«Ô vous, frères humains, connaissez la joie de ne pas haïr»: le ‘livre utile’ d’Albert Cohen

Résumé 0

This essay offers an analysis of the readerly presence in the text Ô vous frères humains(1972), part of the so-called autobiographical works by Albert Cohen. The novel is highly influenced by the Biblical writings of the Prophets; the addressees are therefore called to a deep engagement with the text. Since the very title, the reader becomes party to the book as well as a character in it, playing the different roles of accomplice, defendant, or heir. The narrative alternates between two contrasting time frames; one features the writer, now an elderly and famous novelist, and the other portrays the boy he once was: a ten-year-old in love with France, son of Jewish immigrants. The writer tells of an incident he suffered as a child, when he got insulted, slapped and chased away as a “dirty Jew” by a street vendor and the approving bystanders. The child is therefore forced to become aware of his Jewish identity during a dreadful wander. The penchant for literary writing burgeons in him, together with a prophetical calling, in a regal route alongside the Jewish Jesus and following Moses with the tablets of the Ten Commandments. The two times frames alternate in an intertwinement often consisting of beautiful prose poems. From a thematic point of view, such poems are dominated by semantic isotopies of literary writing, anti-Semitism and death. Most importantly, they constantly call on the addressees (employing the features of prophetic writings).Sometimes the discourse is addressed to anti-Semites (with a lucid awareness of the evil they have caused with the Shoah, which is recalled in touching passages), but then it moves on to address all Christians, whose professed love for their neighbour has become pure hypocrisy. Finally, the discourse addresses every human and declares a universal brotherhood that arises from our common mortality. As a result, the book proves to be a memoir and a testament for future generations, a ‘useful book’ begging the human brotherhood to transform hatred into “tendresse de pitié” – a deep empathy that enables us to recognise even the worst of enemies as brothers in death; a humble prayer for justice in the face of mankind’s common and inescapable fate.