Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008)

'The Protocol' (original title 'Le procès-verbal'). JMG Le Clézio's first novel, for which he was awarded the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 1963.

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio , rarely LeClézio (born April 13, 1940 in Nice ), is a French - Mauritian writer . In 2008 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature .

Life and family background

Jean-Marie Le Clézio is the son of Raoul Le Clézio and Simone Le Clézio. (The parents are cousins ​​and have the same grandparents: Sir Eugène Le Clézio (1832–1915) and his wife Camille, née Accary (1835–1898)).

His family's roots point to France in Brittany and the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. His family's ancestors (François Alexis Le Clézio (1777-?) And his wife Marie Julienne (1779–1834), née Monple) emigrated to Mauritius in 1793 from Brittany to escape the turmoil of the revolution . The island was still under French rule at that time and later became English.

The following generations brought it to economic success. Le Clézio's great-great-grandfather (Alexis) Jules Eugène Le Clézio (1805-1893) became president of the Mauritius Commercial Bank , founded the newspaper Le Mauritien in 1833 and later became the owner of a sugar cane plantation.

Le Clézio has both French and Mauritian citizenship. He spent his childhood in Nice. He only met his father, a British tropical doctor in Nigeria and Cameroon, who had stayed there and separated from his family during the Second World War , when he was eight when he traveled to Africa with his mother and his brother, who was one year older than him. During the two-month voyage, he wrote his first stories in the cabin. Since then, traveling and writing have belonged together for him. After the family returned to Europe and finished school, he first studied English in London and Bristol while teaching French at the same time. He then studied philosophy and literature at the Collège littéraire universitaire in Nice and finished his studies in Aix-en-Provence in 1964 . A dissertation on Lautréamont's Les chants de Maldoror remained unfinished. In 1966/67 he worked as a development aid worker in Bangkok and Mexico as part of his military service. In 1983 he received his doctorate from the University of Perpignan with a thesis on the early history of Mexico. He has taught at the universities of Bangkok, Mexico City, Boston, Austin and Albuquerque, among others.

After his first marriage to Rosalie Piquemal (with whom he had a daughter Patricia) in 1961, he married Jémia Jean, originally from Morocco and Western Sahara , after the divorce in 1975 . The two daughters Alice and Anna come from this second marriage. Le Clézio declares that he is close to Islam and especially Sufism .

Le Clézio became known in 1963 as a 23-year-old with his first work Das Protokoll ( Procès-verbal ). Since then, over thirty works by Le Clézio have appeared, including short stories, novels, essays, short stories and two translations of Indian mythology, e. B. the Chilam Balam of the Maya .

Interview with Le Clézio in 2001

In an interview published in 2001 in “ Label France ”, the Paris-based literary scholar Tirthankar Chanda Le Clézio had a self-portrait drawn showing the development the writer has undergone since his first success as a 23-year-old outside the French literary scene .
If Le Clézio recognizes himself in the characterization of being open to mystical as well as philosophical and ecological questions, then it should be taken into account that he pursues much less ideas than that he wants to express himself and what he believes in. In contrast to literary engagement, as shown by Jean-Paul Sartre , Albert Camus , John Dos Passos or John Steinbeck , and in which a great deal of trust in human development and the power of writing was expressed, he sees contemporary literature more Despair prevail. In any case, literature is unsuitable for changing the world.
In his preferred genre of the novel , which eludes a clear classification, he can best respond to the multipolarity of the world. If it is not considered easy to classify in the French literary scene, then it has to do with the legacy of the encyclopedists , in which everything that does not meet their universal classification claim is marginalized in the exotic . Arthur Rimbaud or Victor Segalen are examples of this. Even contemporary writers from the southern hemisphere would only have a chance on the European book market if they met the European category of the “exotic”.
When he realized how much European rationalism had pushed the urban and technical development aspect, he turned to other civilizations in which other expressive qualities count more. For example, at the end of the 1960s, during a two-year stay in Mexico , where he was sent to the Institut français for Latin America instead of being drafted for military service, he was assigned to sort out booklets, and he was able to go on trips to Panama , where he met the Embera people have. Between 1970 and 1974 he stayed with them again. They would have impressed him because they lived without any legal or religious authority. Writing about them brought him the accusation that he had fallen into the myth of the “ noble savage ”. All he wanted to do was to illustrate the other criteria and values ​​by which they lived.
In his works - for example in Cœur Brûle et autres romances (2000) - he is concerned with comparing the European world, which is one of domesticity, interiors and schooling, with cultures that are turned towards the outside world Moment and where life takes place on the street. Occasions for writing these stories arose from mixed newspaper reports and were based on what actually happened.

