Mario Vargas Llosa is already part of "Los Inmortales".
This Thursday he has officially entered the French Academy, in a ceremony in which he has been accompanied by his family and which
was also attended by King Emeritus Don Juan Carlos
, accompanied by his daughter, the Infanta Christina.
The Hispanic-Peruvian writer is the first author to write in Spanish to enter this prestigious and exclusive institution created in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu to ensure the French language.
"Dear Mario Vargas Llosa:
he is here among us, in our stubborn tribe of ephemeral immortals
," Daniel Rondeau, the academic in charge of giving him the reply and a friend of the writer, told him at the end of the ceremony.
In his speech in French, lasting just over an hour, the author of Conversation in the Cathedral spoke of the influence that the great French authors have had on his career,
claiming France as the origin of his vocation as a writer.
He has also evoked the role of literature, which, he has said,
"needs freedom to exist"
.
"No one is safe if we are not all free: it is the great teaching of French literature," he said.
pomba ceremony
The ceremony has begun at three o'clock, with all the pomp that marks the tradition: republican guard and solemn tone.
King Emeritus Juan Carlos I arrived at 2:45 p.m. accompanied by his daughter, the Infanta Cristina.
At his entrance to the room, he was received with applause from the attendees who were already under the dome of the amphitheater.
Sitting in the front row, Vargas Llosa addressed him to greet him as soon as he arrived.
To the beat of the drum and for four minutes
, the 40 immortals, caretakers of the Gallic language, have been entering one by one in a row
.
Vargas Llosa has evoked his childhood, when he believed that "French literature was sovereign in all of Latin America", his years
reading "and rereading" the French, especially Gustave Flaubert
("my teacher") and his Madame Bovary.
"By studying the French and French authors relentlessly, I secretly aspired to become a French writer," the author has said.
Upon arriving in Paris "I realized that the French had discovered Latin American literature before me (...)
It is in France, what a paradox, where I have begun to feel like a Peruvian and Latin American writer,"
said the writer, whose speech ended with applause.
He recounted
the first day he arrived in Paris,
in 1959. The first thing he did was buy a copy of Madame Bovary in a bookstore: "la joie de lire" (the joy of reading), "a nice bookstore because they never denounced to thieves)".
He remembers that day, reading, "like a dream from which I have never woken up."
"Without Flaubert I would never have been the writer I am today" and it is "thanks to him that I am here today", said the author, who has recounted that, years later, he went to the Frenchman's grave to lay flowers "to thank him for everything what he had done for me and for the modern novel".
In his 22-page speech,
he made extensive reference to his predecessor in seat 18
, which was occupied by Michel Serres.
There have been no shortage of allusions to Victor Hugo and Les Misérables, with scenes that "remain there, as an ideal of justice that convinces and stimulates them".
He has
criticized the censorship of "ghost institutions
" whose example "we have in Putin's Russia" against a "Ukraine that resists" despite everything.
"As in novels, here the weak triumph over the strong because their cause is infinitely greater than that of those considered powerful," he continues.
"Literature will save democracy or it will be buried and disappear," he said.
"a great writer"
In his reply, the academic Daniel Rondeau has listed the contribution of the author, "an immense writer, born in Peru, South American, who has always written in Spanish, but who
has not stopped working on the immortality of the French language
praising our literature on all battlefields."
He recalled an anecdote of his own, when he visited the Vargas Llosa school in Lima to say that he was an admirer of the author of The City and the Dogs.
"Your entire work can be read as a kind of general hymn to literature or as a particular novel.
You have never stopped paying your debts, with Víctor Hugo, with Gustave Flaubert or Julio Cortázar
, your mentor in Paris».
The ceremony finished around five in the afternoon.
Vargas Llosa, as tradition dictates, has worn a black suit with olive green motifs on the lapel, in addition to his sword.
At the event were his wife, Patricia Llosa, who has accompanied him on his trip to Paris, as well as his children.
At the end of his speech, he said: "
A life without literature would be horrible
, sinister, stripped of the richest and most diverse experiences of life, an intolerable routine, full of obligations that would be repeated every day like a set of commitments, Saint Promise of remission".
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