The Battle of Pharsalus by Claude Simon

First published:La Bataille de Pharsale, 1969 (English translation, 1971)

Type of work: Antistory

Time of work: The present, the recent past, and the ancient past

Locale: A sidewalk cafe in Paris, a train traveling through Europe, and a small Greek village

Principal Characters:

• O., the narrator, who is an observer of life
• Uncle Charles, O.’s uncle, now deceased
• Odette, an artist’s model whom Charles had loved
• O.’s Lover, a woman who is unfaithful to O., causing him to suffer

The Novel

The Battle of Pharsalus is not an easy novel to read. It has no linear plot, but rather presents a set of images or basic scenes that constantly recur. In these repetitions sometimes the elements are the same, but more often they shift, reassemble themselves, or have additional material in them. In these ways, Claude Simon forces the reader to participate actively in the reading of this novel.

Although the book is divided into three basic sections, it is not until the second section that Simon clarifies the elemental scenes reiterated throughout the work. The first section introduces these elements to the reader without making them fully intelligible. These basic scenes include several interesting pieces (as in a puzzle) that reflect various layers of time. These time layers represent the ancient Roman battle at Pharsalus, the narrator’s boyhood struggle to translate the Latin account of that battle, his experiences in World War II, his recent train journey through Europe, his recent trip to Greece to find the site of the battle of Pharsalus, and the present time, represented by the narrator sitting in an outdoor cafe in Paris.

Scattered among these time levels are the various motifs of the novel. These motifs include O.’s memories of translating Latin with Uncle Charles,O. struggling to survive when he is unhorsed in a battle in Flanders, the story of a redheaded soldier who goes berserk in O.’s barracks one night, O. trying to break down his lover’s door while she makes love to another man in her room, Uncle Charles watching his artist friend paint Odette nude, O. and a friend Nikos seeking directions on their trip in Greece, a soccer match on the fields near Pharsalus, the wreckage of an abandoned McCormick harvester-reaper on a field in Greece, O.’s train trip through Europe, the views O. sees from his outdoor seat at the Paris cafe, and the students in a political demonstration on a Paris street.

Most of these motif pieces merge frequently with one another, so the reader finds a battle scene from World War II blended into the ancient battle of Pharsalus. Such scenes are not merely juxtaposed to one another; they are literally woven together so that only a very close reading can discern where one ends and the other begins. Simon’s point in doing this is to show that time is really continuous and that the past is always with his characters, even in the present. This disregard for a normal time continuum can confuse an unprepared reader.

Scattered throughout the three sections of The Battle of Pharsalus are moments in which the action freezes or stills itself. At such points, Simon reverts to descriptions of relevant paintings or works of sculpture. Most often these artworks he describes are of battle scenes depicting famous warriors. In this manner, Simon reiterates the timelessness of man’s existence. All battles and sexual struggles become one; the experience is always the same. Even the young men playing a friendly game of soccer on a summer day in Greece are in fierce contention and conflict with one another.

When the novel closes, Simon has led the reader full circle. The narrator is sitting at a desk with a blank sheet of paper in front of him; on this sheet he inscribes the first lines with which Simon had begun part 1 of The Battle of Pharsalus.

The Characters

As is the case with Simon’s shifting of scenes in this novel, so his characters vary and merge somewhat from time to time. The two most clearly defined characters are Uncle Charles and O., the narrator (his nephew).Uncle Charles is now deceased; when he was alive he had a job in banking or accounting, for O. recalls his large desk full of money. Uncle Charles is intelligent and kind; he helps the young O. with his homework. In particular, Charles assists his nephew in translating Latin passages about Caesar’s battle with Pompey at Pharsalus in Greece. After Charles’s death, O. remembers these childhood lessons and sets out to see the actual battlefield at Pharsalus. Charles’s life, unfortunately, had its unhappy aspects. He fell in love with the artist’s model, Odette, who is unfaithful to him. Charles is not alone in his anguish over Odette, for the painter, Van Velden, also loves this beautiful young woman.

The narrator, who rather late in the novel refers to himself as O. for the first time, is a complex character. He most often represents Charles’s nephew, but he sometimes becomes a female persona as well. For example, when O. attempts to break into his lover’s apartment, he feels that he is both O. and the woman lover inside making love to another man. Similarly, at a few points in the book, O. seems to become Charles, as the distressed, jealous lover of Odette. Such character mergings in this novel can confuse the reader, yet they indicate the similarities of experiences between O. and Charles. When O. becomes a female, Simon seems to use this occurrence to emphasize the androgynous nature of all human experience.

There are only a few minor characters who appear in The Battle of Pharsalus who have discernible roles. One of the most fascinating of these is the redheaded soldier who goes crazy in a barracks, threatening imaginary opponents with his saber. Standing naked, drunk, and cursing on a cold winter’s night, this soldier is described as an ancient gladiator by Simon. Despite his disheveled and wild appearance, this demented man takes on a heroic aura. When he is arrested and led away by an officer, the situation seems almost tragic—a great man has been subdued and diminished.

Simon’s other minor characters in this novel serve merely as backdrops in various situations. There are the people who emerge from the subway in Paris and walk pass the cafe where O. sits. These pedestrians represent humanity in several of its aspects—they are carefree, worried, rich, poor, young, and old, all together; even Christ appears on this Paris street. These subway passengers resemble the people riding the train through Europe with O. They have a few distinguishing features but are basically an anonymous group that forms a backdrop and stimulates O.’s reflections.

Similarly, the soldiers in battle represent merely an aggregation of struggling human beings—in the armies of Pompey and of Caesar at Pharsalus, and in Flanders with O. in World War II. It is not important to distinguish fully between these two basic groups of warriors, for their function in the novel is the same—they represent frightened yet courageous men in battle. These sets of soldiers also blend in with the soccer players striving on the field in modern Greece, for their game is similar to a battle.

Critical Context

Simon was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985. His work as an avant-garde novelist and an individualistic writer made him worthy of such an honor. Simon, in such novels as The Battle of Pharsalus, has stretched far beyond the limits of the traditional European novel. The sets of images he creates and re-creates are perhaps the most accurate representations of the workings of a human mind ever accomplished in prose.

The Battle of Pharsalus is a work that stands midway between the author’s earlier, less fully experimental novels, and his later works. Elements in The Battle of Pharsalus, such as the narrator’s wartime experiences, reflect Simon’s own life, as do elements in his previous books, such as La Route des Flandres (1960; The Flanders Road, 1961). In Simon’s novels subsequent to The Battle of Pharsalus, personal experience is even more deeply submerged in complex linguistic structures.

Bibliography

Gould, Karen. Claude Simon’s Mythic Muse, 1979.

Jimenez-Fajardo, Salvador. Claude Simon, 1975.

Loubere, J.A.E. The Novels of Claude Simon, 1975.

Roudiez, Leon S. French Fiction Today: A New Direction, 1972.

Sturrock, John. The French New Novel: Claude Simon, Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, 1969.