Discover “Nelly Bottine” — the first English translation of André Baillon’s poignant short story from La vie est quotidienne (1929), one of the most celebrated yet overlooked gems of Belgian Francophone literature. Read the original French alongside the new English version.
André Baillon (1875–1932) occupies a singular place in European modernist fiction — raw, tender, darkly comic, and almost entirely absent from the English-speaking literary world. La vie est quotidienne (“Daily Life”), published by Les Éditions Rieder in 1929 and never previously translated into English, gathers twelve short stories that observe, with quiet precision and wry compassion, the forgotten people of everyday life.
“Nelly Bottine” is perhaps the collection’s most quietly devastating piece. Set in a small provincial town beside a river, it tells the story of a woman who once dreamed of becoming a nun and ended up running a discreet house near the bridge — known to all the soldiers passing through simply as chez Nelly. Baillon renders her not as a figure of scandal or shame, but as a woman of warmth, practicality, and unassuming grace: she sews buttons back on uniforms, asks after mothers left behind, and offers a kind of solace the barracks never could. When a lonely, persecuted young recruit named Philippe Dufau begins to lean on her beyond what her world can hold, the story moves toward its quietly tragic conclusion with all the restraint and moral intelligence that define Baillon at his best.
This bilingual post presents the complete English translation, curated by Enzo Martinelli, alongside Baillon’s original French text, making it accessible to scholars, translators, and readers new to his work alike. Continue reading Nelly Bottine, by André Baillon ✒️📃🇧🇪