It is a form of visibility of the imprint of women in history, stuck to the corner of an envelope.
From this Monday, a stamp bearing the effigy of the resistant Communist, woman of letters and first winner of the Goncourt Prize, Elsa Triolet, will be available.
It will even be previewed this Saturday at
Maison Aragon-Triolet located in Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines (Yvelines), where Elsa Triolet lived her last years. Published in 495,000 copies, it was designed by graphic designer Ségolène Carron from a famous shot by photographer Gisèle Freund. If parity is still far from the side of the personalities of History in the spotlight, it is clear that a real dynamic is in place.
Elsa Triolet joins Olympe de Gouges, author of the Declaration of the Rights of Women and Citizens in 1791, the muse of the Municipality Louise Michel, Simone Veil, who carried the law decriminalizing abortion, or the philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir. “No postage stamp had been produced on Elsa Triolet, major author of the 20th century, 1st Goncourt Prize awarded to a woman, while a stamp appeared in 1991 on Louis Aragon, her companion. The Philatelic Programs Commission gave a favorable opinion in the summer of 2019 for the issue of a stamp on Elsa Triolet, ”we told La Poste. The health crisis has, in fact, pushed back the initiative which was to be launched in 2020, on the 50th anniversary of his disappearance.
But in fact, who chooses the lucky ones?
We don't know, but anyone can suggest a subject with a stamp.
All you have to do is send your idea to Phil @ poste *, a La Poste service that deals with philately, from design to sale.
The theme must have at least national, or even international, importance, and the choice will then be submitted to the Philatelic Programs Commission, a collegial consultative body of around twenty members, headed by the president of La Poste, Philippe Wahl.
The annual philatelic program is then set by order of the supervisory ministry, in this case the Minister of the Economy and Finance Bruno Le Maire.
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“The Philatelic Programs Commission is committed to defending parity in the choice of programs devoted to personalities and figures of history.
Over the past twenty years, more than a hundred women have illustrated the stamps of the philatelic program in this way, ”La Poste reminds us.
Anticommunism and misogyny converge to keep the writer in the shadows
And in view of her fate, the presence of Elsa Triolet in this less and less closed club of great women honored by La Poste does not suffer from any dispute. Born in the Russian language, the young architect became a novelist there. Spotted by the writer Maxime Gorki, she continued on this path until the love of a young surrealist named Aragon held her back on French soil. The time of novelistic creation in French and that of translation opens, a path constantly paced between his adopted language and his mother tongue. A woman of letters, Elsa Triolet is no less a woman of combat. Of Jewish and Russian origin in occupied France in the 1940s, the writer is fully committed to the Resistance. The Liberation brought him the Goncourt prize for “The first hitch costs two hundred francs”.This intriguing title is one of the enigmatic messages emitted by Radio Londres to announce the landing in Provence.
But the Cold War was not long in removing him from the tribunes of honor.
Anticommunism and misogyny converge to keep the writer in the shadows.
This does not prevent Elsa Triolet from initiating the “Battle of the Book” to support and develop popular reading, to encourage young poetic creation, and to face all oppressive regimes, including Stalinism.
* The request may be accompanied by a visual and must be sent to Phil @ poste
,
3/5 avenue Gallieni 94257 Gentilly Cedex, or, by Internet, to sav-phila.philaposte@laposte.fr