The “man who made millions of French people read” thanks to the promotional programs he presented for more than three decades was honored by the Goncourt Academy, which he presided from 2014 to 2019.
The French journalist and writer Bernard Pivot, known for the television programs “Apostrophes” and “Bouillon de Culture”, died this Monday at the age of 89 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, his daughter Cécile Pivot informed the Agence France Presse. (AFP). .
“The man who made millions of French people read”, thanks to the promotional programs he presented for more than three decades on the France 2 channel, writes the AFP, and who also presided over the Goncourt Academy, took one of these broadcasts to the Fronteira Palace , in Lisbon, in 1998, to dedicate it to Portuguese culture.
Born on May 5, 1935 in Lyon, into a family of small merchants, he was passionate about History and his language, French, with all its “little peculiarities,” as he often stated.
He studied Law in Lyon, Journalism in Paris, and made his debut as a journalist in the literary supplement of the newspaper Le Figaro, in 1958, which he managed, and which he moved to television years later, in 1973. , to present a literary magazine.
On January 10, 1975, he premiered his first successful program, under his own name, “Apostrophes”, which became a cult object on French television and, later, on emerging satellite networks in the 1980s.
Interviews with writers such as Alexandre Solzhenitsyne, Vladimir Nabokov, Marguerite Duras, Marguerite Yourcenar, Umberto Eco and Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and Pierre Bourdieu, exponents of letters and thought of the second half of the 20th century . , highlighted the importance of the program for almost two decades.
Its scope expanded to include politicians and their likes, such as French President François Mitterrand. In 1987, Pivot dared to clandestinely interview Lech Walesa in Poland, defying the pro-Soviet authorities in Warsaw.
In January 1991, “Apostrophes” gave way to “Bouillon de culture”, in which Bernard Pivot expanded the universe of books, films and art.
He was “Broth of culture” that Bernard Pivot brought to Lisbonduring Expo’98, to interview in the same broadcast the writer Lídia Jorge, the filmmaker Manoel de Oliveira and his actors Leonor Silveira and Diogo Dória, without forgetting the then Minister of Culture Manuel Maria Carrilho.
“Bouillon de culture” was last broadcast in June 2001. It was followed by “Double jeu”, between 2002 and 2005, when Pivot abandoned his usual presence on screens.
Member of the Goncourt Academy since 2004 and president from 2014 to 2019, His literary biography includes several essays and two novels, one more forgotten, published in 1959 (“L’Amour en vogue”), and another in 2012 (“Oui, mais quelle est la question?”).
This Monday, the Academy paid tribute to the first professional “non-writer” it co-opted, praising his “insatiable curiosity,” his “high moral standards,” as well as “his uncompromising independence” in relation to big publishers.
Under his presidency, writes the AFP citing the Goncourt Academy, the awards of 2006 (“Le Benevolent”, by Jonathan Littell) and 2010 (“The map and the territory”, by Michel Houellebecq) will go down in history.
Also this Monday, the French President Emmanuel Macron also remembered Bernard Pivotwhom he defined as “popular and demanding, loved by the French”, and who lived “with the French spirit of conversation, curiosity and ‘gourmandise’”.
Among Pivot’s works is also a “Dictionnaire amoureux du vin” (2006).
Source: Observadora
