Jean-Pierre Pouxviel
Every year, the Society of Friends of Brantôme awards a historical biography prize to an author. This year, for its 18th edition, it was awarded, in the old municipal council room of the town hall, Sunday November 10, to Joachim Le Floch-Imad, for his work on Leo Tolstoy, entitled “Tolstoy, a philosophical life », and published by Éditions du Cerf.
Joachim Le Floch-Imad, who, at 25, is the youngest winner of the Brantôme Prize, is director of the Res Publica Foundation, a political science research institute, a foundation created by Jean-Pierre Chevènement. After studying political science and literature at the Sorbonne, he became director of the said institute and also taught at university.
“My book on Tolstoy is the culmination of all the reading of the writer's work, his novels of course, but also his essays and his notebooks which he filled over 63 years. I also worked on the testimonies of his relatives. This book is the culmination of a year of writing. In total, it took me four years to complete this work. »
Anne-Marie Cocula makes the connection with Brantôme
If the author subtitled his work, “A philosophical life”, it is quite simply because for him, it was “a practice of the self or therapeutic of the soul”. “I was very moved and very flattered to learn that I had this prize,” he confides. I admit that I didn't know it existed, but when I saw the list of previous recipients, I was really very impressed. Which made me understand the importance of this distinction. »
Jean-Pierre Pouxviel
Anne-Marie Cocula-Vaillières, in her congratulatory text, explains: “What an astonishing and formidable character! How can we find a qualifier to define it as it is complex, changing, contradictory and astonishing even in the journey of its last days. »
The hardest part remained finding correspondences between Tolstoy and Brantôme. “Between the two of them, however, there are points in common, including the fear of the flesh. Brantôme like Tolstoy had a military career, with an obvious interest in armaments. We also know that Brantôme would have liked to travel to the east of Europe, the opportunity was given to him in 1573 when the Duke of Anjou was elected king of Poland by the assembly of the Diet. But Brantôme was not chosen by the new king of Poland to accompany him: his loyalty as a courtier had proven insufficient in the eyes of this prince who was wary of this storyteller who was so talkative and too close to the two queens he was close to. distrusted: first his sister Marguerite de Valois, then his mother Catherine de Medici. »
Jean-Pierre Pouxviel
