jeudi 9 octobre 2008

Nobel Prize in Literature 2008 speaks french

Press Release
9 October 2008

The Nobel Prize in Literature 2008


Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2008 is awarded to the French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

"author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization".

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born on April 13, 1940, in Nice, but both parents had strong family connections with the former French colony, Mauritius (conquered by the British in 1810). At the age of eight, Le Clézio and his family moved to Nigeria, where the father had been stationed as a doctor during the Second World War. During the month-long voyage to Nigeria, he began his literary career with two books, Un long voyage and Oradi noir, which even contained a list of “forthcoming books.” He grew up with two languages, French and English. In 1950 the family returned to Nice. After completing his secondary education, he studied English at Bristol University in 1958-59 and completed his undergraduate degree in Nice (Institut d’Études Littéraires) in 1963. He took a master’s degree at the University of Aix-en-Provence in 1964 and wrote a doctoral thesis on Mexico’s early history at the University of Perpignan in 1983. He has taught at universities in Bangkok, Mexico City, Boston, Austin and Albuquerque among other places.

Le Clézio received much attention with his first novel, Le procès-verbal (1963; The Interrogation, 1964). As a young writer in the aftermath of existentialism and the nouveau roman, he was a conjurer who tried to lift words above the degenerate state of everyday speech and to restore to them the power to invoke an essential reality. His debut novel was the first in a series of descriptions of crisis, which includes the short story collection La fièvre (1965; Fever, 1966) and Le déluge (1966; The Flood, 1967), in which he points out the trouble and fear reigning in the major Western cities.

Even early on Le Clézio stood out as an ecologically engaged author, an orientation that is accentuated with the novels Terra amata (1967; Terra Amata, 1969), Le livre des fuites (1969; The Book of Flights, 1971), La guerre (1970; War, 1973) and Les géants (1973; The Giants, 1975). His definitive breakthrough as a novelist came with Désert (1980), for which he received a prize from the French Academy. This work contains magnificent images of a lost culture in the North African desert, contrasted with a depiction of Europe seen through the eyes of unwanted immigrants. The main character, the Algerian guest worker Lalla, is a utopian antithesis to the ugliness and brutality of European society.

During the same period, Le Clézio published the meditative essay collections L’extase matérielle (1967), Mydriase (1973) and Haï (1971), the last of which shows influences from Indian culture. Long stays in Mexico and Central America in the period 1970 to 1974 were of decisive significance for his work, and he left the big cites in search of a new spiritual reality in the contact with the Indians. He met the Moroccan Jemia, who became his wife in 1975, the same year Voyage de l’autre côté was published, a book in which he gives an account of what he learned in Central America. Le Clézio began the translation of the major works of the Indian tradition, such as Les prophéties du Chilam Balam. Le rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue (1998) testifies to his fascination with Mexico’s magnificent past. Since the 90s Le Clézio and his wife share their time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius and Nice.

Le cercheur d’or (1985; The Prospector, 1993) treats material from the islands of the Indian Ocean in the spirit of the adventure story. In later years the author’s attraction to the dream of earthly paradise is apparent in books such as Ourania (2005) and Raga: approche du continent invisible (2006). The latter is devoted to documenting a way of life on the islands of the Indian Ocean that is disappearing with the advance of globalization. The former is set in a remote valley in Mexico, where the main character, the author’s alter ego, finds a colony of seekers who have regained the harmony of the golden age and laid aside civilization’s ruined customs, including its languages.

The emphasis in Le Clézio’s work has increasingly moved in the direction of an exploration of the world of childhood and of his own family history. This development began with Onitsha (1991; Onitsha, 1997), continued more explicitly with La quarantaine (1995) and has culminated in Révolutions (2003) and L’Africain (2004). Révolutions sums up the most important themes of his work: memory, exile, the reorientations of youth, cultural conflict. Episodes from various times and places are juxtaposed: the main character’s student years during the 1950s and 60s in Nice, London and Mexico; the experiences of an ancestor from Brittany as a soldier in the army of the revolution in 1792-94 and his emigration to Mauritius to escape the repression of revolutionary society; and the story of a female slave from the beginning of the 1800s. Embedded among the childhood memories is the story of the main character’s visit to his grandfather’s sister, the last mediator of family tradition from the lost estate on Mauritius, who passes on the memories that he as author will carry into the future.

L’Africain, the story of the author’s father, is at once a reconstruction, a vindication, and the recollection of a boy who lived in the shadow of a stranger he was obliged to love. He remembers through the landscape: Africa tells him who he was when, at the age of eight, he experienced the family’s reunion after the separation during the war years.