The bourgeois novel of the 19th century accommodates the autobiographical, which he is taking more and more into account, in that it has evolved as a field of experimentation for diverse forms of expression, because every generation has rediscovered it and reshaped it by adding new elements to it introduced. In his writing it sometimes seems as if he wants to blur all genre boundaries. This also reflects the legacy of his favorite novelists Robert Louis Stevenson and James Joyce . Like VS Naipaul, they drew on the experiences of their first years of life. For him, whose family has lived in Mauritius for generations, a country where India , Africa and Europe meet, the experience of exile counts . As a person born in France, he had always had the impression that his home country was somewhere else and that one day he would get there. So he feels close to his Breton ancestor, who went to Mauritius to settle at the other end of the world. As a nation, France meant nothing to him, but the French language was perhaps his true home.

Awards

• 1963: Prix ​​Renaudot for The Protocol ( Procès-verbal )
• 1980: Prix ​​Paul-Morand of the Académie Française for Desert ( Désert ) (first prize winner)
• 2008: Stig Dagerman Prize
• 2008: Nobel Prize in Literature

The Nobel Prize was awarded to "the author of the awakening, the poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, the explorer of a humanity outside and below the ruling civilization".

nomination

• 1963: Prix ​​Goncourt for The Protocol ( Procès-verbal )

Works in German translation

• Alma. Novel. Translated by Uli Wittmann. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2020
• Storm. Two novels. Translated by Uli Wittmann. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2017 (Tempête, Gallimard 2014)
• The Yama Tree and Other Stories. Translated by Uli Wittmann. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-462-04560-4 .
• Song of hunger. Novel. Translated by Uli Wittmann, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-462-04136-1 .
• Pawana. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-462-04145-3 .
• Raga - a visit to an invisible continent. Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-88423-310-8 .
• The African . Hanser, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-446-20948-0 .
• Revolutions . Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2006, ISBN 978-3-462-03680-0 .
• Fish made of gold. ibid. 2003, ISBN 978-3-462-03219-2 .
• Onitsha . ibid. 2002, ISBN 978-3-462-02278-0 . Paperback: ISBN 978-3-442-72094-1 .
• A place far from the world. ibid. 1998, ISBN 978-3-462-02886-7 .
• Receding star. ibid. 1996, ISBN 978-3-462-02523-1 .
• The Mexican dream. List, Munich 1989, ISBN 978-3-471-78046-6 .
• Desert. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1989, ISBN 3-462-01999-6 .
  • Excerpt in: blue, white, red. France tells. Translated by Uli Wittmann. Ed. Olga Mannheimer. dtv, Munich 2017, ISBN 3-42326152-8 , pp. 293-300.
• Mondo. Stories. Translated by Rolf & Hedda Soellner. List, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-471-78042-4 . TB: Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-29593-9 . (Contains next to the cover story: Lullaby. The mountain of the living God. Water wheel. Of one who set out to see the sea. Hazaran. The people of heaven. The shepherds. )
• Tahar Ben Jelloun . Le Monde, September 6, 1985; German in: Verena von der Heyden-Rynsch (Ed.): Vive la littérature! Contemporary French literature. Hanser, Munich 1989, pp. 33, 35.
• The prospector. Translated by Rolf & Hedda Soellner. Cologne 1985, ISBN 978-3-462-01868-4 . Frequent new editions, also Volk & Welt, Berlin 1989. Most recently: 2008, ISBN 978-3-462-04115-6 .
• Nothing can be really beautiful. In: Akzente H. 2, April 1988, pp. 151-153.
• Letter from Albuquerque, ibid. Pp. 148–151.
• The fever. Piper, Munich 1971, ISBN 3-492-01901-3 .
• Terra amata. ibid. 1970.
• The flood. ibid. 1968.
• The protocol. ibid. 1965.

Works (original)

