Victor Brombert, 1985
Victor Brombert, preeminent scholar of French literature, celebrated WWII Ritchie Boy and 'a teacher of the highest order,' dies at 101
Victor Brombert, the Henry Putnam University Professor of Romance and Comparative Literatures, and an authority on French literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, died peacefully in his sleep at home in Princeton on Nov. 26. He was 101.
Born in 1923 in Berlin to Russian-Jewish parents who had fled Russia, Brombert was raised and educated in Paris, only to flee again with his family from Nazi-occupied France in 1941, this time to the U.S. He joined the U.S. Army after Pearl Harbor and, because he spoke Russian, German and French, was assigned to the intelligence group known as the Ritchie Boys — interrogating prisoners of war and taking part in the second day of the D-Day landing in Normandy with Patton’s 2nd Armored Division, and in the liberation of Paris and the Battle of the Bulge.
After the war, he attended Yale on the GI Bill, earning his bachelor's degree in 1948 and his Ph.D. in 1953. He taught at Yale for 25 years and then joined the Princeton faculty in 1975, transferring to emeritus status in 1999. His fields of specialization were French literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of ideas, problems in literary criticism and comparative studies in narrative.
Brombert was revered among his colleagues and students as much for his incisive and expansive scholarship as for his worldly charisma and compelling lectures — and his ability to burst into operatic song. His experiences in the war only served to intensify his belief in the power of literature to unite people and illuminate the greater good of humanity.
“Though Victor Brombert retired a quarter century ago, his personality and legacy still very much continue to shape who we are today — as well as who we aspire to be,” said Göran Blix, professor of French and Italian and department chair.
‘Pathbreaking works’ and a courageous moral vision
“To this day, his pathbreaking works on European literature remain a starting point for countless scholarly discussions,” Blix said. “As soon as anyone tries to write about Hugo, Flaubert, Stendhal, Balzac and many others, they immediately sense that Victor was there all along and somehow spoke their own most original thoughts before them.
“But Victor was far more than just a brilliant scholar,” Blix continued. “He also made the works he studied, taught and researched speak to people in an urgent and visceral way — because they spoke to him that way.”
Thomas Hare, the William Sauter LaPorte '28 Professor in Regional Studies, and professor of comparative literature and department chair, said Brombert was “a towering figure" among his colleagues, professionally and socially. “I recall a dinner party where he and his equally charming and accomplished wife, Beth, regaled the company with an extended duet from 'Così fan tutte.' He will certainly be missed, but every tear shed in his memory will, I think, be accompanied by an irrepressible smile.”
“He once told me that it was in fleeing the Nazis that he first encountered indifference, the first sign and encourager of cruelty, to the plight of those fighting for their lives,” said Maria DiBattista, the Charles Barnwell Straut Class of 1923 Professor of English, and professor of English and comparative literature. “It taught him the moral necessity of being scandalized by the pain of others, whether great or small.”
“This moral vision subsisted beneath his elegant and always courteous manner,” she said, “and gave added piquancy to that endearing twinkle in his eye that always made you feel that life was full of wonder and those priceless treasures — love and friendship, music and books — that enriched the mind and filled the heart.”
‘A sense of humor and a delicate touch’
Alexander Nehamas, the Edmund N. Carpenter II Class of 1943 Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and professor of philosophy and comparative literature, emeritus, befriended Brombert as soon as he arrived at Princeton in 1989, when Brombert was chair of the Humanities Council.
“A polyglot and a polymath, Victor wore his learning lightly, always with a sense of humor and a delicate touch,” Nehamas said. “His training in interrogation and counterintelligence as a Ritchie Boy, Victor said, prepared him for a career in interpretation and criticism, to which he devoted the rest of his long life. An infectiously enthusiastic teacher, he was an equally enthusiastic singer, bursting out in song — whether opera or old Russian and French favorites — at every opportunity.”
“Thanks to Victor, generations of students learned to love literature,” said Suzanne Nash, professor of French and Italian, emeritus, a colleague of Brombert's for nearly three decades. “Not only was he an eminent scholar in my field, but most importantly he brought a finely tuned aesthetic sensibility to his students who discovered the cultural importance of literary works through attention to a writer’s unique use of language and compositional ambiguities.”
Brombert's wide-ranging scholarly interests helped forge interdisciplinary connections — and an even wider circle of decades-long friendships — with faculty across the humanities, from philosophy and Hellenic studies to creative writing. From 1983 to 1994, he also directed the Humanities Council's Gauss Seminars in Criticism, which invites eminent scholars from around the world to explore topics in the humanities.
“Victor Brombert was the most gracious, the most eloquent, and the most warmly sympathetic of Princeton colleagues,” said Joyce Carol Oates, the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor of the Humanities, who has taught fiction writing seminars at Princeton for more than 45 years. “His charisma as a lecturer was unmatched. I will always recall Victor’s sharply perceptive insights into classical writers like Flaubert, Stendhal, Proust; I can hear him speaking of 'strategies of openings' — the emblematic ways in which novelists begin their novels.”
Brombert wrote 16 books, including acclaimed works on Stendhal, Flaubert, Balzac, Hugo and Baudelaire, and contributed to many other volumes. He continued to write throughout a productive and gratifying retirement, the subject of his 2018 New Yorker essay, “The Permanent Sabbatical.”
