Jean Echenoz: Ravel (2006)

Jean Echenoz's Ravel is the first of a series of three biographical novels, which were followed by Courir (2008) about the Czechoslovakian athlete Emil Zátopek, and Des éclairs, about the Austro-Hungarian inventor Nikola Tesla. The novel covers the final ten years of composer Maurice Ravel's life, from 1927 to 1937.

The book begins when the meticulous Ravel is taking a bath at his house in Monfort-l'Amaury (now a museum) before being driven by the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange to the Gare du Nord to take the train to Le Havre and board the liner for the United States. Before embarking across the Atlantic, though, the boat makes a stop in Southampton, where Ravel briefly meets his friend the translator Georges Jean-Aubry, who gives him a copy of his translation of Joseph Conrad's La Flèche d'or.

Echenoz is noted for his preoccupation with movement, and the book lists the places visited by Ravel to perform, such as New York, Boston, California, Toronto, Montréal, and back to New York. When he returns home to France he goes off touring Europe, etc.

The friends and colleagues he meets along the way are mentioned, although Ravel was a solitary man who was troubled by, for example, insomnia, and various exercises he tried out are mentioned. There is a brief mention of Ravel with prostitutes, although this could be one of his jokes, but the novel stops short of any suggestion of homosexuality: a number of websites seem very keen to co-opt him into the gay community, although he was never associated with any sexual partner at all.

Ravel became unable to recognize his friends, his music, or even put a letter together without tremendous difficulty, and following a brain operation 'he dies ten days later, they clothe him in a black outfit, white waistcoat, stiff wing collar, white butterfly tie, light gloves, he leaves no will, no filmed image, not the slightest recording of his voice'. (My translation.)

My other Jean Echenoz posts:
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Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Gone
Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Off | I'm Gone (revisited)
Jean Echenoz: Courir | Running

Jean Echenoz: Jérôme Lindon
Jean Echenoz: Lac | Chopin's Move
Jean Echenoz: 14

Jean Echenoz: Courir | Running (2008)

Courir, with its protagonist's globetrotting activities, is in some respects not dissimilar, for instance, to the wanderings of the protagonist in Un an (A Year) (1997), or the Arctic adventures in Je m'en vais (I'm Off ) (1999), and can therefore easily be included in Echenoz's 'geographical novels' section: movement is a frequent theme with the writer. This is also the second of his three biographical novels, chronologically coming between Ravel (2006), which concerns the final three years of Maurice Ravel's life (although concentrating on the earlier four months of the composer's American tour), and Des éclairs, concerning Nikola Tesla's life.

The subject of Courir is the Czech Émile Zátopek (1922–2000), one of the world's greatest long-distance runners, and the narrative follows the athlete through his successes in such cities as Oslo, Berlin, London, Helsinki, and Sao Paulo, to his eventual decline and (almost) professional end at the Olympic Games in Melbourne. The narrator treats Émile with warmth, humor, and with a casual, conversational style, and there's a rare first person intervention near the end of one chapter toward the end of the book: 'I don't know about you but me, with all these exploits, records, victories, trophies, I'd perhaps start to have had enough of it.'

Politics is never far from the story, and the first sentence of the novel begins in the late 1930s (when Émile is in his late teens) with the German occupation of Moravia, whereas the final chapter begins with the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Émile has moved from playful youthful defiance of the Germans' authority to serious open defiance of the Russians, for which the Russians try to shame him by making him work as a dustman, and when that fails because he's too popular they send him to the countryside to make holes in the ground for telegraph poles.

After a few years, he is asked to sign a 'confession' that exonerates the Russians far more than himself, and he is then given a job in the basement of the government sports information center as an archivist. Émile says his probably didn't deserve anything better.

My other Jean Echenoz posts:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Gone
Jean Echenoz: Je m'en vais | I'm Off | I'm Gone (revisited)
Jean Echenoz: Jérôme Lindon
Jean Echenoz: Lac | Chopin's Move
Jean Echenoz: Ravel
Jean Echenoz: 14