He is undoubtedly the most venerated living writer, especially among the thirties like François-Henri de, who hold him for the god of letters. Prize winner December in 2002 for King’s bodythen from the Grand Prix of the Roman of the French Academy in 2009 for The elevenPierre Michon is one of those rare authors that no one dares to criticize for fear of passing for an illiterate. However, there is a lot to complain about its bullying prose and its usurped status of national granuted.
Mainly published by Verdier, rare in bookstores and living reclusive at the bottom of the Creuse, he was until then our contemporary Julien Gracq. A kind of copyist monk lost in post-modernity. This fine strategist had calculated his blow well. With King’s bodywhere he took over the famous theory of Ernst Kantorowicz to apply it to some writers he loves (Dante, Shakespeare and others), Michon, willingly megalomaniac, did he only speak of his person? There would be in him a mortal Michon but above all an eternal Michon, devoted to posterity. So he sculpted his own statue, before which his disciples bowed, amazed by his convoluted sentences in which they believe they distinguish a great style. We complain: how can they seriously defend a text as unlocked as I write the iliad ?
A kind of composite labyrinth
This book, many times announced and rejected, was to be the will of Michon, which this year celebrates its 80th anniversary. In the real one, it is a kind of composite labyrinth mixing confession, self -fiction and essay, alternating amphigouric digressions on Homer and lyrical logorrhea on the author’s own life, which is painted in celestial tramp having collected conquests female. In Le Figaro MagazineFrédéric Beigbeder did not praise this self -portrait of Michon in alcoholic priape, half Henry Miller half Antoine Blondin. In the Puritan era which is ours, we can indeed see a punk gesture in these exploits of an old Don Juan whose passages should horrify the neofemists. Unfortunately, Michon is pale next to Apollinaire. His scoundrel scenes have neither the supreme sensuality of DH Lawrence nor the unbridled fantasy of Philip Roth. Give us the Special newspaper by Paul Léautaud! Finally it is not forbidden to lift an eyebrow in front of the countless sexual metaphors of its level (Michon then describes a Greek temple): “It’s male or it’s female? It is cock and again Cock, at first glance-it’s always like that with these damn columns. Patient, her beautiful triangle exposed to the whole of the two sexes have been part of it for three thousand years. ” Beautiful image, worthy of the poet, sorry, of the Aède that is Michon…
In the final scene (by far the best in the book), Michon burns all his library in a joyful fire of joy. The flames spare no one. Page 115, passing to Gallimard editions (where is published I write the iliad), the writer makes fun of all these “ridiculous authors” whose photos are plastered in the hall – his sisters and colleagues of the “white” will appreciate the compliment. Again, you can choose to smile or wonder if our man still has his whole head. Lubric fever does not prevent existential anxiety.
With a self -mockery in which a moralist would see a touch of pride, Michon continues to question his work. Page 123, not completely blinded by its illegitimate glory, the James Joyce de la Creuse makes a disappointed thuriferous speak: “It is that I admired it with passion, Michon, when I was twenty years old. He was idolized. His DIY was listened to as an oracle. , but not unsurpassable. ” Page 235, he evokes one of his former publishers: “I had already swallowed crusts; no one had notified it; having taken the way to get out of me, the criticism had not deviated from it and had worn my Naked crusts, as she had done with my masterpieces. Others will be left to scream in the masterpiece. For us, I write the iliad is to be classified in the crusts.
I write the Iliad, by Pierre Michon, Gallimard, 269 p., € 21.