Henri Troyat: To write, always to write, is often to live

Who is Henri Troyat?

While many of us may not have heard of him, he is considered one of the most prolific and popular French writers of the 20th century. Born Lev Aslanovitch Tarassov and of Russian origin he left his country when he was eight.

His family fled Bolshevik Russia in 1917 with the final destination – Paris. This journey is told in his novel, “Le Fils du Satrape” where Henri gives a rare account of his life as a young boy. His relatives, parents, siblings, governess, and grandmother fled via the Crimea.

Henri Troyat in 1943 via Wikipedia

He recounts their daring escape

• starting with a fire on a train (on which they are locked up),
• then immobilized on a boat in the Volga due to a strike by the crew.
• They are nearly discovered by the Red Army which is dangerously close, but
• make their way from the Black Sea to Venice. From Venice after spending a night on a gondola they depart by train to Paris.

He recalls the difficulties they faced as immigrants arriving in Paris, having lost everything, and trying to exist on very little.

We arrived, out of breath and out of money, from distant Russia, after a perilous exodus which had taken us zigzag across the country torn apart by the Bolshevik revolution. […] We had to flee, move on "foreigner, lose his homeland to save his skin.”  (pp. 7 and 8)

In Paris, the Tarassof family lives frugally, far from the splendor of their bourgeois life in Russia.

Mom was right: you had to restrict yourself in everything when you chose to live the French way.” (p. 37)

Lost in a new world and remembering an old world that didn’t exist, they tried to adapt to a French way of life, going to school each day and studying French, however, at night their family lived as Russians. While they may have been Russians in exile, their future was in France.

After studying law at the Sorbonne and spending some time in civil service Henri began to write. His first novel was Faux Jour (“First Light”) which was not published under his birth name Lev Tarassov.

So why did Lev Tarassov change his name to Henri Troyat?

It was not by choice.

His publisher advised him to adopt a more French-sounding name when he was about to publish his first novel Faux Jour to avoid misunderstanding and the risk that his novels may be seen as translations.

You can only imagine how he must have felt. Leaving his home, and his country, then to master a new language to a level where he was to be published only to be told you have to change your name. Henri wrote about his thoughts on becoming a published writer:

The title was mine, the text was mine, but the author was certainly someone else. His name – Henri Troyat – meant nothing to me. By becoming naturalized, I had my book naturalized. Under this assumed identity, it no longer belonged to me. It was the work of anyone.  (p.
136)”

Neither truly Russian nor ever completely French, Henri related with tenderness and nostalgia to his life as an exile and his childhood. When delivering a speech to the National Assembly on the 50th anniversary of the Geneva Convention relating to the status of refugees, he said:

“If I applied for naturalisation at the age of twenty-two, it was to show my love as a late adoptee to the adopter who had trusted me. So, I want to say to refugees from all over the world, some of who have to give up everything to save their lives, that exile is not an end in itself. Whatever the tragedy they have suffered……..they will find understanding and hospitality in France, provided that they agree to adapt to the spirit and customs of this historical land of asylum.

While Henri described his early years as “floating between two universes,” he certainly thrived in his adopted France and is undoubtedly among the great names of post-second World War literature. Writing over 100 remarkable novels and romantic sequels, he was the winner of the Goncourt Prize at age 27, inducted into L’Académie Française in 1959 at age 47, and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. He was the longest-standing member of the group of 40 so-called “immortals” who safeguard the French language.

He never did return to Russia. Preferring to remember his birth country the way he remembered it as a child:

The snow is cleaner in my dreams”

For me, this is a remarkable story of triumph over adversity. Having to give up so much of his life – his country, his name, his entire identity you can only imagine that he sought comfort in writing and the beauty of everyday life. As Dominique Fernandez of the French Academy wrote in Commemorations Collection 2011.

In his novels as in his biographies, he gave a large place to the small events of daily life, more important in his eyes than doctrines and utopias.”

It also prompts the question that if we change our birth country, our language and our name do we really change our identity? Whether by choice or otherwise, if we live our lives in one country or adopt another, do we ever truly become naturalised?

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