SOURCE: Plunka, Gene A. “Jules Lefranc: Jean Genet's Eternal Galley Slave and Patron Saint.” University of Dayton Review 21, no. 3 (spring 1992): 17-30.

[In the following essay, Plunka observes the connection between sainthood and criminality in Genet's works.]

Jean Genet's life has been a constant immersion in solitude. He described the Mettray reformatory as a time “… que j'étais las de ma solitude d'enfant perdu et que mon âme appelait une mère.”¹ In Querelle de Brest, Genet, speaking through the diary of Lieutenant Seblon, explained his homoerotic love life in terms of solitude: “Ce regard sévère parfois presque soupçon neux, de justicier même, que le pédéraste attarde sur le jeune homme qu'il rencontre, c'est une brève mais intense méditation sur sa propre solitude.”² His sojourns in the 1930's were most often characterized by unsustained friendships, as well as betrayal among fellow thieves, prostitutes, and beggars. Genet has even justified his prison life as a voluntary seclusion from society or a means of establishing one's own identity free from external mandates: “Mais je vous assure qu'il y a des gens, et j'étais un de ceux-là, qui ont aimé la prison et probablement parce qu'on ne pouvait que détester le monde social tel qu'il était, tel qu'il est maintenant.”³ Genet began to write in order to affirm “… la solitude de l'artiste qui ne peut trouver aucune autorité, fût-ce auprès d'un autre artiste.”⁴ He explained to Hubert Fichte, “In art you are solitary, you are alone with yourself.”⁵ Finally, Genet's political writings and his work with revolutionary groups during the last fifteen years of his life can be examined in terms of the quest for solitude. Genet supported such outcasts as the Black Panthers, the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Palestinians, and French immigrants yet did not campaign against the Vietnam War, a political issue that had little to do with the dialectic between mainstream society and marginal individuals. In short, Genet is more interested in his support for the struggling outcast trying to define an identity free from outside control: “But what made me decide to give priority to the Black Panthers is the pressing danger that they face, and the fact that they are alone” (my emphasis).⁶

Genet's protagonists are degraded souls, risk takers living in solitude. Genet is passionately mesmerized by risk takers—soldiers, race car drivers, acrobats, funambulists, circus performers, adventurers, sailors, and artists—who defy the norms of society and live according to their own values and whims. A significant group of persons worthy of elite status in Genet's microcosm includes criminals, particularly thieves and murderers.⁷ According to Genet, “Le voleur fait tourner les têtes, tanguer les maisons, danser les châteaux, voler les prisons.”⁸ Genet views thieves and murderers as strong, committed rebels with a sense of conviction that separates them from the rest of society. Criminals make conscious decisions that isolate them from others: “Voler détermine une attitude morale qui ne s'obtient pas sans effort, c'est un acte héroïque.”⁹ Genet sees crime as an aesthetic act, a symbolic action that has little to do with morality or ethics.

In “Fragments,” Genet noted that crime is an act of solitude, with its own set of laws and standards.¹⁰ The criminal world has its own rules, sanctions, codes, rituals, and argot. Genet is attracted to the pride of the criminal—the lone wolf who invents rather than imitates. Crime meant dignity for Genet, a solitary condition that elevated him from beggar/prostitute to the status of degraded king, noble in his own way. In Miracle de la rose, Genet explains how thievery signified a new sense of identity for him: “Je voulus être moi-même, et je fus moi-même quand je me révélai casseur. Tous les cambrio leurs comprendront la dignité dont je fus paré quand je tins dans la main la pince-monseigneur, la ‘plume.’ De son poids, de sa matière, de son calibre, enfin de sa fonction, émanait une autorité qui me fit homme.”¹¹ Genet associates theft with “une arrogante solitude”¹² that destroys “les chers liens de la fraternité.”¹³ Criminals are threatened outcasts who violate the mores of society, depart from rules, and establish their identity free from the Other.

Genet's criminals who are caught after their crimes often feel joyous rather than fearful or threatened. Expiation is part of the degradation process, so the criminal feels like a Christlike figure, willfully adopting, even nourishing, guilt and sin after the crime. In Miracle de la rose, Genet compares Fontevrault with its former establishment, a monastery; thus, the prisoners, in their humility, adopt “l'âme orgueilleuse d'un moine d'autrefois.”¹⁴ Prison becomes a place of solitude, a haven for marginal individuals to establish their own sense of identity: “En prison à ces instants où le soleil qui pénétrait par la fenêtre dispersait la cellule, chacun de nous devenait de plus en plus, vivait de sa propre vie, et la vivait d'une façon si aiguë que nous en avions mal, étant isolés, et conscients de notre emprisonnement par les éclats de cette fête qui éblouissait le reste du monde. …”¹⁵ Thus, the condemned prisoner on death row is the pinnacle of success in Genet's “society.” Isolated, in solitude, degraded, the ultimate outcast, a condemned murderer (such as Harcamone in Miracle de la rose) is the eternal outlaw who opposes society and refuses to be controlled by others. For the condemned murderer, death is not to be feared because he has already been “dead” to society, cast off from mankind.

Saintliness, the ultimate noble gesture, becomes the metaphor to characterize Genet's risk takers in solitude. In Journal du voleur, Genet clarifies the connection between nobility, beauty, and saintliness:

Comme la beauté—et la poésie—avec laquelle je la confonds, la sainteté est singulière. Son expression est originale. Toutefois, il me semble qu'elle ait pour base unique le renoncement. Je la confondrai donc encoreavec la liberté. Mais surtout je veux être un saint parce que le mot indique la plus haute attitude humaine, et je ferai tout pour y parvenir. J'y emploierai mon orgueil et l'y sacrifierai.¹⁶

During the Playboy interview, Genet explained the comparison between saints and criminals: “They both live in solitude. Don't you have the impression, if you examine the matter closely, that the greatest saints resemble criminals? There's no visible link between society and the saint.”¹⁷ Genet associates saintliness with solitude, complete deprivation resulting in a renewed sense of dignity and pride.

