At the age of 86, the founder of “Marianne” and “l'Événement du Thursday” bows out, after so many services rendered to journalism, to French life, to light music, to authentic Camembert, to politics and to friendship. Former editorial director of “New Obs” and ex-director of publication of “Libération”, the journalist Laurent Joffrin paid tribute to him in a text on his site LeJournal.info and which we reproduce here with his kind authorization .
During our last lunch, he was tired, furious without saying it at his weaknesses, his uncertain approach and his forced stays at the Granville thalassotherapy, and yet equal to himself, his mind intact and his curiosity without limits. .
As always, the conversation, which he carried out in a sparkling manner, interspersed with more or less good jokes which he punctuated with thunderous bursts of laughter while spilling his sauce on the tablecloth, had revolved around the most disparate subjects: the disappearance hors d'oeuvres, restaurant menus, which he bitterly deplored, Pelléas and Mélisande that he held in high esteem, even if operetta remained his great specialty, the fate of Vindex, the true “refractory Gaul” of the beginnings of the Roman Empire, who had wanted to overthrow Nero and whose epic he knew through heart (he had written hundreds of pages on the Gallic revolts against Rome), such neglected detail on Victor Hugo (he had written hundreds of pages on his conversion to the Republic), Macron, Hollande, Bayrou, Mélenchon of whom he carefully scrutinized, day after day, the facts and gestures, the future of Europe in the face of Trump and the scandalous scarcity of raw milk cheese (one of his Homeric battles), the future of Mariannehis creation, which he always cared about, and some personal considerations, which he distilled into little ironic or tender confidences.
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Jean-François was the perfect friend, certainly occupied with himself and his profuse ideas, but listening to others, attentive between two perorations, always lavish with suggestions, new ideas, baroque or subtle, inexhaustible producer of unusual views and deep reasoning. These regular lunches were a bath of youth offered by an octogenarian with an adolescent spirit, always funny and never futile, for whom current events were a stimulating manna, which he adapted according to a coherent and ductile thought at the same time. .
Basically, Jean-François Kahn embodied the quintessence of journalism, passionate about everything and curious about everything else, master Jacques of the media, brilliant on the radio, lively and caustic on television, inexhaustible in writing, always one step ahead. angle or an idea, drawing from its encyclopedic culture the why of the facts of the day, unbeatable on politics, popular gastronomy, song, history, philosophy and the geography of tables Parisians.
Methodical self-taught
He had taken a degree in history while being a postman or printing worker, spent a period in the Communist Party before thinking for himself, a free electron in Paris-Presse and to l’Expresscolumnist and globetrotter at Europe 1, reinventor of Literary News that he had taken twenty thousand copies to bring them to nearly one hundred thousand, founder of two newspapers which left their mark on the press, Thursday Event et Marianneslayer of the powerful and established glories, of unique thinking and cultural elitism, prosecutor of the left and the right, bête noire of the extreme right, author of more than forty books on politics, literature, philosophy, music or history, which he sprinkled with aphorisms and incongruous digressions, philosophical quotations and puns worthy of the Vermot Almanac.
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His eclecticism was looked down upon by a good part of intellectual circles, whom he knew by heart but rarely frequented, preferring the company of Burgundian peasants and Parisian bar owners. However, as a methodical autodidact, he knew more than academics on many subjects.
He professed “revolutionary centrism”, an oxymoron more founded than what was said, holding that societies, like living bodies, did not progress through sudden mutations, but through the permanent rearrangement of existing structures, a theory of his own social evolution, based on his scientific conversations with his brother Axel, and which he alternately opposed to the conservatives and the revolutionaries.
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At the age of 86, he bowed out, after so much service to journalism, civic life, light music, politics, authentic Camembert and friendship. His wife Rachel and his family mourn him with tears, and so do his friends. Farewell, Jean-François! Lunches will now be less exciting, evenings less laughing and newspapers less original. We will no longer hear your loud laughter, your ardent philippics and your prophetic comments. But we will still perceive the echo, to write an article or understand a situation, coming from the journalists' paradise where you are always agitated, in the place of honor.
