Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Death of the writer Michel Déon, the last of the “Hussars” – The Point

The writer and academician Michel Déon, the last representative of the “Hussars”, current literature of the 50s and 60s, died on Wednesday at the age of 97, leaving behind him a work imbued with nostalgia offhand.

“It is a great loss for the Academy. It was the memory and the conscience” said, disturbed, the permanent secretary of the Académie française Hélène Carrère d’encausse about the writer.

This since 1978 at the Academy, the man to the right was the oldest elected after Jean d’ormesson (elected in 1973).

“I feel sadness and sorrow. It was a friend,” said Jean d’ormesson of the AFP, while recalling that it had been “the guidelines are a little different:” He hated the general de Gaulle, I was gaullist”.

Living for more than thirty years in Ireland, Michel Déon died Wednesday of a pulmonary embolism in this country that he loved so much.

He is the author of over fifty books, mostly novels, including “The Ponies” and “The Taxi mauve”, adapted to film with Philippe Noiret and Charlotte Rampling. Novels and writings of a lightweight style and sparkling.

“Michel Déon was above all a stylist, with books that we were delighted with the sailors, left behind in parisian bistros, young women, romantic… His style was anything but boring, very lively, very fun, but very classic too. It was part of a great and old tradition of French style. His books for him to survive”, writes Jean d’ormesson.

the former president of The FN Jean-Marie Le Pen was one of the first political figures to react to his death. “Loving thoughts for the last load of the Hussar Michel Déon”, he wrote on his Twitter account.

Man of the left, the patron Pierre Bergé, has lauded him a “very good writer”. “In politics we were pretty much opposites but I respect him because he knew how to read”, he added.

“The visions of moor and Ireland, the young man green and his twenty years of age, (have) our recognition. Ever”, stressed the president of the MoDem François Bayrou.

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Former secretary of drafting The Action française of Charles Maurras, the name of Michel Déon was attached to the “Hussars”, current literary anti-gaullist and opposite to Sartre, whose leader was Roger Nimier. The great figures were Antoine Blondin and Jacques Laurent.

“They brought the youth (…). They have brought a breath of imagination and fantasy in the Academy,” stressed Ms Carrère d’encausse.

Michel Déon has received numerous awards as the Basis for “The Ponies” (1970), the grand prix du roman of the French Academy for “un Taxi mauve” (1973), the great european prize of literature for children’s albums for “Thomas and the infinite” (1976), the price of the Houses of the press for “I am writing to you from Italy” (1984) or the prix jean Giono for his entire body of work (1996).

Born August 4, 1919 in Paris, under the name of Edward Michel, in a family of military and civil servants, he is a student in Paris, Monaco and Nice, before returning in 1937 in the capital follow a course of law.

Mobilized until November 1942, it remains in the southern zone, working alongside Charles Maurras in Action française. He returned to Paris at the end of 1944 and worked in various newspapers.

He then leaves Paris to be a press correspondent in Switzerland and in Italy, a year in the United States, before returning to France in 1951. As early as 1958, this great traveler was going back to Portugal, and the swiss canton of Ticino, and finally Greece, Spetsaï, who inspired him “The balcony of Spetsaï” (1961). His whole life will then be punctuated by travel between Ireland, Greece and Paris. He settled later in Ireland.

“Michel Déon was a writer of inspiration fiction is nourished from this land of Ireland, that he loved so much (…). Despite his closeness to the ideas of Charles Maurras, he kept in literature a total freedom in its choice, surprising his peers and is exciting for the talent that it caught the attention of”, praised in a press release the minister of Culture Audrey Azoulay.

28/12/2016 21:17:14 – Paris (AFP) – © 2016 AFP

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