It was in the first round and with 18 votes - against one for the director Frédéric Vignale -, one white and two draws, that the Peruvian-Spanish writer Mario Vargas Llosa was elected, Thursday, November 25, to the French Academy.

This election initially aroused little reaction, even if the candidacy of the 85-year-old Nobel Prize for Literature had been retained by the Immortals despite statutes specifying since 2010 that it is necessary to be under 75 years of age to be to present.

Support for the Chilean far-right candidate

But since then, his recent statements about the Chilean presidential election have not failed to challenge. On December 3, during a videoconference interview with José Antonio Kast, the far-right candidate who won the first round of the Chilean presidential election, the writer gave him his support.

"What is happening in Chile is absolutely fundamental for all of Latin America," Mario Vargas Llosa stressed to his interlocutor, as reported by the ActuaLitté site.

"Latin America's eyes are on Chile. There is no other possible alternative to winning the election."

The brand new academician assures us that a victory for José Antonio Kast would allow "Chile to take the lead again and show what the center right is, freedom, support for entrepreneurs, openness to foreign investment".

In @humanite_fr this Monday, the sinking of Mario Vargas Llosa who supports Jose Antonio Kast, the extreme right-wing Pinochetist candidate for the Chilean presidential election #Chile #Chile #KastEsUnPeligro pic.twitter.com/GZngzuIGEY

- Rosa Moussaoui (@rosa_moussaoui) December 6, 2021

In a column published on December 8 in the newspaper Liberation, French and foreign professors and university researchers pointed out this commitment and denounced an "error" on the part of the French Academy.

"Perhaps the Academy considered that the Peruvian writer embodied the ideal of a committed writer from the Enlightenment. But this election poses serious ethical problems", one can read in the text.

"We wrote this column precisely to express our amazement at this election, thinking that perhaps our fellow citizens did not know some of the elements linked to South America, a continent of which we are specialists, from our various disciplines", have also specified to France 24 three of the signatories, the linguist César Itier, the geographer Évelyne Mesclier and the anthropologist Valérie Robin Azevedo.

The authors of this forum thus recalled the writer's previous commitments, in particular to Colombian President Ivan Duque who ended the peace agreements signed in 2016 between the government and the Farc, with the populist candidate for the election. Peruvian presidential election Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the former dictator Alberto Fujimori, or his call in 1995 "to bury the past" in Argentina, referring to the crimes committed during the military dictatorship.

"Fervent anti-communism" and "economic ultraliberalism"

Attracted in his youth by the Cuban revolution, Mario Vargas Llosa broke away from it in the 1970s. He was then one of the most virulent critics of certain Latin American authoritarian regimes, such as Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. He also had a political career, with in 1990 a candidacy for the presidency of Peru resolutely on the right, putting forward controversial liberal opinions, which offended a good part of the electorate.

Lately, a controversy has arisen from suspicions of tax evasion. According to the revelations of several media in the case of the "Pandora papers", Mario Vargas Llosa was a shareholder between 2015 and 2017 of a company in the British Virgin Islands, a tax haven. He denies any intention of avoiding any tax whatsoever. For the authors of the tribune, the dogma of the writer is therefore based on "fervent anti-communism" and "economic ultraliberalism". "By giving him the sword, the Academicians made an error, even a mistake, which tarnishes the image of France in Latin America where the extremist positions of Mario Vargas Lllosa are well known and arouse strong rejection", they conclude.

On social networks, however, some have criticized these attacks against the Nobel Prize, like the former Prime Minister Manuel Valls.

"So to be an academician, you have to have been a support for Castro, Chavez or the heirs of the Shining Path (the Communist Party of Peru, Editor's note)", he wrote in a tweet.

"These researchers could decide first on the literary qualities of Mario Vargas Llosa instead of making him an outrageous trial."

