When elected to the French Academy, it is customary to praise the person you succeeded. Here, Amin Maalouf takes the opportunity to sketch four centuries of the history of this venerable institution, and at the same time, four centuries of the history of France.
We thus address historical facts from the 29th chair with its 18 previous holders. It is an exercise in which the author has excelled. We traverse this history not with dates but with anecdotes, small jabs, alas sometimes low blows.
Why this one rather than another? Political, philosophical rivalries? It’s much more subtle to become immortal. We also discover the origin of this academy which was sanctified by Richelieu from a group of friends.
Four centuries of history in eighteen chapters, eighteen personalities, some of whom, despite their immortality, are forgotten today, but as the poet could tell us, forgetting is not death.
A chair on the Seine, one might be tempted to say: on the stage, as this chair was above all the scene of a theater, the theater of life.
Thierry Jan, writer
