The main character of the work is a young man named Colin. He is handsome and also very rich. Colin has his own cook, Nicolas, and a big house. The young man does not work. Colin awaits the arrival of his friend Chic, who serves as an engineer. Chic is not as rich as Colin, so he works constantly.
The main character's house is stuffed with all sorts of unusual equipment. The devices independently perform household operations. He also has a little mouse who is very loved and always taken care of. The mouse is considered a full member of the family. Colen’s home is always light and joyful.
Over dinner, it becomes clear that Aliza, Chic's new lover, is a relative of Nicolas. The girl, like Chic, is very passionate about the works of Jean-Sol Partre; she also collects all his articles.
One day, Colin and Chic were invited to a reception with Isis, a mutual friend. The girl was throwing a party in honor of her dog's birthday. Colin also wanted to find a soul mate, the young man hoped that he would definitely be lucky at this reception. And so it happened, he met a lovely girl named Chloe. The young people liked each other, and very soon decided to tie the knot.
Aliza is despondent; it seems to her that her parents will not allow her to marry the beggar Chic. Colin comes to the rescue; he gives his friend enough money so that he can propose to Alize.
Soon Colin's wedding took place. The celebration cost a lot of money. After the holiday, the newlyweds and the cook Nicolas, who acts as a driver, leave for the south. On the trip, while at the hotel, Nicolas drives Colen crazy. The man throws a shoe at the driver and breaks the window. Due to the draft, Chloe caught a cold. Men surround the girl with increased care, but it does not make her feel better.
At the same time, Chic and his lover go to exhibitions of their idol Partre. They have to go through various tricks to get there. Colin and company arrive home. Entering the rooms, they realize that the former, joy-filled home has become sad and dull. The mouse was injured. Colin, looking into his safe, realizes that there is very little money left.
Upon arrival home, Chloe felt better. She wanted entertainment. Her friends tried to cheer her up, but at the skating rink the girl becomes ill and loses consciousness. Chloe feels pain in her chest. When examined by a doctor, they find out the diagnosis. A girl has a water lily growing in her chest. To get rid of the disease, the patient had to be surrounded with flowers.
Kolen, with his last money, sends his beloved to an expensive mountain sanatorium and surrounds him with flowers. Left without funds, Colin is forced to go to work. Nicolas is sent to a rich house with Isis; the former owner does not have the opportunity to pay him a salary. Colin's house becomes even sadder. Soon Chloe returns from the sanatorium; doctors removed her flower in her chest, but the disease spread to her second lung. Colin sells everything in his house to buy flowers for his wife.
Chic, meanwhile, spends all the money his friend gave him to purchase Partre’s works. Left completely without a livelihood, he breaks up with Aliza. The girl is upset. She begins to kill all the booksellers who provided Chic with the idol's articles. The police begin to pursue Chic and he has a tax debt. Soon the collector dies at their hands. Aliza dies in a fire.
Later, no longer able to fight the disease, Chloe also dies. The inconsolable husband, completely ruined, buries his wife in the far corner of the cemetery for the poor. Since then, he constantly sits at his wife’s grave, waiting for the white lily to sprout in order to destroy the ill-fated flower. The main character's house is destroyed, and the weakened mouse runs to the cat, asking him to put it to death.
This novel encourages us to think about tomorrow, and not indulge in waste.
Picture or drawing Vian - Foam days
Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary
- Summary of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice
The Venetian merchant Antonio is sad for no reason. Close friends Salanio and Salarino suggest that it’s all about unrequited love or ordinary worry about ships with goods. Antonio rejects these options.
- Summary of Aleshkin's heart Sholokhov
Alyoshka is a boy who could live himself and enjoy her, but often not everything is so simple. Although he is already fourteen years old, he is quite small in stature, and also not very physically developed. This was facilitated by their position in the family
- Summary of the Mistress of the French Lieutenant Fowles
The story takes place in the small town of Lyme Regis in 1867. Young people appear before us taking a walk along the embankment. The woman was dressed in a fashionable dress
- Summary of Doyle's Study in Scarlet
The first meeting of Dr. Watson and Sherlock Holmes in a house located on Baker Street. The doctor's move into the second room and their first joint investigation, which the Scotland Yard police could not unravel.
- Summary of Zweig's Letter from a Stranger
The famous writer R. sorts through the mail and finds an envelope without the sender's name. Inside is a large letter written in a woman's handwriting.
