Catherine Hermary-Vieille: We all have something Lebanese in us

Born in 1943 in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, it is in Charlottesville, in the State of Virginia in the United States, that this novelist and biographer currently resides with her husband, their two children and their dog. In 1981, she won the Prix Femina for her first novel, Le Grand Vizir de la nuit (Gallimard) inspired by the tale La Fin de Giafar et des Barmakides des Mille et Une Nuits. Since then, Catherine Hermary-Vieille has continued to alternate essentially historical biographies and novels with the same success. In 1984, she won the Georges-Dupau Prize, a literary award administered by the French Academy, for all of her work, which today has nearly thirty titles.

While on a mission in a Lebanon then in the midst of civil war to produce a report on the Lebanese people, she discovered a people who cultivate the joy of living. Men and women who kept their doors and their hearts open despite an unbearable daily life. In love with the country of Cedar as one falls in love with a man, her attachment to this country continues to grow so much so that she decides one day to print in her flesh and in her heart a little of this land. She then adopted Yasmine-Victoire, just three weeks old, who then left with a loving mother. From her round trips to this country that she cherishes will be born great and beautiful friendships. Today, she shares her life between France and the United States, and is releasing her next novel in September.

In what environment did you grow up? Did you have a childhood conducive to writing?

I am the fifth of six siblings. I grew up in a family very focused on writing and reading. My father was very literate, and culture occupied a very important place in our daily lives. At the time, women didn't publish, but I had two aunts who wrote a lot for themselves. From a Champagne family, we have remained very attached to the land, to the traditions and to the memory of an old provincial and cultivated France, far from that of today, completely in disarray and we have kept a house of somewhat mysterious family where we meet for the holidays. It was there, in the tranquility of the countryside, that I devoted my time to cycling and reading. We weren't spoiled, TV, laptops and computers didn't exist yet, we piled up books, Pierre Loti, Rudyard Kipling... Today, young people don't read anymore. The climate of present-day France is very suffocating and harmful to the development of minds. We undergo a form of regimentation and culture is dying, as if we wanted to erase everything to recreate a new humanity. There is no more room for discussions, communication or exchanges.

At what age did you start writing?

As soon as I knew how to write, I wrote! At the beginning, I plunged into a childish universe, little stories of animals, bears or rabbits. At that time we had a governess, like all large families, and the parents were not as attentive to the children as young couples are today. We had to manage our emotions alone, so I wrote, and writing allowed me to express myself. At 14, I started to tackle more sentimental problems, young love was unknown territory, a taboo subject. I asked my older sister to enlighten me on things in life. After obtaining my baccalaureate, my father, convinced that my path, that of doing a degree in literature, was already mapped out, took time to understand my choice while respecting it. I was a determined young girl, I had decided to enroll in the National School of Oriental Languages.

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Why did you choose to to study oriental languages?

The choice was spontaneous and instinctive, I wanted to read the poets in their language. I don't know the reason for this orientation, but it was a universe that attracted and fascinated me. Today I can read and write in Arabic, but it hasn't affected my life more or determined anything...

How did writing come into your life? Where did the story begin?

Moving to New York with my husband, I acquired a certain autonomy and discovered an exciting cultural world. On my return to France, strengthened by what I had stored up and under the influence of my professor from the University of Nanterre who had told us the story of Haroun el-Rachid, a story both cruel and poetic, I decided to publish my first novel. I had found the subject fascinating in the manner of the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. This is how Le Grand Vizier de la nuit (Prix Femina, 1981) was born. Journalism then presented itself to me. I had a taste for adventure and I really liked discovering new horizons, but my career as an author quickly took over. Fascinated by history and great figures, I immersed myself in the universe of the Valois dynasty, traveled through the life of the Chevalier d'Éon, that of the wives of Charles VII, Henry VIII, or even the sad destiny of Joséphine de Beauharnais, characters with an extraordinary journey. I often write in the first person (Me, knight of Éon, spy of the king, ed. Albin Michel) to better put on the skin of the character, to penetrate his soul and his spirit. And the thread unwinds… and I am.

What is your writing ritual?

I always write in the morning. I devote four to five hours to writing and even if the inspiration is not there, I settle down in front of my blank page. You must not wait for the muse of inspiration to come to your rescue, because it never will. Writing is a real discipline, you rage for a quarter of an hour and then all of a sudden something comes to your mind and you go like a galloping horse. I write by hand and it is my husband who takes care of transcribing everything on the computer for corrections. I'm not familiar with punctuation, French grammar is very complicated. One wonders how the publishers dealt with the manuscripts of Flaubert or Zola. Lots of erasures with words and sentences in the margins, I corrected several times. A book must be re-read at least four times. And if today we want to simplify the French language to make it easier for emigrants, we amputate it of its richness and its beauty.

