Description
This time, the members of the Reading Circle chose to debate around a "classic", the novel by Louis Guilloux Le sang noir, published in 1935 in the white collection of Gallimard editions.
Book Presentation
Black Blood is the story of a single day in 1917, in a provincial town behind the lines. Through the ordeal of philosophy professor Merlin, nicknamed Cripure (because of his Critique of Pure Reason), it paints a portrait of a society of Pharisees, grotesques, and hateful individuals, contrasted with kind, rebellious, and victimized people. Cripure, though once a rebel, is no longer one. He is the caricature of a man at the end of a civilization, an utterly pathetic figure. Mocked by his students, living like a Gothon, knowing that a revolution is brewing in the East, too late for him, hated by all the patriots back home, he wants to fight a duel in a final act of defiance. And, denied this duel and his honor, he is left with no other option than suicide. Although it resonates with the problems of 1917, Le Sang noir is a metaphysical novel, more than a political one. This metaphysical dimension and the abundance of characters make Le Sang noir the most Dostoevskian novel in French literature.