PREFACE
The most important thing in life is to approach everything with a priori
opinions. In fact, it turns out that the masses are wrong, and
individuals are always right. You have to be careful about getting out of here
rules of conduct: it is not at all necessary to formulate them,
to follow them. There are only two things: it's all kinds
love affairs with pretty girls and New Orleans music
or Duke Ellington. The rest must disappear, for the rest
ugly, and the following pages of the story draw on all
its strength from the fact that this story is completely true,
because I made it up from beginning to end. Her own
material realization consists essentially in projection
reality - in a distorted and heated atmosphere - on
uneven surface, thereby causing curvature. Most
which is not a plausible approach, as you can see.
Colin was finishing his toilet. After the bath he wrapped himself in
a large terry towel, from under which only one could see
his legs and torso. Taking a spray bottle from a glass shelf, he
directed a fragrant stream of liquid oil onto his blond hair.
An amber comb divided their silky mass into long
orange strands like furrows that a cheerful plowman
draws with a fork on apricot jam. Kolen put aside the comb
and, armed with nail scissors, cut diagonally
corners of your matte eyelids, thereby giving your
mysterious look. He often had to repeat this
surgery because his eyelids were growing very quickly. He
turned on the small lamp of the magnifying mirror and moved closer
close to it to check the condition of your epidermis.
Several blackheads appeared around the wings of the nose. Seeing it close
plan, how ugly they were, the eels quickly dived back under
skin, and satisfied Kolin turned off the lamp. He took off
a towel girded around the loins and, to eliminate the last
traces of moisture, missed one of its corners between the toes. IN
the mirror could see who he looked like - a blond man who
played the role of Slim in Hollywood Canteen. He had a round
head, small ears, straight nose, golden complexion. He
often smiled with a childish smile, and then on his chin
a dimple appeared. He was quite tall, thin,
long-legged and very handsome. The name Colin suited him very well. WITH
He spoke quietly to girls, and cheerfully to men.
Almost always he was in a good mood, the rest of the time he
slept.
He released the water from the bathtub, poking a hole in the bottom.
Bathroom floor covered with light yellow ceramic tiles
the room was paved askew, and water ran down it to the drain,
located exactly above the desk of the inhabitant of the lower
floors.
Rating: 10
A little crazy, undoubtedly visionary and in places a stunningly brilliant thing, revealing an astonishing array of meanings. Vian's slightly surreal style of writing and the incredible richness of the text with colors, images and sounds immediately catches the eye. Perhaps it’s been a long time since I regretted so much that I don’t know French: it seems to me that the puns invented by translators are just the tip of the iceberg, hiding the puzzling linguistic twists of the original. Vian says absolutely crazy things with a hilariously serious face. The author invites us to admire the play of the sun's rays on the stained glass mosaic, taste a cocktail of Duke Ellington's improvisations, and talk with the talking mouse who lives in the hero's bathroom. Around here, a pastoral and touching love story begins, everyone laughs and dances. The reader is captivated, and nothing foreshadows trouble.
And here comes the turning point. The love story turns into a sad tale of death and sacrifice. Happiness, laughter and light flow out of the heroes' lives like air from a punctured balloon. The world shrinks, the colors fade, the sounds of jazz become dull and indistinct. A cute parody of Sartre becomes an evil mockery, a mouse from the bathroom washes the lappi into blood, Chloe falls ill and is about to die. Colorful surrealism develops into the grotesque, mountains of corpses are piled up, duplicity and materialism triumph, cold metal rebels against living human warmth. And with all this, the same seriousness, the same incredible imagery and fantasy, the same ability with a couple of strokes to draw a living, convex image of the tragedy, infinitely far from hackneyed phrases and clichés. The collapse of the heroes' hopes is not inferior in strength and expression to the pictures of their recent happiness, and the most elaborate author's constructions are not able to hide from us the cruel reality of what is happening. Perhaps this is even scarier than Vian’s phantasmagoric horror stories. In short, the book is damn good. I don’t even remember where else the banal horrors of everyday life are shown with such visual power. An amazing novel, so unusual and so alive that you can only sigh in admiration.
Rating: 10
Boris Vian. Jazz critic, musician, poet, science fiction writer. Prone to shocking, notorious writer, who became a classic after his death.
