Passé irrécupérable, présent morne, futur aboli. Paradigmes de la médiocrité dans Le Pion sur l’échiquier d’Irène Némirovsky

Abstract

Although Le Pion sur l’échiquier (1934) was greeted by critics as a generally unsuccessful book, Némirovsky developed a thematic and formal network in this novel that was likely to lead to a generational meditation on the malaise of the post-war period. The story of Christophe Bohun, an anonymous clerk who hates his ordinary life, departs from the Russian-Jewish vein that had dominated Némirovsky’s novels up to that point and focuses instead on a French petty-bourgeoisie plagued by social and existential unhappiness. In this way, the hero's bleak inner landscape blends seamlessly into the picture of an age tormented by the assertion of a civilisation so intrusive that it disrupts the relationship between the subject and the world.

Keywords

• Némirovsky (Irène)
• mediocrity
• malaise
• father
• suicide
• failure