We imagine that the entourage of Emmanuel Macron racked their brains with the backhoe. It was necessary to carry out a delicate excavation of weighed and chosen words to write the official reaction of the President of the Republic to the Nobel Prize in Literature awarded this Thursday to Annie Ernaux. The French author is not one of the most fervent supporters of the head of state.
In the second round of the presidential election, in April, she voted for him, but she made it clear that it was “heartbreaking”. With our colleagues from The Express, she confided her “hate” of Emmanuel Macron, “because of his contempt and his arrogance”. “Nothing remains of its great popular consultation. And the great cause of feminism, let’s talk about it! Finally, he destroyed the public services one after the other, the school, the health…”, she listed.
See the official Twitter account of the president greet at midday the novelist whose “voice is that of the freedom of women and the forgotten of the century” therefore lacks neither salt nor pepper. The message will undoubtedly have gone straight to the heartbreak of the person concerned.
“I appreciate his books more than his convictions”
Do not fail to put in our mouths the crisp reaction of Julien Bargeton, spokesperson for the Renaissance senators, the presidential party. “I appreciate his books more than his personality and his convictions”, he tweets, qualifying Years of “magnificent book”. He may have read on the side because Annie Ernaux’s personality and convictions clearly infuse her work.
“I consider myself (…) as a sum of experiences, of determinations also, social, historical, sexual, of languages and continually in dialogue with the world (past and present)”, she wrote in this way in writing like a knife released in 2003.
“Every line like a punch in the stomach”
More interesting and much more reasoned is the reaction of Olivier Dussopt. The former socialist, now Minister of Labour, was not necessarily intended to pay tribute to Annie Ernaux. She is ” [son] favorite author. “Our memory, collective and individual, is questioned, even jostled. Each line is like a punch in the stomach that leaves you breathless in the face of the brutality of a life, the violence of social determinism, the force of conventions and the class contempt that our society has never never got rid of. It is also in a few words, also cut with a billhook, the strength of a feeling, of a momentum, of a love as of anger, ”he describes on Twitter.
Olivier Dussopt is aware of the political significance of the writer. He also anticipates the reproaches: “I can already hear those who will tell me that her activism on the far left should censor the admiration I have for her. They have understood nothing, neither what she writes I believe, nor what I think I am convinced of it. »
On the side of La France insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, you can imagine, is enthusiastic about this Nobel: “We are crying with happiness. Francophone literature speaks to the world a delicate language which is not that of money,” he says. Manon Aubry, LFI MEP, for her part, sends a “tremendous congratulations” to the “brilliant writer, tireless feminist activist and comrade of the Parliament of the popular union”.