Hell (Barbusse novel)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"In the air, on top of a tram, a girl is sitting. Her dress, lifted a little, blows out. But a block in the traffic separates us. The tramcar glides away, fading like a nightmare. Moving in both directions, the street is full of dresses which sway, offering themselves airily, the skirts lifting; dresses that lift and yet do not lift. In the tall and narrow shop mirror I see myself approaching, rather pale and heavy-eyed. It is not a woman I want - it is all women, and I seek for them in those around me, one by one...." --Hell (1908) by Henri Barbusse |
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Hell (L'Enfer) is a French novel by Henri Barbusse first published in 1908, in which the unnamed narrator peers into a peephole in the wall of his hotel room. The novel focuses entirely on the story of a voyeur. He is an isolated man who presents a great many of the problems of modern existentialism in a nutshell. Colin Wilson used this book as the starting point for his "Outsider"
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Plot summary
The narrator, unmarried and friendless, books a room in a Paris boarding house. By chance he finds a hole in his wall, through which he can see the adjoining room and its inhabitants. From the other side, he witnesses: lesbianism; adultery; incest; and death. It is only when he feels he has uncovered all the secrets of life that he decides to leave the room for good. But, as he attempts to leave, he is overcome with backache and blindness.
Literary criticism
Hell was notably popular and widely discussed in France, selling more than a hundred thousand copies in 1917 alone. Colin Wilson gave considerable attention to Barbusse's novel in his influential work The Outsider.
English translations
L'Enfer has been translated into English twice, first as The Inferno by Edward J. O'Brien for Boni and Liveright in 1918 in a heavily abridged form, and then in full as Hell by Robert Baldick for Chapman and Hall in 1966 - later reissued by Turtle Point Press in 1995.<ref>http://www.turtlepointpress.com/books/hell/</ref>
See also