Genet's patron saint is Vincent de Paul, who becomes the galley slave in many of Genet's works, beginning as early as Miracle de la rose, Querelle de Brest, Journal du voleur, extending to his poem, “La Galère,” and finally to Haute surveillance. Saint Vincent de Paul was the chaplain on the galley ships who allegedly exchanged places with one of the galley slaves, Christlike in assuming his sins as well.¹⁸ To Genet, the galley slave, bound by wrists and feet, was the epitome of the humiliated and degraded sufferer in solitude, completely removed from society: “Les galériens sont morts.”¹⁹ The galley slaves, decorated in tattoos as a sign of nobility, reveled in solitude yet willed their miserable conditions so that “… pour eux, toute vie dans la société devînt impossible. Ayant eux-mêmes voulu cette impossibilité, ils souffraient moins de la rigueur du destin.”²⁰ Yet just as Genet claimed that Gide's homoeroticism was suspect, so he questions the motives of Saint Vincent de Paul: “La sainteté de Vincent de Paul, je m'en méfie. Il devait accepter de commettre le crime à la place du galérien dont il prit la place dans les fers.”²¹ According to Genet, risk taking involves a total commitment. The concept of the galley slave and Genet's concomitant reaction to his patron saint, Vincent de Paul, provide us with the means to refute the majority of critics who refuse to see Lefranc in Haute surveillance as Genet's eternal outcast in solitude; unlike Vincent de Paul, Lefranc commits the crime and willingly accepts responsibility for it. His immersion into solitude produces a rite of passage to sainthood.

The traditional view of Haute surveillance derives from Jean-Paul Sartre's analysis, extended by Richard N. Coe and Philip Thody, and accepted without question by most of the subsequent critics of the play. Sartre argues that gratuitous crime represents the lowest rung of the hierarchy for Genet, while murder for gain is admirable: “Et, bien sûr, il ne faut pas que l'acte soit gratuit. Car l'assassin n'est pas le prince démoniaque du Mal, il en est le héros tragique. Il convient donc que les circonstances extérieures et les mobiles empiriques, la faim, la misère, la fureur déterminent le meurtre rigoureusement.”²² Sartre's argument seems bizarre when one thinks of the fictitious murderers Genet extols, most of whom, such as Harcamone, Deloffre, Erik Seiler, and Querelle, killed gratuitously. In any event, as the argument goes, Boule de Neige is atop the hierarchy because he kills in order to survive, whereas Lefranc murders to imitate his idol, Yeux-Verts, whose murder of the young girl was in itself gratuitous. Because Lefranc consciously chose his crime, this premeditated murder is considered by critics to be vile. Coe and Thody state that Genet follows the Jansenist concept of grace and predeterminism: in short, Yeux-Verts is “called” to his crime and could not control his actions, yet Lefranc, who can only worship criminals, cannot enter the elite circle of murderers no matter how much he tries.²³ This line of reasoning is extended by several critics.²⁴

Haute surveillance, although different in form from the ritualistic structure so prevalent in Genet's later plays is, like his other dramas, a rite of passage from solitude to sainthood. Lefranc chose his crime in order to transcend his rank in the criminal hierarchy. Lefranc, the galley slave in a state of abjection, at the lowest rung of the prison hierarchy because of his status as petty thief, foregoes freedom (he is about to be released from prison in three days) to trade places with Yeux-Verts, a murderer whom he admires. Lefranc, the “dead” man, the outcast among outcasts, accepts his crime and alienates himself from his peers, thereby reaffirming his solitude as an icon of sainthood. He becomes a murderer, not by destiny, but because of existential choice, and it is this volition that provides Genet's protagonists (only those willing to make the commitment) with the impetus to take risks and thereby move from a benign, lackluster existence to a more meaningful life.

The feudal hierarchy that Kate Millett postulates as the foundation of Genet's fantasized society, which has only been present in Genet's reminisces of Mettray and Fontevrault in Miracle de la rose, is present again in Haute surveillance.²⁵ Obviously, only the prison setting mandates Genet's use of such a stratified system. Boule de Neige, the hardened murderer aloof to the others around him, is at the pinnacle of the hierarchy. Maurice, the youngster who is one step beyond his former status of queen or chicken, will need only time to rise through the class system. The play revolves around Lefranc and Yeux-Verts, both of whom occupy the middle rung of the hierarchy. For Genet, the play becomes wish fulfillment as we witness Lefranc's jockeying for power in a hierarchy that awards murder and other high-risk criminal activities. Genet, the petty thief hopelessly mired in what unfortunately for him appeared to be a well-defined and inflexible caste structure, watches with interest as his alter ego, Lefranc, assumes the risks and engages in a rite of passage. Lefranc's daring venture results in sainthood, which ultimately places him in the same class as Boule de Neige.

