He is not a writer but a legend who enters the Pléiade on Thursday. Joseph "Jef" Kessel, the journalist-novelist, committed witness to the march of the world, backpacker and member of the French Academy, joins his friend Romain Gary at the Pantheon of Literature a few months apart.
Read also: Joseph Kessel, total portrait
Of the 80 or so novels and stories written by Joseph Kessel, the prestigious Gallimard collection has retained around 20, presented in two volumes, in which "the very essence of the novel is found in Kessel: adventure" , underlines Serge Linkès who edited this edition. In addition to the release of these two volumes, a richly illustrated album dedicated to the author of the Lion will be offered to buyers of three volumes of the Pléiade.
After [The Lion], if no one dared to doubt his status as a writer, he himself had the greatest difficulty writing, wondering how he could do better
Serge Linkès, lecturer at the University of La RochelleVolume 1 (1968 pages, 68 euros) opens with one of Kessel's first texts, L'Équipage (1923), the writer's first commercial success. Volume 2 (1808 pages, 67 euros) ends with the novel which definitively dedicated it, Les Cavaliers (1967). "After this last masterpiece, if no one dared to doubt his status as a writer, he himself had the greatest difficulty writing, wondering how he could do better" , notes Serge Linkès, master of conferences at the University of La Rochelle and specialist in the work of the novelist.
Admission to the French Academy of the writer Joseph Kessel in academic dress, February 6, 1964. Rene Saint Paul / Bridgeman images
One of the great merits of this edition is to juxtapose works pertaining, to varying degrees, to fiction, narrative, reportage or what Kessel liked to call "documentary" . Reading the texts of the writer, who died almost 41 years ago, one remains struck by their astonishing modernity. His books read, the characters that haunt them remain alive in our memory.
Read also: Joseph Kessel, great reporter, novelist, academician, died on July 23, 1979
From Belle de jour to The Army of Shadows , from Slave Markets to La passante du Sans-Souci via Mary of Cork , Kessel drew the fresco of a formidable and violent century. "Things, scenery and people: he gave them back to us as a painter rather than a photographer, living his investigations like novels and giving his reports the movement and the life that animate fiction" , summarizes Gilles Heuré who directed the album Kessel and which was already at work for the volume devoted to the author in the Quarto collection by Gallimard.
"Witness among men"
But Kessel's most beautiful novel may remain his very life. His adventurous life, often heroic, is one with his work. What a fate that of the child born in January 1898 in Argentina, of Russian Jewish parents. He spent his early childhood on the banks of the Urals before settling in France with his family at the age of 10. The rest is known. Brilliant studies, volunteered in 1916. He ended the aviator's war with the military medal and the war cross on his blue jacket. Paradoxically, he only obtained French nationality in 1922.
Meeting in the courtyard of the French Academy: the writers Joseph Kessel and his nephew Maurice Druon on October 18, 1973. Agip / Bridgeman Images
Because he intends to be a “witness among men” , he follows the drama of the Irish revolution, explores the depths of Berlin, flies on the front lines of the Aéropostale with Mermoz, sails with the slave traders of the Red Sea . In 1940, he naturally joined the Resistance and joined the Free French Forces of General de Gaulle. In May 1943, he composed with his nephew Maurice Druon (to music by Anna Marly) the lyrics of the Chant des Partisans , destined to become the rallying song of the Resistance. In tribute to his fighters, he publishes The Army of Shadows . He ended this war, captain of aviation and, again, decorated with the cross of war.
Read also: "Itinerary at dusk": in the footsteps of Joseph Kessel
At the Liberation, he resumed his activity as a great reporter, attended the birth of Israel, followed the Nuremberg trial, traveled to Africa, Burma, Afghanistan ... He collected adventures, wars, women, strong alcohols, soft drugs, novels, glory, honors and misfortunes ... François Mauriac, in his Notepad, sums up his life as follows: "He is one of those beings to whom all excess has been permitted, and first of all in the temerity of the soldier and the resistant, and who will have won the universe without having lost his soul ” .
