Pascal Quignard
Pascal Quignard , born on April 23rd, 1948 with Verneuil-sur-Avre in the the Eure is a writer French. He was prize winner of the Prix Goncourt 2002 for the wandering Shades published at Grasset. Violoncellist, it founds the Festival of opera and theater baroque of Versailles and writes the scenario of the film Every morning of the world .
Biography
Pascal Quignard is born in a family from grammairiens and organists. His/her father is headmaster, his mother the main thing of college. He grows with the Havre. At the 18 months age (1949), it passes by periods of “autism”, which are renewed when it is 16 years old. Later, he declares on this subject: “This silence, it is undoubtedly what decided to me to write, to make this transaction: to be in the language while concealing to me”. Its childhood is difficult most of the time. He knows in particular the anorexia. Its interests carry it towards the old languages and literatures as well as the music. It is tested with the piano, the organ, the violoncello, the violin and the viola.It follows studies of philosophy to Nanterre, of 1966 to 1968, where he is school-fellow of Daniel Cohn-Bendit. Among its professors: Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricœur. It is on the point of starting a thesis under the direction of Levinas, but the revolt of May 68 opposes this way: the thought has “vêtu a uniform which is not appropriate any more” and it moves away from philosophy. It is in this context that he works with his first books, and finds the family organ of Ancenis. He is also bookseller secondhand bookseller.
Its first book is test, devoted to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch ( Being of stammering ), which is worth to him to be noticed by Louis-Rene of the Forests at Gallimard which encourages it to collaborate in its review Transitory the (which accommodates cave others Yves Bonnefoy, André of Bouchet, Michel Deguy, Philippe Jaccottet, Michel Leiris).
Published in 1969 with the Mercure de France , Quignard becomes in parallel reader in this house and at Gallimard. It will enter to the reading panel of these editions in 1976. It publishes several tests, on Maurice Scève, Lycophron, Michel Deguy, a first novel, the reader , regarded by some as largely inspired of the thought of Maurice Blanchot, then a second, Carus , which receives the Prix of Criticisms in 1980.
It publishes then, parallel to its work at Gallimard, various texts for small editors, like the Collet of Buffalo, Orange Ltd Export, Clivages, Éditions of the Friendship, Claude Blaiozot, Chandeigne, Patrice Trigano, then more important editors like Fata Morgana or P.O.L, Flohic etc
It publishes two strong novels at Gallimard in 1986 ( the Living room of Wurtenberg ) and 1989 ( Staircases of Chambord ) which make known it general public. He then becomes general secretary for the leading development at Gallimard.
The publication of eight volumes of the Small Treaties with the editions Maeght in 1990, republished in the collection Folio in 1991, reveals the extent of its readings and seems to devote its abandonment to the literature alone. This same year, he writes the novel Every morning of the world , which will be adapted to the cinema by Alain Corneau with his film Every morning of the world with Jean-Pierre Marielle and Gerard Depardieu, and he cosigne the scenario. This work assoit reputation of Quignard like one of the important authors of the time. It causes moreover the attraction of the public for the discs of Marin Marais.
This bond between music and literature is also very palpable in the functions of Quignard, which is president of the International festival of opera and theater baroque to the castle of Versailles, that it created under the crook of François Mitterrand. It also chairs the Concert of the Nations the sides of Jordi Savall between 1990 and 1993.
The year 1994 marks a rupture in the life and the work of Quignard. It gives up brutally any position in the edition and decides not to publish more at Gallimard. He resigns of the editions, then gives up any musical career. He does not devote himself any more but to the literature.
Following a heart disease, Quignard is hospitalized urgently in 1997. This experiment inspires secret Vie to him , which mixes the fiction, the theory, the dream, the tale, the diary, the novel, poetry, the treaty, the test, the fragment, the aphorism. This new literary form, inherited at the same time the Shelves of boxwood… , of the Small treaties , speculative Rhetoric , then directs in a decisive way its work (“in me all the kinds fell”, says it).
