Perhaps the position of the Peruvian-Hispanic writer before the elections in Chile had more repercussion, due to the triumph of the left, than the contradictions for which he was given a seat in the forty-year-old French Academy, the first to a Hispanic American. The fact is that it was overlooked that the narrator exceeds the allowed age and that he does not write in the language of Molière.
PARIS. (Process) .– “There is no alternative but to win the elections,” Mario Vargas Llosa exhorted José Antonio Kast in a videoconference broadcast by YouTube.
“This is literally totalitarianism versus freedom that we (sic) represent,” replied the Chilean presidential candidate nostalgic for Pinochet.
“That’s right,” replied Vargas Llosa with tragic intonation.
Two weeks later, the triumph of Gabriel Boric, a left-wing candidate, in the second round of Chile’s presidential vote plunged the Nobel Prize for Literature into an abyss of bitterness from which even his recent election to the French Academy cannot save him.
Contrary to what the writer expected when he asked Héléne Carrière d’Encausse, perpetual secretary of the venerable Gallic institution, the honor of occupying the empty seat 18 since the death of the philosopher Michel Serres, his election to the Academy on November 25. he was far from enthusing the French cultural world.
The two great national newspapers – Le Monde and Le Figaro – did not seek him out to collect their feelings and only mentioned the news in brief, somewhat cold reviews. The rest of the French press limited itself to publishing the merely informative note from the Agence France Presse.
The writer Pierre Assouline, chronicler of the weekly L’Obs (ex Nouvel Observateur), was the only intellectual who wrote about the event. He did it in a bittersweet tone, more sour than sweet. Without denying the literary talent of the Nobel Prize.
Assouline stresses that his choice violates an official rule and several unspoken rules of the French Academy. The official one concerns age: The internal regulations of the institution, founded in 1634 in the reign of Louis XIV, set the age limit for submitting a candidacy at 75 years. Vargas Llosa is 85. He shouldn’t have knocked on the door of the Academy. Your request should not have been considered.
Writing in French is the first unspoken requirement. To date it has been scrupulously respected. The requirement has its logic, since the mission of that four-hundred-year-old society is to ensure the French language, regulate it, perfect it and prepare the dictionary, an absolute linguistic reference.
Vargas Llosa writes exclusively in Spanish. Although he is the only living foreign writer to have his work published in French in the prestigious La Pleiade collection of the Gallimard publishing house – this publication is a true consecration in the Gallic literary field – and even if he speaks fluent French and is one of the The great connoisseurs of the work of Gustave Flaubert, the truth is the truth: the Marquis of Spain (since 2010) does not write in French.
Dominique Fernandez, a member of the French Academy, also insists on this point: “Working on the language is the essential mission of the Academy and that implies a perfect command of the language. Someone who never wrote in French has no place at the Academy ”.
Pierre Assouline raises another more earthly question: He wonders if the author of La Tía Julia and the writer, based in Madrid, plans to move to Paris to be able to participate every Thursday in the work sessions of the Academy.
And, more seriously, it alludes to another implicit requirement that the election of Vargas Llosa ignores: his eventual naturalization.
Being a foreigner does not prevent access to the French Academy and the institution is proud to welcome in its bosom – since the end of the 19th century – writers of different origins, but all were received in the temple of the French language after their naturalization.
One exception should be noted: that of the novelist Julien Green (1900-1998). Born in Paris to American parents, Green lived most of his life in France, writing all of his work in French, but never renouncing his American nationality. What’s more: in 1972, the year of his admission to the French Academy, he refused the naturalization offered by then-President Georges Pompidou, becoming the first and to date the only foreign academic.
Among the immortals – this is how the members of the Academy are usually referred to – born outside of France, the Cuban José María Heredia (1842-1905), the Romanian Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994), the Argentine of Russian origin Joseph Kessel (1898) stand out. -1979), the Russian of Armenian origin Henri Troyat (1911-2007) and the Argentine Héctor Biancotti (1930-2012).
The case of Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987) was very particular. In addition to being the first woman to enter the ultra-conservative institution (1981), arousing feverish controversies, the author of Adriano’s Memoirs posed a complex problem, since in 1947, living in the United States, Yourcenar had renounced her French nationality in favor of of the American. Being French again was a legal and political puzzle that only the interventions of the Minister of Justice and President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing solved …
Today four naturalized French foreign writers stand out: the Chinese François Cheng, who joined the Academy in 2002; Lebanese Amin Maalouf, elected in 2011; Britain’s Michael Edwards, received in 2013, and Russian Andrei Makine, received in 2016.
Will Mario Vargas Llosa request his naturalization?
You have plenty of time to think about it, since a year and a half, two years, usually elapse between the election of a candidate and his official enthronement by the President of the Republic.
French politicians and intellectuals should also take advantage of this period to reflect on the ideology of the flamboyant academic, warns a group of French university professors and researchers, led by renowned specialists from Peru.
They do it in a gallery published on December 9 in the morning Libération, under a quite explicit title: Faire entrer Vargas Llosa à l’Académie Française est une faute (Introducing Vargas Llosa to the French Academy is a fault).
“We learned with amazement of the election of Mario Vargas Llosa to the French Academy (…) That decision presents serious ethical problems,” proclaim the signatories before recalling part of the history of political commitments of “clear right-wing” of the author of Conversation In the cathedral.
They begin with their support for the Chilean José Antonio Kast, a position that they define as “one of the vicissitudes of the writer’s propensity to legitimize leaders responsible for murders and human rights violations.” They continue with their “enthusiastic defense” of Colombian President Iván Duque and Keiko Fujimori, a defeated candidate for the Peruvian elections, considered by Vargas Llosa as “the last bulwark against the arrival of communism in his country.”
And finally they bring up an article published by the novelist in 1995 in which “he called to bury the past in Argentina, referring to the crimes perpetrated during the military dictatorship.”
Very didactic, the professors explain to Libération readers:
“It is necessary to place all these positions in the context of consolidation of the networks of the right and the extreme right in Latin America, in which the lobbying activities of the Inter-American Foundation for Freedom (FIL), chaired by Mario Vargas, play a preponderant role. Llosa. ”
Finally, after referring to the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers, which revealed the strategy of the author of Hard Times to hide copyright income and the proceeds from real estate sales in Madrid and London from the Treasury, through a hosted company in the British Virgin Islands – the writer categorically denies the facts – the authors of the rostrum claim that their election to the Academy “sullies the image of France in Latin America.”
How to explain that sudden passion of the French Academy towards Mario Vargas Llosa?
The institution is so hermetic that it is impossible to interview the immortals about it. Lately, however, dissatisfied academics have released confidences dropper and anonymously. They assure that the election of Mario Vargas Llosa is revealing of the crisis of the Academy, whose prestige and authority have been diminishing in recent years. Proof of this is that, instead of having 40 members, it only has 35 because high-profile candidates are lacking to fill the five empty seats.
They also reveal that three Nobel Prize winners in Literature were requested with great discretion: Gao Xinjiang, French of Chinese origin, and two French, Jean Marie Le Clézio and Patrick Modiano, awarded in 2000, 2002 and 2014, respectively. In vain. All three tactfully but irrevocably rejected the distinguished honor of being a member of the Academy.
Only Mario Vargas Llosa remained to renew the coat of arms of the French Academy, they insinuate.
Report published on January 2 in the 2357 edition of Proceso magazine whose digital edition can be purchased at this link.
We would like to give thanks to the writer of this post for this awesome content
Strange relationship Vargas Llosa-French Academy