“By crowning Daoud, Faye, Taïa and me, France sends a message”

It’s one of the big winners this awards season. And he lives in Toulon! Meeting with the Franco-Venezuelan author.

LE FIGARO. – Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française, Prix Femina, what is it like to receive two such prestigious prizes in quick succession?

MIGUEL BONNEFOY. – I am obviously very happy, very honored, even if the prizes have never been an outcome in my eyes. I write because I don’t know how to do anything else! But being rewarded is a way of filling the sails, of continuing to sail in the books. I consider my novels imperfect, I still have everything to write, everything to learn. These rewards give me that little push, encourage me to continue. The fact that the Academy has distinguished the novel by an author whose mother tongue is Spanish seems to me quite symbolic of a country that knows how to open up to others. As an ode to crossbreeding and the crossing of peoples, proof that borders must be porous. I participated in a debate with Kamel Daoud, Abdellah Taïa and Gaël Faye, three authors who had also won major prizes, and I realized how France was sending a beautiful message in this increasingly xenophobic world. Yes, these authors could humbly participate in French cultural heritage, nourish it and take nothing away from it.

Why did you wait so long to write this family story?

I knew that one day I would write it. I’ve been wearing it for thirty years. Throughout my childhood, I listened to my mother tell me about the life of my grandfather who was born into poverty. A mother who died in childbirth, a sailor father who has gone who knows where. A child who grows up with an illiterate woman in the depths of a slum. Nothing predestined him to do great things. Yet he became the rector of the largest university in Venezuela. As for my grandmother, the country’s first female obstetrician-gynecologist, she too is a legend. And it is an extraordinary love story between them. For my mother, this fame was overwhelming, suffocating. On her 18th birthday, she left, as I tell in the novel. For my part, I guess I had to find the right time to embark on this adventure. After publishing five novels, I finally felt ready.

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The Dream of the Jaguar, by Miguel Bonnefoy: the magician of Maracaibo

Everything is said in the first sentence of the novel: “On the third day of his life, Antonio Borjas Romero was abandoned on the steps of a church on a street that today bears his name.”

Paul Valéry said: “The gods, graciously, give you this first verse for nothing but it is up to you to shape the second, which must resonate with the other, and not be unworthy of its supernatural elder.” It’s so beautiful! The first sentence of my book is a prolepsis, an announcement, a classic in literature. Telling the reader: this is what’s going to happen, let me show you how my character got here. I liked the idea of ​​enclosing this hero in an oracular vision, giving him a mythical, epic scope. Show that you cannot escape your destiny. She came to me in a dream. Moreover, Borges often speaks of «dons» of the night. Dreams can bring to writing what hard work will never bring about.

All family stories in the world are subject to political asperities. In Venezuela, it’s the discovery of oil, dictatorships, corrupt governments

Should the lives of your heroes be intertwined with the history of Venezuela?

All family stories in the world are subject to political asperities. In Venezuela, it is the discovery of oil, dictatorships, corrupt governments. If I wanted to write a transformational character arc, it would have been absurd not to mention the political evolution of the country. But we had to be careful that it did not take up too much space. Otherwise, I would have published a book on the history of Venezuela, with dates, places, names, in short, a Wikipedia entry! And that’s not at all what interested me.

Do you think about your readers when writing your novels?

Of course! If I get bored writing, there’s a good chance people will get bored reading me. We write the stories we would like to read. The writer Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès, the temple of intelligence and culture, once asked me: “Would you buy your own novel?” He wasn’t expecting an answer, he just wanted me to think about this question alone. Since then, she hasn’t left me.

Your style is described as “flamboyant”, “abundant”, “baroque”: are you aware that your writing in no way resembles that which the French are used to reading?

Of course! The philosopher Lichtenberg said: “Strive not to be of your time.” It seems to me that there are two ways of not being so, either in a provocative way: I identify the codes of the moment and, out of bravado, I do precisely the opposite. The other option, mine, is to say to ourselves: I know that we read a certain type of literature today, but it’s another that I like. I wouldn’t know how to write on the bone. I would feel restricted, like stuck in a straitjacket. What is surprising is the astonishment that my books arouse: the baroque is nevertheless everywhere in our Mediterranean culture, enter the churches in Rome and see how busy they are, re-read Salammbowe don’t get any more baroque!

Also read
Legacy of Miguel Bonnefoy: one hundred years of uncertainty

Your novel contains so much information that it could be 2000 pages long!

You know Pascal’s sentence addressing a long letter to a friend: “Excuse me, I didn’t have time to make it shorter.” I tightened the text as much as possible, because I didn’t want a long family saga, nor to lose the reader, and for that there is only work, work and more work. Everything is very weighed and controlled. Even though there are many, each word is thought out and is not there by chance.

You have lived in Toulon for several years, why this city?

This is where the woman I consider my godmother, my wife’s grandmother, lives. We wanted to get closer to her. And then we wanted our daughters to grow up by the sea. Toulon is the best country in the world and the Mourillon district is a spectacular place, ideal for working: silence, isolation, a novelist’s dream. I wrote there The Jaguar’s Dream. And so many more books to come…

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