Il existe deux catégories de roman noir: une première qui n'est qu'une métamorphose du récit de détention, une seconde, beaucoup plus originale, qui inaugure une véritable révolution en plaçant à l'avant-plan de l'intrigue un nouveau personnage: le coupable lui-même. Et celui-ci, selon les cas, est gangster, assassin, tueur fou, proxénète, trafiquant, faussaire ou voleur. Dans cette perspective, les premiers auteurs représentatifs du genre, aux États-Unis, ne sont pas tant Hammett ou Chandler (leurs héros contiinuent d'être des limiers) que William Burnett, Donald Clarke, James Cain et Horace McCoy. On remarquera au surplus que les livres qui les ont fait largement connaître ont tous été publiés dans les années de crise, c'est-à-dire entre 1929 et 1935: Le Petit César et Un dénommé Louis Beretti en 1929, Le facteur sonne toujours deux fois en 1934 et On achève bien les chevaux en 1935.
À ces noms, il convient d'ajouter celui, prestigieux, de William Faulkner. Chose curieuse, on évite en France de le ranger au sein des auteurs du genre, sans doute parce que ce dernier est mal perçu ou parce qu'il est toujours de bon ton de dénigrer la littérature policière, sous prétexte qu'elle est le plus souvent mal écrite et qu'elle s'adresse au plus grand nombre. Au surplus, les spécialistes français eux-mêmes négligent le Faulkner « romancier noir », comme on en a une preuve en parcourant le numéro de la revue Europe, paru en août-septembre 1984 et consacré au roman noir américain: Faulkner n'y est pas étudié et c'est en vain qu'on chercherait ici une allusion relative à son œuvre. En revanche, de l'autre côté de l'Atlantique, on ne manque jamais de souligner que Faulkner a, lui aussi, écrit des histoires criminelles. Ce qui explique pourquoi un article lui est dévolu dans l'ouvrage de base Twentieth-century crime and mysterywriters, dont la deuxième édition date de 1985 et où son nom figure, en bonne place entre Howard Fast et Kenneth Fearing.
Pour Hugh Holman, l'auteur de l'article, cinq titres de Faulkner relèvent directement des « crime publications »: Sanctuaire, Lumière d'août, Absalon, Absalon!, L'Intrus et Le Gambit du cavalier.
Il est certain que le premier d'entre eux est le plus typique du roman noir. Faulkner y travailla de janvier à mai 1929, surtout dans l'intention de faire de l'argent et de rencontrer le succès auprès du public. «J'ai songé, dira-t-il plus tard, à ce que je pouvais imaginer de plus horrrible et je l'ai mis sur le papier. » Ce à quoi il aura songé est le milieu de la pègre, telle qu'elle vivait dans l'État du Mississippi, à la fin des années 1920, en s'adonnant à la fois au jeu, à la prostitution et à la contrebande d'alcool. On peut donc raisonnablement penser que certains personnages de Sanctuaire et certaines situations décrites ont un fond de vérité. Selon David Minter, un des biographes de Faulkner, l'étonnant Popeye, peut-être le plus sinistre héros faulknérien, aurait été inspiré par un gangster célèbre de Memphis, un dénommé Popeye Pumphrey. Quant à Miss Reba, elle ne serait que la transposition d'une prostituée connue, à l'époque, de toute la ville. Est-ce à dire que le roman est le reflet précis d'un monde que Faulkner avait sous les yeux? Répondre à la question par l'affirmative reviendrait à banaaliser le livre et, plus encore, à déconsidérer la puissance créatrice de l'auteur et son extraordinaire génie de romancier. Ce qui est sûr, c'est que Sanctuaire est, au premier abord, un roman d'action dramatique et qu'il ne contient que peu d'éléments relevant de l'analyse. En cela, Faulkner a, d'évidence, atteint son objectif: raconter une histoire qui soit de nature à intéresser des lecteurs de récits d'aventures et de mystère. Lui-même, du reste, en aura toujours été friand et on sait que, dans sa propre bibliothèque, il conservait des livres d'Agatha Christie, de John Dickson Carr, de Dorothy Sayers, d'Ellery Queen et de Rex Stout.
