Marie Ferranti La cadillac des Mondadori (2006) and La chasse de nuit (2004)
Jérôme Ferrari À son image (2018) and Le sermon sur la chute de Rome (2012)
Four works of fiction, four stories on Corsica. The lives and actions of the main characters are framed by excursions into the recent past, where Corsican men fought for the French army in World War II (Ferrari, Sermon) and feudal social geographies continue to mold the lives of people on the island (Ferranti, La cadillac). Some protagonists feel colonized by the French. They struggle against this continuing occupation and suppression of their language and culture in different ways, be this by becoming part of the Corsican (armed) fight for liberation from French rule (Ferrari, À son image) or by upholding cultural rituals against all odds of modernity and possible misinterpretations (Ferranti, Chasse de nuit). As readers we get a better understanding why some inhabitants of the island feel their cultural identities and ways of doing might be directed by outsiders (fremdbestimmt); I felt the protagonists' arguments made sense, at least most of the time. The centralized French administration has forbidden and suppressed the use of the Corsican language. This language policy – prohibiting and punishing the use of indigenous/local languages and marking French as the only official language – is part of French politics until today. In Corsica, just like in the former French colonies in Africa and beyond, indigenous/local languages have a hard stand in the education system or outside the home. Many of these languages, among them Corsican, are struggling to survive. Here, I will take a closer look at two of the novels, Ferrari's Sermon sur la chute de Rome and Ferranti's Chasse de nuit.
For many men living in France or in one of the colonies in the mid-20th century, colonial service was often the only way out of village life, which offered no perspective for the future. Marcel, the grandfather of one main character in Ferrari’s Sermon sur la chute de Rome, decides to enter the French civil service after World War II and was sent to a colony in what was called Equatorial French Africa (AEF, Afrique équatorial française). Tragedy overshadows his years there and he returns to his native village in Corsica a stranger, embittered and resigned to what the remainder of his life will offer him. Much later, he encourages his grandson Matthieu to revive the failing bar/restaurant in their native village. There, the mysterious disappearance of the manageress of the bar presents a conundrum for its owner, who cannot face a return to the days of late nights, lewd customers, and greasy dishwater. A succession of would-be hosts and hostesses descend, with disastrous results, before Matthieu and Libero, childhood friends disillusioned with their philosophical studies “on the continent”, i.e. in Paris, return to their native village to take up the reins. Initially they are successful, but as lustful, avaricious reality rudely intrudes on their idyll, they too are forced to concede, their senses befuddled by easy women and plentiful liquor, that all empires must inevitably crumble. Meanwhile, Matthieu’s grandfather Marcel, who funded their enterprise, still lingers on the island, his memories of the collapse of France’s colonial empire still fresh and bitter in his mind. Ferrari’s Sermon sur la chute de Rome covers a century of intimate family history – sometimes funny, tragic, also absurd – through which he also tells the story of Corsica.
The different characters in Sermon are vivid and realistic, palpable. It feels appropriate that the two “native sons” Matthieu, raised on the continent and constantly feeling he has missed out on something essential by being removed from his native village (also by not speaking or understanding Corsican), and Libero believe they can handle running a bar. They do a great job initially, inviting childhood friends to animate the evenings with music and song and by integrating local products into their menus. A place thriving with promise, good mood, and possibilities - I would have loved to spend evenings there. But in the end, they fail too, in both a foreseeable – too much alcohol, too much bad advice – and in an unforeseeable, tragic, way. Matthieu and Libero’s story and life in and around the bar is interspersed with chapters on the life of Marcel. His young wife dies in childbirth in colonial Africa and Marcel stays there for another 20 years, until “decolonization”. This too is a failing, on the side of the French administration and government. The fall of France's empire. Through the figure of Marcel, we readers experience what it must feel like when hopes for a better life away from home are shattered, and how the decision to “go into exile” is accompanied by a bitter sadness. This bitter sadness will stay with Marcel for the rest of his life. The chapter headings and the epilogue are taken from St. Augustine’s Sermon on the Fall of Rome, perhaps to make sure we readers get the analogy to the fallen French (colonial) empire as well as to the end, the fall, of the village bar. And even though St. Augustine’s sermon did not necessarily need such a prominent place in the novel, this added intellectualized touch did not diminish my reading pleasure in the least. The Goncourt prize committee obviously thought so as well, awarding the Priz Goncourt to Jérôme Ferrari for Sermon sur la chute de Rome in 2012.
Ferranti’s Chasse de nuit and La cadillac des Mondadori are both situated earlier in time than Ferrari’s novels. Here, we experience Corsica in the middle of the 20th century and can follow, in Chasse de nuit, the diminishing understanding for a cultural heritage by younger Corsicans. La chasse de nuit recalls the Corsican tradition of the mazzeru, who in his or her dreams hunts and kills the first animal s/he encounters. In the eyes of the dead animal, the mazzeru sees the death of a member of his/her community. The main protagonist, Matteo, sees his inheritance as mazzeru as a type of calling, one he simply has, without his choosing. He describes how he prepares for a hunt: “Before starting the hunt, I pick up a bit of earth, rub my palms with it, and breathe in the scent. I have neither gun nor dagger. My only weapons are a stick, the mazza, carved from a vine shoot, and my teeth.” During a night hunt, chasse de nuit, Matteo predicts Petru Zanetti’s death. It is him who Matteo sees in the eye of the boar slain by his mazza. Petru’s young wife, Lisa, learns of this and comes to Matteo, attempting to change the course of fate. As a consequence of their meeting, Lisa and the mazzeru begin a dance of desire and death, transgressing social boundaries.
We accompany Matteo through the novel, being part to his ambiguity towards his role as mazzeru, which he defends and believes worth conserving, but which also repulses him. He has an ally in Agnes, an old woman who has known him all his life. She understands his emotional upheavals and through her empathy helps him to free himself from being torn back and forth. Personally, I could not always follow Matteo or understand why he acts the way he does. He has a girlfriend, whom he seems to like very much, but whom he also pushes back repeatedly. Ferranti thus made Matteo’s ambiguity towards his role and calling very tangible. Lisa, too, is at times difficult to grasp as character, I felt. She comes from a wealthy family and even though her socio-economic background is radically different from the one Matteo and Agnes come from, they all inhabit the same social space. I saw Lisa as a torn figure as well, being both spellbound and frightened by the person and tradition of the mazzeru. Matteo fascinates and intimidates her at the same time and these feelings of hers he seems to use in order to bend her to his will, maybe to humiliate her. His motives did not really become clear to me. The novel has an inescapable, somber undertone, chronicling a disappearing world through the figure of Matteo. In the end he can liberate himself from misunderstandings – his own and those of his neighbors – and I put the book away feeling reassured that cohabitation, at least in the hearts of people, of the old and the new are possible.
For further reading on Corsican literature, I recommend the doctoral dissertation by Thomas, Jeffrey M. 2021, (Re)Presenting Corsica: From Object of Fascination to Site of Production in Modern French Literature. U of Wisconsin-Madison.