Abstract
Most of Pas pleurer focuses on Montse, Lidia's ninety-year-old mother. Her memory failing, the only time period the elderly Montse can recall is her final glorious summer in Spain in 1936 and her subsequent flight.
The summer included a now nearly forgotten period during which social constraints were loosened and utopia seemed to be on the horizon. All was later eclipsed by the war's violence.
For sixteen-year-old Montse, it was a moment of possibility, freedom, and hope. Salvayre juxtaposes Montse's story with interspersed accounts from another witness to the Spanish civil war: the semi-forgotten French novelist Georges Bernanos.
He was a devout Catholic and, at times, a member of the nationalist group Action Française. Lidia describes her unsettling encounter with Bernanos's Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune (1938; Eng.
A Diary of My Times, 1938), a book that describes his experience as a witness to atrocities committed by Spanish nationalists as well as the complicity of many local representatives of the Catholic Church. Bernanos's growing unease and disbelief give way to horror and a call for justice.
The juxtaposition between the uncouth sixteen-year-old Montse and a middle-aged French monarchist seems odd initially, but both are strong, compelling characters who long for a better world, and their stories complement each other. Both are brought back from the shadows of history to speak to us in the present.