Sanctuaire inspirera d'ailleurs un fameux polar stricto sensu, Pas d'orchidées pour Miss Blandish, de James Hadley Chase (dont la première version date de 1938). Les héros de Chase rappellent en effet nettement ceux conçus par Faulkkner, surtout Miss Blandish elle-même et Slim Grisson. Ainsi, si Popeye, dès son plus jeune âge, découpait des perruches en petits morceaux pour attiser son plaisir, Slim Grisson ne peut, lui, réellement exprimer l'amour étrange qu'il nourrit pour Miss Blandish que par des actes sadiques et violents, par exemple lorsqu'il veut sublimer sa virilité devant elle en se servant d'un couteau. Que Chase se soit nourri du livre de Faulkner, cela ne semble faire aucun doute. L'adéquation thématique est patente. Il reste que dans Sanctuaire l'action policière est des plus ténues, et que le ton adopté par Chase évoque davantage celui inauguré par Dashiell Hammett dans Le Faucon de Malte, paru en 1930, le premier véritable roman noir de l'histoire de la littérature moderne, écrit selon une étonnante esthétique de l'ellipse. Il demeure surtout que la vision de Chase, pour efficace qu'elle soit, ne parvient jamais à l'intensité tragique, à la sombre et sensuelle âpreté, à la majesté bouleversante et hallucinante qui traverse Sanctuaire d'un bout à l'autre.
Sanctuaire n'est en effet pas un roman d'action comme un autre, et certainement pas un ouvrage de série. Car ce qui y est dit est si effroyable, si cru, si brutal qu'il sacralise une véritable esthétique de la perversion, exprimée selon une vision douloureuse de la sexualité et du crime. Tous les personnages du livre sont, de fait, des corrompus, entièrement fascinés par la violence et la luxure, totalement soumis à l'emprise du mal. Dans ces conditions, on comprend pourrquoi André Malraux a parlé de Sanctuaire comme d'une tragédie, en sachant fort bien ce que recouvrait le mot. D'où aussi ces phrases de Marc Saporta, dans sa « psychobiographie» de Faulkner (1) : « On trouve au cœur de Sanctuaire l'un des ressorts les plus révélateurs dont use la mythologie pour nous renseigner sur la condition humaine: l'homme ou la femme semble s'acharner avec persévérance à faire son propre malheur. » Compte tenu de ce qui précède, il n'est donc pas exagéré de prétendre que le livre constitue une parabole, à l'instar de tout ce que Faulkner a écrit, de sa jeunesse à sa consécration internationale, et jusqu'à la publication, en 1962, l'année même de sa mort, de son dernier roman Les Larrrons où, il faut le souligner, resurgit le personnage de Miss Reba. Autant dire que Faulkner, malgré son souci de sacrifier à la littérature de genre, dans le but de faire bouillir la marmite, n'a pu contenir ses hantises les plus profondes et a été incapable d'étouffer les pulsions qui le poussaient sans cesse vers la feuille blanche. Et c'est là ce qui devait arriver aussi à Georges Bernanos lorsque, pour des besoins alimenntaires il allait se mettre à écrire Un crime. Au demeurant, après avoir lu le manuscrit de Sanctuaire en 1929, Hal Smith, l'éditeur de Faulkner, ne cachera pas sa surprise. «Bon Dieu! lui dira-t-il dans une lettre, je ne peux pas publier ça! On nous mettrait en prison tous les deux. » De telle sorte que Sanctuaire ne paraîtra, remanié, qu'en 1931, soit deux ans après Le Petit César de Burnett et Un nommé Louis Beretti de Clarke. Et il aura fallu attendre l'année 1981 pour que soit éditée la version originale du roman. Après tout, est-ce si étonnant que Sanctuaire ait les accents d'une parabole? D'un certain point de vue, le roman noir, le vrai, n'est jamais qu'une fable sur la transgression. Or, chez Faulkner, tout est transgression. Et c'est pourquoi il est impossible de lire son œuvre éblouissante sans avoir la tête en feu et sans avoir la certitude que ce sont bien le bruit et la fureur qui président aux destinées du monde.
(1) M. Saporta. Les Erres du faucon, une psychobiographie de William Faulkner, éd. Seghers, 1984,412 p., 26,68 €.
