Maurice Genevoix at the Panthéon: Emmanuel Macron pays tribute to "French courage"

Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to "French courage" by presiding Wednesday the entry to the Pantheon of the writer Maurice Genevoix, who offered "the immortality of words" to all the soldiers who died during the First World War.

"They are entering here today, finally" the Pantheon, "the temple of the heroes of our Fatherland", declared the head of state at the end of an hour-long ceremony.

Mobilized at the start of the First World War, then wounded in Verdun, Maurice Genevoix won the Goncourt in 1925 for

, before publishing in 1949

, a flood of stories about the Great War.

A republican liturgy after dark

Containment required, this celebration took place in a small committee and without an audience, such as, in the morning, the commemoration of the 102nd anniversary of the Armistice of 1918 and the centenary of the burial of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe.

At 6 p.m., Emmanuel Macron, accompanied by his wife Brigitte, kicked off the ceremony on the forecourt of the Pantheon, with the arrangement of 101 glass cubes, each containing a handful of soil from one of the 101 French departments.

On the 101st, students from the Ecole normale supérieure (ENS) deposited a handful of land in Eparges, in the Meuse, where Maurice Genevoix was injured during the fighting.

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It is also in Eparges, in November 2018, that Emmanuel Macron announced the entry into the Pantheon of the writer, author of

.

After a projection of images on the facade of the Panthéon, the coffin of Maurice Genevoix, who died in 1980, went up rue Soufflot to the nave of the Pantheon, carried by the Republican Guard under the gaze of his family and relatives .

The actors then read two texts, including an extract from

recounting the horror of the trenches, before the Head of State's address. 

To those of 14, Maurice Genevoix offered the immortality of words.

The Republic today brings them all together.

For eternity.

They are there.

pic.twitter.com/D8uPKZsXA2

- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 11, 2020

A historic speech

In a speech of fifteen minutes, Emmanuel Macron wanted to exalt what he calls "French courage".

"Lieutenant Maurice Genevoix enters here with all those of 14. The writer Maurice Genevoix enters here with all the figures who inhabit the thousand pages of his masterpiece: a whole people trained in the face of trial and torment. They are there. With Maurice Genevoix enters the Pantheon a republican destiny, a French existence ", he declared. 

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 Entry to the Pantheon by Maurice Genevoix, a tribute "to all the anonymous" from 14-18

The Head of State worked in particular to establish a lineage between the revolutionaries of 1789, the soldiers of the Great War, but also the builders of Europe and peace.

Yesterday brothers in arms, today companions of eternity, they advance in front of the temple of the heroes of our Fatherland.

pic.twitter.com/VTvDWnZ91K

- Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) November 11, 2020

The tribute of two artists to the soldiers of the First World War

During the ceremony, six sculptures by German plastic artist Anselm Kiefer were inaugurated, the first new works installed in the Pantheon for a century.

Their unveiling was accompanied by a sound work by musician Pascal Dusapin, mixing a choir with the recording of 15,000 names of soldiers who died during the war.