“Not only is it a voice and it’s a feather that inspired me but also helped, guided, consoled me”, confides Thursday, October 6 on franceinfo the singer Juliette Armanet after Annie Ernaux received the Nobel Prize for Literature. For the singer who wants “to open a bottle of champagne” there is “a before and after Annie Ernaux in the writing of the diary”.
franceinfo: Was it a voice and a pen that inspired you in your career as a singer, author and composer?
Juliet Armanet: Not only is it a voice and it’s a feather that inspired me but also helped, guided, consoled me and I don’t think I’m the only one to have this feeling. It was an aesthetic, ethical shock, a shock of femininity. She is an author who completely overwhelms me and who has transformed me in depth in my life as a woman, really.
Is it the language or the background that touched you?
They are both. I studied literature and I worked on the question of autobiography. I hadn’t read Annie Ernaux and when, all of a sudden, I read “The Years”, this way of telling that freedom is a form of illusion and that we are all ultimately dependent on circumstances. In this book, she never talks about herself, she talks about the world around her and she says that we are also the fruit of what exists around us. It’s a terrible observation for our equals because we all have the feeling of being free and at the same time I find it wonderful to always put our identities back into context. And then, this way of talking about oneself without talking about oneself, in a way that is both ruthless and incredibly romantic, it completely overwhelmed me, it’s a completely innovative gesture of writing. The way she tells herself and what she says about herself: her sexuality, abortion, her desires, her mother, her father, everything is so new and powerful that Annie Ernaux cannot be resisted. It’s a hurricane in a woman’s and a man’s life, I imagine.
Some said she invented the impersonal autobiography?
She tells how she came to writing. She searched for a long time. She censored herself for a long time. I think she also had a quest for form. That’s probably why it took a long time in his career. The story she wanted to tell had to be linked to a certain form of writing and this form is almost like a somewhat surrealist manifesto. There is a before and an after Annie Ernaux in the writing of the diary, it is obvious.
Regarding this Nobel Prize, do you think that all women who write can claim a piece of this award?
Maybe. In any case – for her – I’m glad it’s happening in her lifetime. We tend to give honors too late. It is a pantheon of literature. It is also a recognition for the readers. I don’t know if Annie Ernaux was looking for that, or what she feels about that, but I, as a reader, feel proud for her and for the fact of telling myself that this writing – which touched so many women – may be dubbed. I almost want to get out a bottle of champagne.