The French writer and editor Philippe Joyaux, known in the art world as Philippe Sollers, died this Saturday in Paris at the age of 86, leaving behind dozens of works such as “Paradis” (1981), “Femmes” (1983) and “La guerre du goût” (1994).
Considered one of the best-known literary figures in France over the last half century, Philippe Sollers, born on November 28, 1936 in Talence, near Bordeaux, into a bourgeois family, was a precocious writer.
His first work, “Une curieuse solitude” was published when he was 22 years old, and three years later, in 1961, he won the Médicis prize with the work “Le parc”.
The author, who escaped from going to war in Algeria in 1962, alleging schizophrenia, lived with a large part of the French intelligentsia of the second half of the 20th century.
Eugène Ionesco, Louis Aragon, Elsa Triolet, Jacques Lacan, Jean-Luc Godar and Roland Barthes were the companions of Philippe Sollers who cultivated a reputation as an iconoclast. The texts of the Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) marked him deeply.
The writer, who in his youth began a communist militancy, from which he later distanced himself, published most of his works in the emblematic Gallimard publishing house.
Married to the psychoanalyst and writer of Bulgarian origin Júlia Kristeva, with whom they have a child in common, he was active until his last days. His most recent work, published in Gallimard, was “Grail”, in 2022.
Source: TSF
