The Complete Review

The Complete Review

Ostensibly written by its narrator in 1982-3, just after Poland had come under martial law, Madame focusses largely on the narrator's youth in Warsaw in the mid-1960s. A fairly smart and enthusiastic young man, he is literate, interested in music and theatre, a chess player. His world is only partially dominated by the politics of the day (most notably in terms of the school administration, though in a few other situations the Polish condition also rears its ugly head). He is a curious and ambitious youth, interested in pushing limits and exploring possibilities: a typical wannabe intellectual teen. The book begins with the usual challenges to authority as the narrator forms a jazz band and puts on a theatrical production, small episodes meant to give a feel for the conditions in Poland at the time. Amusing enough, they seem somewhat out of place, not fully connected with the center of the novel.
       It is Madame who takes center-stage soon enough: the narrator becomes obsessed with his school's headmistress when she also takes over the French class he is taking in his last year of high school. Madame la Directrice, thirty-one when she takes over the class, has long been the subject of speculation among the students. Almost nothing is known about her. The narrator's obsession is, at first, focussed on determining who she is -- her background, family status, Party affiliation. There is little sense of love or lust, merely obsession.
       A determined (and personable) researcher, the narrator manages to worm a good deal of information out of various people. He finds out a great deal about Madame, specifically when it turns out that an old family friend, Constant, has a son, Freddy, who studied French literature at university with Madame. (Her thesis was on the work of Simone de Beauvoir; our narrator was, of course, already familiar with a number of works by Beauvoir.) As it turns out it is Constant, the father, who reveals the most interesting parts of la belle Victoire's background. (La belle Victoire is another nickname -- though here we at least learn Madame's middle name.)
       She was born in France, and she had a difficult youth. Her father was involved in the Spanish Civil War, with ramifications that haunt her still (and led to her return to Poland). The Spanish Civil War aside makes for an interesting historical analysis, though again it does not seem ideally integrated into the novel.
       Much is also made of the longing for the West. Freddy, himself an expert on French literature, describes the difficulties of travelling to France to participate in conferences and do research, a sad and amusing story (though perhaps also one that has been told far too many times). Madame's great aspiration is apparently also to return to France, and there is a certain desperation to some of her efforts to achieve this.
       In French class Madame and the narrator also duel it out, the narrator trying to interpret each of the Ice Queen's actions and reactions in schoolroom scenes that could take place most anywhere. In addition, the narrator manages to get himself an entrée to the cultural events given under French auspices in Warsaw -- among them a Picasso exhibit and a screening of A Man and a Woman -- all to observe Madame more closely.
       The youthful infatuation does, finally come apart, and the narrator covers the years in between the last time he sees Madame and the writing of this book in cursory manner. The narrator becomes a published writer, making his debut in his first year at university, but by the time he finishes this work he has long been on the "index of banned authors", publishing most of his work since the 1970s in the West. Returning to the scene of his earlier adventures (as a teacher in training) the circle closes with a sort of redemption.
       The time of Madame, when the narrator was young, saw a brief period of relative freedom, cultural and otherwise, but one soon stamped out. The novel conveys a decent picture of Poland (and specifically Warsaw) at the time, though politics are largely secondary. The novel is also entrenched in the Central European cultural tradition: beside the more obvious French slant (Ph?dre plays a prominent role, and de Beauvoir, Beckett, and others also slip in) there is a great deal of Hölderlin, Joanna Schopenhauer, and Zeromski's Ashes, beside plentiful quotation from verse and drama. (Not much that might be an American teen's usual fare.)
       Libera's narrator does come off as a tad too precocious. A jack-of-all-trades, one day turning to jazz, the next to theatre, the next to literary speculation, then playing amateur detective and spy, he never seems fully convincing. The character is searching for his identity and his purpose, without lingering to discover whether any of his undertakings might offer a clue regarding them. Madame as an object of interest seems to follow on a parallel track, and by and large Libera fails to connect the two.
       The narrator at one point breaks out in teenage Angst; surprisingly there is only one such crisis. He complains:

It was all so conventional, so civilized, so "cultured," so polite -- a game of manners, abstract, logical. It wasn't real. There was no madness in it, no divine folly, no ecstasy. No faith except in reason, no sensibility, only sense. (...) Enclosed within myself, inaccessible, locked in the impregnable armour of my brain, I was nothing but irony and superficial wit, the eternal court jester, the buffoon.

       The narrator is a bit harsh on himself (and a bit full of himself). The judgement is, also, ultimately not convincing, the character always more well-rounded than he describes himself here, intellect and reason never dominating imagination and passion. Possibly it is the inadequacy (and irrelevancy) of passion and imagination, futile in this communist state, that the narrator laments. The uncertain focus does, however, weaken a book that ultimately isn't quite sure of its message.
       Noted director Libera brings in some fine theatrical touches and interesting literary digressions on poetry, drama, Schopenhauer, and the Spanish Civil War. It is a fairly entertaining volume, falling a bit flat only because it is not certain enough what it wants to be -- and because the author has not been able to weave the many smaller tales and episodes in the novel neatly into one.