How to Tell the Story of Something Beyond Your Imagination? Historical Truth or “Factual Truth” in the Works of Francophone Writers under Nazism

Abstract

This article examines the integration of History within the field of literature, with a particular focus on the 1940s during the Nazi occupation. It attempts to examine the unique function that reality assumes within the narrative, which contributes to redefine the concept of literariness. The central question posed by these texts and narratives, which are composed in the context of war, is as follows: from a certain historical juncture onwards, particularly with the experience of Nazism, can the world be apprehended through reality as it presents itself, given that this reality transcends the imaginary? In order to address this question and others, we propose to examine the writing of two female authors who found themselves in extreme historical circumstances and had divergent destinies: Françoise Frenkel and Édith Thomas. The texts in question were composed in the heat of the moment (in the case of Thomas) or almost immediately afterwards (in the case of Frenkel). They may be regarded as pieces of everyday history, lived through and immediately put down on paper by the authors, so as not to forget anything of what was (the facts), but also of what was felt (experienced). Drawing on recent literary approaches to “fictional truths” and the literariness of writing that belongs to hybrid (non)fiction, we will question the literary strategies employed by these writers, who have an intuition for the urgent need to make what is happening “intelligible”, while being aware of the impossibility of doing so through a world of references, familiar images and the known past.