Some authors seem immortal, others sink into oblivion. After a while, what’s left? In its monthly series Should we reread…?, The duty revisits one of these writers with the help of admirers and attentive observers. This week, place for the one who has accumulated functions, titles, honors, and pseudonyms! But who is the real Roman Kacew (1914-1980)? More than once, he changed his identity to hide his Russian and Jewish origins, or to fit in in France, a country his mother idolized. This also allowed him to ridicule the Parisian literary institution by winning the Goncourt twice: in 1952 for The roots of the sky under the name of Romain Gary and in 1975 for The life ahead under that of Émile Ajar.
“To love someone is to invent them,” repeated the author of Big hug, here Émile Ajar, a statement that his detractors believed was aimed at himself. Indeed, Charles de Gaulle’s unwavering ally continued to transform: aviator, diplomat, screenwriter, director, he was ready to do anything to satisfy his thirst for recognition. And others will say: to please his mother.
Some have also seen an element of fabrication in Romain Gary’s descriptions of Mina Owczyńska’s excessive love for her son, mentioned in The promise of dawn. It was nonetheless a powerful driving force in nourishing the ambitions of a child born in Vilnius, Lithuania, then exiled to Warsaw, Poland, finally ending up in Nice, at the age of 14. It was there, in 1921, that Roman Kacew would become Romain Gary. And many other variations later.
Ambassador and more, if favorable opportunities
“With maternal love, life makes you a promise at dawn that it never keeps. » This is how Romain Gary expresses it, in The promise of dawnthe weight of the devotion of a woman whom many considered blinded by this son whom she saw as ambassador – of France, no less -, war hero – decorated, certainly, but not up to the ambitions of the fervent Gaullist — and of course a writer.
Romain Gary will be a bit of all of this, with varying fortunes, a man with many careers, never going unnoticed, at the United Nations in New York, in Los Angeles, and especially in Paris. With his appearance as a great lord and his reputation as a seducer, he never failed to dazzle some and make others snicker. His determination to write, in French moreover, will surpass all his other successes.
“I do not tell stories against myself, but against the I […] », declared Romain Gary. From his first books, however, the novelist injects a lot of himself. We see his commitment to the Resistance (European education), his vision of colonialism (The roots of the skyconsidered the first novel with an environmentalist flavor), from America (white dog) or even his sentimental setbacks (Clair de femme, Beyond this limit your ticket is no longer valid), the author denies taking inspiration from the couple he formed with the American actress Jean Seberg (Breathless, Hello Sadness). And that’s without counting his other identities: Fosco Sinibaldi for The man with the dove and Shatan Bogat for Stephanie’s headsin 1974, the same year of publication as Big hug !
Have close to you The life ahead
Gary’s “passion” for pseudonyms also comes from an inner necessity, he who noticed a decline in popularity from the 1960s and who was tired of a recurring criticism: an academic style. By provocation, he invents a great subterfuge with a few people kept in secret, including Paul Pavlowitch, a second cousin, who “plays” at being Émile Ajar. The deception will allow him to conquer a new audience and address other themes, including the friendship between a Jewish woman who survived the Shoah and a young Arab in The life ahead. A true masterstroke, both literary and media.
This book has been attracting young readers for decades. The writer Sophie Bienvenu (This is not love, And at worst, we get marrieda) remembers the shock felt at his contact. “I was educated in France and the school curriculum there is very strong. Even though I always wrote and always read, I was a young punk who didn’t find herself in the classics like Émile Zola or Victor Hugo. At 14, a French teacher gave me The life ahead, and it was a revelation, as well as my gateway to oral writers. »
Even if this novel marked her trajectory as a novelist and pushed her to read all of Gary, she constantly returns to The promise of dawn, “fascinating example of the “romanticization” of his life”. Sophie Bienvenu considers that he perfectly masters “the art of mystification”, adding to the joke that “he must have been a difficult person to be around”!
In addition to being avid readers, the parents of actor, director and playwright Pascal Contamine evolved in the world of diplomacy and international cooperation. Admirers of Romain Gary, they transmitted this passion to their son, and the author was associated with his first artistic steps. More than 30 years ago, in a course on monologue at the National Theater School given by Julie Vincent, he launched into the interpretation of a few pages of Big hug. After another variation in 1995, Pascal Contamine signed a solo show presented a few times, in 2009 and 2012, inspired by the adventures of this solitary statistician sharing his daily life with a python.
“Romain Gary is the meeting between light and anguish,” says the man who also used pseudonyms (Tornado Ricci, Henry Scott) for his work as a playwright. “He is also an artist who perfectly embodied the concept of rebirth, because he was caught in a bubble crowded with prices, but which almost no one read anymore…” Then arrived Émile Ajar, and following him “other characters with a desire to change their condition, a thirst for the absolute and the dream of a better world,” affirms Pascal Contamine.
These ideals are echoed in all of his books, including white dog, which Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette brought to the screen in 2022 and which was released in France a few days ago. This time Gary evokes his years in Los Angeles as well as his married life with Jean Seberg, with at the center a dog trained to attack black people whom he seeks in some way to deprogram. Also a great reader of Romain Gary, the director reread white dog during the filming ofInsh’Allah (2012), at the suggestion of co-writer Valérie Beaugrand-Champagne, who saw thematic similarities between the two works, including these gaps between people from different cultures. And a fundamental question that resonates strongly today: can we take ownership of the fight of others when we are not the first ones concerned?
“This story is autobiographical, but with Gary, we can question certain aspects of his version,” says the woman who is also a writer (The woman who fled). His meeting with his son and that of Jean Seberg, Alexandre Diego Gary, necessary to obtain the rights, was decisive. “He lives as a recluse in Barcelona, without telephone or Internet,” emphasizes Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette. I was passing through Spain for the release of the translation of The woman who fled. I rang his doorbell unannounced, and we spent the afternoon talking. We realized that my grandmother [maternelle] had very probably campaigned alongside Jean Seberg [pour soutenir la cause des Black Panthers dans les années 1960]. »
It was an injured man that the filmmaker met. And how could it be otherwise after the tragic deaths of his mother (August 30, 1979) and his father (December 2, 1980)? “A few years ago, the FBI finally admitted that it had deliberately sought to smear Jean Seberg, but it doesn’t matter: he remains marked by a tragic family history,” notes the woman who published Forest woman in 2021.
This meeting thus colored the writing of the scenario. “ white dog evokes another pivotal moment in Gary’s life, but I wanted to get rid of the myth to get closer to the man, to his fragilities. While writing the script, I felt his gaze as much as that of Diego, who remembers this period very well. He asked me to take care of his mother; it also has more space in the film than in the book. »
In Life and death of Émile Ajar, Romain Gary concluded his confession by saying this: “I had a lot of fun, goodbye and thank you. » We can of course doubt it, but never the pleasure that it still provides to so many readers.