Boule de Neige is atop the prison hierarchy because he is considered to be a vicious killer who murdered for gain or “… pour piller et pour voler.”²⁶ Lefranc, Yeux-Verts, and Maurice recognize him as their master, a member of an elite class to which they all aspire. Boule de Neige, like Harcamone, is an “untouchable,” a god among mere mortals who exist to serve him. When Harcamone made one of his brief appearances, his presence cast a magical aura over the prison courtyard. Boule de Neige, unseen on stage, also rules the prison as some sort of majestic, remote, mysterious deity. Yeux-Verts admits, “Toute la prison est sous son autorité …” (209). As a black man whose name suggests whiteness, Boule de Neige is an all-encompassing deity. He literally dwells above the other prisoners and, as Lefranc acknowledges, “Il fait de l'ombre” (184). Boule de Neige's godlike powers are similar to Harcamone's anthropomorphic presence, and his spiritual aura provides the prisoners with the psychic energy necessary to conduct their daily activities: “Boule de Neige? Il est exotique. Tous les gens de sa cellule le reconnaissent. Ceux des cellules autour et toute la forteresse, et toutes les prisons de France. Il brille, il rayonne. Il est noir et il éclaire les deux mille cellules. Personne ne pourra l'abattre. C'est lui le vrai chef de la forteresse et tous les gens de sa bande sont plus terribles que lui” (184). Also referred to as “un roi” (185), Boule de Neige reigns supreme. Boule de Neige is certainly benevolent to his acolytes and sends them gifts in the form of cigarettes and smiles in the corridors, quite enough for the lowly peons who serve under him and obtain their orders from him.

Boule de Neige's omnipotence as an untouchable inspires fear and awe in the prison hierarchy. Boule de Neige is perceived as “un sauvage” (184), a primitive spirit who acts upon instinct. As one who follows his natural inclinations, Boule de Neige is subject only to his own will and not to the rules, norms, or mores of codified society. As the ultimate risk taker, he willfully passed into a state of solitude in which he is independent and autonomous. The crashers and pimps who are below him in the prison hierarchy are more pedagogical and have not yet achieved their apotheoses. Yeux-Verts admits that Boule de Neige's primitive spirit, the “noble savage” living in unfettered freedom, is a status to be emulated: “… il a la chance d'être un sauvage. Il a le droit de tuer les gens et même de les manger. Lui, il vit dans la brousse. Voilà son mérite sur moi” (193). Lefranc chimes in with, “S'il arrive du désert, il en arrive debout!” (185). Good looking, muscular, “un vrai dur” (184) “qui revient de loin” (184), Boule de Neige is also the physical embodiment of savage terror. In addition, Lefranc's comment that Boule de Neige “jette des éclairs” (184) can be construed as a reference to the black man's sexual prowess as well as to his godlike ability to display his immortal talents.

Maurice is at the opposite end of the hierarchy, occupying its lowest rung. At age seventeen, the youngest of the trio in the cell, Maurice is a novice at crime but has potential for mobility within the class structure. He is the only character in the play to walk barefoot, which Bettina Knapp so aptly infers coincides with his position as a “tenderfoot.”²⁷ At the Mettray reformatory, Maurice would have been equivalent to one of the young, handsome chickens or petty thieves chosen for seduction by the other boys because of his good looks. Indeed, in the 1949 edition of the play, Genet reveals that the pimps (“les vrais macs”) have already accepted him as an acolyte. Transported to prison for the first time, the youngster is now at the bottom of a new hierarchy that he would have ascended in due time had he lived. His effeminate gestures, punctuated by the annoying habit of throwing back an imaginary lock of hair as if he were some sort of whoring temptress, constantly remind us of a sexual presence that seems to personify his only worth as a human being.

As a young neophyte in the presence of his more experienced idols, Maurice can only swoon at their feet and try to emulate the murderers surrounding him. Maurice does not yet possess the significant attributes required to be at the top of the prison hierarchy, and therefore he must imitate the mannerisms of his mentors and hope that the future will be different. Maurice listens to Yeux-Verts and Lefranc recount the sagas of former criminal acquaintances who became the equivalent of ennamored nobility with their own titles; he can only dream of having a title of his own one day. Maurice and Lefranc vie to become the murderer with an accompanying legend and title. Lefranc reveals to Maurice, “Tu trouves normal tout ce qui vient de lui [Yeux-Verts]. Tu accepterais qu'on te coupe en deux à sa place” (204). In the same manner that Yeux-Verts associates himself with the lilac as his talisman, Maurice would like to become the symbol of his beauty, the rose: “Après je n'aurais plus qu'à me transformer en rose pour me faire cueillir!” (195). Maurice has no identity of his own and exists only through wish fulfillment. Thus, when Yeux-Verts surrenders his girl friend to the guard, Maurice is elated because his idol's masculinity is reinforced, and Maurice can again dream of his mentor personifying the prototypical model of macho criminal behavior. This ideal vision of his mentor also explains Maurice's depression upon learning that Yeux-Verts was dependent on orders and gifts from Boule de Neige. In short, Maurice is a hero worshipper, an imitator, not a risk taker like Lefranc.

At first glance, one might believe that Yeux-Verts is an icon for Genet's risk takers, living in solitude, creating his own identity free from societal control. Certainly, Yeux-Verts seems to fit the pattern. Like Harcamone, he is in chains awaiting his imminent execution one month away. He refers to himself as “un homme mort” (192), merely “une chiffe” (192) or “une lavette” (192), the eternal outcast. He admits, “Je ne suis plus vivant, moi! Maintenant je suis tout seul. Tout seul! Seul! Solo! Je peux mourir tranquille. Je ne rayonne plus. Je suis glacé” (193). He appears to be similar to Genet's other aloof murderers who hardly acknowledge the peons around them. Yeux-Verts seems anxious, not fearful, to face the guillotine: “Moi, je suis décollé de terre. La vie me fatigue” (202). He is fully tattooed to mark his status and has even acquired a legendary name, “Paulo les dents fleuries,” that associates him with the murder that he committed. In addition, he has a sense of pride that usually accompanies Genet's risk takers: “Je deviens plus fort, plus lourd qu'un château fort. Plus fort que la forteresse. Je suis la forteresse! Dans mes cellules, je garde des costauds, des voyous, des soldats, des pillards … Je suis la forteresse et je suis seul au monde” (200).

