Odette Keun (1888–1978)
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Über den Autor
Werke von Odette Keun
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Wissenswertes
- Gebräuchlichste Namensform
- Keun, Odette
- Geburtstag
- 1888-09-10
- Todestag
- 1978-03-14
- Geschlecht
- female
- Nationalität
- Netherlands (passport)
- Geburtsort
- Constantinople, Ottoman Empire [now Istanbul, Turkey]
- Sterbeort
- UK
- Wohnorte
- Istanbul, Turkey
Netherlands
London, England, UK
Crimea, Russia
Moscow, Russia
Paris, France (Zeige alle 8)
Algiers, Algeria
Tiflis, Georgia - Berufe
- journalist
novelist
travel writer - Beziehungen
- Wells, H. G. (lover)
- Kurzbiographie
- Odette Keun was born in Constantinople (now Istanbul), the daughter of a Dutch diplomat, with mixed Dutch, French, Italian and Greek origins. Her family's first language was French and she was educated by an English nanny. After her father's death in 1902, when she was 13, she spent three years in a Roman Catholic boarding school in the Netherlands and two years as a novice nun in France. After she left the convent, she traveled widely in Europe and Bolshevik Russia. She wrote about her experiences in Russia, including having been arrested by the Cheka, in Sous Lénine: Notes d'une femme deporte en Russie par les Anglais (1922). Between 1924 and 1933, she was the lover of H.G. Wells, with whom she lived in Lou Pidou, a house they built together in Grasse, France. In the early 1930s, she recognized the dangers of totalitarianism and fascism and called other liberals "spineless" for failing to stand up to Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin. She was the author of numerous nonfiction works including I Discover the English (1934) and A Foreigner Looks at the T.V.A. (1937). See also her biography by Monique Reintjes, Odette Keun (2004), published in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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I'd no idea who Odette Keun was when I bought this book because of its intriguing title and because it was a pre-war Tauchnitz edition — with their dire warnings against attempting to import them into the UK and their blurb text in three languages, these English-language paperbacks published in Leipzig have a kind of exotic period charm.
It turns out that she's still a pretty elusive person to track down, even in this age of Google and Wikipedia. It's easy enough to find out that she was the lover of H.G. Wells from about 1923-1932 and that they lived together in a villa near Grasse in the south of France, entertaining the literary elite of the day. But the rest is rather vague and sometimes contradictory. She was Dutch; her father was a French diplomat; she was born in Turkey; she was an Austrian writer (the one "fact" about her that seems to be genuinely wrong); she was a journalist and possibly a spy during the First World War; she was a communist and involved in the Russian revolution; she spent some time in Tiflis in Georgia; she was a prisoner of the Cheka ...
In 1934, when she wrote this book, she was in her late forties, and had just finished training as a nurse in a Swiss hospital with the idea of setting up a District Nurse scheme in an unidentified British colony (somewhere in Africa?). This scheme seems to have fizzled out from lack of official support, and as far as you can tell from the book (she's a bit vague about it), she had come to London to take a further medical training course of some kind (at the London Polytechnic?) and to do volunteer social work in poor districts.
The book is pretty much what it says: an account of England (or rather: London) and its people as seen by an intelligent Continental visitor. There's a lot of trivial stuff: London bus conductors and shop assistants are much politer than their colleagues in Paris; English cooking is a crime against humanity; the men are addicted to sloppy casual dress; the women wear good clothes badly; London architecture is unfailingly dreary; houses are impossible to live in because of the prejudice against central heating that necessitates an inefficient open coal fire in every room, with its attendant dirt and cold draughts. Exactly the sort of thing you would expect from a French bourgeoise.
But she also gets beyond this sort of superficiality occasionally, for instance when she's comparing an afternoon of enjoyable heckling at Speakers' Corner (delightfully described) to the much more serious politics that goes on in the "real world", or when she's talking about the way people live in the poorer quarters of London, or the way British squeamishness about sex means that although it's one of the very few countries in Europe where there are no political or religious obstacles to birth control, young people still have to find out the hard way because their teachers and parents won't enlighten them. Speaking of sex, Keun confirms the French belief that English men are no good in bed with an air of authority that strongly suggests her practical research wasn't limited to one elderly English novelist. She mentions showing her draft chapter on sex for comment to a wide selection of Englishmen (including the gasman and a man from the council who came about the bins), but she doesn't say whether she put them to a practical test...
Ultimately, she finds London a very agreeable, relaxing place to be, but feels that there's an element of escapism about the British way of life. They aren't fully grown-up, she feels; they can't take decisions; they don't have strong emotions.
An interesting and amusing period piece, but it probably won't tell you anything very new about London in the thirties.
