Annie Ernaux (Lillebonne, 1940) yesterday won the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 "for the courage and clinical precision with which she reveals the roots, estrangement and collective limitations of personal memory", according to the famous phrase with which the jury Swedish justifies its decision every year.
Shortly after five in the afternoon, the French writer offered a press conference at the headquarters of her publishing house, Gallimard, on the Left Bank in Paris. She was wearing a dark blouse and jeans. The novelist did not disappoint the legion of national and foreign journalists who were waiting for her in the blue room, a noble space with a circular floor plan. Ernaux was very clear, humble and combative, an intellectual engagée in its purest form. She didn't dodge any questions. She was accompanied by the patron of the house, Antoine Gallimard. They have believed in her since in 1973 she sent them her first novel by mail.
"I feel something immense," said the Nobel winner to describe her state of mind, but immediately linked with a speech of commitment and responsibility. "I hope to continue writing," she repeated several times. “It is my responsibility to continue”, she insisted, and recalled that she has always conceived her work “from my condition as a woman”, very sensitive to “the secular domination” that the female gender has suffered and that – she warned – continues “from extremely different forms Some softer and some harder.
The author was willing to "continue a fight against injustices, whatever they may be, in relation to women or what I call the dominated." "My work is political, without a doubt," she admitted. For her, literature performs a social function and is "a means of knowledge." "It is true that now I feel a new responsibility," she confessed, referring to the newly obtained Nobel Prize.
Ernaux described herself as a daughter of World War II. Although she was barely aware of the conflict, it has always affected her because it has remained "in the deepest memory." "The desire for peace always encouraged me," she said. “It is not justifiable for men to kill other men,” she added.
They asked her about the women's revolt in Iran and the writer didn't hold her tongue. "I am in favor of Islam rebelling because it is an imposition," Ernaux said regarding her veil, although she defended the freedom to wear it, also in France. About the rise of the extreme right in Sweden and Italy, she acknowledged that it worries her “greatly”. "The extreme right, in history, has never been favorable to women," she recalled.
Ernaux was caught by the Nobel news in the kitchen. He found out on the radio. He doesn't know what he will do with the money because "I don't know how to spend on useless things." She does not know if President Emmanuel Macron called her to congratulate her – he did in a tweet – because she disconnected the phone. "Carrying the label" of Nobel imposes a bit on him, but his goal is to continue to be inspired "by the evolution of society and the passage of time."
Born into a family of proletarian origin, Ernaux has built a powerful body of work, influenced by sociology and without concessions to fiction –beyond changing some names–, which reflects a life marked by the great gaps of gender, language and class. Self-defined as “myself's ethnologist”, she made her debut with Empty Closets (1974), where she recounts the social rupture that going to university meant for her. She became known with her fourth work, El lugar (1983), a merciless portrait of her father who opts, as she herself said, “for a factual writing, I used my father's words, I didn't want to speak ”. That is the apparently cold, minimalist style that has characterized her the most, the same one that she used, for example, to portray the different faces of her mother, the year after her death, in Una mujer (1987) or, years later, in I haven't left my night (1997), where he tells about his Alzheimer's.
Her readers see her almost like a family member, since they have accompanied her throughout her books, helping in her parents' grocery store, rising in social class by getting married, growing older... They know the horrors of those who her father was capable (La vergüenza, 1997, in which he tries to kill his wife), they have been shaken by the scene of her clandestine abortion (The Event, 2000, whose film adaptation won the Golden Lion of Venice last year), and they have also followed her in her passions (in Pure passion, from 1992, and Perderse, from 2001, her secret relations with diplomats from the east; in The occupation, from 2002, we see her possessed by jealousy; in The use of the photo , 2005, sick with cancer, photographs scenes of daily life with her lover; in Memoria de chica, from 2016, she narrates her first time in a summer camp).
They have lamented their gray marriage (The frozen woman, 1991) and have seen, with it, parade the entire 20th century and part of the 21st, politics, songs, customs, technology (The years, 2008, a collective autobiography) ... In Look at the lights, love of mine (2014) we have even accompanied her on her trips –taking notes– to the Alcampo hypermarket. In January, the documentary film The super 8 years will be released, where Ernaux narrates her life through images recorded with a homemade camera.
Clearly on the left, he has supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon and, above all, the yellow vests. President Emmanuel Macron – so criticized for her – was chivalrous, as appropriate, and said that Ernaux is “the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of the freedom of women and of the forgotten of the century”.
