Minor Angels: Toward an Aesthetics of Conflict

If, some time in the future, a literary critic or a cultural anthropologist were to conduct a survey of literature from its beginnings up until the end of the twentieth century, that scholar would realize that representations of violence and conflict feature prominently across periods, traditions and genres. She or he would then come to the realization that it is the war narrative, from Greek epics to historiographic metafictions, that has most significantly contributed to the popularization of violence in literature. If this critic were to pursue his or her inquiries further, and attempted to catalogue works that address the related issues of conflictual violence and war, he or she would have to include, among many: Agrippa d’Aubigné (Les tragiques), Rabelais (Pantagruel, Gargantua), Voltaire (Candide), Victor Hugo (Les orientales, La légende des siècles), Gustave Flaubert (Salâmmbo), Maupassant (Boule de suif), Zola (La débâcle), Malraux (Les conquérants), Sartre (Les mains sales), Patrick Modiano (La place de l’étoile), and Jean Rouaud (Les champs d’honneur). In an addendum to this prestigious list, our critic would then list a somewhat less-known writer who went by the pen-name of Antoine Volodine. Having added Volodine’s name to the footnotes of his or her magnum opus, and sent the final manuscript to the publisher, our critic would think no more of it, and go on to pursue other lofty academic projects. A few days later, a commando of anonymous radicals would seize the manuscript, drown the unsuspecting editor in his own blood, and finally set our unsuspecting critic on fire with the pages of his or her book. At this point, you will have guessed that, for Antoine Volodine, literature “is” a serious business, and that, like Prometheus, one always gets burned when one plays with fire.