These Possible Lives by Fleur Jaeggy

Author:Fleur Jaeggy
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780811226882
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2017-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Marcel Schwob

Mayer André Marcel Schwob was born into a family of doctors and rabbis. His mother, Mathilde, was a Cahun, descended from Caym of Sainte-Menehould who had followed Joinville across the sea during the Crusades and, it is said, nursed him to health when he fell sick with cholera at Acre. From his maternal great-grandfather, Anselme, the rabbi of Hachfelden, Schwob had inherited an ample forehead, sensual mouth, and a sad half smile in his eyes. Marcel was proud of his lineage yet often preferred not to frequent people of his lineage. His head was stuffed with names, words, and legends. By the time he was three he spoke French, German, and English. The house on Rue de l’Église in Chaville was a silent house. His mother climbed the stairs on tiptoe. Even when the Prussians stole wine from the cellar they took great care around the delicate child — he was too precocious, too intelligent, and he suffered from a brain fever. Over the course of his illness he was confined to bed in a shuttered room. During this time he went on many long voyages. Slightly afflicted by rickets, he dreamed of swimming across the English Channel. Upon arrival, he fell into the arms of Jules Verne. He was also friendly with Edgar Allan Poe, with whom he visited once he had chased away the German tutor. He set up his night table to accommodate his visitors. When he was with Edgar and Jules, he was surrounded by conversation, which made him then abhor children of his own age with all their infantile wheezing. His absorption in these dialogues was such that he had no awareness of the hours passing, or even the years. Suddenly he was fifteen years old and devouring Auguste Brachet’s Grammaire comparée. His uncle, Léon Cahun, author of La vie juive, became his tutor and mentor. After all, who was better suited to mentor Schwob than a Cahun? The same Cahun who was a curator at the Bibliothèque Mazarine. Léon told stories about adventurers, sailors, and soldiers. He had traveled through Asia Minor and along the Euphrates. He was very knowledgeable and even spoke Uyghur.

Marcel met a strange melancholy boy at school, Georges Guieysse. The two quickly became inseparable and began working together. Every page Marcel wrote passed through Georges’s hands. They were like Renaissance Humanists: Marcel composed letters to him in Greek and signed off in Arabic — or sometimes just with a simple “shake hands.” Marcel confided in Georges: he was often incredibly tired, his ideas escaped, his memory got fragmented. Why not go to Australia or Canada and become kitchen boys. And then Georges wasn’t around for a period. When they did see each other, Georges would crouch in the corner, clasping at his spleen, while his scholarly friend went on, building itineraries for the voyages they would one day take. On the seventh of May 1889, Georges Guieysse shot himself through the heart. He was twenty years old.

From that point

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