- Julien Gracq Studies
Julien Gracq (1910–2007) was generally considered to be the doyen of French letters at his demise on 22 December 2007, aged ninety-seven.1 Born Louis Poirier in Saint-Florent-le-Vieil (Maine-et-Loire), Gracq took his nom de plume in 1939 at the time his first novel, Au château d’Argol, was published.2 Professor agrégé of history and geography, notably at the Lycée Claude-Bernard in Paris from 1947 until his retirement in 1970, Gracq began writing fiction almost by accident.3 His works, published by the Librairie José Corti, were collected in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, under the masterly direction of Bernhild Boïe.4 Translated into twenty-six languages, they touch on all genres: novels, poetry, theatre, short stories, translations, autobiographical essays, literary criticism, and occasional writings, including notebooks, travel journals, prefaces, and interviews. Gracq is one of the rare literary figures to have appeared in the Pléiade and on agrégation examinations during his lifetime, a prestige marking him out as an exceptional writer.
The exception gracquienne, however, is a double-edged one, indicating not only the singularity of a writer whose syncretic style defies labelling, but also, unfortunately, a dearth of critical interest in his works, especially in the UK and other anglophone academies, as Béatrice Damamme-Gilbert has recently pointed out in French Studies Bulletin.5 Author of an excellent Bakhtinian study of Gracq’s lyrical remapping of the Nantes of his adolescence, Damamme-Gilbert finds this gap all the more surprising, given Gracq’s stature in France and his familiarity with British cultural history.6 Among academics based in North America, too, substantive publications are few, with only one book in English.7 Even in [End Page 192] France, however, where Gracq is so admired and the subject of many critical studies, dissertations, and theses, he is still relatively little known outside the circle of Gracquian enthusiasts that Patrick Marot refers to as the ‘happy few’.8
Of course, one of the reasons for Gracq’s marginal status in literary studies is that his works do not readily lend themselves to some contemporary approaches, such as postcolonial studies or film studies. Other reasons include his mordant, if prophetic, pronouncements against the burgeoning commercialization of literature in postwar France. In La Littérature à l’estomac (OC, I, 520–51) and Pourquoi la littérature respire mal (OC, I, 857–81), he took aim at the Parisian elite, with its excessive hyping of the author as consumer icon, and the annual frenzy of prix littéraires. Also, his refusal of the Goncourt in 1951 for Le Rivage des Syrtes did not win him friends in certain circles, even though he had forewarned the jury in advance that he would not accept the prize if chosen. Finally, Gracq’s loyalty to the modest Corti publishing house, his preference, if not reverence, for the nineteenth century,9 and his criticism of key twentieth-century literary movements — Sartre and engaged literature (for its ‘sentiment du non’ (OC, I, 873)), the New Novelists (for their excessive reliance on technique), and Surrealism (as an organized movement at odds with the truly poetic) — have created the perception of a refractory, if not fusty, writer, ‘le dernier des classiques’.10 It is time to reconsider this narrative of Gracq’s literary standing, and so an état présent is a welcome opportunity to revisit scholarship and suggest new directions.
The lack of a Gracq ‘industry’ may not be a bad thing, however. It is certainly consonant with the author’s strong belief in the intimate nature of writing and reading seen as singular processes, as well as with his oft-repeated insistence on poetic and personal freedoms.11 The tendency to conceal, an aspect of his personal reserve, translates into an écriture favouring the allusive, elusive, and magical interconnectedness of things. Michel Murat references this seductive combination of the discreet and the marvellous in Gracq’s writing in the title of his L’Enchanteur réticent, which glosses the major themes of the corpus.12 [End Page 193]
The relative proximity of Gracq’s passing...