“once you’ve had in your arms, kissed, caressed, possessed a boy of 13 years, a girl of 15, everything else will seem bland, heavy, tasteless”. In the seventies and eighties, the French writer Gabriel Matzneff detailed in his books, his sexual preferences for “under 16 years”, as is entitled one of his essays, 1974 —Les Moins de seize ans, re-released in 2005— and was walking by the studios to talk about them, with the smiles accomplices of the presenters and the audience. No one laughs anymore. The surge of Me Too has also affected the world of French literature. The trigger: the story crude of one of those “girls”, Vanessa Springora
In Le Consentement (consent), the current editor of paris, 47-year-old tells what then not scandalized to almost no one —Matzneff was never tried or his books, in question— and calls it for what it is: pedophilia. Although only one will go on sale on 2 January, in France it is spoken already of the Me Too of the French lyrics, which has made the country to review its past, not exactly glorious or too far, in this matter.
“At the age of 14, it is not normal for a man of 50 will wait for the output of class (…) not find you in his bed, with his penis in the mouth, at the time of the snack,” writes Springora about his relationship with Matzneff. She was 13 years old when, in the mid-1980s, he met Matzneff in a working dinner of his mother, who was also in the publishing world. Shortly after, soon after the age of 14, he fell “in love” with that writer that you ensured that I felt the need “urgent” to be with her. But it was not love and she ends up realising that it lies at a “collector” of young lovers, very young, although it has taken him 30 years to assimilate it and to report it.
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“I Was the victim of a triple predation, sexual, literary and physical,” said Springora in the weekly L Obs. “Behind the appearances smooth as a man of letters, he hides a predator concealed by a part of the literary world”, according to his publisher, Grasset. Matzneff has also responded in L Obs, calling the work of “hostile, malicious, defamatory and intended to sink” up to their reputation.
These days there has been viralizado the interview with the writer in 1990 in Apostrophes, the literary program of excellence for French television. The famous journalist Bernard Pivot asks, colloquially, by what has been “specialized in schoolgirls and little girls”. “I prefer that in my life there are people that still has not been hardened (…). A girl very, very young, it is rather gentle,” he answers, Matzneff. Two guests will laugh, like the public. Only plant face the canadian author Denise Bombardier, who calls him a “wretch”. “What I don’t understand is that in this country the literature, in quotation marks, serve as an alibi to this kind of confidences (…). The old gentlemen will attract young children with chocolates. Mr. Matzneff, he draws you with his reputation”, he denounced. Which ended up vilified in France was a Bombardier, not Matzneff.
‘Le Consentement’ account of what 30 years ago was tolerated: the pedophilia
“Le Consentement is a work that interrogates society. Forces to overcome the times until those seventies and eighties when the literary field, and some in the media praised the dandy parisian without questioning the consequences of their sexual attractions”, consider Le Monde on what is already considered the controversy of the rentrée literary 2020. A time, also recalled France Info, when “calls for the decriminalization of sex with minors are signed even by the greatest intellectuals (Aragon, Barthes, Sartre)”.
“In the seventies and eighties, literature was above the moral; today, the moral is ahead of the literature. Morally, it is a step forward. We are more or less the product of intellectual and moral of a country and, above all, of an era”, has justified the journalist Pivot on Twitter. “The supposed talent of child molesters and other rapists is never an excuse,” he replied quickly, the secretary of State for Equality, Marlène Schiappa. “Where is the pedophilia in the plan of morality, is that it really has not understood anything. Again,” match the feminist movement NousToutes.
“I Was a victim of sexual predation, literary and physical,” says the author
how Much has changed in France? There have been writers or journalists, such as the former literary critic of Le Monde, Josyane Savigneau, who have returned to defend Matzneff against what they consider a new “witch hunt”. Despite the Government’s promises, that he wanted to fix it in 15 years, the law against sexual violence, 2018 and does not set a minimum age of consent. When I Too started one hundred personalities in French as Catherine Deneuve defended a controversial stand on the “right to intrude” of men. And despite the new accusations of abuse against Polanski, her latest movie, J Accuse (The officer and the spy), is a public success in France.
however, Le Consentement, a title that evokes the key question of whether one can speak of consent in relationships so unbalanced, he could move things. The minister of Culture, Franck Riester, has warned that “literature is not a guarantee of impunity”, and has announced that it will review a financial aid that you receive Matzneff is intended for writers that are sick or in financial trouble. “Matzneff has made advocacy of pedophilia in his writings. We can interrogate the opportunity to keep these books available,” said for his part the secretary of State for the protection of children, Adrien Taquet, who wants to analyze if they can activate the justice, despite the prescription of the facts.
Springora, which ensures that he began to write his book before I Too, do not want to be censured books Matzneff. “Mark an era. But what is the book Les Moins de seize ans tolerable today? I think that the best response is to contextualize their texts with, at least, a notice that remember that the facts described are deplorable,” he says in L Obs. Even so, she adds, “I hope to contribute a small stone to the building that we are building around the issues of domination and consent, always linked to the notion of power.”