So to be an academician, it is necessary to have been a support of Castro, of Chavez or of the heirs of the Shining Path…. These researchers could pronounce first on the literary qualities of Mario Vargas Llosa instead of making him an unworthy trial.

https://t.co/GyJpbTWEgx

- Manuel Valls (@manuelvalls) December 10, 2021

For Jean-Jacques Kourliandsky, researcher at Iris, specialist in Latin America and Spain and director of the Latin America Observatory of the Jean Jaurès Foundation, the two fields should not be mixed either. : "Personally, I have no affinities with the political positions of Vargas Llosa, but I consider him to be a writer of great value. He was elected to the French Academy not for his political positions, but for his qualities as a writer. His political commitments must be criticized in the field of politics. "

An academician who does not write in French

Pinned down for his positions, the author was not however attacked on the language of his writings.

Because if Mario Vargas Llosa speaks fluent French, his literary production is only in Spanish.

A specificity for an Immortal who can question, according to Jean-Jacques Kourliandsky: "This type of criticism is acceptable because it relates to the very object of his election. The French Academy is responsible for ensuring the quality of the language and the writing of the Dictionary of the French language. "

"If he applied, it was because he felt not only motivated, but also able to respond to what is expected of him at the French Academy. What is expected of him, they are not proclamations every time there are elections here or there, but a literary contribution ", adds the researcher however.

In 2016, he became the first author of the Pléiade not to have French nationality and to have entered the prestigious collection during his lifetime. He then explained his special attachment to France. Born in Arequipa, in southern Peru, on March 28, 1936, this middle-class child had bathed from an early age in French literature.

"I enrolled in the Alliance Française at the same time as I entered San Marcos (the University of Lima) and at the end of 1953, thanks to the lessons of my magnificent teacher, Mrs. Del Solar, I could read in the language of Molière ", he told in the Latin American literary review Letras Libres. "I did not read, I devoured the books of the small Alliance library which opened the doors to a world rich in poets, novelists and essayists who would mark me for the rest of my life and would ignite the passion, which would never be extinguished, for French culture and the dream of being able, one day, to be a true writer and to live in Paris. "

From the end of the 1950s, he moved to the City of Light, where he was notably a journalist at the Spanish AFP desk: "In Paris, I wrote my first short stories, I discovered Latin America, I started to feel Latin American, I saw my first books published. Thanks to Flaubert, I learned the working method that suited me and discovered the type of writer I wanted to be. France taught me universalism, a sign of the identity of French culture since the Middle Ages. "

His talent as a writer then made him one of the figures of Latin American literature when he was revealed to the world in the 1960s, alongside the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, the Argentinian Julio Cortázar or the Mexicans Carlos Fuentes. and Juan Rulfo.

His work translated into French, mainly by Gallimard editions, is abundant, from "The City and the Dogs" in 1966, to "Temps sauvage" in 2021.

An institution losing prestige

The election of a foreign writer to the French Academy is not a precedent either.

As France Culture reminds us, 19 other academicians who were not born French joined the institution.

The first, the Swiss Victor Cherbuliez, was elected in 1882. Others will follow, such as the American Julien Green, the Argentinian of Russian origin Joseph Kessel, the Algerian Assia Djebar or the Haitian-Canadian Dany Laferrière, entered in 2013.

The French Academy, on the other hand, had not welcomed a Nobel laureate since François Mauriac, elected in 1933, recipient of the Swedish prize in 1952 and died in 1970. Of the 40 seats of the institution conceived as the guardian of the French language , five remain vacant, and the remaining 35 are occupied by 29 men and six women.

In the absence of valuable candidates, the Academy is having notable difficulties in allocating these vacant seats.

Its influence has receded: the prestige of the "green coat" is not at all the same as in the previous century, and many linguists consider its opinions irrelevant.

The chair taken by the Peruvian-Spanish is number 18, previously occupied by the philosopher Michel Serres, and before that, among others, by the philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, Marshal Foch or the former head of government Edgar Faure.

With AFP

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