"Éditions Gallimard has the great sadness to announce the death of Philippe Sollers, born Philippe Joyaux, on May 5, 2023," announced Saturday his publisher in a statement, confirming information from Le Figaro.

This author of more than 80 novels, essays and monographs, director of magazines and long accustomed to television sets was a "lover of fine arts, music and letters celebrating the sacred of this world," writes Gallimard, saluting a man "in love with freedom".

"The indefatigable animator of intellectual and literary life who created and animated with his friends the magazines +Tel quel+ (1960) and +L'infini+ (1983), the author of an innovative and nonconformist work of fiction and critical essays with universal sensitivity, the furtive and attentive friend who never gave up saying that +happiness is possible+, joined +the truth of the great wonderful silence+", continues the publishing house.

And to add: "I came, I lived, I dreamed", in reference to one of the last books of the deceased, "Secret Agent" (2021).

Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak also paid tribute on Twitter to an "indomitable, unclassifiable character, with a teasing look and a sharp wit, who had turned provocation into art and shaken up our time", lamenting the loss of a "unique jewel of literature".

The writer Philippe Sollers, November 7, 2016 in Paris © JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP/Archives

Relaying on the same social network one of his interviews for France inter, the journalist Augustin Trapenard said "Farewell" to the one who "had spoken of shreds, style and scandal, with that contagious joy that made each of his interviews a delicious dialogue".

"Venetian"

Born on November 28, 1936 in Talence (Gironde) into a family of industrialists, left-wing Gaullists and Catholics, Philippe Sollers quickly abandoned his studies to devote himself to literature.

Swapping his surname of Jewels for that of Sollers, from the Latin "sollus" and "ars" ("all art"), he published his first novel, "A curious solitude", at the age of 22.

Winner of the Prix Médicis in 1961 for "Le Parc", he rose to prominence in 1983 with the novel "Femmes", which some critics denounced "pornography".

"He was the most Venetian of French writers, all mazes, masks and labyrinths," said Michel Field, the director of culture and performing arts at France Télévisions, about the author of a dictionary in love with Venice.

"Never school, rather solar. He left his mark and irony on several decades of intellectual and literary life. Besides, he was funny and friendly," he said.

"The France has lost a free writer, whose writing wanders and yet sharpened like a blade," Bruno Le Maire said on Twitter. "I am losing a friend, inexhaustible on our common passion: music," added the Minister of the Economy, also published by Gallimard.

Philippe Sollers during the publication of "Le Parc" at Éditions du Seuil, Paris in 1961 © - / AFP/Archives

Like him, the writer Marek Halter regretted the disappearance of "a friend, an accomplice, a brother. He made me love literature when I was still a painter. We were born in the same year, +a good year+, he said."

Married since 1967 to the psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva, with whom he had a son David, he lived a double love life, devoting a "crazy love" to the Belgian writer Dominique Rolin, 23 years his senior.

© 2023 AFP