Critics have tried to prove that Yeux-Verts's murder of an adolescent is somehow reflective of a more significant gratuitous act that cannot be imitated. Yeux-Verts used his sexual magnetism, signified by the lilac between his teeth, to entice a young girl to his room. Upon the spur of the moment, he strangled her quite like Harcamone, his precursor, who killed a ten-year-old adolescent by accident. The gist of the argument is that Yeux-Verts murdered because he was destined to do so; he simply tried to be himself. Yeux-Verts insists that it was fate calling him and that he had no control over his destiny: “Je n'ai rien voulu, tu m'entends, rien voulu de ce qui m'est arrivé. Tout m'a été donné. Un cadeau du bon Dieu ou du diable, mais quelque chose que je n'ai pas voulu” (213). Yeux-Verts is not the same type of murderer as is Boule de Neige, for Boule de Neige murders for gain while Yeux-Verts did not want to kill at all. Yeux-Verts even laments, “Je suis peut-être moins fort que Boule de Neige parce que son crime était un peu plus nécessaire que le mien. Parce qu'il a tué pour piller et pour voler, mais comme lui j'ai tué pour vivre et j'ai déjà le sourire” (204-205). However, Lefranc, the critics contend, is not true to himself; instead, he murders to imitate others. Therefore, as scholars argue, Lefranc's crime is considered insignificant and not worthy of sainthood.

Critics have assumed that Genet's murderers are destined to be members of the elite and that murderers who try to will their acts cannot enter such a caste system. The argument breaks down when we scan the list of Genet's protagonists. Virtually every murder committed is different; some of them are done willfully, others are gratuitous, and a few of them are committed for gain. Divine in Notre-Dame-des-fleurs, for example, was not “destined” to murder a young child, for her place in the criminal hierarchy will always be beneath the pimps and crashers; yet Divine's apotheosis is as significant as Querelle's, who murders gratuitously. Boule de Neige, who chose his fate as a murderer in order to steal, is obviously atop the hierarchy because of his actions, not because he was destined to be a criminal. Critics who maintain the Jansenist argument without examining Genet's oeuvre and the comparative assessments he makes with regard to the various types of murders will only continue to engage in a futile exercise. The motives for the crime are virtually insignificant. However, what is important to Genet is the result of the risk-taking venture and how the individual uses it to mature, through metamorphosis or a rite of passage, to a new state of awareness.

Unfortunately, Yeux-Verts, a marginal individual, “dead” to society, does not accept the value of his former risk-taking ventures. There is no doubt that Yeux-Verts is the dominant member of the cell, idolized by both Lefranc and Maurice. Yeux-Verts is the one who brings order to the cell, constantly breaking up fights betwen Maurice and Lefranc, who are continually bickering. In addition, as Robert Brustein has noted, Yeux-Verts's illiteracy brings him closer to the instinctive, primitive qualities of Boule de Neige, the pinnacle of notorious success.²⁸ However, Yeux-Verts is not the autonomous, independent persona that he reveals to Maurice and Lefranc. First, he is dependent on Lefranc to write correspondence for him and to read the letters he receives from his sweetheart. Second, he gets his orders from his mentor, Boule de Neige. Furthermore, when any type of crisis develops, such as when the guard seeks a culprit for the unmade bed, Yeux-Verts is quick to pass the guilt on to someone's else's shoulders. However, the most significant element concerning why his risk-taking venture failed to induce a noteworthy apotheosis is his refusal to accept the consequences of his crime.

On the whole, critics have not paid enough attention to the attitude that Yeux-Verts has taken with regard to the murder that he committed. The acceptance of one's crime is certainly as important to Genet, if not more so, than the justification for the risk taking; Genet's reaction to Saint Vincent de Paul demonstrates this point. Yeux-Verts admits, “Moi je ne suis déjà plus au bord. Je tombe. Je ne risque plus rien, je vous l'ai dit” (196). Yeux-Verts is not the artist or the elite criminal mind because he fails to accept his risk as valid and meaningful. Yeux-Verts, like Gil Turko in Querelle de Brest, refuses to take responsibility for his murder. He states, “Et j'ai eu peur. J'ai voulu revenir en arrière. Halte! Impossible! J'ai fait des efforts. Je courais à droite et à gauche. Je me tortillais. J'essayais toutes les formes pour ne pas devenir un assassin. Essayé d'être un chien, un chat, un cheval, un tigre, une table, une pierre!” (197). Yeux-Verts then invents a spiraling dance, and while in pain, tries to go back in time to undo what he considers to be the heinous deed. Yeux-Verts even recalled that, unlike Genet's vicious murderers, he showed remorse for the slaying and did not believe it could have occurred: “J'ai cru qu'une fois morte je pourrais la ressusciter” (199). Yeux-Verts is like a puppet who is prey to fatelike forces he believes are beyond his control; any existential notion of “will” or of man being a product of his actions is foreign to him. To Yeux-Verts, sainthood is not earned but is predetermined:

Ce n'est rien savoir du malheur si vous croyez qu'on peut le choisir. Je n'ai pas voulu le mien. Il m'a choisi. Il m'est tombé sur le coin de la gueule et j'ai tout essayé pour m'en dépêtrer. J'ai lutté, j'ai boxé, j'ai dansé, j'ai même chanté et l'on peut en sourire, le malheur je l'ai d'abord refusé

(213)

