The Little Saint
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The Little Saint (1965) is a "roman dur" by Georges Simenon, the story of Louis, who as an old painter, tries to reassemble the details of his early childhood.
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Summary
Louis Cuchas is the second youngest of six children. Born to different fathers, they have nothing in common except for the roof over their heads, which shelters them in a promiscuity that is both innocent and harsh. Their mother Gabrielle, divided between her successive lovers and her cart of vegetable merchants, hardly has time to look after them. Louis lets the world come to him, recording sounds, colours, images and sensations, under the protection of his mother, whose favourite he is.
At school, he isolates himself, and his sparkling eyes excel at capturing things and people. The nickname "Little Saint" bestowed on him by his fellow pupils who bully him without him fighting back, soon spreads to les Halles where, at his request, he accompanies his mother every morning before dawn.
One by one, his brothers and sisters desert the family home, Gabrielle stops seeing men and Louis grows up. He leaves school and works the night shift at Les Halles, but he is still a kind and modest little boy, with an angelic face framed by delicate curls.
One day, he discovers his great passion: painting. From then on, he lives solely for it, striving to translate in his own way, in the juxtaposition of pure colours, what he had been accumulating inside himself for twenty years. It is the blossoming of a new life that fascinates him, despite the difficult days, and, at the same time, his first experience of love. He moves away, leaving behind the street of his childhood and his mother, whom he will always love dearly. His paintings sell, and he becomes increasingly popular thanks to his friend Suard, who has encouraged his beginnings. But with little concern for money or fame, he remains Louis, the mysterious little boy both near and far - whose fame, shrouded in legend, would later make him a famous artist.
Special aspects of the novel
The omniscience of the narrator is combined with the point of view of the main character. Divided into two parts - maturation and blossoming - the novel is a long retrospective narrative that unfolds, against the backdrop of a social fresco, the life of a pure being, preserved by a childhood gift that blossoms into an artist's ideal.
Note the colourful depiction of the market at Les Halles and the evocation of the building of the Montparnasse–Bienvenüe station in the 1920s.
Description of the work
Space and time
Space
Paris, Rue Mouffetard, Les Halles. References to Algeria and Ecuador.
Time
Characters
Main character
Louis Cuchas. Painter. Single.
Other characters
- Gabrielle Cuchas, Louis's mother, married to Lambert Heurteau and abandoned by him shortly before Louis's birth.
- Vladimir and Alice, Guy and Olivier (the twins), Emilie, Louis's brothers and sisters.
- M. Suard, who sells painters' materials and later owns an art gallery.
See also
- Little
- Saint
- Odilon Redon
- November (Simenon novel), also an evocation of an early childhood
