Rima Abdul Malak, Bruno Le Maire, Marek Halter... They say goodbye to Philippe Sollers

"Unique jewel of literature", "tireless animator of intellectual life" with "contagious joy", the provocative and media writer Philippe Sollers died Friday at the age of 86, sparking a wave of reactions in the world publishing and beyond. “Gallimard Editions have the great sadness to announce the death of Philippe Sollers, born Philippe Joyaux, which occurred on May 5, 2023”, announced its publisher on Saturday in a press release.

This author of more than 80 novels, essays and monographs, director of journals and long accustomed to television sets was a "lover of fine arts, music and letters celebrating the sacred here below", writes Gallimard, hailing a “freedom-loving” man. "The tireless 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 non-conformist novel and critical essays on universal sensitivity, the furtive and attentive friend who has never given up saying that happiness is possible, has joined the truth of the great marvelous silence”, continues the publishing house. And to add: "I came, I lived, I dreamed", in reference to one of the last works of the deceased, Secret Agent (2021).

Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak also paid tribute on Twitter to an "indomitable, unclassifiable character, with a teasing gaze and quick wit, who had turned provocation into art and turned our times upside down", lamenting the loss of a "unique gem of literature".

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 this contagious joy which made each of his interviews a delicious dialogue.

Born November 28, 1936 in Talence (Gironde) into a family of industrialists, left-wing Gaullists and Catholics, Philippe Sollers had quickly abandoned his studies to devote himself to literature. Swapping his surname of Jewels for that of Sollers, from the Latin "sollus" and "ars" ("entirely art"), he published his first novel, "A curious solitude", at the age of 22.

Winner of the Medici Prize in 1961 for "Le Parc", he rose to fame in 1983 with the novel "Femmes", some critics of which denounced "pornography". “He was the most Venetian of French writers, all in mazes, masks and labyrinths”, for his part reacted Michel Field, the culture and live performance director of France Télévisions, about the author of a dictionary in love with Venice. .

“Never school, rather solar. He left his mark and his irony on several decades of intellectual and literary life. In addition, he was funny and friendly,” he said. "France is losing a free writer, with vagrant writing and yet sharp as a blade," said Bruno Le Maire on Twitter. "I am losing a friend, inexhaustible on our common passion: music" added the Minister of the Economy, also published by Gallimard. 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 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 "mad love" to the Belgian writer Dominique Rolin, 23 years his senior.