“Foam of Days” is a book in which the incompatible is harmoniously combined in the most paradoxical way: it is both frivolous and deep, sad and life-affirming.
Vian’s favorite technique is the visualization of a worn-out speech cliche, the transfer of phraseological units from the level of language to the level of the artistic reality of the book (“Having brilliantly executed the swallow, she reaped the laurels, and meanwhile the cleaner swept away the laurel leaves scattered in all directions”). However, fate played a cruel joke on Vian, using his own business card as a weapon. The writer, with his death, realized the metaphor of a “killer film adaptation”, dying of a heart attack during the premiere of a film based on his novel “I will come to spit on your graves.” And in general he had no luck in life. His literary hoax turned into a terrible scandal, and the prize for beginning authors, for which “Foam of Days” was written, was unexpectedly awarded to a far from beginning writer.
“Foam of Days” is a sad tale of love. The novel is built on the principle of contrast: the reader can trace how the style of presentation and language changes from chapter to chapter, turning from light, flying to oppressive and gloomy. The bright colors of the first chapters gradually fade, and in the finale a black and white picture appears before the mind's eye. As darkness envelops the characters’ apartment, the space of the book seems to shrink; the floor meets the ceiling, living flowers wither and turn to dust.
Of particular note is Vian’s unique humor. Perhaps you have never read such talented and elegant banter in your life. Vian parodies everything that can turn into a cliché, all the fashionable hobbies of the French youth of the forties: jazz, surrealism, existentialism... Existentialism suffered the most. “The problem of choice for nausea on especially thick toilet paper”, “a volume of “Vomit” bound in the skin of a stink” will be remembered for a long time by a reader familiar with the work of Jean Sol Partre, ugh! Jean Paul Sartre.
Rating: 10
The most real story, wrapped in a cloak of unreality and permeated with true feelings that make you think differently and see things as they really are.
The beginning of the book, permeated with light, music, happiness and the belief that each new day will bring something more good, shrinks to one endlessly pulsating note of despair in the fevered brain of the protagonist at the end of this work.
Very few books make us think about something in this life. This book makes you not only think, but feel every word and every gesture of the characters.
I read “Foam of Days” only once and a very long time ago. I never even tried to read it again precisely because the book is simply indescribable and you realize that it is very difficult to relive all its events again. And you will never feel one moment again - you will not be able to regain your original feeling of joy from discovering and realizing that such a book exists.
Rating: 10
Cinematic novel.
I had been aiming at it for a long time, and only the premiere of the film of the same name by Michel Gondry (himself a rare master: “The Science of Sleep,” “Rewind,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”), which collapsed in the summer, forced me to cling to the source of the original text.
The level of visionaryness - now I’ll mix two mutually inappropriate but mutually reinforcing concepts into a piano cocktail: visionaryness and visualization - is simply prohibitive.
Undoubtedly, it is worth adding the deepest kinestheticity (again in two layers: touching and disgusting touch) and lightness. Vian does not write, he smokes and writes out this text with the finest feathers of fragrant tobacco smoke.
It was on the example of this work of the pen that Vianova was able to formulate for himself the difference between fantastic and human literature:
The first one kneels before the idea (the same principle: tear out the root of the phantom assumption, and the whole sprout will wither)
The second one can flirt with unrealistic details as much as it wants, but it tells about a person, feelings and relationships, essentially telling a kind of proto-story, like the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden
Rating: 8
Holding a 270-page book in my hands, I couldn’t help but feel upset because, as usual, the publishing houses ripped out my hard-earned money. Imagine my surprise when I came across a story similar to Alice in Wonderland. Here you will not find plot dynamics. Rather, it is a mixture of gourmet food, jazz, blues. There is a place for religion - endlessly ridiculed by Vian. (I later learned how contemptuous the author is for the church).
The six main characters of the book, around whom life, saturated with magic, splashes. I don’t know how to say exactly, but I think this is the same magical realism. Colin is a rich young man who wants to fall in love. Chic is his poor best friend, who fanatically collects things and books by Jean-Sol Partre (the play on words is obvious - Vian creates a parody of Sartre). Beautiful girls Aliza and Isis. Nicolas is a chef from God who works for Colin and is his friend. And finally, the wonderful, dreamy girl Chloe. It is around Chloe that the entire plot will play out. The main musical theme of the book is the blues piece “Chloe”, arranged by Duke Ellington. Chloe and Colin's wedding, their crazy love, her illness.