*
William Faulkner: The Sanctuary of Evil
Mario Vargas Llosa
Faulkner suốt đời giữ cái nhìn tiêu cực của ông, với Sanctuary, câu chuyện một cô gái bị một tên liệt dương phá huỷ trinh tiết bằng một cái bắp ngô, bởi vì, cả nửa thế kỷ, sau những dòng tự kiểm hồi sách mới ra lò, trong lần nói chuyện tại Đại học Virginia, [Vintage Books, New York, 1965], ông vẫn còn chê đứa con hư hỏng của mình, coi đây là một câu chuyện "yếu" và được viết bởi những tà ý [base intentions].
Nhưng đây là một đại tác phẩm của ông. Hai Lúa cứ liên tưởng tới Giáo Đuờng Của Cái Ác, ở một xứ sở khác, ở đó, có những tên già, liệt dương hay không liệt dương, lôi con nít vào khách sạn hãm hiếp, xong xuôi, đuổi ra, quẳng cho cô bé hình như là một trăm đô thì phải, thí dụ như một tay LQD nào đó.
Bởi vì, chỉ có thiên tài mới có thể kể một câu chuyện như thế, với những sự kiện như thế, với những nhân vật như thế, bằng một cách kể mà người đọc, không chỉ chấp nhận, gật gù, kể được, được đấy, mà còn như bị quỉ sứ hớp hồn!
Như chính Faulkner đã từng kể, ông viết Giáo Đường, bản viết đầu, trong ba tuần lễ, năm 1929, liền sau Âm thanh và Cuồng nộ. Ý tưởng về cuốn sách, như ông giải thích, trong lần in thứ nhì [1932], thứ tiểu thuyết ba xu, và ông viết, chỉ vì một mục đích duy nhất, là tiền, [trước nó, thì chỉ vì vui, for "pleasure"]. Phương pháp của ông, là, "bịa ra một câu chuyện ghê rợn nhất mà tôi có thể tưởng tượng ra được", một điều gì một con người miệt vườn, vùng Mississipi, có thể coi như là một chủ đề. Quá sốc, khi đọc, tay biên tập bảo ông, hắn sẽ chẳng bao giờ xuất bản một cuốn sách như thế, bởi vì, nếu xb, là cả hai thằng đều đi tù.
Bản viết thứ nhì cũng chẳng kém phần ghê rợn...
Được coi như, hiện đại hóa bi kịch Hy Lạp, viết lại tiểu thuyết gothic, ám dụ thánh kinh, ẩn dụ chống lại công cuộc hiện đại hoá mang tính kỹ nghệ nền văn hóa Miền Nam nước Mẽo vân vân và vân vân. Khi Faulkner mang đứa con hư của mình trình làng văn Tây, André Malraux phán, đây đúng là, "đưa tiểu thuyết trinh thám vô trong bi kịch Hy Lạp", và khi Borges nói dỡn chơi, rằng những tiểu thuyết gia Bắc Mỹ đã biến "sự tàn bạo thành đức hạnh", chắc chắn, ông ta có trong đầu lúc đó, cuốn Giáo Đường của Faulkner.
Fiction does not reproduce life; it denies it, putting in its place a conjuring trick that pretends to replace it. But, in a way that is difficult to establish, fiction also completes life, adding to human experience something that men do not meet in their real lives, but only in those imaginary lives that they live vicariously, through fiction.
   The irrational depths that are also part of life are beginning to reveal their secrets and, thanks to men like Freud, Jung or Bataille, we are beginning to know the way (which is very difficult to detect) that they influence human behaviour...
    Giả tưởng không tái sản xuất cuộc đời, nó chối từ cuộc đời, và, đặt ở đó, một trò ảo thuật, [một trò mà con mắt, như Sartre đã từng chê Sartoris của Faulkner], giả như là cuộc đời. Nhưng, bằng một cách nào đó, thật khó xác định, giả tưởng cũng hoàn tất cuộc đời, bằng cách thêm vào kinh nghiệm con người, một điều gì con người chưa từng gặp, trong đời thực của họ, và nhờ giả tưởng, mà họ được nếm mùi vị của nó.
