a man of letters but also a great fan of football and the Greens

The former journalist and writer, lover of the French language but also of football, died on Monday at the age of 89.

Letters in a green rectangle, without transition. This was one of Bernard Pivot’s trademarks. The former president of the Académie Goncourt, great protector of the language of Molière, died Monday May 6, his daughter Cécile Pivot announced to AFP, the day after his 89th birthday. An infallible defender of French and its words, Bernard Pivot, although originally from Lyon, was also a great supporter of AS Saint-Etienne.

Very quickly, at a very young age, this son of Lyon grocers developed a rather disconcerting passion for reading. One reading in particular: that of the dictionary. And for many decades, our friends Robert and Larousse had better watch out: when words “unworthy“, as he called them, integrated the dictionary, Bernard Pivot put on his superhero cape to try to save the love of his life: the French language. And as all means were good to serve his master words, lately it was on Twitter that he raged with decency and restraint.

New words from Petit Robert 2021 that I don’t like: brainstormer, blacklister, tracker; schneck, female sex in Eastern France; veggie, English abbreviation of vegetarian; spam, send spam.

— bernard pivot (@bernardpivot1) May 30, 2020

But the one who was “confined to his house for fifteen years to read” nearly fifteen pounds a week, obviously needed to get away. Throughout this golden period when he left home only to go on air, whether in Apostrophes, between 1975 and 1991, or in his Bouillon de Culture from 1991 to 2000, he allowed himself a little getaway from time to time. other. An escape which led him towards his second passion: football. For a long time, in the 1980s and 1990s, he even managed to combine his two loves: books and football.

Football, its enchanted parenthesis

From an improbable but brilliant idea, Bernard Pivot made it a very original tradition: before each Blues competition, he distributed several kilos of books to the players of the France team! “The idea came one day when I brought books to the Saint-Étienne Greens,” he told in the columns of The Team in June 2018.”Some books that I had put in the locker room before leaving for a European Cup match. I said to myself: ‘They must be bothering the unfortunate people, we should give them books.” A supporter serving the collective.

This intellectual therefore knew “clear the mind and rest your neurons” while watching football matches. On television, of course, but especially in the Cauldron. A native of Lyon, and after having lived his entire childhood in Quincié-en-Beaujolais (Rhône), Bernard Pivot was for a long time shared between Olympique Lyonnais and AS Saint-Etienne. “My mother was from the Rhône, but my father was from Saint-Symphorien-de-Lay, near Roanne, in the Loire”he said in an interview with asse-online in 2005.He also took me to the Stade des Iris to watch the matches of LOU, the ancestor of Olympique Lyonnais. But at the time, Lyon didn’t have very good results, the club was playing in the second division, and I had to deal with LOU-Le Mans, LOU-Alès, etc…“

“My father taught me the route to the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium. We would leave in his van to attend ASSE matches.”

And one day, his heart definitely swayed: “Fortunately, my father taught me the route to the Geoffroy-Guichard stadium. We left in his van to attend ASSE matches, at the time the matches took place on Sunday afternoons. As a teenager, I considered myself both a supporter of Lyon, my hometown, and Saint-Etienne, its regional rival. I especially admired Saint-Etienne players like Rachid Mekloufi, and when Saint-Etienne set out to conquer Europe, I switched body and soul to the Greens!“

Support the Greens without borders

The heat of the Cauldron. The fervor of the green people. Two sensations, two arguments which completely captivated Bernard Pivot. The man who sometimes spent fifteen hours a day going through the books of the authors he would criticize on Friday evenings in Apostrophes, therefore let himself be carried away by the green fever which swept through France in the 1970s.The return match of Saint-Etienne-kyiv“, in March 1976 (quarter-final return of the Champion Clubs’ Cup, ex-C1), had capsized him, he liked to remember.

And the Lyonnais put no limits when it came to encouraging his Greens: “I was in the stands that evening, even though I was unable to attend the first leg. At the time it upset me, because I took part in numerous trips: I was of course in Glasgow during the final [la fameuse finale des poteaux carrés contre le Bayern Munich en mai 1976], but I also supported the Greens in other European countries. I remember attending the Greens matches in Eindhoven.“

In his cultural mission, Bernard Pivot finally allowed himself the right to love football and the Greens. In addition to being a man of letters, he was none other than a lover of good things. Football was his Proust madeleine, his treat between two readings; or that famous adrenaline shot necessary for inspiration. To read, to write, or to criticize.