Valérie Pécresse held her first meeting for the presidential election this Sunday, February 13, at the Zenith in Paris. The opportunity for her to pay tribute to one of the great cultural figures of France: Molière.
“Yes, I want Molière in the Pantheon, said the Republican candidate, because for me he is the face of France which greets humanity with a big laugh. Molière is the French spirit. Yes, Molière at the Panthéon, and with him Sganarelle, Scapin and Célimène.
The debate concerning Molière’s enthronement in the Pantheon resurfaced recently, on the occasion of his 400th birthday. But the playwright cannot take his place alongside Voltaire, Jean Moulin or even Joséphine Baker. Indeed, as Bruno Roger-Petit, Emmanuel Macron’s “memory adviser”, explained to Liberation on January 12, “the Pantheon is a secular temple, child of the republican fatherland, itself engendered by the Enlightenment, so all the figures who are honored there are posterior to the Enlightenment and the revolution”.
This does not prevent many personalities from claiming the “pantheonization” of Jean-Baptiste Poquelin. Before Valérie Pécresse, another presidential candidate, Anne Hidalgo, expressed the wish, as did the actor Francis Huster, a great fan of the playwright.