The elegant author of “The Battle of Wagram,” and “the Noise of snow” died at the age of 96 years. The world of letters and of the great passages of life loses one of its flagship products.
Bernard Pivot has tweeted 31 July: “Death at 96 years of a great journalist and a great writer: Gilles Lapouge. I said, repeated that I would have liked to write with his grace, his humor, his culture is immense and original, his way of combining words that have never met. Modest, up from a July 31!” Bernard Pivot was a friend (they have created together, Open the quotation marks, 1973), and a great admirer of his elder brother, Gilles Lapouge. Like many of those who have encountered him during his long journey on earth… a Member of the jury of the prix des deux Magots, he was until recently in the discussions, always smiling. Was just at the turn of a phrase, could we hear that its legs do not wear a little more.
For our part, we had met with this intrepid traveler fourteen years ago, the time to appreciate the man with the smile, curious of everything, the eye sparkling in perpetual motion. He had just published The Wood lovers by Albin Michel. The opportunity to take in The Express, the portrait of this amazing writer, a journalist, who was certainly the longest corresponding permanent media of all time. Until his last breath, he sent them all the days of his ticket, “european” in the daily life of Sao Paulo, O Estado de Sao Paulo. A beautiful lesson in journalism! Back in 2006.
A life shaped by the accidents and misunderstandings
“I don’t like Switzerland !” Half-bantering, half-serious, Gilles Lapouge at the end of the meal. Michel Le Bris, Jacques Miller, Alain Dugrand, would they have inducted in the great family of travel writers as an impostor ? What good is it to have drifted between Sao Paulo and Belem do Para, dragged his gaiters in India and in Iceland, to sing praise absolute Helvetia ?
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An anecdote in a digression, Gilles Lapouge aggravates his case : “I have no sense of direction and get lost all the time. In addition, I am unable to speak a foreign language.” A storyteller, Gilles Lapouge and his 83 spring that weigh ten less ? No, just a lover of feet, nose, and fond of paradox. Normal, in the light of the life of this journalist-novelist-essayist-radio man shaped by the accidents and misunderstandings.
Raised in Oran, Algeria, the small Lapouge only dream of snow. Landed in Paris after the war to follow Science-po, he does not put foot in the rue Saint-Guillaume – “they all looked at Giscard.” Young scholar in unemployment, that is recommended by the historian Fernand Braudel to the post of economic journalist in Brazil. “I knew nothing of the economy and not a word of Portuguese”, fun Lapouge. Return to Paris three years later, when it will become, chandeliers throughout, the permanent correspondent in Europe for the daily life of Sao Paulo, O Estado de Sao Paulo.
fantasy erected in art
at the same time its articles, Lapouge tries his hand at poetry and the novel. A soldier in a rout, the first published, in 1963, by Castermann, the editor of Tintin ( !), is a flop. His second book, The Pirate, published by Balland “goes completely unnoticed.” Don’t panic ! Immarcescible, Lapouge perseveres. And with good reason. Equinoxiales, in 1977, wins attention. Will follow, among others, The Battle of Wagram (finalist of the Goncourt 1986), the Sound of snow (1996), in Need of mirages (1999), In strange countries (2003). Las ! Unlike some teen-agers “who believe themselves obliged to make an epic with their miseries”, the admirer of Giono and Knut Hansum is still not addicted to the autobiography.
Also, he writes his life, “obliquely”, as in this latest novel, The Wood of love, drew in part on her memories of the summer of small-happy child of the period between the two world wars. At the center of the action, professor M. Judrin, delectable stationary traveler, “lord of a piece of the terrestrial globe”, located a good mile from Worthy. Around him, a whole little world delicious, with, in the disorder, a priest, a philosopher, a tiny factor, a soldier laborer with a big heart, a defender of the paths passes through, a mysterious godfather recluse in his dark room… all lovers of words and the absurd. With them, you are imbued with a bygone era, we can enjoy the fantasy that was erected in art and we revel in the disappearing ink of the”old young” Lapouge.
The wizard of paradise lost
Gilles Lapouge has never finished with writing. In addition to her daily blogs sent to the other side of the world, he continued to publish. Thus, three years ago, we left it as a gift a very nice Atlas of paradise lost (Arthaud). Away of gods and heroes, men have never ceased to tinker of paradise. During one of these wanderings he has the secret, Gilles Lapouge the inventory, subjective, but beautiful and well-ordered, of these “little bits of Eden, olympes shrivelled, able to glow a few days or a few centuries to the horizon of our melancholia”. It is by the gardens that you enter in this atlas, Persian gardens, gardens of the Middle Ages, chinese gardens, refractory “to the straight line that attracts the demons”, or _ they have our préférence_, these amazing gardens of Inverewe, located at the 58th degree of North latitude, with the storms and the overcast sky, transfigured by Lord Osgood, heir in 1862 of the 850 hectares to say the least, inhospitable. Then come the utopias, translate the Abbey of Fontevraud, run by nuns, which follow one another, without firing a shot, a handful of brothels, a colony of anarchist brasilienne, a few famous phalanxes.
of course, there will also of the islands “without sin or sorrow”, and seven artificial paradise, in this work, illustrated by Karin Doering-Froger where the erudition of the dispute to the humour and the elegance of the poetry. And then, there’s this eighth paradise, Gilles Lapouge went on to join in this July 31, 2020. Mr P.
