Pascal Kignard is a famous contemporary French writer who received the Goncourt Prize for his work “Wandering Shadows” in 2002, an amazing combination of poetry, philosophical essay and novel.
A master of words and virtuoso, Kinyar was known as a scholar in the fields of art and culture, and his literary works represent a hybrid form of essay and novel, where life and death, fantasy and knowledge, thought and poetry are intertwined. You will learn about the most famous works of the master from this article.
About the writer
Pascal Kignar was born in 1948 in the city of Vermei. He spent his childhood and youth in Le Havre, where he studied ancient languages ​​and studied music. Until 1968 he was fond of philosophy, his teachers were E. Levinas and P. Rier. At the age of 21, after the publication of the essay, The Existence of a Mumble, exploring the identity of Sacher Masoch, he entered the committee of readers of the Gallimar publishing house.
Since 1988, Kinyar was the editor-in-chief, became the founder and leader of the Opera and Ballet Festival in Versailles, and six years later left official posts and devoted himself entirely to literature. Kinyar, like the heroes of his books, leads the life of a hermit. According to the writer, he decided not to care about fame and the outside world, but to focus on the inside.
Kinyar became known to the general public in 1991, when according to his novel "All Mornings of the World", the film of the same name was directed by A. Korno. Kinyar is the author of more than 25 books, 20 works on ancient literature and history. The result of his work in 2002 was a multi-volume epic about the life of Pascal Kignar himself, he intended to write it until the last days.
Life saga
"Wandering Shadows" is a fragmentary novel, where each passage is connected with others in a single whole in a poetic language. "Wandering Shadows" - the first book of the series "Last Kingdom", for which the author received the Goncourt Prize, it was not translated into Russian.
The life of a writer, thinker, philosopher is described here, and the author puts inner life at the forefront, admiring and wondering at it, he criticizes reality, as if he can avoid it, focuses attention on important details.
Pascal Kignar acquaints his readers with his creative workshop, with the writing technique, tells how he creates his works, shortening what is written, he receives a concentrate of erudition and an ideal syllable. The book consists of 55 chapters, the name of the writer is borrowed from the Confession of St. Augustine, who contrasts God with the earthly, as Kinyar’s inner versus outer.
"The Last Kingdom"
There is real confusion with the books of this cycle: Separately, "Private Life" came out, then "Rook Charon". In fact, these are the novels of one series "The Last Kingdom", consisting of nine books. Only two were published in Russian.
Rook Charon, the sixth novel in the series, was released in Russia in 2009. As it happens with Kinyar’s books, it’s simply impossible to pinpoint the genre — not an essay, not stories, not philosophical notes, but something made up of the first, second, and third, and episodes from the writer's personal life are embedded in the gaps of this original work.
Word beauty
The Secret Life is indicated by the author as the eighth volume of the Last Kingdom cycle, but was created very first - in 1998. Pascal Kignar’s book “Secret Life” can be called special, since he wrote it when he was hospitalized with a heart attack. He took a serious illness to his heart and, leaving the hospital, took up a work of love.
It is difficult to determine the genre of a book - it is an essay and a scientific treatise, united by common motives. Both the form and the logic of thought are constantly changing: then he describes the music teacher, in whom he was in love, her eyes and curls. That goes into long discussions about attraction, sex, marriage, lust, and how they differ from love.
Kinyar, as if an etymologist, is looking for the true meaning of words, he turns to the texts of the Bible, Apuleius, Stendhal, M. Tsvetaeva, trying to "clear" the word from everything "superficial" that is bewitching. In the books of Pascal Kignar, love is inexplicable, not public, but silent and sudden.
In his “processing”, warm as the sun, love is comparable to death, because “there is nothing more beautiful in the world than two lovers,” and no one looks at the world with such neglect. So love is also death. Quite a bewitching reading, and the writer is a juggler, easily managing with medieval Japan, modern England and ancient Rome; a decorator draping an idea terrifying in its power of influence with exquisite sentences and words. And that is wonderful.
Like music
Kinyar is a talented musician who plays excellently on the accordion, organ and piano. For compatriots, he rediscovered the beauty of the works of Charpentier, Lully, Couperin. The leitmotif of his work was music. The heroes of many of his books are musicians: "Villa Amalia", "All Mornings of the World", "Karius", "WĂĽrttemberg Salon". A number of his essays are devoted to music - "Hatred of music", "Love of music", "Speculative rhetoric".
Pascal Kignar’s novel , Villa Amalia, was published in 2006. The main character Anna, a pianist and composer, learns about her husband’s betrayal, and this becomes the last straw in a series of her disappointments. Anna changes her life drastically: she sells a car, an apartment, breaks a credit card and leaves for Ischia Island, moves to the Villa Amalia, where inspiration returns to her.