The comparison between Gil Turko and Yeux-Verts is most appropriate to understand Genet's reaction to the murder that Yeux-Verts has committed. Genet is fascinated with the concept of the Elect in the criminal hierarchy and how certain individuals are predetermined to be murderers, a class that excluded Genet's entrance. Gil regarded his crime (Théo's accidental murder) as beyond the scope of his control; instead of profitting from the risk-taking apotheosis, Gil became its victim. Gil, like Yeux-Verts, bears the weight of an “albatross” around his neck and is faced with a guilty conscience. Both Gil and Yeux-Verts wish their crimes had never occurred and try to sublimate their reactions to what they consider to be an uncontrollable errant deed. Most importantly, the crime committed is anything but a risk-taking aesthetic act resulting in proud sainthood. Instead, both Gil and Yeux-Verts are left with bitter curses that they must live with for the rest of their lives. Lefranc says to Maurice that Yeux-Verts, recounting the notorious murder, was “jusqu'aux larmes!” (207). Yeux-Verts is pale from the crime and, as Bettina Knapp suggests, the murder emasculated him: he lost his lilacs (his phallus) in the process.²⁹ Like Gil, Yeux-Verts, with humble renunciation, refuses to accept responsibility for his deed—an essential characteristic of Genet's concept of metamorphosis to sainthood. Genet frowns upon Saint Vincent de Paul, who accepts the responsibility for the galley slave's crime without doing the deed himself. Similarly, Genet also questions those who commit the crime but do not accept its accompanying burdens.

Lefranc, “the frank one,” is the protagonist of the play, and Genet, who is most endeared with his alter ego, takes him from petty thief to sainthood. Critics have confessed that Lefranc has many of Genet's traits, yet they refuse to weigh his murder of Maurice as a positive act from Genet's point of view. Like Genet, he clips out photos of illustrious murderers and prays to them. Similarly, Lefranc is the intellectual of the cell and consequently helps Yeux-Verts write his letters; Genet was also usually viewed as the outsider in the cell because his knowledge separated him from the primitive instincts of most of the other criminals. In the original edition, Lefranc compares himself to Saint Vincent de Paul; in the later edition, he boasts of the marks on his wrists and ankles—the sign of the galley slave. Lefranc prophetically remarks, “Depuis trois cents ans, je porte la marque des galériens et tout va finir par un coup dur” (189). Not coincidentally, Saint Vincent de Paul lived approximately three hundred years prior to the writing of the play.³⁰ Moreover, Lefranc is Genet's embodiment of wish fulfillment. Unable to join ranks with the hardened criminals surrounding him, Genet, with his unusual qualities of perception and vision, became the obvious outsider in the prison hierarchy. Unable to murder, Genet could only dream of emulating the murderers to whom he prayed while fantasizing in his cell. Maurice reinforces this concept of Genet as the outsider when he says to Lefranc, “Moi, tous les hommes, les vrais, m'ont accepté. Je suis encore jeune mais j'ai leur amitié. Ils ne te la donner ont jamais, jamais. Tu n'es pas de notre espèce. Tu n'en seras pas. Même si tu descendais un homme. Non, nous te fascinons” (195). Maurice challenges Lefranc with the despicable notion, at least to Genet, that metamorphosis from petty thief to murderer is hopeless: “Mais toi, jamais tu n'arriveras à un si beau résultat. Il suffit de te regarder. Tu n'es pas fait pour cela. Je ne dis pas que tu sois innocent, je ne dis pas non plus qu'en tant que cambrioleur tu ne vailles rien, mais pour un crime c'est autre chose” (195).

Lefranc chooses to create his destiny, unlike Yeux-Verts, who has no will of his own and falls victim to deterministic forces. Lefranc, like Genet, emulates risk takers; both men experience an apotheosis as they turn their dreams into reality. Genet is not engaging in self-mockery. Instead, he views Lefranc as an alter ego who, in Genet's wildest fantasies, exchanges places with a murderer. Lefranc's crime becomes an explicit stamp of positive character, whereas Yeux-Verts is actually exposed as the coward who refuses to take responsibility for his actions.

Critics have accused Lefranc of trying to imitate Yeux-Verts, at times ineffectively. Although, by imitating Yeux-Verts, Lefranc tries to become someone who is pretentious, he does not know that Yeux-Verts refuses to bear the burden of his murder. In Lefranc's eyes, Yeux-Verts is defined as a murderer per se, although Lefranc intuitively understands that Boule de Neige, with his primitive instincts, is much closer to the elite status of crime lord. Lefranc does not know the real Yeux-Verts until the latter dances to undo the murder that he committed; at that point, Lefranc realizes that Maurice's murder would place him in a superior position to Yeux-Verts.

Throughout the play, Lefranc tries to emulate Yeux-Verts, whom he views as a man in control of his destiny. Maurice warns Yeux-Verts about Lefranc's desire to become his idol: “Tu ne vois pas la gueule qu'il s'offre? Il est en train de te boire. Il t'avale” (200). The tone becomes sexual as Maurice implies that Lefranc's fantasy is masturbatory: “Mais regarde sa gueule. Il est heureux. Tout ce que tu [Yeux-Verts] lui dis, lui rentre dans la peau. Tu lui entres par la peau et tu ne sais pas comment tu vas en sortir. Abandonne” (200). Lefranc inks on tattoos to resemble Yeux-Verts and then dons his mentor's jacket almost as if to get into his outer skin. Lefranc writes letters to Yeux-Verts's girl friend, and Yeux-Verts accuses Lefranc of trying to adopt his persona once he is released from prison: “Parce que en sortant d'ici, dans trois jours, tu espères la rejoindre” (187). Lefranc admits, “J'ai fait tout ce qui j'ai pu pour que les mots qui partaient vers ta femme soient le plus beau possible. Tu as le droit de m'en vouloir, je prenais ta place” (205). Lefranc becomes so obsessed with his ideal vision of Yeux-Verts that he begins to remake Yeux-Verts so as to conform to his fantasy paradigm. Lefranc exhorts Yeux-Verts “descends toujours” (206) in order to degrade himself further in solitude so as to be worthy of his murder. Reveling in ecstasy, Lefranc uses his knowledge gleaned from newspaper clippings to share comraderie with Yeux-Verts while recalling the vicious murderers they have known, albeit from different sources. David I. Grossvogel astutely notes that Lefranc's maturity gives him a proximity to Yeux-Verts that Maurice's youthful impudence cannot match.³¹ Lefranc clearly uses the age proximity (he is one year older) to his advantage as best he can in order to be accepted by his mentor.

