2023-11-07 13:50:13
This Tuesday, November 7, the jurors rewarded the author and filmmaker loyal to Editions de l’Iconoclaste. His abundant novel recounts the life, in reverse, of Michelangelo Vitaliani, against the backdrop of World Wars and fascist Italy.
It was the most predictable outcome of the Goncourt marathon. The other big favorite, Neige Sinno, having won the Femina yesterday with Triste Tigre (POL), it was a safe bet that Veiller sur elle by Jean-Baptiste Andrea would win, ahead of Sarah, Susanne and the writer of Eric Reinhardt (Gallimard) and Humus by Gaspard Koenig (Editions de l’observatoire). The Academy, which crowned last year, after bitter debates, the autobiographical Vivre vite by Brigitte Giraud (Flammarion), chose this time to award the prize to a work of pure imagination and abundant romance . It also rewards an independent publishing house, Iconoclast, created in 1997 by Sophie de Sivry who died in May. Published by l’Iconoclaste since his first novel, My Queen in 2017, Jean-Baptiste Andrea, 52, also a filmmaker, already received the Fnac novel prize at the end of August.
Secret reunion
Watching over her recounts the life, in reverse, of Michelangelo Vitaliani known as “Mimo”. In the fall of 1986, the 82-year-old man died in a monastery in Piedmont where he had spent his last forty years incognito. Small in stature, Mimo was born in France – which earned him the nickname “il Francese” for a long time – to Italian parents. After the death of his father during the Great War, his mother sent him home to the small Turin workshop of the sculptor Zio Alberto. Alcoholic, “bastard”, the master mistreats his apprentice, a precocious genius. The tandem moved to Pietra d’Alba in December 1917, a village dominated by the wealthy Orsini clan and the cultivation of orange trees. “We are not from the same social background, you understand. We cannot be friends, period,” said young Viola, the youngest of this family of marquises, to Mimo, who included an influential bishop brother and another, a supporter of Mussolini.
Love knows no classes. Between the aristocratic Viola and the modest Mimo an intense and platonic relationship will form which will last decades, made up of secret reunions in the cemetery of Pietra d’Alba where she listens to the dead. She slips him a first work on Fra Angelico from her father’s library, he will sculpt her a bear in marble for her birthday. Because a bear is also in the painting, and in the village, they claim that it is Viola, a bit of a witch. Jean-Baptiste Andrea has a penchant for childhood love stories, the most successful passages in Veiller sur elle. The continuation of the idyll bounces on the jolts of destiny. Intelligent, cultured and whimsical, Viola dreams of flying, taking off in a flying wing made with the help of her friends on the day of her engagement to escape the planned union. But the independence of a woman in the 1920s crashes against the wishes of her family, and Viola ends up marrying a rich and vulgar lawyer.
Recognized sculptor and virtuoso
This is not the only thread that this gluttonous novel follows, with the two world wars and a fascist Italy as a backdrop. After a stint in the Bizzaro circus, almost telephoned for this small character, Mimo will become a recognized and virtuoso sculptor, with well-stocked order books. His last work, a Pietà carved in marble, was removed from the Vatican to be relegated far from the gaze of men because of its disturbing attraction. It is not far from him, in the Piedmontese monastery, where dying, he parades his entire existence.
Watch over her by Jean-Baptiste Andrea. The Iconoclast, 580 pp., €22.50 (ebook: €15.99).
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