Speech By Emmanuel Macron

September 14^th Palais de l’Élysée

Version française

 

 

 

Madame Julia Kristeva—

On behalf of the French Republic, we raise you to the dignity of the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit.

 

Dear Julia Kristeva,

 

Your life could be summed up in one word: to translate. You have translated words that already existed within you, turned them into volumes, and helped so many others to find their own words. Through writing, reading, and reflection, you have made a fine art of translation

 

And for you, indeed, it all started with letters.

 

You were born in Silven, Bulgaria, and your childhood memories are colored by those unique celebrations of May 24^th, when the alphabet is paraded in the streets of your city. [1] A letter of the Cyrillic alphabet was pinned to your clothing. This was a call to write that was unrelated to any literature. And you even recalled having the feeling of becoming this letter. It was from the experience of this joyous celebration that you came to treasure a lesson that writers, artists, and lovers of letters then shouted in the streets: “Le verbe ne fait que s’éscrire en moi pour que le bien soit” [“The Word writes itself in me only so the good exists”]. [2] This saying remains with you, as with your intimate bond with words. [3] Already a sensitivity, an awareness that the misnaming of things is a serious matter. And so, between the spirituality of your father, an accountant with the church administration, and the rationalism of your mother, a biologist, you chose for yourself the Enlightenment, a French Enlightenment, passionately French. You attended L’alliance française, learned French, and you copied from Diderot’s Jacques the Fatalist or Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, to forget, from time to time, the violence that surrounded you. But you are no child of the nomenklatura, [4] and so you could not go to Moscow to pursue the course of studies in Astronomy that you dreamed of. And so, at the University of Sophia you turned to literature.

 

 

You were 24 when the Charles-de-Gaulle Scholarship brought you to France. You had five francs in your pocket, but [also] this love of letters, language, and words. It happened in Paris when you were reading the magazine Clarté in a tiny room that you came across a picture of one Philippe Sollers [1936-2023]. His literary vision interested you as much as his appearance, which struck you more as that of a footballer than a writer. And so, you went to meet him, and it was like a vision, or a confirmation, that you had already decided, without a doubt, that you would never again part ways.

 

         As a young intellectual you are poised to leave an impression on the world of ideas both in France and abroad. Nourished by poststructuralism, I struggled to say, you forged above all your own thought, a path, and in constructing this thought you made friendships with some of the biggest names in the French intellectual scene. Following your noteworthy research on the medieval novel, [5] it is with your doctoral thesis, Revolution in Poetic Language, [6] that you cross frontiers, where you theorize that which you will call “semiotics,” this part of language that precedes sense, a fascinating field of studies that will take you to question the nature of Giotto and Bellini’s paintings and the literature of [Mallarmé,] Artaud, Joyce, Céline and Proust. And from China to the United States, you became a key figure in contemporary thought.

 

You are situated at the intersection of several intellectual currents: structuralism, historical materialism, and psychoanalysis. From this confluence emerges overall a unique approach that allows you to help create, in France and abroad, this notion of intertextuality. Every text, you say, is constructed as a mosaic of quotations and an interlacing of words ‘already said’ and taken up anew. And speaking of the déja-dits, Roland Barthes—and you would later give his name to your research center— [7] said of you that you have this ability to displace the already said. [8] And how fitting, because your entire body of work is indeed a matter of displacement, of singularity, of otherness. [9] A sense of otherness that stems moreover from this feeling of being at once French, Bulgarian, and European, and you are among those who think of Europe in terms of language, convinced that writing and creation can serve, precisely, to unite us.

 

         Julia Kristeva, this ‘will to know,’ but also to transfer and disseminate enlightenment knowledge. Through your teaching, you have marked entire generations of students. Through your lectures on psychoanalysis, you have also established yourself as an intellectual authority for an entire generation. It is said in the United States that you are not only a star, but that during your stays in Washington or New York it was not uncommon for people to ring the doorbell asking to see mister and misses Kristeva. You have always shared. And books have sustained your life with Philippe, even the rooms of your homes are overflowing with books, nourishing this literary bond that has never left you. Then your son David, the joy of your life since 1974. Here again culture brightened your lives: Philippe made young David laugh as the family’s Molière, as Mozart’s music often filled the living room. Together you shared so many struggles and convictions.

 

You decided in 2003 to commit yourself to establishing, along with Charles Gardou [b. 1953], the Conseil National Handicap (CNH), to raise awareness, provide training, and share information about different forms of disability and their treatments. [10] You found yourself at a loss at times, confronted with the incomprehensible. And then it was David who found the words, Cartesian as he was, “But mom! I dream, therefore I am!” You continued to be there for your family, in the ‘service of letters,’ of thought, and until his last breath, at the end of The Second Life, alongside Philippe. [11] It was David who, in a moment of brilliance, at the event of his father’s passing, created this magnificent word so full of promise: démourir. In the breeze of the Isle of Ré near the section of the Cimetière d’Ars dedicated to British Airmen is where the love of your life rests, this second life, and it is yours too.

 

“I travel myself” [Je me voyage], you say. By your books and your lectures, and your dedication to your patients, you have undoubtedly turned your life into a fine art.

 

To this day you are steadfast to your loved ones, to the ‘service of letters,’ to thought, and to continuing your work that has always brought together languages, disciplines, and cultures, from Bulgarian to French, from psychoanalysis to literature, seeking what we share in common, but always assuming this great singularity—“to displace the already said.”

 

         And so, dear Julia, for all of these reasons, as well as those that I have not mentioned, I have the honor of elevating you to the rank of the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit.

 

Emmanuel Macron

(The spoken word shall prevail)

 

 

Translated by Ilya Merlin.