Sylvain Tesson, during the Cannes Film Festival, July 14, 2021. VALERY HACHE / AFP
The artistic director of the Spring of Poets, Sophie Nauleau, announced her resignation, which follows the controversy arising from the choice of the writer Sylvain Tesson as sponsor of the 2024 edition, in a press release sent Friday to Agence France- Press.
“The choice, which I fully accept, of Sylvain Tesson as the magical godfather of “La Grace” (theme of the 2024 edition, from March 9 to 25) has triggered a startling, dismaying, not to say monstrous cabal. In this context, no words being audible, I preferred to reserve mine for silence”she explains.
Sophie Nauleau refers to a column by 1,200 actors from the world of culture (poets, publishers, booksellers, librarians, etc.) published on January 18 in the daily Release and qualifying the 51-year-old travel writer, Prix Renaudot in 2019 for The Snow Pantherd’“reactionary icon” or even “leading figure of (the) “literary extreme right””.
Sylvain Tesson notably prefaced several novels by Jean Raspail, a monarchist and traditionalist Catholic writer, admired by identitarians, who died in 2020. The signatories, including the authors Baptiste Beaulieu and Chloé Delaume, believed that this was due “reinforce the trivialization and normalization of the extreme right in the political, cultural spheres, and in society as a whole”.
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Support from Rachida Dati
“To those who summon me to respond, I would remind you that I have devoted the last fifteen years, first on France Culture then to the Spring of Poets, to making the voices of yesterday’s poets heard, in all their diversity. today »adds Sophie Nauleau in the press release, announcing her “departure of artistic direction” of the event.
“For those, if there are any, who want to know who I am or what I think, all they have to do is listen, for example Goethe’s Oaka radio documentary made in the Buchenwald concentration camp »she said again.
Coordinated by the association of the same name, the Spring of Poets is supported by the Ministry of Culture, the National Book Center and the Ministry of Education. Last weekend, the Minister of Culture, Rachida Dati, supported the choice of Sylvain Tesson as godfather, believing that he “is one of those writers who have the desire to share the love of words with everyone”.
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