As the play develops, Lefranc is gradually inculcated with the realization that his efforts to imitate Yeux-Verts are futile. Instead of portraying the tough hoodlum image that he would like to convey to his cronies, Lefranc daily exposes himself as spurious and pretentious. His tattoos, the mark of the criminal, are drawn in ink because he feared the prick of the needle. He failed in his attempts to become Yeux-Verts, and writing letters to Yeux-Verts's girl friend only served to exacerbate the anger of his cellmates. Lefranc's pretentious mask of tough criminal is constantly challenged by his benevolent matriarchal tendencies to slip Maurice blankets at night and provide the youngster with sustenance in the form of bread and soup at meals. His hypocrisy is evident when he refuses tobacco offered to him during the day yet steals cigarettes at night. In addition, he cannot share male bonding with his fellow malefactors because his intimate association with criminals derives mainly from newspaper clippings rather than from actual acquaintanceships. As Ruby Cohn has stated, Lefranc must constantly act for others or play roles, for imitation destroys his individuality.³² Maurice rebukes Lefranc for imitating rather than inventing: “Tu te nourris des autres. Tu te vêts, tu te pares de nos beautés, je t'en accuse! Tu voles nos crimes!” (211-212). Maurice candidly assesses Lefranc's banal existence as counterfeit and illusory:

Tu es faux. Faux jusqu'à la moelle. Fausses ton histoire de la galère et tes marques aux poignets, faux tes secrets avec notre femme, fausses tes complications à propos du nègre, faux des tatouages, fausses tes colères, fausse …

(211).

In short, Maurice, parodying Lefranc's name, sums up Lefranc's fraudulence when he states, “Fausse, ta franchise …” (211).

Although Lefranc fails miserably as he tries to imitate Yeux-Verts, he succeeds in his apotheosis, a rite of passage from solitude to sainthood. Haute surveillance has been compared to a perverted Mass in which Lefranc attempts to enter the sacred caste system via murder, much in the same manner that a priest attains spiritual unity through ingestion of the wafer.³³ Lefranc's apotheosis is an elevation of a deity through evil committed as risk taking. Lefranc, like Genet, chooses his destiny through risk taking that begins in solitude. Thus, the alternate title, Préséances, or the right to assume a position above someone, is appropriate to describe the focus of the play.

During the first stage of the rite of passage, Lefranc is isolated from his peers in the social structure. As the play progresses, we witness Lefranc's complete segregation from his fellow cohorts in crime. Whereas Maurice and Yeux-Verts never reveal their full names, Lefranc has a nickname, Jules, and a surname, Georges, separating him from the ardent criminals who dislike revealing their true identities to the authorities. Boule de Neige, for example, sends down two cigarettes, which go to Yeux-Verts and Maurice—Lefranc, the outsider, does not deserve the gifts because he is considered to be different or incapable of social mobility within the infrastructure. Lefranc accuses Yeux-Verts and Maurice of trying to segregate him from the cell: “C'est vous qui êtes contre moi. Vous ne me permettez plus d'exister” (187). Indeed, Maurice constantly reminds Lefranc that the petty thief's artificiality does not equate with the primitive qualities inherent in most criminals. Maurice considers Lefranc to be different from the other prisoners: “Tout seul. Parce que tu es tout seul, ne l'oublie pas” (188). Even the guard is aware that Lefranc is an “odd bird” in the cell. Lefranc, however, has imposed this isolation upon himself and becomes stronger as a result of his solitude. His continual refrain, “laisse-moi” (thrice on 198, twice on 208), is the proud cry of the marginal man—in this instance, an outcast ostracized from society as well as from his support structure—engaging in the requisite first phase of the metamorphosis to sainthood.

The hazing that Lefranc undergoes throughout the play accentuates his rite of passage, Lefranc, isolated from all others, has become “dead” to society. Degraded by his peers and isolated from mainstream society, Lefranc, the ultimate pariah, begins to assert his elitism. The constant humiliation imposed upon him from Maurice and Yeux-Verts becomes internalized as a positive form of self-abasement. Lefranc intuitively begins to assess his role in the criminal hierarchy and attempts to change his status through risk taking—the murder of Maurice.