The music of wind
The hero of the WĂĽrttemberg Salon, which was published in 1986, the renowned musician refuses to give concerts and shuts himself in the old WĂĽrttemberg. Remembering the sorrows and pleasures of his life, he wanders in the labyrinth of those people who once loved him, and those whom he loved. Forgotten names, tastes, smells float up and a fragment of a children's song bursts into his memory a friend whom he lost, and friendship that is above love.
In "Karyus", published in 1979, the musician hero suffers from severe depression, his friends and wife take care of him, trying to restore his joy to life. Readers learn about everything that happens from the diary, which is one of the characters, and quietly invites you to interesting discussions, joint music-making, quarrels and reconciliations. Soon, the reader feels his own in this society, learning with them friendship, love and compassion.
Released in 1991, the novel "All Morning of the World" by Pascal Kignar tells of the musician Saint Colombo, who composed a play after his wife's death - a sad and beautiful thing, like an old cello, which he masterfully played. All mornings of the world begin with music that helps bear the severity of the day and the inevitability of the evening. This small book is saturated with music, the music that everyone listens to, but not everyone is destined to hear. This is the music of night and wind.
Roman books
Roman Pascal Kignar "Notes on the plates of the Aviation Aviation", published in 1984, is a diary of a noble Roman, with her experiences, deeds, concerns. The first part of the book tells about the life of the heroine and provides a brief overview of Roman events. Among all the cataclysms taking place around, a woman finds time and takes notes on the household, notes about meetings, accounting and deeply personal notes on the tablets.
Pascal Kignar introduces the reader to the ancient Roman rhetoric and author Guy Albucius in the novel Albucius, published in 1990. With his books, Guy excites the whole of Rome, and when he speaks, time ceases to exist. He likes obscene things and shocking details, but even about such base things he narrates talentedly. This work of Kinyar is too frank, but consonant with that time.
Seeing the light in 1994, the book of Pascal Kignar "Sex and Fear" - one of the most sensational. The author connects Roman history with modern, expresses the idea that the inventor of the cult of murder, Puritanism and melancholy is Rome.
Erotica, body, morality - what the Romans admired, underwent changes, but not under the influence of Christianity, but thanks to the emperor Augustus. Under him, marital and sexual relations were clothed in a new strict morality. And only fear of him forced the ancient Romans to suppress the animal instincts. “Sex and fear” are two reciprocal forces: creative and destructive.
Freedom and loneliness
"Terrace in Rome" (2000) - a novel about art, love, freedom. The author introduces the reader to Moom Graver, who was born in Paris and lived in the 17th century. Kinyar restrainedly, succinctly and simply tells the art of that time. He tells the love story of Moum and Nanni, which is replaced by loneliness. The mutilated Mom leaves, carries away desire and anger, the ugliness of his own face and unspent love. He writes alone engravings with scenes from everyday life in order to one day pass away from life on a terrace in Rome.
Pascal Kignar’s novel "The Chambord Stairs" was published in 1989. He talks about Edward Furfor, a lone toy collector and traveler. He is always haunted by the image of a girl with a black braid, which he once loved. He meets with women whose names he does not remember, disappointed in them and leaves. He is doomed to loneliness and finds no place for himself. But, having unraveled the secret that had haunted him all his life, Edward resigned himself - the craving for women had faded, I liked being alone. Everything is leaving. Diseases take loved ones, indifference takes the place of love, and a person who has not been able to find himself in life does not make anyone happy.
The book The American Occupation, published in 1994, tells of Patrick and his girlfriend Marie. Their childhood was in the post-war years. The dream of a beautiful life forced them to pick up empty cans from Coca-Cola, old catalogs near the fenced American base with a luxury supermarket, it became for them a symbol of freedom, the opportunity to escape from the backwoods, to escape from the grayness of everyday life and misunderstanding of parents.
Reader Reviews
Kinyar provokes his works on deep emotions and stormy emotional experiences. Here loneliness, hatred and hope, the clash of cultures and eras, the problems of fathers and children. Kinyar reveals to the reader a whole gamut of emotions - attraction, suffering, languor. Dynamic narratives are replaced by the writer's thoughts about the eternal - life, art, death, love.
Kinyar is very attentive to little things, to the thin fabric of human existence, barely visible through the thickness of centuries, that his artistic speculations and fantasies merge with history, are similar to archaeological finds. Even if they have nothing to do with reality, they remain in memory under the influence of emotions.