    Những vùng sâu phi lý, ngoại lý, cũng là một phần của cuộc đời, nhờ những người như Freud, Jung, hay Bataille bắt đầu lộ ra, và chúng ta bắt đầu hiểu, cung cách, đường hướng [thật khó tách bạch hẳn ra được], chúng ảnh hưởng lên cách ứng xử của con người.
William Faulkner: The Sanctuary of Evil
According to his own testimony, Faulkner wrote the first version of  Sanctuary in three weeks in 1929, immediately after The Sound and the Fury. The idea of the book, he explained in the second edition of the novel (1932), had always seemed to him 'cheap' because he had conceived it with the sole intention of making money (up to then, he had  only written for 'pleasure'). His method was 'to invent the most horrific tale that I could imagine', something that someone from the Mississippi could take as a topical theme. Aghast at the text, his editor told him that he would never publish such a book since, if he did so, both of them would go to prison.
Then, while he was working in a power plant, Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying. When this book came out, he received the proofs of Sanctuary which the editor had finally decided to publish. On rereading his work, Faulkner decided that the novel was indeed unpresentable as it stood and made many corrections and deletions, to such an extent that the version which appeared in 1931 differed considerably from the original. (A comparison of both texts can be found in Gerald Langford, Faulkner's Revision of Sanctuary, University of Texas Press, 1972.)
 The second version is no less 'horrific' than the first: the main horrifying events of the story occur in both versions, with the exception of the discreetly incestuous feelings between Horace and Narcissa Benbow and Horace and his stepdaughter Little Belle, which are much more explicit in the first version. The main difference is that the centre of the first version was Horace Benbow, while in the new one, Popeye and Temple Drake have grown and have relegated the honest and weak lawyer to a minor role. With regard to structure, the original version was much clearer, despite the temporal complexities, since Horace was the perspective from which nearly all the story was narrated, while in the definitive version the tale continually changes point of view, from chapter to chapter, and sometimes even within a single paragraph.
  Faulkner maintained his negative opinion of Sanctuary throughout his life. A half century after that self-critical prologue, in his Conversations at the University of Virginia (Vintage Books, New York, 1965), he once again called his story - at least in its first version - 'weak' and written with base intentions.
  In fact, Sanctuary is one of his masterpieces and deserves to be considered, after Light in August and Absalom, Absalom, among the best novels of the Yoknapatawpha saga. What is certain is that with its harrowing coarseness, its dizzying depiction of cruelty and madness, and its gloomy pessimism, it is scarcely tolerable. Precisely: only a genius could have told a story with such events and characters in a way that would be not only acceptable but even bewitching for the reader. This almost absurdly ferocious story is remarkable for the extraordinary mastery with which it is told, for its unnerving parable on the nature of evil, and for those symbolic and metaphysical echoes which have so excited the interpretative fantasy of the critics. For this is, without doubt, the novel of Faulkner that has generated the most diverse and baroque readings: it has been seen as the modernization of Greek tragedy, a rewriting of the Gothic novel, a biblical allegory, a metaphor against the industrial modernization of the culture of the South of the United States etc. When he introduced the book to the French public in 1933, André Malraux said that it represented 'the insertion of the detective novel into Greek tragedy', and Borges was surely thinking of this novel when he launched his famous boutade that North American novelists had turned 'brutality into a literary virtue'. Under the weight of so much attributed philosophical and moral symbolism, the story of Sanctuary tends to become diluted and disappear. And, in truth, every novel is important for what it tells, not for what it suggests.
  What is this story? In a couple of sentences, it is the sinister adventure of Temple Drake, a pretty, scatterbrained and wealthy girl of seventeen, the daughter of a judge, who is deflowered with an ear of corn by an impotent and psychopathic gangster - who is also a murderer. He then shuts her  away in a brothel in Memphis where he forces her to make love in front of him with a small-time hoodlum whom he has brought along and whom he later kills. Woven into this story is another, somewhat less horrific: Lee Goodwin, a murderer, an alcohol distiller and bootlegger who is tried for the death of a mental defective, Tommy (who was killed by Popeye), condemned and burned alive despite the efforts of Horace Benbow, a well-intentioned lawyer, to save him. Benbow cannot make good triumph.
