1984) expose hidden crimes committed by figures of French military authority during the First World War; how they reject the myth of a France united by combat embodied in the heroic and steadfast poilu; and how they complicate and pluralise memories of the war through the existence of a counter-memory and a counter-myth founded upon the figure of the mutin de guerre. It illustrates how the French historical crime novel resolves the tension between the historian, concerned primarily with collective ideas and responsibility, and the judge, seeking to ascertain the extent of individual guilt, thereby constituting an intermediary, marrying the ethical, the factual and the political. It concludes, however, by exploring the limits of memory, narrative and collective political identity proposed in both works, but also considers the readership of such crime fiction as a contemporary counter-community.

Cet article étudie la manière dont les romans Le Boucher des Hurlus (1982) de Jean Amila et Le Der des ders (1984) de Didier Daeninckx dévoilent les crimes commis par certains chefs militaires en France pendant la Première Guerre mondiale. Il examine également la façon dont ces deux romans réfutent le mythe d'une France unie dans le combat (représenté par le culte du poilu héroïque et résolu) et, ce faisant, créent un souvenir plus complexe et pluralisé de la guerre à travers un contre-souvenir et un contre-mythe construits autour du personnage du mutin de guerre. Il illustre la façon dont le roman policier historique allège la tension qui existe entre l'historien (qui se concentre d'abord sur les idées et les responsabilités collectives) et le juge (qui cherche à établir la culpabilité individuelle) constituant ainsi un intermédiaire qui épouse l'éthique, la vérité factuelle et la politique. En conclusion, il exposera néanmoins les limites de ce souvenir, de ce récit et de cette identité politique proposés par ces deux romans. Il évoquera également en conclusion la possibilité de considérer le lectorat de ce genre de roman policier en tant qu'une contre-communauté contemporaine.

Notes

^[1] Published by Nouveau Monde Éditions, these currently run to six titles: La Cote 512 (2005), L'Arme secrète de Louis Renault (2006), Le Château d'Amberville (2007), Les Traîtres (2008), Le Gendarme scalpé (2009) and Le Crime de l'Albatros (2012).

^[2] More generally, Pierre Schoentjes estimates that approximately 100 novels concerned with the First World War have been published in France since 1980 (2013, 11).

^[3] As the anniversary approached, the then socialist Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, argued for the rehabilitation and pardon of all mutineers only to face a rebuttal from the President, the Gaullist Jacques Chirac (L'Evénement du jeudi, 12–18 November 1998).

^[4] For Kristeva crime fiction is essentially optimistic since, as one character in her own crime novel Meutre à Byzance puts it: ‘tu peux savoir d'où vient le mal’ (cited in Kristeva 2004). For a further discussion of this optimistic quality of crime fiction, see Fraser (2005).

^[5] Bracke writes specifically of representations of the Second World War in these decades, a time when the First World War appears to have all but disappeared as an object of cultural representation in France. In many ways, Le Boucherdes Hurlus and Le Der des ders contributed to a revival of cultural interest in this conflict, an interest which shows little sign of waning as the 100th anniversary of the conflict approaches.

^[6] Indeed, Griffon's narrative suggests at various points that he is in fact actively avoiding memories of the war. Griffon is subject to nightmares, but also to sudden visions of writhing bodies (2002, 43) that suggest a repressed memory of combat and which may also explain his sudden tears at the sight of the batman's mutilated body (78). Moreover, he declares to another veteran: ‘“Trois ans au front, ça fait un bail… Mais bizarrement, je n'ai qu'une idée, les oublier”’ (80).