Au-delà de tout réalisme : le viol de Mlle de Saint-Elme

One of the most intolerable scenes in Louis Dumur’s “war” tetralogy is certainly the rape of Mlle de Saint-Elme in Nach Paris ! If this scene marks a rupture in the tone of Dumur’s novels and finds its justification in the desire to denounce the German atrocities committed in Belgium, it is nonetheless one in a series of similar scenes which place Dumur’s discourse beyond simple political situations or the context of the given moment.