  These horrors are a mere sampling of the many that appear in the book, in which the reader encounters a strangling, a lynching, various murders, a deliberate fire and a whole raft of moral and social degradation. In the first version, furthermore, the character endowed with a moral conscience, Horace, was caught in the grip of a double incestuous passion. In the final version this has been softened to the extent that it remains as scarcely a murky trace in the emotional life of the lawyer.
  In every novel it is the form - the style in which it is written and the order in which it is told - which determines the richness or poverty, the depth or triviality, of the story. But in novelists like Faulkner, the form is something so visible, so present in the narration that it appears at times to be a protagonist, and acts like another flesh and blood character, or else it appears as a fact, like the passions, crimes or upheavals; of its story.
   The effectiveness of Sanctuary's form stems above all from what the narrator hides from the reader, putting the facts in a different place in the chronology, or leaving them out altogether. The yawning gap in the novel - the barbarous deflowering of Temple - is an ominous silence,an expressive silence. Nothing is described, but from that unexpressed savagery a poisonous atmosphere seeps out and spreads to contaminate Memphis and other places in the novel, turning them into a land of evil, regions of ruin and horror, beyond all hope. There are many other hidden pieces of information, some of which are revealed retrospectively, after the effects that they cause - like the murder of Tommy or Red or the impotence of Popeye - and others which remain in the shadows, although we do learn something about them, enough to keep us intrigued and for us to surmise that in this darkness something murky and criminal is lurking, like the mysterious journeys and shady affairs of Clarence Snopes and the adventures of Belle, the wife of Horace.
   But this manipulation of the facts of the story, which are withheld momentarily or completely from the reader, is more cunning than these examples might indicate. It occurs at every stage, sometimes in every sentence. The narrator never tells us everything and often throws us off the scent: he reveals what a person does, but not what he thinks (Popeye's private life, for example, is never revealed), or vice versa, with no prior warning, he depicts actions and thoughts of unknown people, whose identity he reveals later, in a surprising way, like a magician who suddenly makes the vanished handkerchief reappear. In this way, the story lights up and fades; certain scenes dazzle us with their illumination while others, almost invisible in the shadows, can only be glimpsed.
  The pace of the narrative time is also capricious and variable: it speeds up and goes at the pace of the characters' dialogues, which the narrator recounts almost without commentary - as for example in the trial. In Chapter 13, the crater chapter, time is filmed in slow motion, almost stops and the movements of the characters seem like the rhythmic development of a Chinese shadow theatre. All the scenes of Temple Drake in the house of the old Frenchman are theatrical, they move at a ceremonial pace which turns actions into rites. In this tale, with some exceptions, the scenes are juxtaposed rather than dissolving into each other.
  All this is extremely artificial, but it is not arbitrary. Or rather, it does not seem arbitrary: it emerges as a necessary and authentic reality. The world, these creatures, these dialogues, these silences could not be otherwise. When a novelist succeeds in transmitting to the reader that compelling, inexorable sensation that what is being narrated in the novel could only happen in that way, be told in that way, then he has triumphed completely.
  Many of the almost infinite number of interpretations of Sanctuary stem from the unconscious desire of critics to come up with moral alibis which allow them to redeem a world which is described in the novel as so irrevocably negative. Here once more we come up against that perennial view - which, it seems, literature will never be able to shake off — that poems or fiction should have some kind of edifying function in order to be acceptable to society.
  The humanity that appears in this story is almost without exception execrable or, at the very least, wretched. Horace Benbow has some altruism, which makes him try to save Goodwin and help Ruby, but this is offset by his weakness and cowardice which condemn him to defeat when he tries to face up to injustice. Ruby also shows some spark of feeling and sympathy - she does at least try  to help Temple - but this does not have any useful outcome because she has been inhibited by all the blows and setbacks and is now too cowed by suffering for her generous impulses to be effective. Even the main victim, Temple, causes as much repugnance as sympathy in us because she is as vacuous and stupid - and, potentially as prone to evil - as her tormentors. The characters who do not kill, bootleg, rape and traffic — like the pious Baptist ladies who have Ruby thrown out of the hotel, or Narcissa Benbow - are hypocritical and smug, consumed by prejudice and racism. Only the idiots like Tommy seem less gifted than the rest of their fellow men in this world when it comes to causing harm to others.
