This Thursday, February 9, the writer Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, enters the French Academy. After being elected in 2021, the 86-year-old Spanish author of Peruvian origin received his Academician sword on Wednesday. He is expected under the dome in the afternoon to deliver his speech. A reception to which the new immortal has invited the former king Juan Carlos. An exceptional ceremony on several counts.
Already, the election of Maria Vargas Llosa was an exception. Both because he was ten years older than the age limit for applying and also because he had never written in French. But the prestige of his Nobel Prize in Literature had prevailed, thus reflecting on a French Academy which had not had a laureate of this magnitude since François Mauriac, who entered in 1933 and was rewarded in 1954.
And then his monumental work, with essays, plays, more than twenty novels including The city and the dogs, Aunt Julia and the scribe or The goat party, pleaded in his favour. His francophilia as well. He lived in Paris in the 1960s, and had always expressed his admiration for French letters which returned it to him since in 2016 he was the first living foreign author to enter the famous collection of the Pléiade. A recognition of which he was proud as he said at the microphone of RFI :
“ You can’t imagine how happy I was with the publication of my books in La Pléiade. I have always been very close to French literature, and considered that the Pléiade was a kind of summit. So to be part of it, to be at that summit, it was very encouraging. “.
A disturbing voice for some
However, personalities, academics, politicians, have recently spoken out condemning his public positions. Mario Vargas Llosa, unsuccessful presidential candidate in Peru in 1990, has never ceased to display his ultra-liberal opinions as his recent support forJose Antonio Kast, a far-right contender in the elections in Chile. Also quoted in cases of tax evasion, the writer is subject to criticism.
The fact remains that his entry into the French Academy, in chair 18 previously occupied by the philosopher Michel Serres, reinforces the universality of the institution which has already welcomed writers from all over the world, from the American Julien Green, to the Algerian Assia Djebar. Today, the Academy still has great authors born outside France in its ranks, whether Amin Maalouf in Lebanon, Dany Laferrière in Haiti or Andreï Makine in Russia. With Vargas Llosa, the whole of South America joins France.