Fire in the Blood (2007)

Fire In The Blood

Irene Nemirovsky

CONTENTS

Translator's Note

A Note on the Text

Fire in the Blood

Preface to the French Editiontai

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TRANSLATOR'S NOTE

Throughout this translation of Fire in the Blood I have used various terms to express an important concept that recurs in the novel: the paysan. This French term is extremely difficult to translate: "peasant" in English has different connotations and "farmer" is too limited. The "paysan" is not just a farmer, but an entire rural social class, often not necessarily working clss, but still not the "bourgeoisie," middle class, despite some paysans being quite wealthy landowners. Irene Nemirovsky's vivid description of her paysans illustrates the multifaceted subtleties implied in the term and brings them to life for us, her readers. Fire in the Blood is a gem of a novel: compact, and brilliant.

I would like to dedicate this translation to the memory of Malcolm Bowie, distinguished French scholar, mentor, friend.

SANDRA SMITH

CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND, 2007

A Note on the Text

Until recently, only a partial text of Fire in the Blood was thought to exist, typed up by Irene Nemirovsky's husband, Michel Epstein, to whom she often passed her manuscripts for this purpose. However, Michel's typing breaks off at the words 'I felt so old' (see p. 37), leaving the novel unfinished. Did Michel stop typing when Irene was arrested and deported to Auschwitz on 13 July 1942? Or perhaps even earlier in 1942, when she could no longer find a way to get her novels and short stories published?

As readers will learn from the Preface to the French edition of this novel found at the back of the book, it is likely that Nemirovsky was still working on Fire in the Blood in 1942. We know this thanks to the work of Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt, who were commissioned to write a biography of Nemirovsky, and who began extensive research into her archive. Two pages of the original manuscript were found to have been in the suitcase that Nemirovsky's daughter, Denise Epstein, carried with her from Issy-l'Eve'que when she and her sister, Elisabeth, fled after their mother's arrest, and which contained Nernirovsky's great lost novel Suite Franfaise. And as Philipponnat and Lienhardt trawled the Nemirovsky archive at the Institut Memoires de l'edition contemporaine (IMEC), they discovered, amidst papers given by Nemirovsky for safe-keeping to her editor and family friend in the spring of 1942, the rest of the missing manuscript: thirty tightly packed pages of handwriting, with very few crossings out, the beginning of which corresponded to Michel's typed version.

It is an extraordinary collection of papers, which adds to our understanding of Nernirovsky's oeuvre. As well as the manuscript of Fire in the Blood, it contains Nemirovsky's working notebooks dating back to 1933, successive versions of several of her novels-including David Golder-as well as outlines for Captivite, the projected third part of Suite Franfaise.

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WE WERE DRINKING A LIGHT PUNCH, the kind we had when I was young, and all sitting around the fire, my Erard cousins, their children and I. It was an autumn evening, the whole sky red above the sodden fields of turned earth. The fiery sunset promised a strong wind the next day; the crows were cawing. This large, icy house is full of draughts. They blew in from everywhere with the sharp, rich tang of autumn. My cousin Helene and her daughter, Colette, were shivering beneath the shawls I'd lent them, cashmere shawls that had belonged to my mother. They asked how I could live in such a rat hole, just as they did every time they came to see me, and Colette, who is shortly to be married, spoke proudly of the charms of the MoulinNeuf where she would soon be living, and "where I hope to see you often, Cousin Silvio," she said. She looked at me with pity. I am old, poor and unmarried, holed up in a farmer's hovel in the middle of the woods. Everyone knows I've travelled, that I've worked my way through my inheritance. A prodigal son. By the time I got back to the place where I was born, even the fatted calf had waited for me for so long it had died of old age. Comparing their lot with mine, the Erards no doubt forgave me for borrowing money I had never returned and repeated, after their daughter, "You live like an animal here, you poor dear. You should go and spend the summer with Colette once she's settled in."

I still have happy moments, though they don't realise it. Today, I'm alone; the first snow has fallen. This region, in the middle of France, is both wild and rich. Everyone lives in his own house, on his own land, distrusts his neighbours, harvests his wheat, counts his money and doesn't give a thought to the rest of the world. No chateaux, no visitors. A bourgeoisie reigns here that has only recently emerged from the working classes and is still very close to them, part of a rich bloodline that loves everything that has its roots in the land.