Pierre-Louis Fort, professor of universities in literature at Cy-Cergy-Paris-Université, returns to an interview with the “world” on the recognition of Annie Ernaux internationally, linked according to him to the strength of his Work, which summons the universal in the singular story of its existence.
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The Nobel of literature crowned, Thursday, October 6, Annie Ernaux and her largely autobiographical work, making this feminist figure from a modest background the first French to win the prize. A work whose strength lies in part in the universalism of the themes addressed, at the origin of the international success of the author, estimates Pierre-Louis Fort, professor of universities in literature at Cy-Cergy-Paris-Université, which has In particular coordinated a notebook of the herne (2022), devoted to the writer.
considered for several decades as a heavyweight of literature in France, when Annie Ernaux has started to enjoy international recognition?
In my opinion, it was done in two stages. First, in the early 1990s, when his work was studied by the Anglo-Saxon academic world, in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States. It is a first form of recognition and an accelerator to disseminate the writings of Annie Ernaux.
Recognition of the general public is a little later and will be done during the 2010s, at the time of the English translation of the years (Gallimard, 2008; 2018 for translation). In 2019, this book allows Annie Ernaux to be a finalist of the Man Booker Prize [the most prestigious Prize for Foreign Literature in the United Kingdom]. It does not win the price, but this appointment greatly increases its popularity abroad. His work is today translated in forty languages, including of course Spanish, English or German, but also Serbian, Bulgarian, Georgian or Japanese.
How to explain -You his success beyond our borders?
Her success is linked to the universality of what she expresses. Annie Ernaux’s strength is to start from an experience that is hers, while managing to touch individuals everywhere on the globe, getting off the land, social and gender borders. Readers find themselves in his works, it’s quite impressive.
I give for example its three greatest successes in translation and internationally: Place (1984), Passion Simple (1992) and the years (2008). The place, which traces the story of her father’s loss [and evokes Yvetot’s grocery coffee in Normandy, where she grew up], is finally centered on the relationship between a father and her daughter and on the defector of class , two themes that are without border. Simple passion, a novel in which the author says it has been devoured by a love passion for a Russian lover, is much better welcomed abroad than in France, where he is deemed moved, even obscene. While there is nothing more universal than passion, wherever we are on the planet! Finally, the years, a work in which the author gives to feel France of the 20th e century. The book was not without difficulty for the various translators: they had a huge job to be provided to find equivalent historical references in each country, but this work has made it possible to create a XX e century Common to all readers.
These works have been praised by multiple prizes since the mid-2010s, in Italy, Germany, Spain, to the Nobel Prize for Literature.
His feminist commitment he played a role?
Annie Ernaux is rightly perceived both as a politically committed writer and as a feminist writer. His primary concern is the condition of women in the world, freedom of speech, freedom to act, to do, and to have your body. Its commitment is very clear and highlighted in the foreign abroad, even if it is not reduced to that.
Its feminist dimension has undoubtedly participated in the dissemination around the world of his works, which resonate all the more in the post #MeToo context that our societies know. She is happy to carry these messages on class defector or international love passion, even if it is time subscribed to writing. For her, literature is changing things, even beyond France.