Dans La Bibliothèque des Nòs Présidents Ce qu'ils lisent et rilisent sous la direction d'Etienne de Montety is a beautiful and inspiring book by Editions Tallandier. Why reading a book about the french Presidents and what they love to reading?
For various reasons. Once an ex neighbor of us, now living close to Paris from decades said me that once he had worked, decades ago, in the library of a beloved french President for a restoration; just last year I watched on TV an interview with Emmanuell Macron and I found it amazing. Although young he is a real man of culture, and he sounded different from all the rest of politicians at the moment in Europe and other countries; he said in a portion of the interview in the section dedicated to him "Nous sommes un peuple littéraire et les Françaises et les Français, sourdement, attendent de leur président qu’il soit littéraire." "We are a literary country and french women and french men wait for a president with high notion of literature."
Plus: it's always wonderful discovering other people's favorite books. It says a lot of their interior and exterior world; least but not last a book like this one is precious because will give a lot of good book suggestions to its readers.
The truth is that apart being Presidents, french Presidents are people in love for reading; and all of them are characterized by special tastes.
Adolph Thierswas the first one posing close to a book.
Same did later de Gaulle; he loved to posing close to ancient books.
There is also to say that the patrimony of France in terms of literature is for sure great. De Montety in the foreword adds that a president surrounded by books represents the entire French and its literary patrimony.
De Gaulle was a general and his library is in a lovely countryside a bit distant from Paris.
Books that marked his existence were special ones. Six years in exile, he was a voracious readers of history books, but also literature, art, travels and geography.
De Gaulle started to develop with the time a technique in grade of let him read a book pretty quickly. He also had many memoirs of Richelieu, Poincaré, Auriol, Herriot, Eisenhower, Patton, Kennedy, Truman, Churchill, Spears, Littleton, Adenauer, but also books by André Gide.
Georges Pompidou developed pretty soon a voracious enthusiasm for reading. Verne, Dumas, Balzac, Proust, Stendhal but also greek and latin authors, poets, foreign literature. He read what he could find close to him. Victor Hugo but also Verlaine considered tremendously mysterious but also the poet of melancholy and regret. And then Pascal, Molière, Racine, Boileau, Bossuet, Diderot, Montesquieu; he also had the original edition of La Principesse de Clèves by Mme de Lafayette, dated 1678. He loved André Gide, Sartre, and many more.
Valéry Giscard d’Estaing is a spiritual person. You will discover that he is in love for authors like Tolstoi for the profoundity of the knowledge of the human soul, but also, thanks to a trip de Gaulle asked him of attending in China of Confucious's books and quotes. Substantially he reads these quotes everyday and he says he is attracted by the model of man portrayed by Confucius, because that man is a good man, a gentleman, someone interested in the problems of others. In love also for an author like Karen Blixen, Out of Africa, his final thoughts are for Europe. To the ex President, Europe should present to everyone life and work conditions satisfying, ending with these considerations: if Europe will be a hospitable continent, maintaining its cultural and spiritual roots, at the origin of its existence, it will become a continent different from all the other ones, with a touch of color and light that will become always more important in a Confucian Sky!
Francois Mitterand was a great book-lover. He could not live without books and he brought books with him wherever he went. He venerated Hugo and in particular Lamartine. He was in love for history and he appreciated Vladimir Jankélévitch, Daniel Cordier, David Rousset, Jean-Marcel Jeanneney, William Styron, Gabriel García Márquez, Julio Cortázar. Thinker like Bergson, Descartes were other favorite readings. His ideas, once he left the Presidency was to writing a book about Laurent de Médicis but he did not find the time.
You will discover the profound and immense love of Jacques Chirac for poetry, in particular, Japanese, chinese ones. He loved a special adoration for Philippe Jaccottet and his À la Lumière d’Hiver. Walt Whitman, adorable optimistic poet, was another favorite author of Chirac. Chirac loved the ethnic, and the exotic, and all that authors in grade of whispering him of distant places, other cultures, different sounds, light, tastes, colors.
Nicolas Sarkozy appreciates Flaubert, Balzac and he has an entire collection of La Pleiade.La Pleiade has a fascinating history; a project started in the early 1900s by Jacques Schiffrin and supported by Editions Gallimard.
Francois Hollande's reading are impregnated of freedom and rights. He has been touched by a book Les Lettres à Anne by Francoise Mitterand and then Victor Hugo and Zweig for understanding with this last author how the anti-semitism started to become seriously dangerous in Europe.
Emmanuell Macron read from his childhood. Theater in particular, once a teenager: Racine, Molière, Musset, Hugo. He also confesses he completed his literary formation thanks to the library of his father. a more intellectual one with books of philosophy, sociology, but also contemporary literature. Garcia Marquez marked Macron, like also Foucault, Derrida, Proust and Celine. Macron tells during the interview that he loves to keep two editions of the various books he reads; one more elegant and another one more informal for experiencing a different freedom. Reading is the best way, confess the President for living some moments of abstraction from the daily routine.
The authors of the various sections: Charles de Gaulle Frédérique Neau-Dufour, Georges Pompidou
Éric Roussel, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing Charles Jaigu, François Mitterrand Laure Adler, Jacques Chirac Christine Albanel, Nicolas Sarkozy Camille Pascal, François Hollande Cécile Amar, Emmanuel Macron Étienne de Montety.
Highly recommended.
I thank Editions Tallandier for the copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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