Quite simply, Goethe enjoined
"to make a masterpiece of one's life"
.
Joseph Kessel drew from his novels.
Each moment of an existence placed under the sign of intensity inspired him with a story, a story.
So much so that the borders were erased between the world and literature.
"
Living and writing, you can do both,"
he said.
The strength of his writings lies there, without a doubt, in this intertwining between reality and fiction.
Like a Saint-Exupéry or a Gary, Kessel is both a man of action and a writer.
He needed to live the adventures before writing them.
To feel the high winds or the African sun on your face, to breathe the dust kicked up by the hooves of Afghan horsemen, to love the land and women.
The reporter returned a thousand times to reality what the latter brought him.
He sublimated it.
“Things, settings and people: he gave them back to us as a painter rather than a photographer, living his investigations like novels and giving…
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