Marcel Schwob - The Children's Crusade

[giantsilkmoth]

This tiny little tragedy is an interesting piece in Schwob's oeuvre, as it's quite difficult for me not to read it as both a coda and rejoinder to The Book of Monelle, especially given Schwob was reportedly very frustrated at being primary known as the author of the latter. Like Monelle, this is a bleak, polyvocal tale of metaphysical child suffering. Here, though, it's vastly more nihilist. No longer do children, in their innocence and ephemeralness, exist to teach lessons or remind adults of something or bring other children to safety. Instead they exist purely as strange, innocent beings with terrible, senseless fates at the hands of adults and the uncaring cruelty of nature/G-d. Schwob mentions on the first page the disgust at people who cut up kids and put them on display to provoke sympathy and that absolutely is something I read as a critique of his own writing.

Also, interestingly, Schwob was (as far as I know) an assimilated Jew and there's a funny dynamic here where he has a sort of fascinated outsider perspective on both Christianity and Islam, but Judaism is completely missing.

All-in-all, a book that's very slight and thus doesn't have a huge impact, but which is a well-wrought tragedy and is particularly of interest for folks who care about Schwob as a writer writ large.

Note: This book is as weird about Islam and "the east" as you'd expect a book from a European about the crusades with white as the primary symbol to be.