Next Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., the Tarascon intercommunal library welcomes 2 authors for a meeting around history.
A man of passion
Jean-Claude Thiriet is well known in the Tarasconnais, where he worked from 1973 to 2001 at the Sabarthès college as a French and Latin teacher, before leading the Volleyball club at the MJC in Tarascon, then creating the TFVB (Tarascon Foix Volleyball).
Despite sport, his lifelong passion remains History. His doctoral thesis devoted to the Italian writer Curzio Malaparte also links literature and history. He also collaborates with various university journals, and supports Maria Pia de Paulis in the preparation of the L'Herne notebook dedicated to Curzio Malaparte.
At a very young age, Jean-Claude Thiriet became interested in the war of 14-18 through his great-uncle, Raymond Grizou, a Corbières winegrower who experienced the horror of combat as a stretcher bearer: “He spoke very little about it, but rather told fragments of life, the stories of soldiers or officers of his regiment whom he had encountered,” he says. An imperative emerges from these stories: we must save this precious memory, without sinking into pathos.
So, the literature lover chooses the surprising angle of poetry. Why this choice? Only she could translate the bits of humanity that the great-uncle told. “The balance of fiction and homage restores poetry to its most poignant dimension: a school of the gaze, of the heart and of the mind, recounting all the lessons of terrible and accepted hope,” says the former teacher. In the form of a diary, each page of which is a poem, through chiseled writing, without artifice, “Égrener ces jours” transcends this humanity at the heart of the unspeakable.
Denise Dejean in addition
In addition to this evocation of a world event, the Tarasconnais writer Denise Dejean will bring a touch of local history to this meeting, with her work “A forger, two continents”, the adventure of this young Banatois born in 1821 who will take his unique know-how as a forger from the Pays de Foix beyond the oceans.
At the end of the meeting, the authors will dedicate their works: “Égrener ces jours” by Jean-Claude Thiriet (€20, éditions Conference) and “Un forgeur, deux continents”, by Denise Dejean (24 €, éditions Élan Sud ).
