Philippe Sollers


Philippe Sollers was a French writer, critic and editor.
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Early life

Sollers was born as Philippe Joyaux on 28 November 1936, in Talence, France. His family ran the local Société Joyaux Frères, the iron factory Recalt producing material for kitchens, metal constructions and machines for the aircraft manufacturer SNCASO under the German military administration in occupied France during World War II. His parents were Octave Joyaux and Marcelle Molinié. He moved to Paris in 1955 and studied at the Lycée privé Sainte-Geneviève of Versailles and at the ESSEC Business School.
In Portrait du Joueur, Sollers reflects on his upbringing as the child of a prosperous bourgeois family, weaving in the stories and legends surrounding his ancestry. Though he initially pursued studies in economics, preparing to assume management of his father’s factory, his early literary influences soon steered him in a different direction. Guiding him along this new path was his first mentor, the poet Francis Ponge, whose support and influence proved decisive.

Work

Following his first novel, A Strange Solitude, hailed by François Mauriac and Louis Aragon, Sollers began, with The Park the experiments in narrative form that would lead to Event and Nombres. Jacques Derrida analyzed these novels in his book Dissemination. Sollers then attempted to counter the high seriousness of Nombres in Lois, which featured greater stylistic interest through the use of wordplay and a less formal style. The direction taken by Lois was developed through the heightened rhythmic intensity of non-punctuated texts such as Paradis.
In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel along with writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet, which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoël, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor and Pleynet as editorial secretary.
Sollers was at the heart of the period of intellectual fervour in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. He contributed to the publication of critics and thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser, and Roland Barthes. Some of them were later described in his novel Femmes, alongside other figures of French intellectualism active before and after May 1968.
His writings and approach to language were examined and praised by French critic Roland Barthes in his book Writer Sollers.
Sollers's other novels include Women, Portrait du joueur, Le coeur absolu, Watteau in Venice, Studio, Passion fixe, and L'étoile des amants, which introduced a degree of realism to his fiction, in that they make more explicit use of plot, character, and thematic development. They offer the reader a fictional study of the society in which he or she lives by reinterpreting, among other things, the roles of politics, media, sex, religion, and the arts.

Controversies

In 1990, following a televised disagreement between Canadian novelist Denise Bombardier and the French writer Gabriel Matzneff over Matzneff's recently published memoir about his sexual relationships with young teenagers, a few days later, on the television channel France 3, Sollers referred to Bombardier as "a badly fucked bitch".

Personal life

Sollers married philosopher Julia Kristeva in 1967. He died on 5 May 2023, at the age of 86.

Essays

Agent secret, Mercure de France, 2021
  • "Complots" – Gallimard, 2016
  • "Portraits de femmes" – Flammarion, 2013
  • "Fugues" – Gallimard, 2012
  • "Discours Parfait" – Gallimard, 2010
  • "Vers le Paradis" – Desclée de Brouwer, 2010
  • "Guerres secrètes" – Carnets nord 2007
  • "Fleurs" – Hermann éditions 2006Dictionnaire amoureux de Venise, 2004
  • "Mystérieux Mozart" – Plon 2001
  • * "Mysterious Mozart" – University of Illinois Press, 2010
  • "Éloge de l'Infini" – Gallimard, 2001
  • "Francis Ponge" – Seghers éditions, 2001
  • "Francesca Woodman" – Scalo Publishers 1998
  • "Casanova l'admirable" – Plon 1998
  • * "Casanova the Irresistible" – University of Illinois Press, 2016
  • "La Guerre du Goût" – Gallimard, 1994
  • * "Liberté du XVIIIème" – Gallimard, 2002
  • "Picasso, le héros" – Le cercle d'art 1996
  • "Les passions de Francis Bacon" – Gallimard 1996
  • "Sade contre l'Être suprême" – Gallimard 1996
  • "Improvisations" – Gallimard, 1991
  • "De Kooning, vite" – La différence 1988
  • "Théorie des Exceptions" – Gallimard, 1985
  • "Sur le Matérialisme" – Seuil, 1974
  • "L'Écriture et l'Expérience des Limites" – Seuil, 1968
  • * Writing and the Experience of Limits – Columbia University Press, 1982
  • "Logiques" – Seuil, 1968
  • "L'Intermédiaire" – Seuil, 1963Le Défi – c.1958

Novels

Légende - Gallimard, 2021 Désir - Gallimard, 2020Le Nouveau - Gallimard, 2019Centre – Gallimard, 2018Beauté – Gallimard, 2017Mouvement – Gallimard, 2016L'École du Mystère – Gallimard, 2015Médium – Gallimard, 2014L'Éclaircie – Gallimard, 2012Trésor d'Amour – Gallimard, 2011Les Voyageurs du temps – Gallimard, 2009Un vrai roman, Mémoires – Plon 2007Une Vie Divine – Gallimard, 2006L'Étoile des Amants – Gallimard, 2002Passion Fixe – Gallimard, 2000Un amour américain – Mille et une nuits, 1999Studio – Gallimard, 1997Le cavalier du Louvre, Vivant Denon – Plon 1995Le Secret – Gallimard, 1993La Fête à Venise – Gallimard, 1991

Interviews

Contre-attaque – Grasset, 2016L'Évangile de Nietzsche – Cherche Midi, 2006Poker - Gallimard, 2005Voir écrire – Calmann-Levy, 2003La Divine Comédie – Desclée de Brouwer, 2000Le Rire de Rome – Gallimard, 1992Vision à New York – Grasset, 1981Entretiens avec Francis Ponge – Seuil, 1970

Translations in English

Casanova the Irresistible – University of Illinois Press, 2016H – Equus Press, 2015Mysterious Mozart – University of Illinois Press, 2010Writing and Seeing Architecture – University Of Minnesota Press, 2008Watteau in Venice – Scribner's, 1994Women – Columbia University Press, 1990Event – Red Dust, 1987The Park – Red Dust, 1986Writing and the Experience of Limits – Columbia University Press, 1983A Strange Solitude – Grove Press, 1959

Influences and tributes