Thursday, October 9, 2008

Στον Γκουστάβ Λε Κλεζιό το Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας 2008

French author Jean-Marie Le Clézio is photographed in a waiting room at the Lonorore Airport in Vanuatu, South Pacific, 2005, has won the 2008 Nobel Literature Prize.(AFP/File/Marc Le Chelard)

Ο Γάλλος συγγραφέας Ζαν Μαρί Γκουστάβ Λε Κλεζιό είναι ο νικητής του Βραβείου Νόμπελ Λογοτεχνίας για το 2008, σύμφωνα με ανακοίνωση της Ακαδημίας των Βραβείων Νόμπελ. «Συγγραφέας νέων ταξιδιών, ποιητικών περιπετειών και αισθησιακής έκστασης, εξερευνητής της ανθρωπότητας πέρα από τη βασιλεία του πολιτισμού», αναφέρει η ανακοίνωση της επιτροπής.

One of the most translated modern French authors, whose first novel appeared when he was only 23 years old. Due to his early experimentalist approach to novel, Le Clézio has been counted among the avant-garde writers, but actually his work is difficult to pin down. Le Clézio's themes are cross-cultural. He moves freely, without restriction, from one continent to another, fusing ideas and images from different kinds of literature and culture. Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2008.

"La guerre a commencé. Personne ne sait plus où, ni comment, mais c'est ainsi. Elle est derrière la tête et elle souffle. La guerre des crimes et des insultes, la furie des regards, l'explosion de la pensée des cerveaux. Elle est là, ouverte sur le monde, elle le couvre de son réseau de fils électriques, Chaque seconde, elle progresse, elle arrache quelque chose et le réduit en cendres." (from La Guerre, 1970)

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in Nice in 1940. Le Clézio's father, born in Mauritius, was a doctor, who moved from England to British Guyana, and then to Nigeria. Before the family was reunited, he lived years in Africa.

Le Clézio was raised in France. His early childhood Le Clézio spent in Roquebillière, a small village near Nice. At the age of eight Le Clézio started to write poetry and read comics. In 1947 he traveled to Nigeria with his mother and brother, spending there a happy year without school. Later the author depicted his childhood in the semi-autobiographical novel Onitsha (1991), in which a young boy sails with his mother to Africa, where his English father is chasing his own dreams.

Le Clézio was educated at schools in Nice, where his mother settled during the war. In 1957 Le Clézio passed his baccalauréat in literature and philosophy. He then studied at the Bristol University, at the University of London, and Institut d'Études Littéraires in Nice. In 1964 he received his M.A. from the University of Aix-en-Provence.

Le Clézio married in 1960 Rosalie Piquemal, half-French, half-Polish; they had one daughter. After divorce Le Clézio remarried. From this marriage he has also one daughter.

As a writer Le Clézio made his breakthrough with his first novel, Le procès-verbal (1963), which was awarded the Théophraste Renaudot Prize. The work introduced one of his central themes, the flight from commonly accepted ways of thought into extreme states of mind. Adam Pollo, the protagonist, is a sensitive youg man, who wanders around the town, much like a stray dog, and after making an agitated speech to an apathetic crowd eventually ends up in a mental hospital for a period. The mood of the novel has been compared to that of Camus's Stranger and Sartre's Naisea.

Le Clézio's writing is simultaneously clear and intensive, impressionistic and controlled, nostalgic and contemporary. In an interview Le Clézio once said, that his favorite novelist are Stevenson and Joyce - noteworthy both exiled writers. Often his protagonists are loners, who try to find ways to cope with the modern life and technology, or come into conflict with urban surroundings.

Le procès-verbal was soon translated into several languages, among others into Finnish. In spite of his international fame, Le Clézio chose to stay away from fashionable literary circles, saying in an article in 1965: "Not yet sure if writing is a good way of expression." He taught at a Buddhist University in Thailand in 1966-67, at the University of Mexico, and at the Boston University, University of Texas, Austin, and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Since 1973 Le Clézio has divided his life between France, the U.S. and Mauritius. He has also traveled in Nigeria and Japan and published translations of Mayan sacred texts.

Through Le Clézio's novels the sun and the sea, light and water, are recurrent images. From 1969 to 1973 Le Clézio lived among the Embera Indians in Panama. Haï (1971), written during this period, is a lyrical account of the author's experience which, as he has confessed, changed his whole life. On the whole, the natural environment, animate and inanimate, forms a kind of philosophical, unifying ground for Le Clézio's themes.

Le Clézio's constant travels are reflected in the settings of his books. Through his own experience he has described the clash of cultures, and the unequal side of globalization, the domination of Western rationalism. In Désert (1980), which received prix Paul Morand, a young nomad woman, Lalla, from the Sahara becomes a famous photo model, but she returns to the desert to give birth to her child. A parallel story tells of the crushing of the Tuaregs in the beginning of the 20th century by the French colonizers.

