Marcel Aym茅 was a French novelist, children's writer, humour writer, screenwriter and theatre playwright. His writings include The Man Who Walked Through Walls (Le Passe-Muraille), one of his most famous short stories for which there is a monument in the Montmartre Quarter of Paris.
Le Passe-Muraille = The Passer-Through-Walls = The Man Who Walked Through Walls, Marcel Aym茅
The passer-through-walls, translated as The Man Who Walked through Walls, The Walker-through-Walls or The Man who Could Walk through Walls, is a short story published by Marcel Aym茅 in 1943.
A man named Dutilleul lived in Montmartre. In his forty-third year, he discovered that he possessed the ability to pass effortlessly through walls.
In search of a cure he consulted a doctor, who prescribed intensive work and a medicine. Dutilleul made no change to his rather inactive life, however, and a year later still retained his ability to pass through walls, although with no inclination to use it.
However, a new manager arrived at his office and began to make his job unbearable. Dutilleul began using his power to annoy his manager, who went mad and was taken away to an asylum. Dutilleul then began to use his ability to burgle banks and jewellery shops.
Each time, he would sign a pseudonym "The Lone Wolf" in red chalk at the crime scene, and his criminal exploits soon became the talk of the town. In order to claim the prestige and celebrity status "The Lone Wolf" had gained, Dutilleul allowed himself to be caught in the act.
He was put in prison, but used his ability to frustrate his jailers and repeatedly escape. He then fell in love with a married woman, whose husband went out every night and left her locked in her bedroom. Dutilleul used his power to enter her bedroom and spend the night with her while her husband was away.
One morning, Dutilleul had a headache and took two pills he found in the bottom of his drawer. His headache went away, but later that night, as he was leaving his lover's house, he noticed a feeling of resistance as he was passing through the walls.
The pills Dutilleul had thought were aspirin were, in fact, the medicine his doctor had prescribed for him a year earlier. As he was passing through the final outer wall of the property, he noticed he was no longer able to move. He realized his mistake too late. The medicine suddenly took effect, and Dutilleul ended up trapped in the wall, where he remains to this day.
Read in Funny Ha Ha anthology translated into English. This was a funny story about a guy who finds a mysterious pill and after ingesting it discovers that can pass though walls. It was interesting to read what he does with the power and how the story ends.
I am embarrassed to say I had not heard of Marcel Aym茅 until I came across his work while searching for magic realist books. I was somewhat relieved to hear that my bibliophile husband hadn't either. And yet Aym茅 is a writer described by George Simenon as The greatest French writer of the day.
Unfortunately little of Aym茅's writing has been translated into English, which, if this collection of short stories is anything to go by, is a great shame.
There are ten short stories in this book and nearly all can be considered magic realism. I was reminded of Kafka when I read the book. Aym茅's approach is to take a fantastical element, set it in a realistic setting and follow the internal logic to its conclusion.This appeals to me - as I said in my review of The Peculiar Sadness of Lemon Cake I like there to be a logic within the story. Dutilleul, the man who walks through walls, starts hardly using his "gift" at all but a series of actions and events take him down a slippery path. Likewise the woman who can duplicate herself starts with just one other self , but after a while her other selves are duplicating and the numbers increase exponentially.
Some of the stories are amusing surrealism, but others have a dark tone to them. Published in 1943, the stories reference the grim reality of life in occupied France. The most striking is Tickets on Time in which in response to shortages the government decides to put unproductive consumers to death by rationing the number of days they are alive. Unproductive is defined to include the rich, elderly, unemployed, writers and artists and of course Jews. Sadly the subject matter is still relevant in 2013.
My favourite story was The Seven-League Boots. This story looks at a gang of boys and their relationships, and the wider context of social status. Not until the end is there much sign of magic realism. In this and in all the stories, Aym茅's strength is the characterization of the stories' participants. Despite being short stories the characters' motives and emotions are well defined and explored. No wonder Simenon admire Aym茅 so much.
This review first appeared in my magic realism blog
Ce livre audio contient deux nouvelles (ou plutot deux bijoux) 茅crites par Marcel Ayme et lues par Denis Polydades. C'est un plaisir exquis -- la harmonie parfaite entre le texte et la narration.
Le Passe-muraille -- la sculpture au coeur de Monmartre Image credit: Wikimedia commons, Carl Campbell