He still writes novels ( Terrasse in Rome , which receives the Grand Prix of the novel of the French Academy in 2000, Villa Amalia in 2006), but he declares with insistence not to more want to write but various volumes (perhaps twenty or thirty) of Dernier kingdom , which gathers, counts, summarizes and recuts all the topics of his work. The first three volumes are published in 2002, two others follow in 2005. The first volume receives the Prix Goncourt, after rough discussions; its reward causes some angers among the members of the academy.
Its work is regarded today as one of most important. It was the subject of several studies, and in particular a conference in 2004 with Cerisy-the-Room (published by Galileo in 2005), directed by Philippe Bonnefis and Dolorès Lyotard. One can read there contributions of Philippe Forest, Pierre Lepape, Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Michel Deguy, Jean-Luc Nancy, Geoffrey Bennington and Chantal Lapeyre-Desmaison, which published with him a long maintenance with the Flohic editions as well as the first total reading of its work.
In 2005-2006, Quignard republishes in Galileo the whole of the rare or untraceable texts of its work, plus some news, in their re-examined version, increased and final.
Outlines on work
The work of Pascal Quignard is those of which it is impossible to gather concepts in some lines. In the line of writer-thinkers, like Maurice Blanchot, or of the demanding authors like Georges Bataille or Emmanuel Levinas, but also and paradoxically of rare or less prolix authors, like Louis-Rene of the Forests, Gerard Macé, perhaps Christian Bobin.
The permanence of the topics, their possible ressassement, prevents all real cutting of large territories in it, the more so as the distinctions between kinds, little by little, and since very early, “fall” at his place. We then propose some tracks, the review of some fundamental topics and constantly present in this rich work, diverting and yet with deepest hearts, touching.
The primitive scene
Fascination and sideration
Lists
Formerly
“ formerly, compared to the past, it is this to emerge ceaseless from an origin in all. And it is possible, why not, that by withdraw the desiccated lava, of the tinsels, that into growing old one can belong to a newer shininess and that the " the last regard" , as the Japanese say, the glance of the good-bye, is also the most contemporary glance more nine, of what emerges at the plot of the land, and at the bottom of the sky. Formerly is one to emerge pure. It is the celestial explosion. Big Bang does not cease occurring. It is to be directly in catch with this present absolute. It is one moment. One absolute moment. All the remainder, all the past, all the reaction of all conservatisms, are things which are made to choke this movement to emerge. ” Pascal Quignard, with the microphone of Alain Veinstein during the emission Surprised by the night diffused on October 15th, 2007 on France Culture
The metaphor
To write
To see
Silence
Death
This will be worked later…
One of the originalities of the writing of Pascal Quignard, it is the emotional tie which develop during the reading between the author and the reader: a form of transfer which makes that the reader becomes depend on the voice of the Narrateur, which justifies the reactions, sometimes violent towards the creation of the author.
L' attitude of the reader in the text quignardien is summarized in: tender, slavery and humiliation. For the author, there is no critical distance, but a simple obedience with the text, as it explained well in the Sex and fear: “That which writes sodomizes, that which bed is sodomized”.
In this direction, each book of the author represents an adventure. One cannot have access to his kingdom without placing the body and the heart at the disposal of his language. There is in this procedure a form of return, return towards the origins, flashback, return in oneself worms of the areas driven back and damaged by the language. Lire Quignard is to agree to get rid of sound me to wander in the universe before the language.
Villa Amalia , its last work puts in scene this wish all to leave, not to more be oneself and of going to be discovered elsewhere. To live the loss like a birth, all to lose to be as light as at the moment of birth. To strip itself of all that is likely to connect the individual in a sterile fixing: image of oneself and name. It is also a return to the possibility of the music, after the Hatred of the music (“the music hurts… I flee the music infuyable”), very severe and final test then, published in 1996.
The current problems of Pascal Quignard, since it started the Last Kingdom , novel-tale-test-river that only his death seems to be able to close, turn around the remote and solidified past (Formerly), of passed moving (it his clean and recent), of the tale, the language (precarious): “ To say that we are beings of language, like does it the company, is deeply false. We are not speaking beings, we become it. The language is a precarious asset, which is neither at the origin nor even at the end because often the word wanders and is lost before even as the life ceases. ”
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