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Emmanuel Bove: Armand (Armand)
Our eponymous hero and narrator,Armand had, like many people from many countries following World War I, been living in poverty. He had then metJeanne, a war widow who was clearly comfortably off and though she was older than him, they got together and he now lived in relative comfort. Although they are not married, the couple seem to live happily together.
One day he is out walking in the streets of Paris when someone taps him on the shoulder. It is.Lucien, a friend from the days of his poverty who he had not seen for some time.Lucien is clearly not well off. Armand invites him for a drink.Lucien comments that it is clear that Armand is well off. Armand has not been seen for some time at the cheap wine house both used to frequent.Armand feels somewhat guilty about his former friend and invies him to his house for lunch the next day and even suggests that he may be able to find him a job.
Armand has tried to put his past life behind him and forget it, now he is comfortably off with. Jeanne.
Jeanne prepares a nice lunch, but Armand is worried that when she sees Lucien she will feel that she has wasted her time.Armand he tries to warn her what he is like. For example he is shy and does not speak much but that is normal for him.
When he does arrive, it is clear he has made an effort but his clothes are torn and scruffy, and of course he is clearly nervous. He clearly feels lost in a big house and does not know where to sit or how to behave. However, when the meal is over, he seems reluctant to go andArmand has to encourage him telling him that he,Armand, will come and visit him the next day.
Lucien lives in a very rundown building in a small, cold room. He asksArmand about his arrangements withJeanne and whether Jeanne gives him money.
This man had never been happy. For years he had lived alone, anxious, worried about his fragile state of health, despised by the people who knew him by sight. I felt sorry I had failed to make allowances for him. He had no suspicion of how devoted I was to him. He did not expect anyone to do him a kindness.
asks Armand even suggests that while he is happy with Jeanne, he misses the old freedom he used to have when he could come and go as he pleased and no one bothered him. It is not clear whether he really means this or whether he is just saying it to placate Lucien. However, we do know that he enjoys no longer living in a one room flat and that he enjoys being able to move around the house.
When he visits Lucien, he finds him stripped to the waist and his old war wound is clearly visible. However, they are soon interrupted by Lucien’s sister Marguerite. Lucien berates her for turning up unannounced and Armand feels that he has to defend her to the annoyance of Lucien. Lucien storms off and Marguerite is worried that he will later hit her because of her unannounced arrival and Armand’s defence of her.
Armand, perhaps foolishly ,will go and visit Marguerite. She is clearly embarrassed by the visit of an unaccompanied male and even more so when.Armand’s attempts at comforting her go too far.
Will she tell her brother and will he tell?Jeanne? Not surprisingly this gives.Armand some cause for concern.
What Bove does in this book, as he has done in other books, is to focus considerably on the main character’s thoughts, what he thinks of other people, what they might think of him and what they might think of what is going on around them. Much of the book is essentially.Armand’s outlook on his own life, on what his life has been, and the lives of the Three characters he comes in contact with during the course of this book.
He clearly enjoys the comforts of his life with Jeanne but at the same time, he feels that he has lost a certain amount of freedom by being with her. However, he is not entirely sure of the respective advantage of being free or having a comfortable life.
We do get the reactions of the other characters primarily as seen through Armand’s eyes.
Of course we the readers we react in a similar way, perhaps wondering how we might behave in those situations.
It is a relatively short book and f the action takes place over a very short space of time and is interesting for us as we get deeper into the psychology of eponymous protagonist.
Publishing history
First published in 1927 byÉditions Emile-Paul frères
First English publication in 1987by Carcanet
Translated by Janet Louth