Bonjour Tristesse

Sagan was born Françoise Delphine Quoirez on June 21, 1935 in Cajarc, France to bourgeois parents. She was a passionate reader from a young age, devouring the works of Proust and Camus, among others. Regarded as something of an amoral troublemaker as a youth, Sagan was expelled from a convent school and later the Louise-de-Bettignies School. She went on to attend the Sorbonne in 1952 but dropped out. Sagan published her first novel, Bonjour Tristesse, which she reportedly wrote over the course of several weeks, when she was just 18 years old. The novel was an immediate success, capturing public attention with its provocative themes, and its publication catapulted Sagan into a long and successful literary career. To this day, it remains her best-known work. Sagan’s novels are known for their psychological insight and existential elements, and scholars have noted the French existential philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre’s influence. In addition to novels, Sagan also published plays, lyrics, and screenplays. Though her writing is not overtly autobiographical, there are notable parallels between Sagan’s decadent and often tumultuous personal life and the disillusioned, amoral bourgeois characters who populate many of her works—the notoriety that Bonjour Tristesse generated made Sagan something of a celebrity, and she handled her new wealth and fame haphazardly, living a lavish and indulgent existence rife with substance abuse, fast cars, and gambling. Sagan largely retreated from the public eye after her husband’s death from pancreatic cancer in 1991, and she died effectively bankrupt on September 24, 2004, of a pulmonary embolism at the age of 69.

To better understand the notoriety that Bonjour Tristesse generated with its publication, it is helpful to address Catholicism’s influence on French culture in the decades leading up to the release of Sagan’s debut novel. At the beginning of the 20th century, 98.4 percent of the country’s population was Catholic. This changed with the 1902 election of Émile Combes as Prime Minister. As Prime Minister, Combes sought to limit the Catholic Church’s influence on the daily lives of French residents, and he ordered the closure of the country’s parochial schools and called for state-sponsored religious organizations to be dissolved. All this led up to a reversal of Napoleon’s 1801 Concordat (an agreement between Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII which made Catholicism the official religion of France), which effectively restored the separation of Church and State in France and, notably, resulted in the dissolution of all 54 of the country’s monastic orders. Catholicism saw a resurgence in France following World War I, in which over 30,000 priests joined the army. The nation’s renewed embrace of Catholicism around this time is also evident in the canonization of St. Joan of Arc in 1920. Though the Catholic Church’s silence in response to the deportation of Jewish people during World War I was a source of criticism for some, the Nazi Occupation of France during World War II inspired yet more religious devotion, and Catholicism’s influence on French culture continued to grow, a trend that persisted into post-war France, though the Church’s influence began to wane as the public became aware of scandals within the Church, and as existentialist philosophy and a resurgence of intellectualism took hold of the broader culture.

Following the success of Bonjour Tristesse, Sagan published Un certain sourire (A Certain Smile), which follows Dominique, a young law student at the Sorbonne, who begins an affair with her lover’s uncle. Like Cécile in Bonjour Tristesse, the heroine of A Certain Smile is also a disillusioned young woman from a bourgeois family who just so happens to be a year younger than Sagan was at the time of the novel’s writing. Another of Sagan’s early novels is Aimez-vous Brahms? (Do you like Brahms?). The novel tells the story of a divorced 39-year-old interior designer named Paula. Though she already has a lover named Roger, Paula begins a love affair with a much younger man named Simon after he invites her to a Brahms concert, and she is struck by how deeply the music woos him. Bonjour Tristesse follows Cecile as she transitions from youth to maturity over the course of a summer. In this way, the novel has much in common with the bildungsroman, a literary genre that follows a protagonist’s coming of age. Other such novels published around the time of Bonjour Tristesse include The Lover (L’Amant), an autobiographical novel by the French writer Marguerite Duras. The novel was published in French in 1984 and in English in 1986. Set in French Indochina, the novel tells the story of a romance that develops between an unnamed, 15-year-old French girl and an older, wealthier Chinese Vietnamese man. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath is another semi-autobiographical novel that follows a protagonist’s coming of age. Published in 1963, the novel follows a 19-year-old college student named Esther Greenwood who struggles to make her way in the world as her mental health deteriorates. The novel was met with positive views despite its controversial subject matter.