Released in 1943 and set in a rural French community around that time, Le Corbeau is the story of a ‘poison pen.’ For those in need of a definition (I needed one): a poison pen is an individual, his or her identity secret, who writes threatening letters. The letters may directly threaten the person receiving them—implying knowledge of an embarrassing secret, for example—or indirectly, if a letter containing the same information is sent to someone else.
Gossip, libel, unfounded rumor, anonymity—all this sounds familiar. We’re in a period where cyber-bullying, and its sometimes lethal consequences, make the news every week.
The difference is that today, a teen can send such a letter to a hundred people in five minutes. In 1943, the handwritten letters appear one by one; an insidious trickle over months. First a few citizens get them; revealing their contents privately to confidantes, who sometimes reveal that they too have received one. Only later does the letter-writer, who signs each note “Le Corbeau” (The Raven) grow bold: hiding one note in a wreath in a public funeral, and letting another flutter down from the upper floor of a cathedral during Mass.
