“She lived in the uncomfortable love of Guadeloupe, in the undisturbed attachment to France. She was from France in her own way,” declared Emmanuel Macron, Monday April 15, during the national tribute paid to the Guadeloupean writer Maryse Condé, who died on the night of April 1 to 2.
At the National Library of France, at the Richelieu site, the Head of State greeted a writer who “lived in the Republic in her own way, without denying her past of struggle, without completely denying what her destiny as a woman irreducibly carried republican hope. A beautiful child of the Republic, like the beautiful child of the migration of hearts overcoming the curse and the assignment.”
“Literature to the stomach”
The author of Ségou or La Vie sans fards, who died at the age of 90, was one of the great voices of French-speaking literature, exploring in her novels, her theater and her essays the history of Africa and its diaspora, the legacy of slavery and black identities. “She, Maryse Condé, who interrupted Bernard Pivot on the set of Apostrophes with a “can I protest?” of infinite revolt, of infinite malice, of infinite sweetness,” Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to him. “Maryse Condé did not write in French or in Creole, she wrote in Maryse Condé,” according to the president.
“Maryse Condé lived loving Guadeloupe with a bittersweet love. (…) Maryse Condé lived without giving anything away, without cheating, without trying to please, continuing to write and cook, literature in her stomach, from the height of her mischievous authority, her fierce humor, laughing at herself- even and dictating his sentences as one dictates recipes,” he added.
This national tribute brought together many members of the government, including the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, and the Minister Delegate for Overseas Territories, Marie Guévenoux, and personalities from culture, religions and overseas territories, such as the permanent secretary of the French Academy, Amin Maalouf, and the Guadeloupean deputy Christian Baptiste.
The president also agreed to rename the Guadeloupe – Pôle Caraibes des Abymes airport “Maryse-Condé airport”, the Elysée communicated to Agence France-Presse, confirming information from the Outremers360 site.
