An old postcard from Céreste

To celebrate the paperback publication today of The Sea Garden, I'm taking you to Céreste, a quiet village at the eastern end of the Luberon, on an intriguing trail.

This charming backwater plays a crucial part in the middle section of my novel, where we renew acquaintance with Marthe Lincel, the perfumier who first appeared in The Lantern. Just up the road, the Vaucluse ends and the signs announce the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. In real life, as The Sea Garden, Céreste was a Resistance stronghold during the Second World War, secret headquarters of "Captain Alexandre", the poet René Char, as I wrote here in a previous blog post.

A couple of years ago, while I was writing the novel, I found a stall selling old postcards at a market in Simiane-la-Rotonde. Naturally, I stopped to sift through the boxes marked with the names of places I knew, and pulled out this one of Céreste:

 

Now this may sound a bit crazy, but when I'm writing a book, I always look for signs that I'm on the right track. I'm sure there are plenty of people who will say that we see what we want to see, and it's all a lot of nonsense. They are probably right, but that doesn't stop me enjoying a nice moment of coincidence, synchronicity, call it what you will. But look at the name on the right: Monsieur Gabriel Brachet, Marseille. If you haven't read the book, I'm not giving anything away, but be sure to make a note of the first name. If you have read the book, I hope it gives you a pleasant frisson!

The words were written on July 23, 1931, and they're not terribly interesting - it seems to me they could well have been written to a child, as the sender urges "Gaby" to take care to fill in a form and to write with news of what he's been doing. The intriguing part is that the sender gives his own name, "Mr Et. Paul" - Etienne? - and address as the Château des Guis at St-Martin-de-Castillon.

St Martin de Castillon is another lovely, quiet village that sits opposite the ripples of the Great Luberon, a few kilometres along the road and higher in the hills than Céreste. I know it well, but I'd never heard of the Château des Guis. Of course, I bought the postcard and scoured a large scale map when I got home. I couldn't find the château. An internet search found nothing, either.

But I never like to give up...and when I was looking at the my files of photos and background info the other week, wondering what I could use for my blog, I remembered this postcard - and this time, with a bit more online detective work, I managed to find the property in St-Martin. It is a grand old residence, though it's not called a château but a "bastide", which is denotes an imposing old house, possibly once fortified.

And here it is, The Bastide Les Guis:

 

 

The Bastide Les Guis is even available to rent, and there are details and more pictures on the Janssens Immobilier site and on Made in Provence. 

Liberation of Provence

Seventy years ago today, the American-led liberation of southern France reached the town of Apt. The previous day, the tanks and Jeeps had rolled into Aix-en-Provence (above), chasing the fleeing German army of occupation. But today is the day remembered in Apt, with a plaque on a small roundabout planted with cypresses and flowers where the main road, the old N100 now the D900, arrives from Céreste.

This plaque is no anniversary special; it has been here for as long as I can remember, passed daily by the locals as they go about their business, and the tourists who swell the town's life during the summer. It is a poignant reminder not only of the event itself, but that - contrary to myth - the French remember it with profound gratitude. In the villages and small towns of the Luberon, the wartime cooperation between the brave members of the resistance and the RAF is recalled with pride and enduring mutual respect. Should the war be discussed with visitors from Britain, the US and Canada, it is with a sense of shared history.

This was the starting point of my novel The Sea Garden, in which the story plays out against the background of the Liberation which began with the Allied invasion on the coast at St-Tropez. The settings in the book can be seen here: the island of Porquerolles just below Hyeres, and Manosque to the north-east of Pertuis.

For weeks, the local newspaper La Provence (from which this map is taken) has been telling the story day by day. Yesterday's page included a fascinating piece by Yves Reynaud about the day the Americans arrived in the village of Tour d'Aigues near Pertuis on the southern slopes of the Luberon mountains.

What the French noticed first of all was that the harsh sound of hobnailed Nazi boots had gone from the silent streets, to be replaced by the soundless rubber of the American footwear - and music! The "Yanks" chewed gum nonchalantly as they offered cigarettes and chocolate to the villagers - the French offered fruit in return. In the village centre, the whole population clamoured around the Jeeps and Dodges, vehicles so modern as to be curiosities in themselves. Upbeat tunes were playing from the Jeeps: songs they had never heard before.

The momentous day ended in the Café Innocenti - today, the Café du Chateau - with laughter, talk, drinking and dancing. One of the GIs sat down at the old piano and started pounding out Boogie-Woogie. Two days later the Americans had pushed on north, but the villagers continued the party by collecting eggs from every farm and smallholding. An immense celebratory omelette composed of more than a thousand eggs was cooked and shared by the whole community.

This evening in Apt, the town's liberation will be marked by two parades through the town with some of the original vehicles; the laying of wreaths and honouring of the dead; the unveiling of a new memorial plaque in the Place de la Mairie in the presence of Lieut-Col Tim Stoy and Captain Monika Stoy, representing the US Army; a showing of a newsreel film of the event; an aperitif outside the Hotel de Ville; and dancing under the trees to a swing band.

