Narrative Syncope in Jorge Semprún’s L’Évanouissement

Franco-Spanish author Jorge Semprún’s second published novel, L’Évanouissement (1967), has received almost no scholarly or public attention. Described as a draft of future works, it often serves as a reference point for analyses of his other, better-known narratives and novels. In this article, I focus on L’Évanouissement as a novel of disruption, dissonance, and anticipation. Through the idea of the syncope, and of lyrical syncopation, I argue that the novel creates syncopation in the broader corpus of the author, producing a disruption that drives forward the reader’s expectation for something that is still to come. Moreover, through analysis of two episodes of syncope, I suggest that the syncopated structure simultaneously suspends and propels the narrative, raising questions of witnessing, narrative, and ethics when demand for the restoration of rhythm enables disingenuous and incongruous stories to proliferate. Finally, reading narrative syncope as a form of syncopation, I demonstrate that the novel anticipates a narrative that is still to come and yet already fading away

Close reading · Focus (optics · Narrative · Point (geometry · Reading (process · Syncope (phonology · Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America · Latin American Literature Studies · Narrative Theory and Analysis