Élisabeth - Éric Rohmer - Translated by Aaron Kerner - With a Foreword by André Aciman - Followed by an Interview with the Author

Jul 31, 2026

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English edition of Élisabeth by Éric Rohmer, translated by Aaron Kerner and introduced with a foreword by André Aciman, followed by an author interview. The foreword discusses the novel’s publication history, including its original French appearance in 1946 under the title Élisabeth attributed to “Gilbert Cordier,” and its later reissue as La maison d’Élisabeth in 2007. It clarifies Cordier as Rohmer’s pen name and situates Rohmer within the French New Wave and his broader film legacy.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages179

Reading Time4 h 36 min

AccessFree to download

Foreword by André Aciman

Part One

Chapter I: Afternoon’s End

Chapter II: Morning Thoughts

Part Two

Chapter I: The Others

Chapter II: Precautions

Chapter III: During the Rain

Chapter IV: Encounters

Part Three

Afterword

An Interview with Éric Rohmer

“My heroes, a little like Don Quixote, take themselves for characters in a novel, but perhaps there is no novel.” Éric Rohmer “Rohmer was one of a handful of really great filmmakers of the last halfcentury. I can’t think of a greater.” —Geoffrey O’Brien, The New York Review of Books “Rohmer, as critic, editor, and friend, through his writings, activities, and personal influence, was the father of the French New Wave . . . He had already started sketching Élisabeth at age nineteen Rohmer ’s surfaces aren’t placid but taut; they’re smooth because of their almost unbearably high tension, and their tautness is like that of a membrane that could, with aprick, be definitively burst, giving way to an unpredictably chaotic eruption of pent-up passion.” —Richard Brody, The New Yorker “Rohmer-world [is] an enchanted and yet peculiarly unsentimental place in which both words and actions, minds and bodies, matter absolutely . . . ARohmer movie doesn’t clobber you with its smarts; it generously furnishes you a space in which to think for yourself . . . To find other artists besides Rohmer who can see this deeply into a character ’s humanity and make us love him anyway—that is to say, who can ironize with this degree of gentleness—you have to reach up to a pretty high shelf: Shakespeare? Tolstoy?” —Dana Stevens, Slate “Rohmer ’s novel evokes suffocating human and natural atmospheres, shifting between interiors—a cramped apartment; a dentist’s office; the inside of a car—and sun-scorched backyards and village streets. It then releases the tension in a torrential summer storm, which is made immediate in finely etched details . . . Paradoxically, his novel is a marvel of cinematic showing, a closely observed engagement with nature and ordinary life.” —Trevor Cribben Merrill, The University Bookman “The elder statesman of the Nouvelle Vague, born a decade before Truffaut and Godard, Rohmer also served as the New Wave’s sage, resisting aesthetic and political fashion to maintain his chastely ironic vision of amorous folly … Rohmer ’s films feel miraculously fresh, contemporary, lightly sprung …His characters search for happiness, truth, self-knowledge, but mostly they seek love, and for all the cool classicism of Rohmer ’s miseen-scène, they frequently desire an all-consuming, engulfing love, or one that ‘burns.’” —James Quandt, Artforum “Rohmer ’s world is one of eternal youth, in which illness, death, and old age never seem able to interfere.” —Jacques Kermabon, 24 images “The novel would always remain Rohmer the filmmaker ’s inspiration . . . Like Godard, like Hitchcock and Fritz Lang and, one might add, like Pirandello, he is obsessed with manipulation, with machination, with conspiracies, with artifice . . . He fills the frame with a thousand details of existence.” —Laurence Schifano, Rohmer en perspectives “A Rohmer movie is not simply a drama or a comedy, a love story or an exercise in suspense, a psychological study or philosophical disquisition; it’s all these and considerably more. Whether an original piece or an adaptation, be it set in the present or the past, the city or the country, it’s always first and foremost a Rohmer film. In essence, he invented his own genre.” —Geoff Andrew, the Criterion Collection [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) ÉLISABETH [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) ÉLISABETH ÉRIC ROHMER TRANSLATED BY AARON KERNER WITH A FOREWORD BY ANDRÉ ACIMAN FOLLOWED BY AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR McNally Editions New York [OceanofPDF.com](OceanofPDF.com) McNally Editions 134 Prince St. New York, NY 10012 Copyright © 2007 by Éditions Gallimard, Paris English translation © 2026 by Aaron Kerner Foreword copyright © 2026 by André Aciman All rights reserved Printed in Canada Originally published in French in 1946 as Élisabeth, attributed to “Gilbert Cordier,” by Éditions Gallimard, Paris. The second French edition, including an interview with the author, was pub

FAQs

Who is identified as the author of Élisabeth in its original 1946 publication?

The original French publication in 1946 attributed Élisabeth to “Gilbert Cordier.” The foreword explains that Cordier was Rohmer’s pen name.

How did the title of the novel change in the later Gallimard reissue?

Gallimard reissued the work under the altered title La maison d’Élisabeth, which included an interview with the author.

What additional materials follow the main foreword in this English edition?

After the foreword, the volume includes an interview with Éric Rohmer.

Jul 31, 2026

Upload by Eliana