Lefranc, who lacks the natural instincts of a primitive, must learn how to take risks or to murder. The newspaper clippings that he collects, his only contact with murderers, will not provide Lefranc with the advice that he requires. Instead, he uses Yeux-Verts as his inspiration for murder. The impetus for his metamorphosis is the story that Yeux-Verts relates concerning the young girl that he murdered. Yeux-Verts gives Lefranc the necessary instructions so that he can follow his criminal longings: “Mais pour être dans ma peau, il faut être de ma taille. Pour être à ma taille, il faut faire comme moi” (205). Lefranc reveals that the tattoo on his chest is “Le Vengeur,” which was a submarine that Yeux-Verts had served on in the navy.³⁴ Yeux-Verts cajoles Lefranc into believing that the most notorious Avenger was Robert Garcia: “Lui c'est le champion qu'il faut terrasser. Et pour cela réussir un meurtre complet. Pas autre chose” (209). Yeux-Verts, sentenced to death, turns over his girl to the guard but tells Lefranc, “Et … toi aussi tu auras droit à ma femme” (209). As we have seen, Maurice's effeminate gestures and his youthful virility have made him the “whoring temptress” of the cell. Lefranc subliminally associates Maurice with the girl, duplicating the crime. As Harry E. Stewart suggests, the talisman is the lilac.³⁵ Maurice goads Lefranc by saying, “Tu nous regardes nous débattre et tu nous envies. Elle te faisait reluire, l'histoire du lilas! Avoue-le! On n'a pas fini de voir ta sale gueule penchée en avant, avec ses yeux morts, tourner dans la cellule. Et tu vas la ruminer, l'histoire du lilas!” (211). The lilacs inspire Lefranc to create his own destiny as he wills his action. Maurice intuitively feels Lefranc's transformation: “Elle te donne des forces? Elle remonte. Elle te remonte aux lèvres? Le lilas te remonte aux dents?” (211). Maurice pushes Lefranc to the brink of action as he hazes the pariah about his isolation from “true” criminals who are not phony but are capable of fulfilling their destinies. Lefranc then refers to Maurice as a whore, admonishing him for tossing his hair in a provocative manner. Maurice's “Monsieur a peur que je dérange ses grappes de lilas?” (212) is the sexual stimulus that unites Lefranc's strangulation of Maurice with Yeux-Verts's murder of the girl. Maurice's body falls between Lefranc's legs, accentuating the murder as sex-related. Thus, Lefranc will now have his own title, “Le Vengeur” (212), and will be enshrined in legend as is Yeux-Verts, Paulo les dents fleuries. Instead of Lefranc praying to murderers in his cell, other petty criminals will now view him as a paragon worthy of emulation.

Critics generally reject Lefranc's murder of Maurice because Yeux-Verts denounces the action as spurious. Who made Yeux-Verts the raisonneur of the play? Most critics regard Lefranc as the character who most resembles Genet, yet suddenly during the denouement, Yeux-Verts is viewed as the spokesman for a Jansenist Weltanschauung that is associated with Sartre's subjective view of Genet. In the 1949 acting version of the play, Lefranc states that the murder of Maurice makes him stronger than Yeux-Verts because he willed his crime and will not have to dance to undo the deed.³⁶ Lefranc's apotheosis takes him to a new, relatively stable, well-defined status of sainthood. In Journal du voleur, Genet stated that he chose to become a thief and willed his destiny. Lefranc follows Genet's lead and admits to Yeux-Verts that his misfortune stems solely from his own solitude. Thus, Harry E. Stewart is correct in arguing that Lefranc's last words of the play, “Je suis vraiment tout seul!” (213), reflect the cry of a proud saint who has willed a life of solitude free from external control.³⁷

Lefranc's murder of Maurice allows him to be the galley slave with which he identifies and had always wanted to become. Lefranc's prayers to the notorious murderers that he idolized were comparable to Saint Vincent de Paul's assumption of the crimes of the galley slave. On the cover of the third draft of the play, Genet scribbled a note, reminding himself that Vincent de Paul must commit the galley slave's crime. Lefranc chooses to commit the crime rather than merely accept the sins of the galley slave. Lefranc, who is about to be released from prison in three days, flatly rejects freedom in order to impose solitude upon himself. He decides to murder and also to betray his friends in the cell, thereby doubly accentuating the evil and ostracizing himself even further in solitude. In short, Lefranc's murder of Maurice places him higher than Yeux-Verts atop the criminal hierarchy. Lefranc does what Saint Vincent de Paul and Yeux-Verts have failed to do. Yeux-Verts murders but refuses to accept the consequences of his actions; Saint Vincent de Paul assumes responsibility for the crime but fails to do the deed himself. The apotheosis enables Lefranc to supersede Yeux-Verts in a class system in which mobility is based both on one's will and on acceptance of one's actions rather than on a castelike structure that precludes change.

Prior to the rite of passage, Lefranc was excluded from what was thought to be a caste system; after he assumes the responsibility for his actions, Lefranc actually exchanges places with Yeux-Verts in the hierarchy, which is no longer considered to be sacrosanct. After the apotheosis, Lefranc achieves the independence that he formerly associated with Yeux-Verts and Boule de Neige. Lefranc, the intellectual trying to maintain his integrity in a codified, primitive society, is obviously Genet's alter ego; Lefranc's acknowledgement that he is stronger than Yeux-Verts reflects Genet's personal statement about the value of metamorphosis through risk taking. Genet's art, like Lefranc's murder, is an aesthetic form of risk that ultimately produces independence from any organized social structures.

A steadfast adherence to the Jansenist position prevents critics from accepting Lefranc's apotheosis to sainthood, although these same individuals have no reservations in identifying with the sainthood of Claire and Solange in Les Bonnes. The rite of passage, unlike the Jansenist concept of predeterminism, is present in virtually all of Genet's oeuvre and provides one of the most comprehensive means of interpreting the plays. Lefranc's risk taking produces an autonomous individual who is proud of his solitude free from societal restraints. By his own admission, Lefranc has taken control of his life and has moved from imitator to proud artist.

Notes

1. Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1951) II. 387.

2. Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Gallimard, 1953) III, 176.

3. See “Genet de vive voix,” Le Nouvel Observateur, 2-8 October 1982, 50. Also, see Genet's comment about prison being a state of solitude deprived of sex and freedom: George Jackson, Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970) sixth page of an unpaginated introduction.

