2023-05-06 20:08:37
“Unique jewel of literature”, “tireless animator of intellectual life”, the French writer Philippe Sollers died Friday at the age of 86. His disappearance sparked a wave of reactions in the publishing world and beyond.
“Gallimard Editions have the great sadness to announce the death of Philippe Sollers, born Philippe Joyaux, which occurred on May 5, 2023”, announced its publisher in a press release on Saturday, confirming information from Figaro.
This author of more than 80 novels, essays and monographs, director of magazines and long regular on television sets was a “lover of fine arts, music and letters celebrating the sacred here below”, writes Gallimard, saluting a “freedom-loving”, provocative and media-friendly man.
“The tireless animator of intellectual and literary life who created and animated with his friends the reviews ‘Tel quel’ (1960) and ‘L’infini’ (1983), the author of an innovative and non-conformist novel and ‘critical essays with universal sensitivity, the furtive and attentive friend who has never given up saying that ‘happiness is possible’, has joined ‘the truth of the great wonderful silence'”, continues the publishing house.
And to add: “I came, I lived, I dreamed”, in reference to one of the last works of the deceased, “Secret Agent” (2021).
Tribute from Rima Abdul Malak
Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak also paid tribute on Twitter to an “indomitable, unclassifiable character, with a teasing gaze and quick wit, who had turned provocation into art and turned our times upside down”, lamenting the loss of a “unique jewel of literature”.
Relaying on the same social network one of his interviews for France inter, the journalist Augustin Trapenard said “Farewell” to the one who “had spoken of shreds, style and scandal, with this contagious joy which made each of his interviews a delightful dialogue”.
“Venetian”
Born November 28, 1936 in Talence (Gironde) into a family of industrialists, left-wing Gaullists and Catholics, Philippe Sollers had quickly abandoned his studies to devote himself to literature.
Swapping his surname of Jewels for that of Sollers, from the Latin “sollus” and “ars” (“entirely art”), he published his first novel, “A curious solitude”, at the age of 22.
Winner of the Prix Médicis in 1961 for “Le Parc”, he rose to fame in 1983 with the novel “Femmes”, which some critics denounced as “pornography”.
“He was the most Venetian of French writers, all in mazes, masks and labyrinths”, for his part reacted Michel Field, the culture and live performance director of France Télévisions, about the author of a dictionary in love with Venice. .
“Never school, rather sunny. He left his mark and his irony on several decades of intellectual and literary life. In addition, he was funny and friendly”, he greeted.
“France is losing a free writer, with wandering writing and yet sharp as a blade,” said Bruno Le Maire on Twitter. “I am losing a friend, inexhaustible on our common passion: music” added the Minister of the Economy, also published by Gallimard.
Like him, the writer Marek Halter regretted the disappearance of “a friend, an accomplice, a brother. He made me love literature when I was still a painter. We were born the same year, ‘a good year ‘, he said”.
Married since 1967 to the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, with whom he had a son David, he lived a double love life, devoting a “mad love” to the Belgian writer Dominique Rolin, 23 years his senior.
This article has been published automatically. Sources: ats / afp
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