Is There a Man in This Text? French (Auto)-Translation of Sorana Gurian's "Zilele nu se întorc niciodată"

The case of Sorana Gurian (1913-1956) and her first novel Zilele nu se întorc niciodată is an opportunity to examine the position of artists from the periphery who tend towards the centre. As a Russian-speaking Jew, she ‘deterritorializes’ the Romanian language by describing Bessarabia, which despite its status as a historical Romanian region, constitutes an otherness within Greater Romania. The fact of reconstructing in writing this tension between the centre (Bucharest) and the periphery (Bessarabia) at the time of the Second World War bears witness to an impossible identity project: how to write about Bessarabia in Romanian when the fascist Romanian powers are carrying out a policy of ethnic cleansing there? And how can one claim one's own origins through literature when this risks deportation? Meanwhile, by translating her novel into French in the 1950s in collaboration with Richard Gébault, Sorana Gurian attempted to join the World Republic of Letters. Nevertheless, the intrusion of Richard Gébault leads to numerous modifications in the text and changes the way it may be received. If the existence of two authors does not abolish an autobiographical reading, this construction raises a series of questions: what is the nature of the heterodiegetic narrator in this case? Does it change according to gender and number of authors? Does coauthorship break the unity of the narrative voice and reflect the relationship between the two? Following Mary Jacobus’ striking question 'Is There a Woman in This Text', I propose to ask: is there a man in Les jours ne reviennent jamais?