Among Le Clézio’s most recent works are Ballaciner (2007), a deeply personal essay about the history of the art of film and the importance of film in the author’s life, from the hand-turned projectors of his childhood, the cult of cinéaste trends in his teens, to his adult forays into the art of film as developed in unfamiliar parts of the world. A new work, Ritournelle de la faim, has just been published.

Le Clézio has also written several books for children and youth, for example Lullaby (1980), Celui qui n’avait jamais vu la mer suivi de La montagne du dieu vivant (1982) and Balaabilou (1985).

Literary Prizes: Prix Théophraste Renaudot (1963), Prix Larbaud (1972), Grand Prix Paul Morand de l’Académie française (1980), Grand Prix Jean Giono (1997), Prix Prince de Monaco (1998), Stig Dagermanpriset (2008)


Works in French
Le procès-verbal. – Paris : Gallimard, 1963
Le jour où Beaumont fit connaissance avec sa douleur. – Paris : Mercure de France, 1964
La fièvre. – Paris : Gallimard, 1965
Le déluge : roman. – Paris : Gallimard, 1966
L'extase matérielle . – Paris : Gallimard, 1967
Terra amata. – Paris : Gallimard, 1967
Le livre des fuites : roman d'aventures. – Paris : Gallimard, 1969
La guerre. – Paris : Gallimard, 1970
Haï. – Genève : Skira, 1971
Mydriase. – Montpellier : Fata Morgana, 1973
Les géants. – Paris : Gallimard, 1973
Voyages de l'autre côté. – Paris : Gallimard, 1975
L'inconnu sur la terre. – Paris : Gallimard, 1978
Vers les icebergs. – Montpellier : Fata Morgana, 1978
Voyage au pays des arbres. – Paris: Gallimard, 1978
Mondo et autres histoires. – Paris : Gallimard, 1978
Désert. – Paris : Gallimard, 1980
Trois villes saintes. – Paris : Gallimard, 1980
Lullaby. – Paris : Gallimard, 1980
La ronde et autres faits divers. – Paris : Gallimard, 1982
Celui qui n'avait jamais vu la mer ; suivi de La montagne du dieu vivant. – Paris : Gallimard, 1982
Balaabilou. – Paris : Gallimard, 1985
Le chercheur d'or. – Paris : Gallimard, 1985
Villa Aurore ; suivi de Orlamonde. – Paris : Gallimard, 1985
Voyage à Rodrigues. – Paris : Gallimard, 1986
Le rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue. – Paris : Gallimard, 1988
Printemps et autres saisons. – Paris : Gallimard, 1989
La grande vie ; suivi de Peuple du ciel. – Paris : Gallimard, 1990
Onitsha. – Paris : Gallimard, 1991
Étoile errante. – Paris : Gallimard, 1992
Pawana. – Paris : Gallimard, 1992
Diego et Frida. – Paris : Stock, 1993
La quarantaine. – Paris : Gallimard, 1995
Poisson d'or. – Paris : Gallimard, 1996
La fête chantée. – Paris : Le Promeneur, 1997
Hasard ; suivi de Angoli Mala. – Paris : Gallimard, 1999
Coeur brûlé et autres romances. – Paris : Gallimard, 2000
Révolutions. – Paris : Gallimard, 2003
L'Africain. – Paris : Mercure de France, 2004
Ourania . – Paris : Gallimard, 2006
Raga : approche du continent invisible. – Paris : Seuil, 2006
Ballaciner. – Paris : Gallimard, 2007
Ritournelle de la faim. – Paris : Gallimard, 2008

Je sais que j'ai lu déjà Le Clézio. Mais je n'arrive ni à me souvenir du titre, ni de l'histoire. Ca m'embête un peu quand-même...
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article tiré de nobelprize.org
image prise ici

4 commentaires:

M. S-C a dit…

Tu m'as devancée pour écrire un article sur le prix Nobel de Littérature !

la. a dit…

Haha, je pense bien: dès 12:35, j'étais scotchée à mon écran, j'avais mis deux réveils (pour être sûre de ne pas oublier l'heure de l'annonce), et à 01:00 je me rongeais les ongles, caméra fixée sur la porte blanche, close. (Ils sont super forts pour faire monter la tension, les mecs de la télé.)
Bon, et après je me suis fait engueuler par ma mère, elle m'avait appelé (j'avais rien entendu).

M. S-C a dit…

Dans ces conditions, c'est sûr que tu avais une grande longueur d'avance ! ;-)

la. a dit…

Évidemment que j'ai pris mes dispositions!