Gilles Martin-Chauffier’s weekly column: on behalf of Rushdie, let’s reread his joyous novel which unleashed fundamentalist fury!
“This summer, I will re-read Proust. Among the ridiculous things about the leaders of the rope who govern this country, there is this mania for “re-reading”. On the beach, they don’t carry Stephen King like everyone else. They reconnect with the classics. As if a second reading offered them a particle. They must think that it’s a young man or young woman trained in the beautiful neighborhoods and subscribers to Wednesdays at the Comédie-Française. For years, this ennoblement was forbidden to me. Literary critic of the newspaper, I was asked to tackle the literary season. Roman work. Thank you editors who publish anything! “Dangerous Liaisons”, “Rameau’s Nephew”, La Fontaine’s Fables, Madame de Sévigné’s Letters and Christopher Isherwood’s “Passing Friend” must be the only books I have read more than four or five times. With “Robinson Crusoe”, of course, the novel of novels.
For this great first, on August 7, as soon as I set foot on Île-aux-Moines, I therefore chose one of my best memories: “The Charterhouse of Parma”. Ouch, ouch, ouch… How long! To say that at 16, I whistled at these monuments like Coke cans. We quickly feel that in 1840, the evenings never ended. Neither cinema nor Netflix… La Sanseverina was the Romy Schneider of the time. And the young Fabrice had the features of Delon in “The Cheetah”. I’m not talking about Count Mosca, respected like Mario Draghi and sealed in power like Merkel. The charm still works: the writing hasn’t aged a bit, nothing is “posed” or literary. Pure French romanticism: Mosca loves the Duchess who loves Fabrice who loves Clélia who marries another. Frankly, Proust didn’t invent anything when it comes to amorous salad. The river of each other’s affections meanders endlessly. Like Lucien de Rubempré in “Splendours and Miseries of Courtesans”, Fabrice never ceases to make mistakes from which those who love him come out – that is to say all the other characters. I had forgotten this exhausting stream of twists and turns. Holy memory! To the point of wondering about the functioning of my neurons. It didn’t get any better with the attack on Salman Rushdie.
“The Satanic Verses”: lively, funny, mischievous
At the time, in 1988, I had read “The Satanic Verses”. With dark ulterior motives. Although a former student of Saint-Jean de Passy from the age of 5 to 16, where I sometimes served mass, I never believed for a moment in God but I hate that people make fun of the clergy – what whether. The caricatures of “Charlie” against the Pope, for example, never made me laugh. So I opened the novel with the firm intention of making fun of it. Bad pick: it was lively, funny, mischievous. The black-hooded donkeys of Islamic virtue had made their tender grass of a few lines taken out of context. The explanation of the title occupied only two or three paragraphs telling that a handful of surahs would authorize other gods than Allah. Nothing offensive in tone, malicious in intent. A writer may well lend a bold thought to God, our eternal rival, the greatest best-selling author in history. Except for the boring genre, all literary styles are good.
Also read. In the archives of Match – When Salman Rushdie told his “life on death row”
A few weeks later, I had met Rushdie in London. His sarcastic eye and playful wisdom lent a unique elegance to his bitterness of a man condemned to turn in a promenade yard under close surveillance. Fear did not paralyze him. I only remember one sentence but I have never forgotten it: “Life is a tragedy made up of comedies. On the other hand, incredibly, I have no memory of the book. Since the attack, I have read ten summaries of it in the newspapers. A bit like “La chartreuse”, everything had evaporated. Anything but an atmosphere of free thought, amusement and intelligence. Everything that the stoup or minaret frogs cannot stand, which in their respective cathedrals only keep the gargoyles.
There is only one thing left to do: reread “The Satanic Verses”. To paraphrase “Le Cid”, it is “the duty dictated to us by the blood shed” by a madman for God.