The Devil in the Flesh     by Raymond Radiguet, Translated by A.M Sheridan Smith Original title: Le Diable au corps Original language: French Published by Marion Boyars Pub. Date: 1987 Format: Paperback, 128 pages Dimensions: (in inches): 0.40 x 11.24 x 4.72 ISBN: 071450193X List Price: $12.95 Buy online from Amazon.co.uk for £7.41 Buy online from Amazon.com for $10.36 Published by Boyars Pub. Date: 1969 Pub. Place: UK Format: Paperback, 127 pages List Price: £6.95 Not available for ordering

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Raymond Radiguet wrote The Devil in the Flesh before he was nineteen years old and by twenty he was dead. His semi-autobiographical novel tells the story of a sixteen year-old boy who, coming of age during World War I, has an affair with the wife of a soldier fighting on the front. The woman, two years his senior, eventually falls pregnant and, just after the general armistice, dies giving birth to his son.


Published at a time when French patriotism was running particularly high, The Devil in the Flesh caused an outrage when it first appeared in 1923, and the scandalous or ‘diabolical’ character of the narrator’s exploits provides the novel’s main thread.


On their first meeting he and Marthe find they share a liking for Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal, a collection Marthe’s (then) fiançé has forbidden her to read; later, their first kisses are exchanged in front of a symbolically glowing fire. This identification with subversion and amoralism enables the narrator to see through the hypocrisy of the adult world: when a neighbour, to relaunch his political career, invites guests to listen through the floorboards to the sounds of the young couple’s lovemaking, ascribing his licentiousness to a concern for morality, the narrator foils his plan by abstaining at the normal hour; then, when the would-be mayor’s disgruntled guests have gone, he and Marthe make love even louder than usual.


As the soldiers are packed off to be machine-gunned at the front in their thousands amidst a torrent of jingoistic fanfares it is Radiguet’s refusal to accept standard interpretations, be they moral or political, or to be moved by anything other than the poetry of things, that gives his story its innocence and strength.

‘Each day, after dinner, we went to the station at J-, about two miles from our house, to watch the troop trains go by. We picked bluebells on the way and threw them to the soldiers. Ladies in smocks poured red wine into their canteens, spilling quarts of it on the flower-strewn platform. The whole scene left me with the same impression as a firework display. Never was there so much wasted wine, so many dead flowers.’ p26