Claude Simon, the Inexhaustible Chaos of the World

Thu 21 May at 5pm
Films
Books & Ideas
On the works of Claude Simon

Join us for a special screening of Alain Fleischer’s documentary “Claude Simon, the Inexhaustible Chaos of the World”. It will be introduced by Dominique Viart, and preceded by a short introduction to “Claude Simon and life writing” by Alastair Duncan.

 

The French novelist Claude Simon, 1913 to 2005, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985. His novels from Le Tricheur (1945) to Le Tramway (2001) transpose his life in increasingly autobiographical form – a life marked by the death of his father at the front in 1914 and by his own experience of Spain in revolution in 1936 and as a cavalryman on horseback in May 1940. His novels reconstruct the past in vivid, sensuous, fragmentary detail and with deep sympathy for the victims of History.  Alastair Duncan, Honorary Senior Research Fellow of Stirling University, was responsible for the two-volume collected edition of Simon’s works in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

 

Alain Fleischer’s film is based on the exhibition he designed and curated which was held in the Centre Pompidou in 2013. Alain Fleischer is a noted film director, author, artist and photographer with many works to his credit and prizes from the Académie Française for his short stories and for his book on accents, L’accent Une langue fantôme.

 

Dominique Viart, professor emeritus of the University of Paris/Nanterre, is one of France’s foremost experts on contemporary French literature. His many books include La Littérature française au présent and Anthologie de la littérature française contemporaine. He initiated and organised the exhibition on which the film is based and founded the Association of Readers of Claude Simon which is organising this three-day event.

  • Language: In French
  • Price: £5 Full Price | Free for French Institute members
  • Duration: 2h

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Writer, filmmaker, artist and photographer. Lives in France and Italy.

Author of some sixty books (novels, short stories, essays). Director of some 350 films (feature films, experimental films, art documentaries).

On the initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a major retrospective of his works as an artist and photographer has toured various countries in Europe and America.

- Georges Dumézil Prize from the Académie Française for L'accent une langue fantôme.

-Grand Prix from the Académie Française for his short stories.

- Honorary Doctorate from the University of Quebec in Montreal.

- Honorary Doctorate from the University of Humanities in Vilnius, Lithuania.

On behalf of the Ministry of Culture, Alain Fleischer was the founder and director of Le Fresnoy - National Studio of Contemporary Arts.


A member of the Institut universitaire de France and professor emeritus at Paris Nanterre University, where he founded the Observatoire des écritures contemporaines françaises et francophones (Observatory of Contemporary French and Francophone Writing), Dominique Viart has been editor-in-chief of the Revue des Sciences Humaines since 2001. Co-founder of the Société d'études de la littérature française des XXe et XXIe siècles (Society for the Study of 20th and 21st Century French Literature), he has promoted research into contemporary literature (La Littérature française au présent, 2005; Anthologie de la littérature française contemporaine, 2013), identifying certain major forms (narratives of filiation, critical fiction, archaeological novels, etc.). He has published numerous studies on various contemporary writers (Claude Simon, Jacques Dupin, Julien Gracq, Robert Pinget, Pierre Michon, Annie Ernaux, François Bon, Eric Chevillard, Patrick Deville, Maylis de Kerangal, Joy Sorman, etc.).

In 2003, he created the Association des Lecteurs de Claude Simon (Association of Readers of Claude Simon), which he chaired until 2012. In 2013, he organised the exhibition ‘Claude Simon, l'inépuisable chaos du monde’ (Claude Simon, the inexhaustible chaos of the world) at the Centre Pompidou and published the proceedings of the three symposiums held on this occasion under the same title (Claude Simon. L'inépuisable chaos du monde, PU du Septentrion, 2024).


Alastair Duncan is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow of Stirling University. He has published widely on the authors of the so-called New Novel: Nathalie Sarraute, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet. His book, Claude Simon. Adventures in Words was published in hardback in 1994 and in paperback in 2001. He directed the two volumes of Claude Simon’s work in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade: Oeuvres, in collaboration with Jean Duffy in 2006 and Oeuvres II, with the help of Bérénice Bonhomme and David Zemmour in 2013. He was president of the Association of Readers of Claude Simon from 2012-2017. 

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