Spanish-Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa enters the French Academy today, the first time a writer who does not write in this language has entered the institution founded in 1635.
Vargas Llosa is given the traditional sword and academic suit at the age of 86.
The former Spanish ruler, Juan Carlos I, is expected to be invited by the author of La fiesta del chivo. This gives an unexpected twist to a very formal public ceremony that has little significance in French cultural life.
In 2016, Nobel laureate Vargas Llosa became the first foreigner to be included in Gallimard’s prestigious La Pléiade collection.
Exactly at the headquarters of this publishing house, the first act of joining the French Academy takes place on Wednesday, with each new member of the institution being handed a special sword.
Vargas Llosa is a member of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language, the institution responsible since 1994 for preserving language health. A very similar function is performed by the French Academy through a committee of elected members.
Vargas Llosa has been fluent in French since his years in Paris, where he arrived in 1959 and worked as a translator, teacher and journalist.
But unlike the foreign writers who preceded him at the Academy, such as the Argentinian Héctor Bianciotti (1930-2012), his language is Spanish. Bianciotti started in Spanish and switched to French. Another famous precedent is José María de Heredia, a poet born in Cuba in 1842 and elected French academic in 1894, a year after being naturalized.
Watch the language. Sorbonne University.
Vargas Llosa is a Peruvian-born writer and these years have been very formative. In Paris he discovers himself as a Latin American. And now he has that European side from Spain,” adds this expert.
The French Academy also welcomes anyone who declares a love for Molière’s language.
In 2004, Vargas Llosa published The Temptation of the Impossible, about one of his literary obsessions, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. About two years later, he published another article by one of his favorite authors, Gustave Flaubert, about Madame Bovary, The Perpetual Orgy (2006).
The main action of the ‘installation’, as it is called in academic parlance, now takes place in the headquarters of the Academy on the left bank of the Seine, opposite the Louvre. Dressed in a green embroidered suit and a brand new sword, Vargas Llosa must deliver a eulogy to his predecessor, Michel Serres, which will later be answered by another scholar.
Traditionally, a word is attributed to Vargas Llosa. It will be “xérès” (Spanish sherry). It will then occupy seat 18, which was occupied in the 19th century by the liberal thinker Alexis de Tocqueville.
Date. He is the last and most prolific representative of the golden belt of Latin American literature, the first writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature and thus enter the French Academy without ever writing in French. As a universal writer based on the complex Peruvian reality, he was part of the so-called Latin American “boom”, along with other greats such as the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez, the Argentine Julio Cortázar or the Mexican Carlos Fuentes and Juan Rulfo.
He was born on March 28, 1936 in Arequipa, in the south of Peru, in a middle-class family. He was raised by his mother and maternal grandparents in Cochabamba (Bolivia) and later in Peru.
The “immortals” who watch over the tongue
The French Academy, which Mario Vargas Llosa will join, was founded in the 17th century to ensure the correct use of language, although the authority of the ‘immortals’ who compose it has since declined.
It was founded in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, Louis XIII’s prime minister, who was appointed “head and protector” of the institution. In republican France, this task rests with the head of state.
Mission: “Give strict rules to our language and make it pure, eloquent and able to handle art and science.”
Currently, only 35 of the Academy’s 40 full members are “immortal”. The name was inspired by the slogan “À l’immortalité” (Towards immortality), commemorating the institution’s mission to preserve language.
The academics chosen by the absolute majority are scientists, priests, writers, historians or politicians. Among the most famous are Montesquieu (1727), Marivaux (1742), Voltaire (1746), Chateaubriand (1811), Victor Hugo (1841, after four nominations) and Louis Pasteur (1881). Emile Zola was rejected 25 times. And Marshal Pétain, elected unanimously in 1929, was expelled in 1945 after leading the Vichy regime in collaboration with Nazi Germany.
Since 2010, the only rule is under age 75. However, that did not stop Mario Vargas Llosa from being selected in 2021, despite being 85 years old. A total of ten women entered the facility. There are currently six in the academy.
Source: Ultimahora
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I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