The atmosphere of this elegant, dark and tragic story captivates and does not let go. Excellent language and style of work.
Rating: 10
A young man named Colin passionately desires to fall in love. And he falls in love - with a girl named Chloe. They get married, but Chloe falls ill, and Colin does everything to help Chloe recover.
The main characters, like the story itself, are superficial. Moreover, they are not at all attractive. Colin, squandering his fortune, an infantile unable to work, Chloe, a typical fairy girl, Colin's servant Nicolas, who does not miss more than one skirt, and apparently suffers from something like a split personality, their comrade Chic, an obsession who spends all his money on books Jean-Sol Partre (a bold allusion to a well-known philosopher), how some modern audiophiles collect releases of their favorite groups, Chic's girlfriend Aliza, who allows Chic to do this and shows unequivocal signs of attention to Colin... well, and someone else from were there any characters in the novel? Oh yes. Mouse. Here she is – the most adequate and pleasant character in the book.
I fully admit that in the original, in French, the novel may turn out to be much more impressive - after all, language games are difficult to translate, but in the form in which the book is presented to the Russian-speaking reader now, it, unfortunately, does not represent anything unusual. Just the story of one failed love with a slight touch of surrealism and a soundtrack by Duke Ellington. Literally a couple of hours after reading, nothing remains in my head - to write this review I even had to pick up the book again and leaf through it. Fortunately, it’s quite short.
Rating: 5
Look around and you will notice how life is seething around in all its splendor, foaming and playing. And when you wake up every day, imagine that you have a mouse dancing under the rays of the bright sun, which, if something happens, will give everything just to help at the moment when everything is going to hell. And it’s probably worth listening, then you’ll hear the crackling of foaming life.
Before us is a world of whimsicalities, absurdities and improbabilities, but it frightens us with its reality so much that we want to get lost, like a needle in a haystack. And it smells good, and no one will bother me there. A world of absurdities that would never happen to anyone at the same time shows people like us with the same problems, dreams and aspirations. A world where human warmth is given to the cold metal of weapons, in which young people want love, not work; someone gives their last money to obsession, not noticing and rejecting the most valuable.
The novel, which begins with light and bright colors, ends with dimmed light and hopelessness. All heroes ultimately have tragic fates. In this foam of days around us there are others who, perhaps, lack a little mouse that can change their existence. Or incapable. This is a love story so tragic that no surrealism with its unusual images can weaken the weight of unhappy love that crushes the main characters. Gradually, the rooms become smaller, the windows become overgrown, the tiles turn into wood, and the sun grows dim. What is this? No, it’s something different for everyone.
Everything is over. All destinies unraveled and became clearer. But then that same mouse appears, showing in the last lines the quintessence of all life...
Rating: 9
“Tenderly, gently, subtly, subtly...”
Overall, an unusually graceful and chaste love story: smile: Probably similar to the incredible music of a pianoforte: smile: And yet too frivolous. Later, I came across lines from Beigbeder’s essay “The Best Books of the 20th Century”
“Surely there will be people who don’t like “Foam of Days”, who find this book too naive or frivolous, and I want to solemnly announce to them, these people, right here that I feel sorry for them, because they did not understand the most important thing in literature. Want to know what it is? Charm." Brrr - and this is about me:eek: Despite all the admiration for the wonderful fantasy, extraordinary lightness and charm of the narrative... I did not leave, looming in the depths of consciousness, irritation from the complete sloppiness, nihilism, and selfishness of the heroes, the existence of which resembles a well-known fable Krylova
Rating: 3
Boris Vian
Foam days
Colin was finishing his toilet. Coming out of the bath, he wrapped himself in a wide terry sheet, leaving only his legs and torso naked. He took a spray bottle from the glass shelf and sprayed his blond hair with the volatile aromatic oil. An amber comb divided his silky hair into thin orange strands, reminiscent of the furrows that a cheerful plowman makes with a fork on a saucer of apricot jam. Putting the comb aside, Colin armed himself with nail clippers and cut the edges of his matte eyelids at an angle to give his look a mysterious look. He often had to do this - his eyelids grew back quickly. Colin turned on the light bulb of the magnifying mirror and moved closer to it to check the condition of his epidermis. Several eels lurk near the wings of the nose. Strongly enlarged, they were amazed at their ugliness and immediately scurried back under the skin. Colin turned off the light bulb with relief. He unwrapped the sheet that was tight around his thighs and used the tip of it to remove the last drops of water between his toes. His reflection in the mirror seemed surprisingly similar to someone - well, of course, the blond guy who plays the role of Slim in Hollywood Canteen(1). Round head, small ears, straight nose, golden skin. He smiled so often with a baby smile that a dimple could not help but appear on his chin. He was quite tall, slender, long-legged and generally very cute. The name Kolen probably suited him (2). He spoke kindly to the girls and cheerfully to the guys. He was almost always in a good mood, and the rest of the time he slept.
