There is no greater danger in love than talking about it. By tracking down lightning bolts in the chaos of everyday life, we risk creating a void. To fall from a height, numbed by lyricism. Phrases that make the kohl flow require grace. It takes a special talent and audacity.
The kind that Nicolas Mathieu deploys in his books. For several years, the writer, winner of the 2018 Goncourt Prize for his novel “Their children after them”, has also been sharing them on Instagram, to which he admits he is addicted. Film reviews, pieces of romantic bravery, political pamphlets, outbursts born from the ordinary…
For his 133,000 subscribers, he respects one rule: “Formulate what goes through our body. » His tours de force are his declarations to a love hidden, then lost. They trigger the fever of the “followers”: “How is it possible, so much love? », “I cry over your words”, “We will not give up until we have obtained a Nicolas Mathieu for each one! »
Nicolas Mathieu and Charlotte Casiraghi, March 7, 2024, in Paris.
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The author vibrates with the weight of lack, the allegory of reunion, loss, desire, pain. The past is engraved on the thread of posts: “I put in my stomach the immense reserve of our history, the stabs, our bodies swimming, the sheets that twist and our fingers that lie, the departures on vacation, coffee in a hurry, a Christmas full of children and our ready-made words, the language that we had invented, because all love is an indigenous people, with its rites, its grammar, its enemies, its sacrifices and sowing who will make spring again. »
And finally: “I would cancel Homer and everything that follows to see this gold bangle on your wrist again and relive a single summer hour in the Lot and under the roofs. Watch me make sentences, see how I reach for your skin and only manage to grab pages of the dictionary. »
From these “it-posts”, he has just made a book, “The Open Sky”. An illustrated work, “at the heart of everyday life”, published in February by Actes Sud and shot through with wonder and melancholy.
Charlotte Casiraghi and Nicolas Mathieu, in Paris, March 7, 2024.
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A novelist gifted with passion
On March 6, while he was presenting it on the set of the show “La Grande Bibliothèque”, the novelist, usually so gifted at evoking the end of passion, ventured to celebrate its beginnings: “In a story of love, at the start, we seek to agree, in the musical sense of the term, that is to say to play, not on the same melody, but on the same tone. To agree, you have to get in tune with definitions, with vocabulary, with pet names. It’s a bit ridiculous but that’s how it starts. »
To live happily, let’s not live hidden.
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What, who was he talking about then? For those best informed, a face slipped between the lines, a smile between the sentences: the rumor of his complicity with Charlotte Casiraghi shed light on the mystery.
A princess girl in love with words
We imagine the meeting. She, first of all, granddaughter of Grace Kelly, daughter of a princess very quickly caught up with the taste for letters and knowledge. The child from the Rock discovered philosophy in Khâgne then on the benches of the Sorbonne. Since then, a journey dedicated to the sharing of knowledge, to this need to transmit and engage, received as a heritage. She can recall that Prince Pierre was close to Marcel Proust, and that Albert I created the International Peace Institute.
In turn, she left her mark by founding, in 2015, the Monaco Philosophical Meetings. And by also signing a book on our affects, our most powerful impulses, “Archipel of passions”, with her former teacher Robert Maggiori.
Contemporary Map of Tendre where she too has deciphered love and its language. Of the science of astonishment that she has made her own, Charlotte Casiraghi will say: “It’s something elusive. Philosophy is volatile. You can’t hug her for reassurance. » She loves novels and especially romance. Like an explorer, who is not afraid to step out of her world.
In Paris, March 7, 2024.
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She shared her life with an irresistible showman, Gad Elmaleh, then she moved to the cinema with another irresistible, Dimitri Rassam, the producer of “Envole-moi” and the two parts of the “The Three Musketeers” saga. They reportedly separated in December.
With each, she had a son. But the fashion icon, Chanel ambassador who organizes the Literary Rendezvous on rue Cambon, cites Colette and Simone de Beauvoir, Virginia Woolf and Marguerite Duras, Arthur Rimbaud and René Char in the pantheon of her readings, feels at home among the writers.
When she was younger, she even dreamed of “being the friend and confidante of Baudelaire”, from whom she invokes this verse which touches her: “Me, my soul is cracked…” She confided: “I like passionate writers, with writing that engages the reader in an experience. Some overly constructed writing affects me less. Those that tremble a little, that reveal the author’s flaws stand out to me more. » Should we see the hollow portrait of a novelist born into a modest family in the Vosges?
For him, the crack is first and foremost social. He will make it his subject. He did not grow up under the Riviera sun but near Epinal. Arsène Lupin, Sherlock Holmes: if he also has a palace, it is imaginary.
Metro and sandwich at the Gare de l’Est… While waiting to take him one day to Épinal, his hometown, Nicolas Mathieu offers him a coffee on the terrace.
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At a private high school, Nicolas Mathieu discovers “Nausea”, by Jean-Paul Sartre, and the shame of its origins. Much later, “the shame of having been ashamed”. He studied history in Nancy, cinema in Metz, arrived at the Sorbonne without the codes and tried to fit into the mold.
A consecration and three novels later, including “Animals in War” and “Connemara”, he admits that, Goncourt or not, the complexes remain: “I am afraid all the time of making mistakes. » Dedicated writer but class defector who, despite success and recognition, declared Paris an “impregnable city”.
Nicolas Mathieu and Charlotte Casiraghi.
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It was at his home in Nancy, during the recording of the podcast “The taste of M”, online on March 8, that he delivered a new definition of love, a bit philosophical. “Literature and stories in general overemphasize lightning, vertical intensities. Perhaps we should look at horizontalities too. That which extends, rather than that which rises. ” What ? The horizon, the Mediterranean?
There are tidal waves that make little fun of imposed reliefs and even dizzying rocks. Opposites magnetize. But are they so contrary? They who, at a Gare de l’Est café terrace, look like two departing students.