For further reading: Conversations avec J.-M. G. Le Clézio by P. Lhoste (1971); World Authors 1950-1970, ed. by John Wakeman (1975); J.-M. G. Le Clézio by Jennifer Waelti-Walters (1977); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993); Le Clézio ou la quête du désert by Simone Domange (1993); Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999) - For further information: Intersected Pasts and Problematic Futures by Karen D. Levy ; Interview with Jean-Marie Clézio ;

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio wins Nobel prize

New litterature nobel prize French writer Jean Marie le Clezio

Selecter works:

  • Le Procès-Verbal, 1963 - The Interrogation - Raportti Aatamista (suom. Olli-Matti Ronimus)
  • Le Jour où Beaumont fit connaissance avec sa douleur, 1964
  • La Fièvre, 1965 - Fever - Kuume (suom. Leila Adler)
  • Le Déluge, 1966 - The Flood
  • L'Extase matérielle, 1966
  • Terra amata, 1968 - (trans.)
  • Le Livre des fuites, 1969 - The Book of Flights
  • La Guerre, 1970 - War
  • Haï, 1971
  • Les Géants, 1973 - The Giants
  • Mydriase, 1973
  • Voyages de l'autre côté, 1975
  • translator: Les Prophéties du chilam Balam, 1976
  • Voyage aux pays des arbres, 1978
  • L'Inconnu sur la terre, 1978
  • Vers les Icebergs, 1978
  • Mondo et autres histoires, 1978 - Mondo - film (1996), dir. by Tony Gatlif, starring Ovidiu Balan, Philippe Petit, Pierrette Fesch, Jerry Smith
  • Désert, 1980 - Desert - Autiomaa (suom. Marjatta Ecaré)
  • Trois Villes saintes, 1980
  • Lullaby, 1980
  • La Ronde et autres faits divers, 1982
  • Celui qui'n avait jamais vu la mer; La Montagne du dieu vivant, 1984
  • translator: Relation de Michocan, 1984
  • Le Chercheur d'or, 1985 - The Prospector (trans. by Carol Marks)
  • Villa aurore; Orlamonde, 1985
  • Balaabilou, 1985
  • Voyage à Rodrigues, 1986
  • Les Années Cannes, 1987
  • Le Rêve mexicain, ou, La Pensée interrompue, 1988 - Mexican Dream (trans. by Teresa Lavender)
  • Printemps et autres saisons: nouvelles, 1989
  • Sirandanes; Un Petit Lexique de la langue créole et des oiseaux, 1990
  • Onitsha, 1991 - (trans. by Alison Anderson) - Kaupunki nimeltä Onitsha (suom. Annikki Suni)
  • Pawana, 1992
  • Étoile errante, 1992 - Wandering Star (trans. by C. Dickson) - Harhaileva tähti (suom. Annikki Suni)
  • Diego et Frida, 1993
  • La Quarantaine, 1995
  • In the Eye of the Sun: Mexican Fiestas, 1996 (with Geoff Winningham)
  • Poisson d'or, 1997
  • La fête chantée, 1997
  • Enfances, 1997 (with Christophe Kuhn)
  • Hasard suivi de Angoli Mala, 1999
  • Fantômes dans la rue, 2000
  • Coeur brûlé et autres romances, 2000
  • Révolutions, 2003
  • Mondo et autres histoires, 2005
  • Ourania, 2006

Have the Nobel prize for literature judges struck a blow against Coca-colonisation?

New litterature nobel prize French writer Jean Marie le Clezio

UnAmerican literary activity ... Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

The first paragraph of the New York Times, when they brought the good news from Stockholm to the Big Apple, said it all:

John Sutherland Posted by John Sutherland Thursday October 9 2008

PARIS: Amid debate over purported bias against American writers, the Swedish Academy on Thursday awarded the 2008 Nobel prize for literature to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French novelist, children's author and essayist regarded by some French readers as one of the country's20greatest living writers.

Note the location in the first word - not the Swedish but the French capital. And that poisonously barbed qualification, "some French readers". The subtext: "we wuz robbed!"

A Google-news sweep reveals that first reaction in America is that the Nobel committee, in line with their prize-awarding colleagues in other fields, now see it as their God-given mission to cut the world's only remaining superpower down to size. To prevent in literature what has happened in film (a cultural field in which Sweden and France were once world players - but no more). Or even in science. This year's laureates are notably de-Americanised: most spectacularly with the award to Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi for their discovery of the Aids virus. The hidden agenda there was that the US virologist, Robert Gallo, had been wrongly credited as the first to do so.

It's clear that the committee intended its 2008 "biases" to be noticed. Last week, Academy permanent secretary Horace Engdahl waved a carefully calculated red flag by declaring that American writing was too "parochial" (that hurt) for the judges' consideration this year. The Yankee bull duly charged. Asked this morning how he thought the literature award would be received in the US, Engdahl blandly replied, "I have no idea". Are those Swedish trousers I smell burning?

Whether or not Le Clézio is the worthiest winner will await judgment by those authorities in the English-speaking world qualified to pronounce on the issue. I'm not one, and I don't imagine that many English-language readers - even of this blog -will be either. But I've put in my order for the English translation of the novelist's early masterpiece, Le Procès-Verbal (The Interrogation). A work, apparently, whose narrative technique was influenced by the author's residence among a tribe of Panamanian Indians. There will be rejoicing around the old campfire tonight.

The larger question raised by this year's award one can confidently have an opinion about. Has America got too big for its cultural boots? So big, in fact, that it's positively dangerous. Our screens, large and small, have been Americanised. Our popular music. Our bestseller lists increasingly feature American, not home-grown blockbusters. Even the credit crunch, which is shaking up our lives, comes to us courtesy of Wall Street, wrapped in the Stars and Stripes.

There is, of course, a writer of our own who has resisted American imperialism in the great tradition of Grahame Greene (who, as I recall, declared that he would rather live in Moscow than in New York, but chose actually to live on the Cote d'Azur). For a wild moment, when the announcement flashed up, I thought it was "Le Carré". No such luck. Perhaps next year.

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