Having pierced the bottom of the bathtub, he released the water from it. The light yellow ceramic tile floor in the bathroom was sloping and water flowed into a gutter just above the desk of the occupant of the apartment below. Recently, without warning Colin, he rearranged his furniture. Now water was pouring onto the sideboard.
Kolen slipped his feet into batskin sandals and put on an elegant lounge suit - bottle-colored corduroy trousers and a pistachio satin jacket. He hung a terry sheet on the drying rack, threw a foot mat over the side of the bathtub and sprinkled it with coarse salt to draw water out of it. The rug was immediately spat on - it was all covered with clusters of soap bubbles.
Leaving the bathroom, Colin moved to the kitchen to personally oversee the final preparations. As always on Mondays, Chic (3), who lived nearby, dined with him. True, today was still Saturday, but Colin was eager to see Chic and treat him to the dishes that his new cook Nicolas had inspiredly prepared. Twenty-two-year-old Chic was the same age as Colin and also a bachelor, and besides, he shared his literary tastes, but he had much less money. Colin, on the other hand, had a fortune sufficient to not work for others and not deny himself anything. But Chic had to run to his uncle’s ministry every week to get some money from him, because his profession as an engineer did not allow him to live at the level of his workers, and commanding people who are dressed better than you and eat better is very difficult. Trying his best to help him, Colin called him to dinner under any pretext. However, Chic's painful pride forced Colin to be constantly on guard - he was afraid that too frequent invitations would betray his intentions.
The corridor, glassed on both sides, leading to the kitchen, was very bright, and the sun was blazing on each side, because Colin loved light. Everywhere you looked, brass faucets gleamed, polished to a shine. The play of sunlight on their sparkling surface produced an enchanting impression. Kitchen mice often danced to the sound of the rays breaking on the taps and chased tiny sunbeams that endlessly crushed and tossed across the floor like yellow mercury balls. Kolen casually stroked one mouse: it had long black mustaches, and the gray fur on its slender body shone miraculously. The cook fed the mice excellently, but did not let them eat away. During the day, the mice behaved as quietly as mice and played only in the corridor.
Colin pushed open the enamel kitchen door. Cook Nicolas kept his eyes on the dashboard. He sat at the control panel, also covered with light yellow enamel, in which the dials of various kitchen appliances that stood along the wall were mounted. The needle on the electric stove, programmed to fry the turkey, quivered between “almost ready” and “done.” The bird was about to be taken out. Nicolas pressed the green switch, which activated a mechanical probe that easily pierced the turkey, and at the same instant the needle froze at the “ready” mark. With a quick movement, Nicolas turned off the power supply to the stove and turned on the plate heater.
“...Putting the comb aside, Colin armed himself with nail clippers and cut the edges of his matte eyelids at an angle to give his look a mysterious look. He often had to do this - his eyelids grew back quickly.” This is how the surreal novel “Foam of Days” (in the original “L’Écume des jours”) unexpectedly begins, which is read in one breath and will not leave anyone indifferent.
For me, the novel “Foam of Days” is a unique work and has no analogues in world literature. When I first read it, many years ago, it made a deep impression on me, which has not faded to this day. This is a book that can be read in one sitting.
This work combines many genres. This is a drama with fantastic, even rather surreal elements and black humor. Of course, absurd prose and especially poetry will not surprise anyone now, however, I will continue to insist that this work is unique of its kind. Of course, Vian was greatly influenced by his personal acquaintance with the classic of absurdist drama Eugene Ionesco and the thinkers of that time Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. The fate of Boris Vian himself was unusual.
