Intellectuals have signed a petition to demand the enthronement of the poets Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine in the Panthéon.
If the Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, has not formally signed it, she said she was in favor on Wednesday, in the columns of the Point.
To the great poets, the grateful minister: Roselyne Bachelot, in charge of Culture, supports a petition in favor of the entry of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine into the Pantheon, submitted to President Emmanuel Macron.
"It would only be fair to celebrate their memory today by bringing them jointly to the Pantheon, alongside other great literary figures: Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Hugo, Malraux", we read in the petition revealed Wednesday.
This "appeal to the President of the Republic", the only one empowered to decide, was originally launched by a group of intellectuals, academics and academics passionate about these two famous authors.
Bachelot does not sign the petition but supports it
They convinced, among others, the Ministers of Culture from Jack Lang (who had been from 1981) to Françoise Nyssen, with the exception of Franck Riester (who held the post until July but still sits in the government).
The ministry told AFP that Roselyne Bachelot had not signed directly but supported the initiative.
"The fact of bringing these two poets who were lovers, yes, together, to the Pantheon would have an impact which is not only historical or literary, but deeply current", declares the minister to the weekly
Le Point
.
Among the signatories, we find for example the former mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë, the former minister Bernard Kouchner, intellectuals as different as Edgar Morin, Alain Minc and Michel Onfray, and many artists and writers like Agnès b, Annie Ernaux, Olivier Py or Line Renaud.
The promoters of the petition are the writers Jean-Luc Barré and Frédéric Martel, author of the preface to a 1,000-page biography of Rimbaud, by Jean-Jacques Lefrère, republished Thursday by Bouquins (Laffont editions).
Two poorly buried poets?
Rimbaud (1854-1891) and Verlaine (1844-1896) are two of the most famous poets, adulated and commented on in the French language.
The first is buried in his hometown of Charleville-Mézières (Ardennes), which he hated, and in the family vault, alongside, recalls the petition, of "his enemy and usurper, Paterne Berrichon", a minor poet who married his sister and wronged his posterity.
Verlaine rests in the Batignolles cemetery in Paris, also in the family vault, "near the ring road under horrible plastic flowers", according to the signatories of the appeal.
“Is this how France honors its greatest poets?” They ask.