• Le Procès-verbal , Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1963, Prix ​​Renaudot
• Le Jour où Beaumont fit connaissance avec sa douleur , Mercure de France, L'écharpe d'Iris, Paris 1964, np
• La Fièvre , nouvelles, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1965, 237 pp.
• Le Déluge , Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1966, 288 pp.
• L'Extase matérielle , essai, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1967, 229 pp.
• Terra Amata , roman, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1967, 248 pp.
• Le Livre des fuites , roman, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1969, 290 pp.
• La Guerre , roman, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1970, 295 pp.
• Lullaby , Gallimard, 1970
• Haï , Skira, "Les Sentiers de la création", Genève 1971, 170 pp.
• Mydriase , illustrations de Vladimir Velickovic, Fata Morgana, Saint-Clément-la-Rivière, 1973
• Les Géants , roman, Gallimard, “Le Chemin”, Paris 1973, 320 pp.
• Voyages de l'autre côté , nouvelles, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1975, 308 pp.
• Les Prophéties du Chilam Balam , version et presentation de JMG Le Clézio, Gallimard, “Le Chemin”, Paris 1976, 201 pp.
• Vers les icebergs , Editions Fata Morgana, “Explorations”, Montpellier 1978, contains' Iniji by Henri Michaux
• Mondo et autres histoires , nouvelles, Gallimard, Paris, 1978, 278 p. (Cover story filmed by Tony Gatlif 1996, English version 1997, VHS 1999)
• L'Inconnu sur la Terre , essai, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1978, 325 pp.
• Voyage au pays des arbres , dessiné par Henri Galeron, Gallimard, "Enfantimages", Paris 1978, 27 pp.
• Désert , Roman, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1980, 410 pp.
• Trois Villes Saintes , Gallimard, Paris 1980, 81 p.
• La Ronde et autres faits divers , nouvelles, Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1982, 235 pp.
• Relation de Michoacan , version et presentation de JMG Le Clézio, Gallimard, “Tradition”, Paris, 1984, 315 p.-10 p. de pl.
• Le Chercheur d'or , Gallimard, Paris 1985, 332 pp.
• Voyage à Rodrigues , Gallimard, “Le Chemin”, Paris, 1986
• Le Rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue , Gallimard, "NRF Essais", Paris 1988, 248 pp.
• Printemps et autres seasons , Gallimard, "Le Chemin", Paris 1989, 203 pp.
• Sirandanes , Seghers, 1990, 93 pp.
• Onitsha: roman Gallimard, Paris 1991
• Étoile errante Gallimard, Paris 1992
• Pawana Gallimard, Paris 1992
• Diego et Frida Stock, «Échanges», Paris 1993, 237 p.-12 p. de pl.
• La Quarantaine roman, Gallimard, Paris 1995
• Poisson d'or roman, Gallimard, 1997
• Gens des nuage 1999, Gallimard, travel journal written with his wife Jemia on the occasion of a trip to the Sahara, with photos by Bruno Barbey
• La Fête chantée , essais, Gallimard, “Le Promeneur”, 1997
• Hasard (suivi d'Angoli Mala) romans, Gallimard, Paris 1999
• Cœur Brûle et autres romances , Gallimard, Paris 2000
• Révolutions , roman, Gallimard, Paris 2003
• L'Africain , Mercure de France, “Traits et portraits” Paris 2004
• Ourania , roman, Gallimard, “Collection Blanche”, Paris 2005
• Raga: Approche du continent invisible , Éditions du Seuil, “Peuples de l'eau”, Paris 2006
• Ballaciner , essai, Gallimard, 2007
• Ritournelle de la faim roman, Gallimard, “Collection Blanche” Paris 2008