The French writer lived a short life (1920-1959), but managed to try himself as a jazz musician and performer of his own songs; he wrote novels, plays, poems, film scripts, ballet librettos, translated from English, sculpted sculptures and painted paintings. And the writer died of a broken heart in a cinema while watching the premiere - a film adaptation of the black action film “I Will Come to Spit on Your Graves,” which he wrote under the pseudonym Vernon Sullivan. Researchers became interested in Vian's work after his death, in the 1960s.
In the grip of the absurd
Traditionally, in the novel “Foam of Days” there are three storylines: the main, love-lyrical one (Colen and Chloe); “existential-Partrean” (Chic and Aliza) and absurdist - everything else.
Moreover, the absurdist layer constantly, easily and naturally seeps into the first two.
The heroes of the novel are divorced from life, which is why their love affairs are so unrealistic and cloying. They are young, beautiful, rich, cheerful and carefree. They don’t walk through life, but flutter, and in the literal sense: “Kolen’s heart swelled to incredible sizes, then soared up, lifted him off the ground, and he flew in...”.
The characters do not know any worries except parties, morning toilet (the bright outfits of a carefree dandy, which Colin lovingly chooses in front of the mirror) and a hearty dinner. Both parallel love novels (Colin-Chloe and Chic-Aliza) - the main character and his friend - are written as carbon copies: a very beautiful girl, love at first sight, cloudless relationships and flying on a cloud... Since the beginning of the novel is a children's fairy tale, each The characters' wishes are fulfilled at the snap of a finger. A striking example is the honeymoon scene. When, during their honeymoon in a big white limousine, Colin and Chloe felt “somehow uneasy from the landscape rushing past” and Chloe said: “I hate this dim light, this darkness,” then Colen “pressed on green, blue, yellow and red buttons and multi-colored filters replaced car windows. Now Colin and Chloe seemed to be inside a rainbow, and colored shadows danced across the white fur of the seat...” This is an example of escapism - an escape from harsh reality into a fictional universe.
I wanted exquisite dishes - the witty chef Nicolas was already conjuring in the kitchen, I wanted refined alcohol - get a pianoctail, I thought about love - a charming bride immediately appeared on the horizon. Until reality in the form of incurable illness and death invades life.
A man loves a woman, she gets sick and dies
Shortly before his death, Vian said about the novel “Foam of Days”: “I wanted to write a novel whose plot consists of one phrase: a man loves a woman, she gets sick and dies.” The motive of the death of a beloved and the hero's suffering for her is one of the most popular motives in world literature. Interestingly, this is a favorite plot device of Vian’s contemporary, Erich Maria Remarque. Thus, we can trace plot parallels in two of my favorite books - “The Foam of Days” by Vian and “Three Comrades” (1936) by Remarque. In both cases, the carefree life of friends changes forever with the fatal illness of their beloved. Both books have tragic and quite predictable endings. Even the illnesses of the heroines are similar - tuberculosis and a water lily nymph growing in the lung (essentially the same tuberculosis in its absurdist version). I think this coincidence is due to the fact that both authors wrote in the post-war period. Remarque is considered one of the authors of the “lost generation,” whose novels are dedicated to the lives of soldiers who cannot adapt to post-war life because their psyches are broken by the war. And Vian’s novel was written during the Second World War and was completed immediately after it. Perhaps Colin and Chic are also representatives of a lost generation, only they were lost not in post-war Europe, but in their own imaginary world?
At the beginning of the novel we see light-hearted fiction flirting with the reader. In the second part it becomes increasingly darker. The idyll is being destroyed before our eyes. Vian managed to create his own fragile fantasy world that does not tolerate contact with reality. This waking dream, at first filled with a fantasy as light as cotton candy, gradually develops into a terrible grotesque. This moment of transition is most successfully conveyed by the author. Thus, the novel combines two genres - utopia and dystopia.
Vian managed to create his own fragile fantasy world that does not tolerate contact with reality. This waking dream, at first filled with a fantasy as light as cotton candy, gradually develops into a terrible grotesque.
It’s amazing how the world around us changes along with the characters. In fact, this describes what happens to each of us, although we try not to notice it. For example, the idyllic nest of newlyweds Col and Chloe shrinks along with Chloe's illness, and her bed sinks to the floor. Vian shows that his heroes cannot exist in the real world, merciless to the creatures that float from flower to flower and are charmingly helpless.
The main character has to work. The job search scene is one of the most powerful, scary and memorable in the book. Kolen comes to a greenhouse where people grow weapons from metal using the warmth of their own breasts. Loving sensitive Colin is too tender for this job. From its warmth, beautiful roses grow from metal, not weapons. The man who hired him copes with it, but has turned into a twenty-nine-year-old man. What could be scarier than this metaphor?
