At 77, the “armchair 37” of the French Academy is one of the few French people who whisper potential winners each year to the Nobel committee. He’s not shouting it from the rooftops. Because, as much for the Nobel Peace Prize, everyone can launch their ideas, as much for literature, you have to wait until you are asked. And that can make people jealous.
>> Awarded the Nobel for Literature, Annie Ernaux highlighted in bookstores: “It’s an opportunity to discover her work”
Depending on the year, this pope of medieval literature may or may not respond to letters from the Nobel Committee. He suggested Yves Bonnefoy, without success. He rather had flair – he doesn’t dare speak of influence – when in 2016, he proposed the name that won the 2017 prize: it was Kazuo Ichiguro, the British, of Japanese origin. “I had taken care of the letter”, he said. This year, he is not quite sure of having answered, tired of pleading for a colleague from the Academy whose name he does not want to give. But he would not have chosen Annie Ernaux, and he says it without jargon.
How do you end up teaching medieval literature and blowing names on the Nobel committee? For him, everything comes from his parents, married on the benches of the Sorbonne, just before the Second World War. The father, normalien, had done a thesis on the equivalent of the songs of gesture in Germany, any son of Alsatian peasants non-French-speaking that he was. This officer father, taken prisoner, refusing to be released because he would have been sent back to Alsace, in German territory: unimaginable with a wife – the mother of Michel Zink – half German Jew.
Michel Zink was born three days before the armistice in Issy les Moulineaux, on May 5, 1945. And we pinch ourselves there again, hearing him, the academician, tell the rest: “My parents always told me that I was 3 weeks premature. When I grew up, I did the math: I realized that my parents conceived me in the Morvan the day they learned about the Liberation of Paris. We could finally have children again!”
He spent his childhood in Lyon, and following in the footsteps of his two older sisters, he entered Normale Sup. No choice ! In classical letters, he indeed fears to be “skinny” in contemporary literature. In high school, he had read a little book on the troubadours of Languedoc which had “delighted”. That won’t stop her from reading to her three children the entire Looking for lost time by Marcel Proust! All have become scientists, but all love books.
After his aggregation, Michel Zink teaches at the Sorbonne, in Tunis during his cooperation, he gives conferences all over the world, all in French, “my english is terrible”, he confesses. He collects prizes: Doctor honoris causa from the Universities of Sheffield, Bucharest, Beijing, foreign member of the Academy in the United States or even at the Royal Academy of Letters in Sweden, etc.
Contrary to what one might think, this Swedish distinction would have nothing to do with the fact that the Nobel Committee requests it. In his memory, the first contact dates back to his entry into the College de France: nearly 30 years ago, well before the French Academy as well. The official rules are pretty obscure. We don’t even know how many there are. The only archives available are those of 50 years ago: 13 French people solicited in 1970, about thirty the year before.
A few years ago, Michel Zink also worked on the radio at France Inter, to write a chronicle of medieval literature! Henceforth his life is regulated by the Academies. This Friday afternoon, at 3:30 p.m., he was at the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, for a “secret session” 30 minutes followed by a “public”, with communication of Egyptology. It is in fact a whole life dedicated to the book since he also sits on all the commissions for awarding prizes for history, literature, etc. At 77, the medievalist still writes, but less. He is currently finishing a small work taken from his last courses at the Collège de France, which had as their theme: “talking to simple people a medieval literary tune”. An entire program !