“Promise at Dawn: A Memoir” by Romain Gary: An alternate personality patterned after his mother, and a suicide note signed by Émile Ajar.

Roman Kacew (1914-1980) is the only author to have won the Prix Goncourt twice, which he won under two different pseudonyms, Romain Gary (1956) and Émile Ajar (1975).

Promise at Dawn (1961), which covers his childhood through military service in WWII, is mostly about his poignant relationship with his mother, who raised him by herself. She idolized France, was enterprising, and had great expectations. And though they were of modest means and not even French, she expected him to become a French ambassador and a famous novelist, both of which he achieved.

For the first three quarters of the memoir, the first-person narrator speaks about his mother and himself as two very close, but separate, persons. She is a loving mother, and he is inspired to fulfill her expectations. But when they are separated in WWII—he is a pilot for the Free French in North Africa and Europe, while she remains in France—he starts to refer to her as a presence:

“I truly believe that it was my mother’s voice which was talking through me…I went…under the influence of some strange force over which I had no control, since my mother’s personality and determination had always been stronger than I. I even believe that a change came over my voice and a strong Russian accent was clearly audible…” (1, p. 253).

“Never was her presence more real to me, more physically felt…the voice summoned me to battle…My mother took advantage of my extreme nervous exhaustion to take over from me completely…her breath flowed into me and replaced my own and that she became truly me…my mother followed me wherever I went and her voice held a note of cutting irony…(1, pp. 257-258).

“My mother came almost every evening to keep me company on deck, and we leaned together on the rail…My mother smoked continuously and I saw her by my side with such clarity…

     “You haven’t written me anything for months,” she told me reproachfully.

     “There’s a war on.”

     “That’s no excuse. You must write.” She sighed. “I have always wanted to be a great artist.”

     “Don’t worry, Mother,” I promised her. “You shall be an artist, a famous artist. I’ll see to that.”

…I was imagining her there, at my side, with all the love, with all the talent of which I was capable…In the course of those nights she spoke to me more freely than she had ever done before” (1, pp. 295-296).

He is describing an alternate personality based on his mother. Sometimes he become that personality and speaks with his mother’s accent. Sometimes he sees and converses with the alternate personality.

Although one corner of his mind always knows that it is imagination—multiple personality is not a psychosis—these kinds of experiences, in the words of one Nobel Prize-winning author, are “more real than real,” since the alternate personalities look and sound real, appear to have minds of their own, and a great deal of autonomy.

You may say that this is only the kind of imagination that all novelists have. And that is my point.

Suicidal or Homicidal Alternate Personality and Memory Gap

“Certain incidents have completely escaped my memory. One of my friends, Perrier, whose word I would never dream of doubting, told me long after the war that once, when he returned to the bungalow we shared at Fort-Lamy, he found me under the mosquito net with a revolver pressed against my temple, and that he flung himself on me just in time to deflect the bullet…I have no recollection of this disgraceful episode. It was not in the least like me…” (1, p. 305).

The only thing he can think of to explain this out-of-character behavior and memory gap (amnesia for the episode), is that he had had a severe attack of typhoid which affected him both physically and mentally. But he does not actually tie the above to the illness, and when he does describe his illness at some length—he was so ill they had given him last rights and had a coffin ready—his illness is characterized by his remarkably strong will to live, because, as he always says, he had yet to fulfill his mother’s expectations.

This looks to me like he had an alternate personality of whom he was unaware—thus, for any period of time that this alternate personality was in control, his regular, host personality would have a memory gap—who was depressed and suicidal himself, or was homicidal and wanted to kill the host and/or the mother-identified personalities.

“Gary died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 2 December 1980 in Paris. He left a note which said that his death had no relation to Seberg's suicide the previous year. He also stated in his note that he was Émile Ajar” (Wikipedia).

Addendum: Of course, when suicidal behavior is involved, it is clinical multiple personality, which should have been diagnosed and treated after the earlier suicide attempt.

Added January 26, 2018: The Wikipedia quote about his suicide note may not have meant that the suicide note was signed by his Ajar personality, per se, but only that it was he who had used the Ajar name as a pseudonym. So it is unclear which of his personalities pulled the trigger to commit suicide. It may have been neither his Gary nor his Ajar personalities.

1. Romain Gary. Promise at Dawn: A Memoir [1961]. New York, New Directions, 2017.