Any uncreative work not filled with love disgusts Vian. War is a particularly destructive business. As the Latin proverb says: when the guns speak, the muses are silent. The worst thing that can happen is the transformation of a person into a mechanism suitable only for military operations.
The first part of the novel simply sparkles with bright colors, their entire palette - from “ordinary” colors (blue, red, green) to “neologism colors”: the color of coconut with milk, sour green. “The knee...was so open that you could see the blue and lilac thoughts pulsating in the veins of his arms.” In the episode of Chloe's funeral, everything turns into a colorless, faded mess. In the same scene, black humor reaches its apotheosis - Colin's conversation with the crucified indifferent Jesus, the suicide of a mouse, the blind orphanage girls singing a psalm...
In general, the aesthetics of black humor has always been close to Vian (this was most clearly manifested in the novel “I’ll Come to Spit on Your Graves”).
Pianoctail and heartbeater
There is a lot of autobiography in the novel. First of all, you pay attention to the abundance of music. The names of jazz compositions are easily woven into the outline of the novel and become a code that the characters exchange. What is one pianoctail worth - the dream of many readers of the novel. By playing any melody on the pianotail, you can make a cocktail and taste it. The heroes of the novel drink cocktails to the tunes of Ellington and Armstrong... The protagonist’s falling in love is also naturally accompanied by a musical leitmotif - the composition “Chloe” by Ellington, because this is the name of Colin’s beloved. Of course, auditory (or rather musical) associations are Vian’s main tool. But besides this, it immerses us in a vibrant world of taste, tactile and visual sensations. For example, the same pianoctail is a fusion of taste and auditory impressions.
The mechanisms invented by Vian, which fill the novel, play a special role in it. This is the pianoctail - a symbol of dolce vita, and the terrible murder weapon of the sertseder, which Aliza plunges into Partre’s chest (will appear again in Vian’s novel of the same name “Sertseder”).
Of course, the novel is very difficult for theatrical and even film productions.
Kolen comes to a greenhouse where people grow weapons from metal using the warmth of their own breasts. Loving sensitive Colin is too tender for this job. From its warmth, beautiful roses grow from metal, not weapons.
With an abundance of fantastic elements that are difficult to convey on stage, it is similar to Ibsen’s “Peer Gynt” and Goethe’s “Faust.” In Vian, the “bored” Jesus on the crucifix, a cat and a mouse, as if coming from a Disney cartoon, are endowed with the gift of voice.
In general, this mouse is an important character in the book, a barometer of the mood of the story. At the beginning, she rejoices along with Colin and Chloe's carefree life, bathing in the rays of the sun. Then, when Chloe is sick, she hurts herself on the glass. And when Chloe dies, she commits suicide in the cat's mouth.
Like Lewis Carroll, Vian repeatedly uses the technique of literal interpretation of metaphorical expressions and phraseological units (for example, “the walls are closing in”). Verbal play is expressed in a series of neologisms, puns, and telling names. Young people at the party dance fashionable dances: cross-eyed, dislocated and chilled. Chloe is being treated by Dr. D'Ermo. The wedding ceremony and funeral are managed by such ridiculous characters with altered church ranks as the Priest, the Priest, the Drunken Martyr and the Archbishop. It is interesting that the description of the wedding and funeral are somewhat similar. Thus, the narrative actually began with the wedding, closes with the funeral according to the canons of the ring composition.
Vian's style has something of the classic French grotesque, Francois Rabelais. He also likes to break boundaries, laugh at religious sacraments, and sometimes add something conventionally “greasy, indecent” (although in Vian’s universe the rules of decency are different). Thus, organizing a wedding ceremony is impossible without “wedding peders”.
Fantastic elements act as tools for witty parody. Behind the cardboard idol of Jean-Sol Partre, one can easily discern the idol of millions, an existentialist philosopher with whom Vian was personally acquainted. The titles of his works are also parodied - for example, "Nausea" became "Vomit". By the way, the novel also contains a grotesque image of the Duchess de Boudoir (Simone de Beauvoir).
Vian ridicules the philosopher, for whom he had friendly feelings, not in order to ridicule his philosophy, but in order to cast doubt on the idea of ultimate truth.
