This article was originally published in “Lire Literary Magazine” in March 2021.
Omar Sy drew on the charm of the romantic adventurer of the character of Maurice Leblanc to embody with panache a version of Arsène Lupine declined in the XXIe century. Great success of the beginning of the year, the series Lupin returns for a season 2, which will put this elegant thug back at the heart of your evenings for a few days.
He is the hero of our heart, indestructible, perfect. Well, almost perfect: we can make two complaints. First of all, his good bourgeois side, attached to his property. He does not hesitate to claim it. […] More serious, the other reproach, but it is a quirk of time which annoys us today: the frankness, the “patriotardism”.
These reservations made, while Arsène wins us over, makes him a romantic character. The superb of Ruy Blas: I am leaving. – There is no way out. – That’s no reason why I shouldn’t go.
The emotion, when the knight Floriani unravel, as if by game, the enigma of the famous necklace of the queen stolen from the Duke of Dreux-Soubise, demonstrating that it can only be a child who acted, thus selling, stone per stone, diamonds (many were fake besides) to ensure each year to his sick, abandoned mother, a decent living. Obviously, this child was already called Arsène.
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Inseparable loves and adventures
And then the women, their looks, their smiles. He doesn’t resist, doesn’t even think about it. A stranger crossed in the street, he is ready to solve all the enigmas, to endanger his freedom, his life, on this simple sign of fate. There is thus, in the work of Maurice Leblanc, little Norman and literary cousin of Maupassant, a whole series of novels and short stories where love and adventure are inseparable. The fascinating Young lady with green eyes, Clara the blonde and Antonine, the twins of La Woman with two smiles, Louise d’Ernemont in The Shadow Sign, discovering the diamonds of the farmer general … and in the first Arsène Lupine, The sweep-and-go : there again, they are two sisters, Catherine, the young girl, and Bertrande, who becomes a widow at the start of the adventure, like Clara and Antonine de The Woman with Two Smiles, one freed
, the other pure and virgin. Lupine is Raoul d’Avenac there.
A property in Normandy, a river, the Aurelle, which on certain dates carries gold, a mysterious manager who disguises himself at night as a burglar with a gigantic hat and enormous clogs, despite which he passes in the narrowest cracks: of course, the hat is canvas, the rubber clogs! Raoul d’Avenac will of course find the source of the gold. Alas, he is madly in love with the two sisters as they are both with him. So, rather than fighting among themselves, they decide, with their souls in their hearts, to leave him and they each come to announce it to him. But Catherine brought her face closer and offered her lips. For a moment she fainted between the arms which hugged her madly and under the lips which kissed his. Then, freeing herself with a gesture, she runs away
. Two days later, it was Bertrande to announce his departure to him. But she smiles, mysterious and captivating. And he drew her to him, without her resisting
.
A sort of Gérard Philipe of the burglary
Finally, last furiously romantic novel, but of an English romanticism, that of Walpole, cruel, black, unique in the work of Leblanc and rare in our literature: The island of thirty coffins. A desolate islet in Brittany, a dismal prophecy, three women on the cross, all the inhabitants killed during their attempt to escape, an infernal trio, Vorski, his wife and his second son, an angelic duo, Véronique d’Hergemont and her son (but the two children are half-brothers, Leblanc is fascinated by blood ties), sometimes almost unbearable violence, and, mystery, a radioactive stone. The time was fascinated by the work of Marie and Pierre Curie, the miraculous and deadly radium, and Leblanc was closely interested in science. All of these ingredients come together in one amazing book.
So here is our Arsène, young, beautiful, dragging all hearts after himself. A sort of Gérard Philipe of the burglary, but more enigmatic, obscure, complex. A hero.
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