Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Médium par Philippe Sollers

2014; American Association of Teachers of French; Volume: 88; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tfr.2014.0091

2329-7131

William Cloonan,

Political and Social Issues

ses études, son travail et ses ambitions par amour pour Albert. Les deux autres types de texte suivent les faits et gestes de Mileva et d’Albert après l’internement de leur fils, avec des retours à l’époque où ils étaient mariés. L’histoire des Einstein se mêle à un arrière-fond historique et politique. On assiste ainsi à l’avènement du nazisme dans une manifestation opposant des membres du Rote Frontkämpferbund et des chemises brunes criant Sieg Heil sur Alexanderplatz, ou encore au travers de discours antisémites diffusés à la radio qu’Albert est en train d’écouter. Plus tard, quand Albert est en Amérique, le roman fait allusion au courage qu’il montrera pour soutenir la cause des Noirs et aider à la création de l’État juif. Il évoque également les ennuis qu’il a eus avec le FBI pendant le maccarthysme, alors que jamais il n’a eu le courage de revenir voir son fils! University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire Dominique S. Thévenin Sollers, Philippe. Médium.Paris: Gallimard, 2014. ISBN 978-2-07-013760-2. Pp.166. 17,50 a. A medium is a “personne susceptible, dans certaines circonstances, d’entrer en contact avec les esprits” (quatrième de couverture). The narrator, an aging French intellectual who spends weekends in Venice and is known to the locals as the professore, is apparently a medium, a man whose mind ventures backward in time, examines the present and occasionally imagines the future. The novel is divided into two uneven parts. The shorter describes the professore’s time in Venice, which he spends mostly in his apartment or the neighborhood café. He encounters Ada, who provides him with massages, and Loretta, a young waitress about whom he idly fantasizes. The larger section is more of an essay than fiction. The professore divides humanity into two vast categories. The larger is the world of folie, which consists of all those who practice political correctness. That includes television intellectuals, anti-smokers, individuals who support le marriage pour tous because it is fashionable, and academics who dig around in French intellectual history searching for evidence that will soil the reputation of a great man. The smaller category consists of adherents to contre-folie (the expression is from a manuscript of Saint-Simon discovered after his death), which here refers to the intense, albeit disorganized, resistance to all that constitutes contemporary folie. As these two categories are deployed in Médium, they are remarkably simplistic. Take the case of Voltaire.While he once was a“figure universelle”, celebrated for his opposition to injustice, he is currently“misogyne, homophobe [...] antisémite” (50). To read him today is to risk being branded, “pervers dangereux, fasciste et potentiellement terroriste” (51). There are two things wrong with the professore’s dichotomy. First, readers of Sollers would doubtless agree with the condemnation of political correctness, but also assume that it does not pertain to their enlightened selves. Political correctness has been subject to such opprobrium that today it is the 282 FRENCH REVIEW 88.2 Reviews 283 one thing that nobody will recognize in his/herself. Secondly, whatever today’s more nuanced judgments of someone like Voltaire, he will continue to be read. Sollers is expressing an anxiety about social and intellectual conformity, which has already become a cliché of the Left, and as such is frequently voiced by talking heads on radio and television. He is preaching to the choir, even if it is singing a slightly different tune. All this is not to say that Médium is simply a compendium of trendy Leftist pieties. Occasionally Sollers rises to the occasion and offers a judgment that restores one’s confidence in his ability to outrage and antagonize. His solution to the sexual harassment of women:“éduquer les hommes à l’homosexualité rapide”(81). Or his succinct critique of the plethora of literary publication in France:“on poublie” (109).Yet these moments, refreshing in their articulation and absence of cant, are infrequent in Médium. Saint-Simon is cited throughout, and he is the better writer. Florida State University William Cloonan Tuil, Karine. L’invention de nos vies. Paris: Grasset...