For more about the activities of the French resistance in this area, you can read more in these past blog posts about Céreste, and Samuel Beckett at Roussillon. More on Apt tomorrow.

Writing and determination

 

"Closed like a box-wood shutter," wrote the poet René Char, "An extreme and compact fortune is our mountain range, our compressing splendour." This closed wooden shutter is in Céreste, the village where Char lived when he was leader of a Resistance cell during the Second World War. Plain and simple on the surface, like Char's words, but with something intriguing about it - that dark grape colour; the deep tactile texture of sun-dried cracks in the wood: the planks are aged but solid, and hiding who knows what behind. 

 

There are any number of metaphors it can stand for but right now, for me, it's the moment when I turn in on myself to return to the writing of a new book. At the beginning I stand outside, perhaps for quite some time, wondering what exactly I will discover. Though I have a few pre-conceived ideas of what lies inside the dark and dormant house of my imagination, I won't know what surprises are in store until I concentrate on entering. To sit at a desk and immerse myself is an adventure, a safe one, though it's always possible to lose control of events. And Char's mountain range can at times be there too, in the uphill battle to shape ideas and words into viable forms.

 

This summer in Provence I did my favourite kind of research: going to the places where a novel will be set, poking into corners and wandering with endless curiosity, though some might call it nosiness. I spend a couple of mornings in Céreste, exploring the winding streets. Another day I attended a little 'conference' under the plane trees which addressed the poets of the Resistance. It was all the more fun because I knew that sooner or later I would have to sit down and crack on - but I'd do so with a full scrapbook of notes and pictures for grey winter days.

 

This week I gave a talk about how I became a writer. It was a good time to think about what I was going to say, because I realised that I could do worse than to focus on what had really made the difference between wanting to write and be published, and being published. And then take my own advice.

 

The talk was held at an appropriate venue, The Poet at Matfield quite near where I live in Kent. It's a traditional old pub, now transformed into a fine restaurant. The eponymous poet was Siegfried Sassoon - born in Matfield, across the green from the pub - decorated soldier of the First World War and best known for poetry which exposed the horrors and stupidities of war.

 

 

When you read the works of men like Sassoon and Char, the experiences their words reflect, you realise that they set out all the important, the compelling subjects: life and death, love and betrayal, honour and dishonour, truth and lies. I should have said that while I was speaking, but I didn't. I was thinking more of what they inspire in a smaller, more personal way. Because a sense of purpose and determination is more use than high-mindedness.

 

And that was what I said. If it doesn't sound too trite in juxtaposition, you have to be determined to become a writer. You have to want to do it, and follow through. It's not just putting the words on the page either, it's about being sufficiently clear-sighted to junk what's not good enough. It's about reading widely to be able to gauge what's good and bad, always with a single aim in mind.  

 

I've always been stubborn, but when it comes to writing I simply will not admit defeat. Which doesn't mean I think I'm always right - far from it. Sometimes it means admitting I've got something wrong and working like a demon to put it right, engine humming with determination to reach the happy ending of a decent published book. With this novel I'm experimenting a bit more with structure. I'm excited about it, and so far my publishers like the idea that it will be different. It may not work, but if at first you don't succeed... I'm going in.   





Rene Char: Night chimera

Congé au Vent (Wind Away)

   Camped in the hillsides near the village are fields of mimosa. During the gathering season, it may happen that, some distance away, you meet an extremely sweet-smelling girl whose arms have been busy during the day among the fragile branches. Like a lamp with a bright nimbus of perfume, she goes her way, her back to the setting sun.

   To speak to her would be sacrilege.

   The grass crushed beneath her slippers. Give her right of way. You may be lucky enough to make out on her lips the chimera of the damp of night.

René Char, from Fureur et Mystère (1948)

A native of Provence, the poet René Char (1907-1988) had the gift of capturing expansiveness in the small frame of verse. It was freedom he valued, and he invited the reader to walk in the “great spaces of the self”, uniting the universal and the deeply personal.

Originally part of the French surrealist movement, Char reflected the complexities of the “fury and mystery” of World War II in occupied France. Directness and passion are coded into the landscape of his descriptive flow. For Char was no mere wordsmith: he was a man of action and astonishing bravery, commanding a Resistance cell from Céreste in the eastern Luberon.

The short prose-poem Congé au Vent  appears in René Char, Selected Poems, edited by Mary Ann Caws and Tina Jolas (pub. New Directions, New York). This is a superb introduction to his work, with English translations and the original on opposite pages.

You only have to go as far as the title of Congé au Vent to get a taste of Char’s wordplay – and the delicacy of these excellent translations. Wind Away is the English title, which is perhaps too lyrical quite to capture the holiday or 'day off' sense of “congé” – I think Off in the Wind, the more literal translation, would work better for me.

But to quibble is to engage, and that was above all, what René Char intended his poetry to do.

The painting used to illustrate the poem is Long Shadows – Provence by Maryanne Jacobsen which I’ve written about here. The richness of the evening colours and the path leading on seem to catch the essence of Char’s words. If you would like to find out more about the Surrealist Movement, there is an excellent article here on Artsy.net.