Pierre Gripari

Pierre Gripari is a writer French, born with Paris the January 7th 1925 and died in Paris the December 23rd 1990.

Biography

Born in 1925 from a mother manicurist and medium, Norman originating in Rouen, and a father engineer of Greek origin , Pierre Gripari accepted an atheistic education . During the Second world war, his/her two parents die. It must then give up its literary studies to exert various small trades: agricultural clerk, expeditionary clerk in a notary and even, on the occasion, pianist in balls of countryside. He engages then, of 1946 with 1949, volunteer in the airborne troops.

Of 1950 with 1957, it is employed Mobil Oil , and exerts on this occasion the functions of union representative CGT. It then stops working to write. Not managing to make publish its works, it finds a place of boy of library to CNRS.

It is made known in 1962 with a play of a rare dramatic virtuosity, Lieutenant Holding , created in Gaîté-Montparnasse, then with an autobiographical account, Pierrot the moon , published with the editions of the Roundtable in 1963. Its career of author starts then really. Its following literary works do not meet however success. Having left CNRS to live of its feather, Gripari knows poverty. Refused successively by seventeen editors, it finds finally its freedom of author only in 1974 thanks to Vladimir Dimitrijevic, the owner of the editions the Age of Man, “an editor who can read”, said it with amazement.

Gripari explored about all the kinds. Excel expert of the national literary inheritances, it can also make profitable the myths and the popular folklore, without scorning the fantastic accounts and the science fiction. He thus managed to create a whole universe. “The only stories which interest me, writes it in the back-world , are those of which I am sure, as of the beginning, that they never arrived, which they will never arrive, which they cannot arrive”. One owes him as well of the novels as of the news, the poems, the accounts, the tales, the plays and literary criticisms.

But Pierre Gripari is especially known general public like an admirable writer for children. Its most famous work, the Tales of the street Broca , appears in 1967. It is made up of a whole of stories putting in scene the marvellous one within the framework familiar of a district of Paris at the time contemporary; its characters are children of immigrants. At the end of the years 1970, the illustrators Fernando Puig Rosado and Claude Lapointe contribute to popularize these tales. The first editions of the Contes of the street Broca (at the Roundtable) pass unperceived, but their republication by Gallimard brings success and celebrity to Gripari. This collection will be translated in the whole world, including in Italy, in Germany, in Greece, in Bulgaria, in Poland, in Brazil, in Hungary and in Japan.

Pierre Gripari was also critical theatrical for the newspaper Ecrits of Paris . He accepted in 1976 the Voltaire Price for the whole of his work. One will find many biographical elements in a book of discussions with Alain Paucard realized in 1984, Gripari directions for use.

Deceased on December 23rd, 1990 at the Saint-Joseph hospital in Paris of the continuations of an surgical operation, it is incinerated with the cemetery of the Father-Lachaise on January 4th, 1991.

Personality

This iconoclast hates the serious fanatics and people. It is defined itself as “a Martian observing the world of the men with an amused curiosity, foreign in the terrestrial world”. Between street Broca and street of the Madness-Méricourt, and though he is also epicurean, he carries out a life of Bohemia almost monacale. It chose poverty never not to fall into compromising. “There are sacrifices, said it. The pleasure of the writing is worth all that”. Indifferent to any material ambition, he wants to be commercial dreams.

Political positions

Communist of Stalinist tendency of 1950 with 1956, it approaches then, because of its predilection for the provocation and derision, of the mediums of Extrême right-hand side (he will be member of Europe-Action). Nevertheless, its later absence of political commitment closes proclamation its disinterest major of the policy. It ignores as many the religions very. This anarchist of right-hand side then took part in the European religious organization of the Groupement of research and studies for European civilization.

In a general way, one can say of Pierre Gripari whom he religieusement is politically and religieusement always opposed to his interlocutor.

Style and topics of predilection

The literary work of Pierre Gripari is marked by the scholarship, the quotation and the exercise of style. It is tested indeed with various and varied kinds: epistolary novel ( left-handed Brother or the Voyage in China ), tale of chivalry ( the Tale of Paris ), science fictions ( parallel Lives of Branchy Novel ), etc Appear among the recurrent themes of its works the history of the 20th century, the refusal of the totalitarian claims, Europe like spiritual fatherland, the Homosexualité and the criticism of the religions monotheists, in particular the Jewish religion, which he considered totalitarian and racist. In fact, some regard this antijudaïsme as Antisémite because of his liveliness provocante. Symmetrically of others present its anti-semitism quasi célinien (expressed in its tests) like a sizeable criticism of the Jewish religion.

Gripari treats the homosexuality, which he saw without complexes, on an at the same time ironic and tragic tone, its design of the things of the love constituting the base of its pessimistic vision of the existence.

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