Banine’s ‘Jours caucasiens’

I have just read the novel ‘Jours caucasiens’ by Banine. This is an autobiographical account of the author’s childhood in Baku. I find it difficult to judge how much of what she writes there is true and how much is a product of her vivid imagination. I do not find that so important. In any case I found it very interesting to read. It is not for readers who are easily shocked. Banine is the pen name of Umm-El-Banine Assadoulaeff. She was born in Baku into a family of oil magnates and multimillionaires. In fact she herself was in principle a multimillionaire for a few days after the death of her grandfather, until her fortune was destroyed when Azerbaijan was invaded by the Soviet Union. In later years she lived in Paris and wrote in French. To my taste she writes very beautifully in French. I first heard of her through the diaries of Ernst Jünger. While he was an officer in the German army occupying Paris during the Second World War he got to know Banine and visited her regularly. It was not entirely unproblematic for her during the occupation when she was visited at her appartment by a German army officer in uniform. She seemed to regard this with humour. The two had a close but platonic relationship.

As I mentioned in a previous post, during the year I lived in Paris I was a frequent visitor to the library of the Centre Pompidou. One of the books I found and read there was a book by Banine about her meetings with Jünger. I believe she actually wrote three books about him and I am not sure which one it was I read. I enjoyed reading her book and it was nice to see an account of Jünger’s time in Paris which was complementary to his own. I had completely forgotten about Banine until recently. I was reminded of her by the following chain of circumstances. Together with my wife we were thinking of going on holiday to Georgia. I found an interesting organised tour visiting Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. One of the places to be visited was Baku. I must confess that it was not clear to me at that point that Baku was in Azerbaijan. In any case, it occurred to me that Banine was born in Baku and I looked her up in Wikipedia. I found out that she had written the book ‘Jours caucasiens’ and I thought it might be good to read it before the planned trip. I got the book from the university library without being sure I wanted to read it. The prose of the first page captured me immediately and did not let me go. The potential trip to Georgia will not take place this year, if at all. Even if it does not it has had the pleasant consequence of leading me to rediscover Banine.

The society in which Banine grew up was the result of the discovery of oil. Her ancestors had been poor farmers who suddenly became very rich because oil-wells were built on their land. She presents her family as being very uncivilised. They were muslims but had already been strongly affected by western culture. I found an article in the magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ from 1947 where ‘Jours caucasiens’ is described by the words ‘gehören zu den skandalösesten Neuerscheinungen in Paris’ [is one of the most scandalous new publications in Paris]. It also says that her family was very unhappy about the way they were presented in the book and I can well understand that. It seems that she had a low opinion of her family and their friends and the culture they belonged to, although she herself did not seem to mind being part of it. She was attracted by Western culture and Paris was the place of her dreams. As a child she had a German governess. Her mother died when she was very young and after her father had remarried she had a French and an English teacher for those languages. She quickly fell in love with French. On the other hand, she saw having to learn English as a bit of a nuisance. Her impression was that the English had just taken the words from German and French and changed them in a strange way.

After the Russian invasion Banine’s father, who had been a government minister in the short-lived Azerbaijan Republic, was imprisoned. He was released due to the efforts of a man whose motivation for doing so was the desire to marry Banine. She was very much against this. Perhaps the strongest reason was that he had red hair. There was a superstition that red-haired people, who were not very common in that region, had evil supernatural powers. Banine’s grandmother told her a story about an alchemist who discovered the secret of red-haired people. According to him they should be treated in the following way. He cut off their head, boiled it in a pot and put the head on a pedestal. If this was done correctly then the heads would start to speak and make prophecies which were always true. Banine could not help associating her potential husband with this horrible myth. Unfortunately she was under a lot of social pressure and after hesitating a bit agreed to the marriage. Apart from being a sign of gratitude for her father’s release this was also a way of persuading her suitor to use his influence to get a visa for her father to allow him to leave Russia. In the end she accepted this arrangement instead of running away with the man she loved. At this time she was fifteen years old. Her father got the visa and left the country. Later she also got a visa and was able to leave. The last stage of her journey was with the Orient Express from Constantinople to Paris. The book ends as the train is approaching Paris and a new life is starting for her.

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