In 2002 he wrote a memoir about his years in France before and during the war, “Trains of Thought: Memories of a Stateless Youth,” named one of the best books of the year by The New York Times and the London Times Literary Supplement.
In 2023, at age 100, he published “The Pensive Citadel,” a collection of essays on his life as a literary scholar, named one of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2023. During a packed campus event that November, Princeton colleagues celebrated Brombert’s 100th birthday, as well as the publication of the book.
Just two days before his death, Brombert had finished correcting the proofs of his last essay, on language and his training as a Ritchie Boy, to be published in The Hudson Review in 2025.
In November 2023, Princeton colleagues celebrated Brombert’s 100th birthday, as well as the publication of his book “The Pensive Citadel."
‘A true teacher, a teacher of the highest order’
In French, Brombert taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the 19th and 20th century novel and poetry. In comparative literature, he taught courses on the modern antihero and, for more than a dozen years, the survey course “Modern European Writers," which enrolled 300 to 400 students each fall.
“With just that one survey course, that's between 3,600 and 4,800 mostly first-year undergraduates who were exposed to Victor’s extraordinary mind and to what one might call his stage presence, his skills as a performer,” said John Logan, a member of Princeton's Class of 1966 and graduate student of Brombert's at Yale, who joined Princeton's faculty a few years before Brombert came to Princeton. Logan precepted for Brombert in his course on Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert and Zola — forging a tight-knit friendship that was a source of joy and inspiration for a remarkable 50 years.
“One conversation we had remains particularly bright in my memory from that time,” said Logan, who has served as literature biographer at Princeton University Library since 1986. “I asked him whether we should replace two very traditional survey courses with courses designed to attract students — especially first-year undergraduates — more interested in literary texts than in literary history. His response: 'Mon ami, il ne faut jamais remplacer; il faut toujours suppléer' ('My friend, you should never replace; you must always supplement'); best advice I ever received.”
Brombert received Princeton's Howard T. Behrman Award for Distinguished Achievement in the Humanities in 1979 and the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in 1999.
Richard Brody, a film critic for The New Yorker, a 1980 graduate and comparative literature major, said, “I had the great privilege to be taught by him in his class 'The Prison in Literature'; waiting for him with other students at a landing high up in East Pyne, [we] knew he was coming up the steps because we heard him sing, in a mellifluous baritone, 'Non più andrai' from 'The Marriage of Figaro.'”
According to Brombert's son, Marc, his father responded almost daily to former students who reached out to thank him for his impact on their lives.
One of those students was David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, a 1982 graduate and comparative literature major, whose last email exchange with Brombert was late last month.
“I took two courses from Victor Brombert, which meant many happy days in his lectures and even more challenging evenings encountering, for the first time, such novels as 'The House of the Dead' and 'The Charterhouse of Parma,'” Remnick said. “As a student, I was thrilled by his panache (sartorial, verbal and more), but it is remarkable how little I knew of the man. ... It was only because we kept up a correspondence for many years that I came to know anything about his profound humanity, his complexity, his wit, his boundless love for Beth. His gifts to me hardly stopped at graduation, and they certainly don't stop with his passing. He was a true teacher, a teacher of the highest order.”
Many of Brombert's graduate students recall their dissertation adviser with both gratitude and awe.
Claudie Bernard, a professor of French literature, thought and culture at New York University, earned her Ph.D. in 1984 and said Brombert was “a constant inspiration" during her graduate studies. “He has been, for several generations of students and scholars of literature, an extraordinary mediator between the 19th century, whose intellectual landscape he illuminated; the 20th, of which he lived the traumas and explored the artistic experiments; and the 21st, in which his legacy vibrantly survives.”
Richard Goodkin, professor emeritus of French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who earned his Ph.D. in 1981, still remembers Brombert's detailed comments on his dissertation drafts. “It was like having a conversation with him,” he said.
‘Le petit Victor’ as a giant
Paul Holdengräber, the founder and director of the New York Public Library's “LIVE from the NYPL” cultural series and the founding executive director of Onassis Los Angeles, took his first academic job, at Williams College, before he was done with his Princeton dissertation.
Brombert came to visit him, and over breakfast pronounced, “There are two kinds of dissertations: brilliant dissertations and finished dissertations,” reminding Holdengräber he still had three chapters to write.
“I loved taking classes with 'le petit Victor,' as he used to refer to himself, who for me was always 'le grand Victor' (Hugo),” said Holdengräber, who earned his Ph.D. in 1995. “The pleasure of the text was present at every moment in Victor’s work and teaching; this gave us — his fortunate students — license to bring forth the same passion for words and works into the classroom and on the page.”
Among his many honors and awards, Brombert was named Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur and Commandeur des Palmes Académiques (the highest academic decoration in France), and received the Médaille Vermeil de la Ville de Paris (the highest distinction bestowed by the city of Paris).
Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, and a former president of the Modern Language Association and of the Academy of Literary Studies.
He received the Harry Levin Prize in Comparative Literature and a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, and held two Guggenheim Fellowships and a Fulbright Fellowship in Rome.
Brombert is survived by Beth, his wife of more than 74 years, and by their son, Marc, and daughter, Lauren.
Donations may be made in Brombert's honor to Penn Medicine Princeton Health and the Center for Modern Aging Princeton.
View or share comments on a memorial page intended to honor Brombert's life and legacy.