Raymond Schwartz is one of my favourite authors in Esperanto. He delights in word play and has an incredible grasp of the language. Schwartz grew up in Metz, a city which has belonged to both France and Germany. Anni kaj Montemarte is his first work which treats this “French-German” connection. He later developed this theme at length in Kiel Avko de L’Rivero (1963) — one of my favourite novels in any language.
Anni kaj Montmartre is an early work written in 1930. The novella is about a young woman, Anni Laufer, who is seduced away from her quiet life as a nanny in Allenstein, Germany, to be abandoned by her lover Gustav in Montemarte, Paris, France. She is picked up by a pimp, and delves in to a world of sex, drugs, and partying. It is thrilling stuff.
The thing that I appreciated most about the novella was its treatement of Montemartre’s bohemian art scene. It was fascinating to read about the wild parties people were having in the 1930s. I had never thought about how parties or dance-clubs worked before electronic music. At one point it’s noted that a dance hall had two orchestras so that the music could continue while the musicians rested and recovered. At one point, Gustav works as a doorman selling cocaine in cigarette packs.
Esperanto works often have some kind of gimmick around languages. It’s an adorable trope of the genre. In this one, Anni never masters French and often needs an interpreter. At the end of the novel, she flees to a convent of the order she grew up in. She’s not able to make herself understood in French, so she quotes Copernicus' epitaph in Latin (which she learned as a schoolgirl):
Non parem Pauli gratiam require;
Veniam Petri neque posco : sed quam
In crucis ligno dederas latroni
Sedulus oro.
Translation found here:
Not the grace in Paul that wrought;
Not the pardon Peter sought;
What of both, when nailed on tree, Thou the thief didst give—
give me !"
This convinces the nun that Anni is in need of help, and she seeks a German speaking nun to interpret. It makes a nice ending to the novella.
Published: Jan 13, 2025
Last Modified: Jan 13, 2025
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