In keeping with a theme which emerged from my initial experiment with blogging, I thought I would nominate a portrait of French Nobel prize winning author J.M.G. (Jean-Marie Gustave) Le Clézio as the subject of my Flickr exercise.
Le Clézio won the Nobel prize for literature in 2008, something I was made aware of one rainy morning in Juan les Pins as I peered disappointedly through the window of the appealing, oddly shaped little library pictured below in an earlier blog post. Disappointedly because the library was closed, its opening hours in keeping with its modest footprint in the picturesque park close to the seafront.
In the dimly lit interior of the library there was evidence of a reverence for the literary tradition associated with the local region and indeed, Le Clézio was born in 1940 in the nearby city of Nice. Here he completed his secondary education and an undergraduate degree although he also studied English at Bristol University and grew up speaking both English and French. The library had featured his works in a compelling display which somehow added a whole new dimension to my appreciation of the place and its cultural history. I fished in my shoulder bag for a pen and copied down the name Le Clézio on the back of a docket from a local fruit shop, one of those odd things you do when you are travelling.
Yesterday I came across an English translation of one of Le Clézio’s novels, Wandering Star and am much inspired by a tribute on the back cover which reads “I raced home every night to read this exquisitely written story which feels more like poetry than prose.”
No comments:
Post a Comment