ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the representation of exile, bilingualism and identity in those of Jorge Semprun's texts which do not take Buchenwald or Communism as their predominant focus. Exile is hence represented in Adieu as part of the 'ideal' in Semprun's delight in French language and culture and in Paris and as an encounter with 'volupte' in his encounters with women and experience of sexuality. In Adieu, the narrator describes himself as haunted by Baudelaire's poetry in the summer of 1939 and identifies it as the principal means of his initiation into the French language. Once in France, Semprun's sense of alterity became personalized and his experience of exclusion and displacement triggers an obsession to acquire a faultless competence in the French language and the immense resources of French cultural capital. Among the early works, L'Évanouissement bears initial consideration for its treatment of gender and sexuality.