literature

• Eva Kimminich: 'Laisser parler l'autre' - Aspects ethnographiques chez J.-MG Le Clézio. In: Series of publications by the French Center. Ed. V. Joseph Yurt. Nomos, Berlin / Baden-Baden 2004.
• Eva Kimminich: Border Crossers and In-Between Spaces: An essay on Lotman and Le Clézio's approaches to the non-Semiotic. In: Kodikas / Code. Ars Semeiotica. 2012. ISSN-Print 0171-0834 , pp. 453-469.
• Eva Kimminich: 'A la recherche du paradis perdu' ou l'au-delà des mots dans l'oeuvre de J.-MG Le Clézio. In: Creliana, Revue du Center de recherche sur l'Europe littéraire. (CREL), 1, Mulhouse 2001, pp. 22-32.
• Eva Kimminich: 'Entendre le monde'. Language and body in the work of Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. In this. u. a .: tongue and signs. Frankfurt am Main et al. 2000 (= world - body - language, perspectives of cultural forms of perception and representation, vol. 1): pp. 187–202.
• Bernd-Jürgen Kiltz: Transpersonal storytelling at JMG Le Clézio. Lang, Frankfurt 1977 ( European University Papers: Series 13, French Language and Literature, Vol. 50) At the same time Düsseldorf, Univ., Diss. Phil. ISBN 3-261-02278-7 .
• Sibylle Bieker: Le Clézio. In: Critical Lexicon for Contemporary Foreign Language Literature (KLfG). As of 1985. (Literature up to this date, especially also in French & English as well as reviews in German newspapers.)
• Monika Walter: Dream trip to the Tarahumaras? An imaginary encounter between Antonin Artaud and JMG le Clézio. In: Thomas Bremer u. a. (Ed.): Places of longing. Festschrift for the 60th birthday of Titus Heydenreich. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-86057-641-0 , pp. 373-391.
• Johannes Oswald: Traveling to the other side of consciousness. Research on the literary work of JMG Le Clézio. Lit, Münster 1985 (Series: Romance Studies, Vol. 1) Bibliography pp. 307–313. ISBN 3-88660-108-0 - TB: ISBN 3-88660-113-7 (Münster, Univ., Diss. Phil. 1983.)
• Gerda Zeltner-Neukomm: The I and the things. Experiments on Ponge , Cayrol , Robbe-Grillet , Le Clézio. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968 (Series: Essay, 10)
  • this. (under the name Zeltner): Filled with music and peace. To Le Clézio's new style. In: NZZ , 9./10. September 1978. (via L'Inconnu sur la Terre .)
• Hans-Jürgen Schmitt: Withdrawal to language. About the novels ... In: Neue Rundschau , 80, 1969; Pp. 344-354.
• Rita Schober: From the real world in poetry. Essays on the theory and practice of realism in French literature. Aufbau-Verlag, 1970, pp. 277-323.
• Christa Bevernis: On the image of people in contemporary French novels . Michel Tournier , JMG Le Clézio, Georges Perec . Spellings and ways of seeing. In: Weimar Contributions. Journal for literary studies, aesthetics and cultural theory, volume 31, issue 10. ibid. 1985. (pp. 1589-1613) ISSN  0043-2199 .
• Ingrid Schwamborn: JMG Le Clézio. In: Wolf-Dieter Lange (Ed.): French literature of the present in single representations (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 398). Kröner, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-520-39801-X , pp. 428-445.
• Astrid Arriens: JMG Le Clézio as the narrator of modern myths. Diss. Phil. Univ. Kiel 1992.
• Adolf Blümel: Literary Theory and Its Realization. About the novels of… Salzburg, Univ., Diss. Phil. 1980
  • ders .: J.-M.-G. Le Clézio's world of ideas in his novels and their artistic realization. Salzburg Romanistic Writings, 1982.
  • ders .: "Faire de l'art en voulant faire de la science." On Le Clézio: "La Fièvre". In: Die Neueren Sprachen, 68. pp. 438–449. 1969.
  • ders .: Now it's time to flee backwards. The theme of escape at Le Clézio. Die Neueren Sprachen, 22. pp. 149–159. 1973.
• Brigitta Coenen-Mennemeier: Child and Cosmos. JMG Le Clézio as a storyteller. In: Die Neueren Sprachen, 83, Issue 2, April 1984, pp. 122-145.
• Anka Greiner: The theme of the “fuite” in JMG Le Clézio's early novels. Master's thesis, Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel 1988.
• Horst Bienek : Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio: The Protocol. In: Neue Rundschau, Vol. 76: Heft 4, 1965, pp. 698-700.

Web links

Commons : Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio  in the German Digital Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio at perlentaucher.de
• J. M. G. Le Clézio in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Genealogical information on the Le Clézio family
• Information about the ancestors of Le Clézio
• On the motif of the sunrise in Mondo as a mythologist (departure, birth)
• in French: 2 hymns to true freedom, photo Le Clézios
• in Franz., Fredrik Westlund 2006, last accessed February 7, 2009 . In detail about various aspects of the writing of Le Cl. - numerous notes
  • [2] ders .: Bibliography Le Clezios (incl. Articles in compilations etc.) until 2003, last accessed on February 7, 2009
  • [3] Bibliogr. about Le Clézio, from various languages, until 2003

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On Le Clézio's ancestors ( Memento of the original from January 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  
2. ↑ Joseph Hanimann: The hunter of lost dreams. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , October 10, 2008, No. 237, p. 37. - With this first voyage, his novel Onitsha begins in 1991 .
3. ↑ Françoise Dubor: JMG Le Clézio. In: Yale French Studies , No. 75, 1988, pp. 209-210.
4. ↑ See biographical information on the Nobel Prize award .
5. ↑ Le Clézio, le Maroc et l'islam - Festival Etonnants voyageurs - Littérature - La Vie. Accessed April 12, 2020 (Fri-FR). 
6. ↑ Le Clézio provides information about himself as an author (accessed on July 11, 2010)
7. ↑ Sveriges Radio  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. June 4, 2008.  
8. ↑ Press release of the Nobel Foundation (PDF; 23 kB), October 9, 2008.
9. ↑ Contains: Tempête and Une femme sans identité .
10. ↑ First edition with wrong ISBN.
11. ↑ first in: Le Monde , April 1985. (on the suppression of so-called primitive cultures by "civilization")
12. ↑ on writing, cf. ibid. conversation with Pierre Maury, pp. 160–163.
13. ↑ [1]
14. ↑ Chapter "Tixcacal" in German in: Akzente (magazine) H. 2, April 1988, pp. 133-143.
15. ↑ therein: "Orlamonde." German in accents, as above, pp. 153–159.
16. ↑ on the creation of "The Goldsucher", on the trail of his grandfather. German extract in Akzente 1988, see above on 1980, pp. 143–148.