PS:
A colleague has now pointed me to a useful article about Keun by Ruud Beeldsnijder in the journal Onvoltooid Verleden (February 1999). Apparently she was Dutch, but from a predominantly French-speaking expat family. She grew up in Turkey, was educated in an Ursuline convent in Holland and spent two years as a Dominican novice in France, but gave that up to travel. In 1920 she went to Georgia, becoming a close ally to the revolutionary government there, trying to drum up sympathy for them in the West by her writings. She wasn't very successful in this, but she did evidently manage to annoy British intelligence. When she visited Istanbul in 1921 they arrested her, confiscated her notes and Dutch passport, and put her on the first boat to Russia, where she spent some months as a prisoner of the Cheka before she was able to make contact with the Georgian mission in Moscow and return to Tiflis. In early 1922, after considerable diplomatic pressure from the Dutch government, the British allowed her to return to the West (but tried to get the Italians to arrest her instead). With this in mind, it's remarkable that she had arrived at a relatively positive view of the British only ten years later, and in fact lived in Britain from 1939 until her death in 1978.… (mehr)
It turns out that she's still a pretty elusive person to track down, even in this age of Google and Wikipedia. It's easy enough to find out that she was the lover of H.G. Wells from about 1923-1932 and that they lived together in a villa near Grasse in the south of France, entertaining the literary elite of the day. But the rest is rather vague and sometimes contradictory. She was Dutch; her father was a French diplomat; she was born in Turkey; she was an Austrian writer (the one "fact" about her that seems to be genuinely wrong); she was a journalist and possibly a spy during the First World War; she was a communist and involved in the Russian revolution; she spent some time in Tiflis in Georgia; she was a prisoner of the Cheka ...
In 1934, when she wrote this book, she was in her late forties, and had just finished training as a nurse in a Swiss hospital with the idea of setting up a District Nurse scheme in an unidentified British colony (somewhere in Africa?). This scheme seems to have fizzled out from lack of official support, and as far as you can tell from the book (she's a bit vague about it), she had come to London to take a further medical training course of some kind (at the London Polytechnic?) and to do volunteer social work in poor districts.
The book is pretty much what it says: an account of England (or rather: London) and its people as seen by an intelligent Continental visitor. There's a lot of trivial stuff: London bus conductors and shop assistants are much politer than their colleagues in Paris; English cooking is a crime against humanity; the men are addicted to sloppy casual dress; the women wear good clothes badly; London architecture is unfailingly dreary; houses are impossible to live in because of the prejudice against central heating that necessitates an inefficient open coal fire in every room, with its attendant dirt and cold draughts. Exactly the sort of thing you would expect from a French bourgeoise.
But she also gets beyond this sort of superficiality occasionally, for instance when she's comparing an afternoon of enjoyable heckling at Speakers' Corner (delightfully described) to the much more serious politics that goes on in the "real world", or when she's talking about the way people live in the poorer quarters of London, or the way British squeamishness about sex means that although it's one of the very few countries in Europe where there are no political or religious obstacles to birth control, young people still have to find out the hard way because their teachers and parents won't enlighten them. Speaking of sex, Keun confirms the French belief that English men are no good in bed with an air of authority that strongly suggests her practical research wasn't limited to one elderly English novelist. She mentions showing her draft chapter on sex for comment to a wide selection of Englishmen (including the gasman and a man from the council who came about the bins), but she doesn't say whether she put them to a practical test...
Ultimately, she finds London a very agreeable, relaxing place to be, but feels that there's an element of escapism about the British way of life. They aren't fully grown-up, she feels; they can't take decisions; they don't have strong emotions.
An interesting and amusing period piece, but it probably won't tell you anything very new about London in the thirties.
