2024-01-22 11:07:12
A column published in Libération denounced the choice of Sylvain Tesson as sponsor of the event, believing that this contributes to the “normalization of the extreme right”. The writer received the support of several political figures, including that of the Minister of Culture.
The Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, supported on Sunday the choice of Sylvain Tesson as godfather of the Spring of Poets (March 9-25), after a forum which opposed it by accusing the writer of being a “reactionary icon “.
“Sylvain Tesson is one of those writers who have the desire to share with everyone the love of words. I am happy that the Spring of Poets celebrates throughout France this vision of poetry, open, free and popular,” declared the minister on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
“Trivialization of a reactionary ideology”
The writer Sylvain Tesson was chosen to be the sponsor of the Spring of Poets, an initiative supported by the Ministry of Culture, the National Book Center and the Ministry of Education. A collective of 1,200 actors from the world of culture opposed the choice of Sylvain Tesson as sponsor of this annual event in a column published Thursday January 18 in Release. Chloé Delaume, Douce Dibondo, Nancy Huston and even Blast editions denounced the choice of Sylvain Tesson, calling him a “reactionary icon”.
They criticized him in particular for having prefaced a novel by Jean Raspail, a monarchist and traditionalist Catholic writer, admired by identitarians.
“We warn of the fact that the appointment of Sylvain Tesson as godfather of the Spring of Poets 2024, far from being contingent, reinforces the trivialization and normalization of the extreme right in the political, cultural and overall spheres. of society”, we can read in the forum.
The signatories maintain that “the trivialization of a reactionary ideology embodied by Sylvain Tesson goes against the extreme vitality of poetry claimed by the Spring of Poets”.
Tesson supported by the Minister of Culture
Since the publication of this column, Sylvain Tesson has been able to count on numerous supports, on the right, but also on the left. The Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire thus denounced on Saturday “the sectarian exclusion of an adventurous pen”, providing his “total support for Sylvain Tesson, poet of our world”.
Other personalities came to the rescue of Sylvain Tesson, of Xavier Bertrandpresident of the Hauts-de-France region, to the leader of the LR Eric Ciotti Passing by Valérie Pécressepresident of the Île-de-France region.
An “idiot campaign”
Jack Lang, the creator of the Spring of Poets, for his part rebelled “with force and indignation against the imbecile campaign carried out against Sylvain Tesson”. “Such cretinism is an insult to poetry which, par excellence, is free and without borders,” added the former Minister of Culture.
In addition to politicians, Sylvain Tesson has also been defended by figures from the literary world, such as the writer Nicolas Mathieu, winner of the Goncourt Prize in 2018. “The after-sales service for position statements has become a full-time job and this time we devotes seems more and more empty. A little lazy”, he declared on Instagram.
“All my life I have admired the work of right-wing authors, reactors, even bastards, and never thought that it was necessary to align neither literature nor my tastes with my appetite for progress. (. ..) I believe that we must fear as much as evil certain means that we use to promote the advent of good,” he added.
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