Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel Prize for Literature 2010 is the first to enter the French Academy this Thursday, February 9, without ever having written directly in French.
The 86-year-old Peruvian-Spanish novelist Mario Vargas Llosa was elected by his peers in November 2021. As tradition dictates, he must deliver a speech in which he praises his predecessor. In this case, in chair 18, it is the philosopher Michel Serres (1930-2019).
The speech was written with the help of the novelist’s French translator, Albert Bensoussan. The writer showed that he was not afraid of controversy by inviting the former King of Spain Juan Carlos to Paris on this occasion. The ex-sovereign has lived in exile since 2020 in the United Arab Emirates. In his country, his popularity collapsed after a series of scandals, including a complaint of harassment from a former mistress, Corinna Larsen, revelations about his lavish lifestyle and an elephant hunt in Botswana.
Almost unanimous
Vargas Llosa’s candidacy for the French Academy had been the subject of special care. Not only did he write in Spanish, but he was ten years over the age limit. But the result was almost a plebiscite: 18 votes for him, only one for a rival, a blank and two draws. However, of the three elections which took place subsequently at the French Academy, only one allowed the entry of a “Immortal“, the professor at the Collège de France Antoine Compagnon, while the other two were unsuccessful for lack of an absolute majority for a candidate.
The perpetual secretary of the Academy Hélène Carrère d’Encausse said that she had only to congratulate herself on welcoming this world-renowned writer. “He is very interested. He always asks for things to be sent to him, he’s on the website, he comments to us all the time. It fascinates him“, she told AFP in February 2022. Mr. Vargas Llosa had the inestimable advantage of his Nobel Prize. The Academy had not welcomed a laureate of this award since the one awarded in 1952 to François Mauriac (member from 1933 to 1970).
Controversial positions
Mario Vargas Llosa is controversial in Latin America for his right-wing positions, in a region where many governments are on the left. The author of The Goat Party is a member of three linguistic academies, having been elected to the Peruvian Academy of the Language in 1977, and to the Royal Spanish Academy in 1994.
Other foreigners preceded him at the French Academy. The first was an American, Julien Green in 1971, who never wanted to become French. Dany Laferrière, elected in 2013, is Canadian-Haitian. The Academy, an institution responsible since 1635 for defending the French language and writing a dictionary, has 40 seats. Five remain to be filled.
Despite its difficulties in attracting prestigious candidates, as well as women, it has not lowered its requirements when electing those who will put on the green coat. Because the academicians remain so, with some exceptions, until their death. They are therefore looking for pleasant comrades and personalities who will make a lasting contribution to the influence of the body.
“One cannot congratulate the Academy too much for not being, like so many other constituted bodies, absolutely hostile to superiority and for not counting only imbeciles.“, quipped the academician Jean Dutourd in an essay republished in January, The Academy by one of the 40.