PS:
A colleague has now pointed me to a useful article about Keun by Ruud Beeldsnijder in the journal Onvoltooid Verleden (February 1999). Apparently she was Dutch, but from a predominantly French-speaking expat family. She grew up in Turkey, was educated in an Ursuline convent in Holland and spent two years as a Dominican novice in France, but gave that up to travel. In 1920 she went to Georgia, becoming a close ally to the revolutionary government there, trying to drum up sympathy for them in the West by her writings. She wasn't very successful in this, but she did evidently manage to annoy British intelligence. When she visited Istanbul in 1921 they arrested her, confiscated her notes and Dutch passport, and put her on the first boat to Russia, where she spent some months as a prisoner of the Cheka before she was able to make contact with the Georgian mission in Moscow and return to Tiflis. In early 1922, after considerable diplomatic pressure from the Dutch government, the British allowed her to return to the West (but tried to get the Italians to arrest her instead). With this in mind, it's remarkable that she had arrived at a relatively positive view of the British only ten years later, and in fact lived in Britain from 1939 until her death in 1978.… (mehr)
2 
thorold | Jan 23, 2012 |
thorold | Jan 23, 2012 | 
Book Description: 320pp frontis. 1923. *Imprisoned by the Cheka for her Menshevik views, she left via Georgia in 1921. Useful for general conditions of life & for the operation of the Cheka (Grierson).VG. Bookseller Inventory # 080671
Book Description: New York: Dodd, Mead. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. 1923 1st Am. ed. hardcover. 320pp. red cloth sm 8vo: near Very Good/no dj [bookplate; else nrVG] An eyewitness view of revolutionary Russia originally written and published in French under the title "Sous Lenine." This edition was translated (or "virtually rewritten" in English) by the author herself. Although a French writer, Odette Keun (1888-1978) was a Dutch citizen, her father having been charge d'affaires of the Netherlands legation in Constantinople (Istanbul) where she was born. During the journeys described in this book "Bolshevist Russia [broke] her heart" while she "acquired knowledge of British brutality and Russian madness" in the unsettled political climate of the era. A fascinating contemporary account of the confused origins of the Soviet state and what appeared to many at the time to be a Brave New World. She was a mistress of the famous English writer H. G. Wells. Bookseller Inventory # 4815
$81 -$102 in same cond. May 2007… (mehr)
Book Description: New York: Dodd, Mead. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. No Jacket. 1st Edition. 1923 1st Am. ed. hardcover. 320pp. red cloth sm 8vo: near Very Good/no dj [bookplate; else nrVG] An eyewitness view of revolutionary Russia originally written and published in French under the title "Sous Lenine." This edition was translated (or "virtually rewritten" in English) by the author herself. Although a French writer, Odette Keun (1888-1978) was a Dutch citizen, her father having been charge d'affaires of the Netherlands legation in Constantinople (Istanbul) where she was born. During the journeys described in this book "Bolshevist Russia [broke] her heart" while she "acquired knowledge of British brutality and Russian madness" in the unsettled political climate of the era. A fascinating contemporary account of the confused origins of the Soviet state and what appeared to many at the time to be a Brave New World. She was a mistress of the famous English writer H. G. Wells. Bookseller Inventory # 4815
$81 -$102 in same cond. May 2007… (mehr)
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The British occupying forces in Constantinople arrested Keun and summarily deported her to Russia in June 1921. She never got an official explanation, but it seems fairly obvious that they had been annoyed by her support for the independent bolshevik republic of Georgia, where she was acting as a kind of PR consultant for the government (a bit like Graham Greene in Panama). The British were still scheming to try to keep the Russians out of the Caucasus at the time, and the presence of even a relatively obscure western communist journalist in Tiflis must have been an embarrassment to them.
Since all her papers, including her Dutch passport, had been confiscated by the British, Keun had a hard time explaining herself to the Soviet authorities when she arrived in Sebastopol, especially since post and telegraph services were basically inoperative and there was no Dutch diplomatic representative in Russia at the time anyway. She thus found herself being passed on from one Cheka outpost to the next over a period of three months, never quite a prisoner but never quite at liberty either, and got the chance to see a side of Russia in the immediate aftermath of revolution that was hidden from most visiting left-wing intellectuals. It's an odd mix of Doctor Zhivago and Nancy Mitford. She can be cool and analytical when she's describing the brutality of the system, the all-pervasive corruption, the ubiquity (even then) of the Cheka and the grinding poverty, dirt and hunger of a society that was still trying to sort out how to get industry, agriculture and public services working under communism. On occasion, her account descends to sheer comedy — intentionally when she deploys her rubber folding bathtub in the Sebastopol prison and takes a shower under the startled gaze of the guards and fellow-detainees, unintentionally when she lists the lack of domestic servants among the deprivations that make women's lives a misery in Kharkov. But there's always a lot of sympathy there for the Russians, and she herself comes over as very human when, tough as she obviously must have been, she has to admit that her experience brought her close to despair. There's a marvellous scene where she turns the full fury of an outraged French bourgeoise on a young Cheka interrogator in Moscow: she knows it's a stupid thing to do, but she's just so fed up she can't stop herself. Maybe that was what finally convinced them she wasn't a spy...
Keun wrote the French version of this book first, then adapted it herself into English: I read it in French. The first third of this is a wonderful tirade against the British authorities in Istanbul. I would imagine that "le capitaine H." and "le colonel M.", if they read it, must have felt they had been been reduced to two pairs of gently steaming army boots. It would be interesting to see how much it's toned down in the English version. She also has a go at the French mission in Tiflis before the revolution that must have had the libel lawyers rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation...
Hindsight shows that she was pretty close to the mark with her analysis of the endemic weaknesses of the Soviet system, even though she didn't predict that Stalin and Hitler would between them manage to give it the impetus to keep going another sixty-odd years. She wasn't the only communist intellectual to lose her faith after exposure to what was happening in Russia, but she must have been one of the first. And there weren't many women of her generation who would have had the nerve to go off to the Caucasus on their own in the middle of a war. An interesting and intrepid character, definitely.… (mehr)