4. Genet, Oeuvres complètes, III, 267.

5. Hubert Fichte, “Jean Genet Talks to Hubert Fichte,” trans. Patrick McCarthy, The New Review 4 (1977): 17.

6. Pierre Démeron, “Conversation With Jean Genet,” Oui, November 1972, 64.

7. For a thorough analysis of Genet's attitude toward crime, see Gisèle A. Child Bickel, Jean Genet: Criminalité et transcendance (Saratoga, Ca: ANMA Libra, 1987).

8. Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes II, 164.

9. Jean Genet, Journal du voleur (Paris: Gallimard, 1949) 237.

10. Jean Genet, “Fragments …,” Les Temps Modernes 10 (1954): 203.

11. Genet, Oeuvres complètes, II, 242.

12. Genet, Journal du voleur, 49.

13. Ibid., 86.

14. Genet, Oeuvres complètes, II, 339.

15. Ibid., 319.

16. Genet, Journal du voleur, 222.

17. Jean Genet, “Playboy Interview: Jean Genet,” Playboy, April 1964, 50.

18. As the legend goes, Genet did the same thing with his friend, Jean Decarnin, and was willing to suffer in prison for Decarnin's crime.

19. Genet, Oeuvres complètes, III, 246.

20. Genet, Oeuvres complètes, II, 348-349.

21. Genet, Journal du voleur, 227.

22. Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet, Comédien et Martyr, in Oeuvres complètes de Jean Genet (Paris: Gallimard, 1952) I, 96.

23. Richard N. Coe, The Vision of Jean Genet (London: Peter Owen, 1968) 229, and Philip Thody, Jean Genet A Study of His Novels and Plays (New York: Stein and Day, 1968) 157.

24. See L. A. C. Dobrez, “The Murderer and the Saint: Sartrean Relationships in the Work of Jean Genet,” Southern Review: An Australian Journal of Literary Studies 10 (1977): 258-260; Tom F. Driver, Jean Genet, Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, no. 20 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966) 28; Jacques Ehrmann, “Genet's Dramatic Metamorphosis: From Appearance to Freedom,” Yale French Studies 29 (1962): 35-36; Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969) 171-173; David I. Grossvogel, The Blasphemers: The Theater of Brecht, Ionesco, Beckett, Genet (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1962) 155-156; Josephine Jacobsen and William R. Mueller, Ionesco and Genet: Playwrights of Silence (New York: Hill and Wang, 1968) 131-137; Carol Rosen, Plays of Impasse: Contemporary Drama Set in Confining Institutions (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1983) 199-200; Jeannette L. Savona, Jean Genet, Grove Press Modern Dramatists Series (New York: Grove Press, 1983) 22-38; Franco Tonelli, “From Illusion to Theatre: Artaud & Genet,” The Theatre Annual 29 (1973): 10; George Wellwarth, “The New Dramatists: 3. Jean Genet,” Drama Survey 1 (1962): 312-313; Yvette Yvonne Marie Went-Daoust, Le Symbolisme des objets et l'espace mythique dans le théâtre de Jean Genet (Oegstgeest: Kempenaer, 1980) 27-30, 42.

25. Kate Millett, “The Balance of Power,” Partisan Review 37 (1970): 199-218.

26. Jean Genet, Oeuvres complètes (Parts: Gallimard, 1968) IV, 204. All subsequent citations are from this edition and are included within parentheses in the text.

27. Bettina Knapp, Jean Genet, Twayne's World Authors Series, no. 44 (Boston: G. K. Hall 1989) 100.

28. Robert Brustein, The Theatre of Revolt (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964) 386.

29. Knapp, 104.

30. Saint Vincent de Paul lived from 1576 to 1660. Thus, Saint Vincent de Paul was alive three hundred years ago from the date that Genet was writing in the mid-1940's.

31. Grossvogel, 153.

32. Ruby Cohn, Currents in Contemporary Drama (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1969) 64.

33. A few critics have noted that the play is a perverted Mass with Lefranc as the priest sacrificing Maurice in homage to the Christlike figure, Yeux-Verts. For example, see Lewis T. Cetta, Profane Play, Ritual, and Jean Genet: A Study of His Drama (University, Al: The University of Alabama Press, 1974) 31; John Cruickshank, “Jean Genet: The Aesthetics of Crime,” Critical Quarterly 6 (1964): 206; Alexsandra Hoffman-Liponska, “La Conception du théâtre de Jean Genet et sa confrontation avec les thèses d'Antonin Artaud,” Studia Romanica Posnaniensia 2 (1972-1973): 49; and Leonard Cabell Pronko, Avant-Garde: The-Experimental Theater in France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962) 142.

34. “Le Vengeur” was not randomly chosen by Genet. Querelle's ship was also known as Le Vengeur, suggesting a comparison between Querelle and Lefranc. Querelle de Brest was written approximately during the same time that Genet worked on the late drafts of Haute surveillance.

35. See Harry E. Stewart, “In Defense of Lefranc as ‘Hero’ of Haute surveillance,” The French Review 45 (1971): 369, and Harry E. Stewart, “The Case of the Lilac Murders: Jean Genet's Haute surveillance,” The French Review 48 (1974): 87-94. The use of the lilac as inducement for both murders is also discussed by Maggie Megaw, “Jean Genet's Haute surveillance: A Study of the Manuscripts,” The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin, New Series No. 14 (1980): 90.

36. These lines were excised by Genet for the definitive version of the play.

37. Stewart, “In Defense of Lefranc as ‘Hero’ of Haute surveillance,” 371.