Joy and gratitude – nothing less, and even more. Because the program devoted by Geneviève Brisac (Prix Femina in 1996 for Week-end de Chasse à la Mère, Ed. de L’Olivier) to Christiane Rochefort is particularly well written. Because the actress Marie Matheron makes her work so well heard (Les Petits enfants du siècle; Stances à Sophie). And because Cédric Aussir signs, once again, a remarkable achievement.
First some “basic information”, as Geneviève Brisac puts it with her lovely malice, so much does one feel that it’s less Christiane Rochefort’s life that interests her than her work, her style, her rhythm, what she says (and that it shouldn’t) and how.
But since we have to, here it is: Christiane Rochefort was born on July 17, 1917, in Paris. Father: telephone operator. Mother: Postal employee. Very quickly, to survive his childhood, he will need an imaginary life. Very quickly, to write, he will have to divorce (1953). Five years later, it is The Rest of the warrior (Grasset, prize of the New Wave 1958). She talks about love, sex, and it bothers. Those who reigned over the critics of the time called his literature “filthy”, “gynecological” – François Mauriac in the lead.
Christiane Rochefort is amused, but the fate of women, homosexuals and the colonized and, more broadly still, the voiceless and the marginalized has not finished occupying her. Much like fate does to children – a reference to the resilience that is its own. As Geneviève Brisac recalls: “It took him more than sixty years and thousands of pages to finally talk about it. This will be La Porte du fond, “precursory book, tense, ruthless for everyone. A book that has the violence and humor of King Kong Théorie, by Virginie Despentes. Who has the violence and the courage of L’Inceste, by Christine Angot, and her Voyage dans l’Est”.
forgotten
Christiane Rochefort says there the influence of this incestuous father; this mother who sees nothing. It says it all, above all, about the violence, blackmail, humiliation, bad faith and destruction at work. The book won the Prix Médicis. We are then in 1988.
Ten years later, she died in her home in the south of France. And then: nothing. Forgotten, Christiane Rochefort. Worse, his books, which say so well “the cruelty of injustice, the stupidity of patriarchy, violence against children, women and the elderly too”, have become unavailable.
Geneviève Brisac offers an explanation: “The 1990s and the 2000s were conformist years, where social success took the place of the horizon, where materialistic individualism took the place of morality, and where the word “feminism” was banished. “And to form the hope that it will be rediscovered.
Especially since – and Geneviève Brisac is right to insist – Christiane Rochefort not only has a lot to tell us, but she tells it to us with a poetic talent, a beautiful insolence and a fierce stimulating humor. While waiting for the reissue of his works, get back on the show. Hear his voice. His nerve and his words. And to think that we are lucky to have such beautiful programs available and free of charge (public service obliges). So beautiful, and so essential, too.
