MARC FUMAROLI
AN))
PHILIPPE SOLLERS
73
LE
DEBAT:
Before fighting Communism with Maoism, you had an ex–
tended f1irtation with the French Communist Party, if I'm not mistaken.
ps:
Absolutely, even if "f1irtation" is not the appropriate word. The idea,
which turned out to be mistaken, was to use the channels of inf1uence in
the university and elsewhere in service of what we felt was essential, which
had nothing to do with the politics in question. There was a certain cyn–
icism in this plan, I admit, and I can be faulted for that. It was a way of
using the available channels.
LE
DEBAT:
A
great marketing success!
PS: There were no natural allies to be found in French universities before
1968. French society has changed a lot since then. The danger I perceive
today is not the same, but it is no less the confirmation of the same glob–
al phenomenon that must be analyzed in itself: the rise of the technical.
There is no contradiction for me between previous totalitarian phenome–
na and the contemporary, supposedly liberal market that is meant to
increase literacy and reading but actually results in illiteracy and the reign
of a lateral mafia. If I hadn't been involved in such a revolt back then, I
think I would be much less worried by the situation today than I am.
MF: Between the first and the second Sollers, aside from the talent, there
is another point of continuity which fascinates me. It's the way in which,
previously in
Tel
que!,
now in
Le
Monde,
you brandish Sade like a banner.
If Mallarme is a sublime poet, whom his disciples followed with reserva–
tions, Sade is a feudal and obsessive writer whose works I wouldn't wish
on any nation's body of literary classics. For he is certainly the most
extreme point of sterili ty and oversatiety in the exhausted literature of the
Enlightenment. To use Sade as a f1ag for literary reconquest is simply to
extend a bi t further the desert, the drought, the hysteria.
PS: I disagree with you completely. I think Sade is a great novelist, with
the force of his imagination, the extraordinary construction of his books,
the number of things you learn - just think of Italy in
Juliette.
It's also a
great account of the Terror. What I would like to show, with my interest
in the classics, is that today you can read them in relation to one another.
I don't think it's irrelevant that Sade can be read at the same time as
Chateaubriand, or Voltaire wi th Bossuet. The kind of literary history in
which we've lived for a long time has two characteristics. First, it opposes
two camps - a constant in French literature - Voltaire against Rousseau,
Bossuet against Fenelon, Racine against Corneille, Sartre against Camus.
Second, it has a system of exclusion. We build these brutally exclusive
pantheons. In your desire to exclude Sade there is a certain intolerance in
