EL ACUERDO DE TRANSACCIÓN EN MATERIA DE PATENTES

Published in 2008, Les Années is both the most expansive in scope, and the most intricately narrated of Ernaux‟s works. The flashback recounted captures both individual and collective memories spanning nearly seven decades, starting just after World War II and ending in 2006. Further distinguishing itself from the rest of Ernaux‟s corpus, Les Années is the only text in which we do not encounter a first-person singular narrator. Rather, a mise- en-abyme launched approximately one-quarter into the text reveals a polyphonic narrator in the gradual integration of nous/on with elle, all of which are ultimately identified as the future author.

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perspectives of the same polyphonic nous/on/elle referenced above. The first of these perspectives is anchored in the present (and often projects into the future, as we shall see in the opening line and throughout the narrative), while the other sets her point of view in the past. The present-time narrator, who opens the text with the foreboding commentary on the “disappearance” of images, will also narrate the photographs and the mise-en-abyme on the conception of the work and the identity of its eventual future author/narrator.29

The second perspective of the narrative voice in Les Années slips into a retrospective voix off mode, an arrival demonstrated by fading from the present into the past. This fade is implied visually by the numerous blank spaces in the text. We may consider as evidence an example that arises quite early in the text. In the following passage, we encounter the description of a photograph in the present tense, after which a large textual scission leads us to the past. The photograph presents the deceased sister of the nous/on/elle narrator, while the passage the immediately follows reports the customary play between boys and girls,

specifically that the two sexes were segregated:

La photo floue et abîmée d‟une petite fille debout devant une barrière, sur un pont. Elle a des cheveux courts, des cuisses menues et des genoux proéminants. A cause du soleil, elle a mis sa main au-dessus des yeux. Elle rit. Au dos, il y a écrit Ginette 1937. Sur sa tombe: décédée à l’âge de six ans le jeudi saint 1938. C‟est la sœur aînée de la fillette sur la plage de Sotteville-sur-Mer.

Les garçons et les filles étaient partout séparés. Les garçons, êtres bruyants, sans larmes, toujours prêts à lancer quelque chose, cailloux, marrons, pétards, boules de neige dûres, disaient des gros mots…Les filles,

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In fact, the entire text is a mise-en-abyme, since the present-time narrator presents merely the conception of the book, always in the future tense or the present conditional mood. Given that, the flashback itself can be seen as unfolding not on the page, but in the memory of the voix off, much like the process of voluntary memory. Moreover, as we shall see in the next section of this chapter, present-time narrator also implies that her memory is a recording, editing, projection and viewing device for the events recounted in the actual flashback narrated as voix off.

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qui en avaient peur, étaient enjointes de ne pas les imiter, de préférer les jeux calmes, la ronde, la marelle, la bague d‟or. (Les Années 40-41; emphasis and spacing in original)

Further clarifying the status of the voix off, we shall recall Hayward‟s assertion description of the intra-diegetic narrative voice (86). First, we discover that the nous/on/elle is part of the story and we are privy to her inner thoughts through the metadiscursive

commentaries following each photographic image. Moreover, the flashback sequences interrupt the present-time narrative. Those two phenomena establish, following Hayward‟s definition, that narration in Les Années occurs on an intra-diegetic level. 30

The fused identity of the nous/on/elle narrative voice is manifest in numerous metadiscursive commentaries that I will discuss later in this chapter. In any event, Les Années is the only Ernauxian text that does not feature je as its narrative voice. In fact, in

Les Années, je is mentioned only to be renounced as the inappropriate voice with which to narrate the flashback: “Aucun je dans ce qu‟elle voit comme une sorte d‟autobiographie impersonelle – mais « on » et « nous » - comme si, à son tour, elle faisait le récit des jours d‟avant (Les Années 240). This phenomenon demonstrates the evolution of Ernaux‟s je into a more far-reaching collective voice, as she states in her essay entitled “Vers un je

transpersonnel”: “Le je que j‟utilise me semble une forme impersonnelle, à peine sexuée, quelquefois même plus une parole de « l‟autre » qu‟une parole de moi : une forme transpersonnelle en somme” (221).

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Following is affirmation of the fused identity of the nous/on/elle narrator as it appears in the commentary accompanying a photograph evoked in Les Années: “Et c‟est avec les perceptions et les sensations reçues par

l‟adolescente brune à lunette de quatorze ans et demi que l’écriture ici peut retrouver quelque chose qui glissait dans les années cinquante, capter le reflet projeté de la mémoire individuelle par l’histoire collective” (Les Années 54; my emphasis).

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Yet, although je is rejected as the text‟s narrative voice, this is not to say that any notion of a singular, subjective experience is completely excluded from the Les Années, for a nous always includes a je. In Les Années, the elle described in the text‟s photographs

represents that je in terms of an individual memory, whose personal experiences are an optic through which collective experience is captured. Ernaux supports this hypothesis in a 2008 interview, where she explains her choice of narrative voice in Les Années:

Avec ce livre, en particulier, j‟ai voulu créer une fusion. J‟ai utilisé le « on », le « nous », le « elle » comme une forme collective, impersonnelle. Sans pour autant me passer de l‟intime. Habituellement, le « je » de la première

personne est le signe de l‟autobiographie. Mais il est également un moyen de dire le monde qui est autour. A condition qu‟il ne s‟agisse pas autobiographies bêtement centrées sur soi, bien sûr ! (Freniot and Delaroche www.lire.fr) However, despite those differences, certain Ernauxian trends are still present in Les Années. Readers already familiar with even a few of Ernaux‟s works will notice abundant intertextual references, not only in theme, but also with regard to the photos evoked, but not shown in the text (the exceptions being L’Usage de la photo, published in 2005 and L’Autre fille, published in 2011). We may indeed view Les Années as the continuation, if not the apogee, of the text-image reciprocity that Ernaux has maintained throughout her corpus, particularly in terms of writing the memory (and reality) of her past experiences. We shall determine that Ernaux‟s writing of memory simulates cinematic processes such as the

recording, imprinting and projecting of images. Moreover, Les Années relies on blank spaces, serving as the literary equivalent of the cinematic fade or dissolve, and a voix off to narrate retrospective events. Finally, like Ernaux‟s previous texts, Les Années begins in the present

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time with a prologue that prepares us for the flashback about to be launched.31 In the sections that follow, we will explore various elements of the prologue, which itself features

abbreviated flashbacks. I will then examine the primary flashback narrative, with particular attention to the narrator‟s perception and conception of memory in cinematic terms. In both the prologue and the main narrative we will note the visual aspects of memory and

simulations of cinematic devices, including the fade and voix off, that pervade the text.