   In this fictional reality, human evil is shown, above all, in and through sex. As in the fiercest Puritans, an apocalyptic vision of sexual life permeates all Faulkner's work, but in no other novel of the Yoknapatawpha saga is it felt more forcibly. Sex does not enrich the characters or make them happy, it does not aid communication or cement solidarity, nor does it inspire or enhance existence. It is almost always an experience that animalizes, degrades and often destroys the characters, as is shown in the upheaval caused by Temple's presence in the Old Frenchman's house.
   The arrival of the blonde, pale girl, with her long legs and delicate body, puts the four thugs - Popeye, Van, Tommy and Lee - into a state of excitement and belligerence, like four mastiffs with a bitch on heat. Whatever traces of dignity and decency that might still survive within them vanish when faced with this adolescent who, despite her fear and without really being conscious of what she is doing, provokes them. Purely instinctive and animal feelings prevail over all other feelings such as rationality and even the instinct for survival. In order to placate this instinct, they are prepared to rape and to kill each other. Once she is sullied and degraded by Popeye, Temple will adopt this condition and, for her as well, sex will from then on be a transgression of the norm, violence.
   Is this animated nastiness really humanity? Are we like that? No. This is the humanity that Faulkner has invented with such powers of persuasion that he makes us believe, at least for the duration of the absorbing reading of the novel, that it is not a fiction, but life itself. In fact life is never what it is in fiction. It is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but always more nuanced, diverse and predictable than even the most successful literary fantasies can suggest. Of course, real life is never as perfect, rounded, coherent and intelligible as its literary representations. In these representations, something has been added and cut, in accordance with the 'demons' - those obsessions and deep pulsations that are at the service of intelligence and reason, but are not necessarily controlled or understood by these faculties - of the person who invents them and bestows on them that illusory life that words can give.
Fiction does not reproduce life; it denies it, putting in its place a  conjuring trick that pretends to replace it. But, in a way that is difficult to establish, fiction also completes life, adding to human experience something that men do not meet in their real lives, but only in those imaginary lives that they live vicariously, through fiction.
  The irrational depths that are also part of life are beginning to reveal their secrets and, thanks to men like Freud, Jung or Bataille, we are beginning to know the way (which is very difficult to detect) that they influence human behaviour. Before psychologists and psychoanalysts existed, even before sorcerers and magicians took on the role, fiction helped men (without their knowing it) to coexist and to come to terms wfth certain phantoms that welled out of their innermost selves, complicating their lives, filling them with impossible and destructive appetites. Fiction helped people not to free themselves from these phantoms, which would be quite difficult and perhaps counterproductive, but to live with them, to establish a modus vivendi between the angels that the community would like its members exclusively to be, and the demons that these members must also be, no matter how developed the culture or how powerful the religion of the society in which they are born. Fiction is also a form of purgation. What in real life is, or must be, repressed in accordance with the existing morality - often simply to ensure the survival of life - finds in fiction a refuge, a right to exist, a freedom to operate even in the most terrifying and horrific way.
  In some way, what happened to Temple Drake in Yoknapatawpha County according to the tortuous imagination of the most persuasive creator of fiction in our time, saves the beautiful schoolgirls of flesh and blood from being stained by that need for excess that makes up part of our nature and saves us from being burned or hanged for fulfilling that need.
London, December 1987
Mario Vargas Llosa
Những mắc mớ, liên hệ, giữa những tác giả tưởng chẳng liên hệ với nhau, như J.H. Chase, Faulkner, McCoy, tất cả đều quy về một thằng Mít, là Gấu, cùng chỉ ra cơn suy thoái về kinh tế trên toàn thế giới, và về đạo đức riêng ở xứ Mít, liệu tất cả chỉ để nói ra điều này: Trong những ngày nằm nhà thương Grall, BHD ghé thăm, trên đường đi, ghé tiệm sách ở đường Lê Lợi, mua cho Gấu cuốn của Chase, Un beau matin d'été, và khi đưa cho Gấu, hỏi đọc chưa, Gấu ngu quá, nói đọc rồi, và em buồn rầu nói, em cũng nghi như vậy, khi mua!
Ui chao, số mệnh chẳng lẽ chi ly, châu đáo đến như thế, đối với thằng cha Gấu?