What is writing for you?

It's wonderful! I escape from myself, I no longer exist, I enter the other and I follow the other in a logical path. I become the other. Paradoxically, if you give life to an imaginary being, it will live its own life and will live it almost without you and you will follow it, like links in a chain. Everything becomes logical and is told in a narrative of cause and effect: this is because that is, if it had not been, this would not be. As one follows the course of a river which flows and which crosses landscapes, deserts, forests, villages and which will end up in the sea like the great whole, without disappearing. I accompany these characters with great interest and that leads me elsewhere.

Your friendships in the literary world?

Jean d'Ormesson, my great friend, was a person who had a magnificent command of the French language and who had a mischievous eye, a curiosity for everything and a culture from another century. I remember one evening at a dinner with Alain Decaux, Joseph Kessel and Michel Déon, all these men of advanced age and whose minds were racing. They answered each other, had a sense of repartee, it was a firework of spirit and culture. Even the young academics of today no longer possess this gymnastics of bouncing on a word, of making a witticism where it is not expected. This French spirit, which shone in the salons of the 18th and 19th centuries and which made these exchanges and conversations pure happiness, no longer exists. We discussed, we broached interesting subjects, the conversation had panache.

What do you do when you're not writing?

Today, I take care of my much older husband and the house, I see friends, I walk at least an hour a day.

Your latest novel acquisition?

The Armenian friend by Andreï Makine, a moving and powerful book, and The Day After by Philippe de Villiers, on the collapse of French politics, much less poetic and without any evasion but which helps me understand what our future will look like. He talks about the dislocation of the peasant world and industry.

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How do you view the new generation?

I sometimes receive a lot of manuscripts. Young people today are full of enthusiasm but they lack a general culture and references. She talks a lot about herself, her experiences, her stories of love or friendship, but it's always from a single point of view.

Lebanon and you is a long story of love and friendship, how was it born?

In 1983, I was sent on a mission to Lebanon to report on the life of the Lebanese during the war. I arrived in a country that welcomed me with open arms and smiling and affable people despite all the difficulties they were going through, and this kind of joie de vivre as the only bulwark against death. I fell in love with a country as one falls in love with a man. For me, Lebanon was a unique country. I had traveled a lot but I had never encountered this mixture of beauty, culture and deep human warmth. The second time I came back to interview President Amine Gemayel, we arrived by helicopter from Cyprus, the pilot had dropped us off somewhere in the mountains and we left with our backpacks, without any control. As I was adventurous, I liked it a lot.

How do you explain the Gabriel Matzneff episode in the show "Apostrophes", you who were present on the set?

That evening, it was Denise Bombardier who raised the hare. At the time, the French intelligentsia accepted pedophilia. We did not judge the artists who expressed their art as they saw fit, they had all the rights. He was a good writer but a pervert who thought he had complete freedom to express himself. When on the set of Apostrophes, Denise Bombardier said to him: "It is in prison that you should be", he ignited and defended himself.

Today, there is an explosion of denunciations pushed to the extreme. Men are not even allowed to look at you anymore, which takes all the charm out of relationships. There is a hostility between men and women and they no longer tolerate gestures of attention and gallantry. There is no more room for joyful complicity.

You have adopted a little Lebanese girl, does she know anything about her country of origin?

I was in love with Lebanon and I already had a son. I wanted a second child and it never happened. I thought you could only have children from a person or a country you loved, and I loved Lebanon. As a journalist, I had many connections and it was thanks to the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul crèche that I was able to adopt my little Yasmine, she was 3 weeks old. She never wanted to return to Lebanon. For her, her life began when I took her in my arms. It was like a total break with his origins and the beginning of a new life.

What brought you back to Beirut today?

My friends. It's when friends are hurting that you have to be close to them. My very dear friends who are afraid and anxious and want to tell them that we are here, that they are not alone.

How did you find Beirut today?

For me, Beirut will remain Beirut with its few moments of grace, a remnant of human warmth despite everything and this joie de vivre, but in the immediate future, without any projection into the future. The Lebanese are devastated but remain combative from day to day, they live the present moment as much as possible without having any illusions about the future. I was very struck by the total lack of faith in the future.

For me, Lebanon is the root of our humanity, where it all began. I can't think it can go away, we are all Lebanese somewhere. But I did not find a respondent, the people cultivate bitterness and suffer the feeling of helplessness, that made me desperate.

Are you releasing a new novel soon?

I have finished writing my last novel which deals a lot with Lebanon, Les Exilés de Byzance. It deals with the subject of a family that leaves from Byzantium, along the Near East to the South to arrive in Egypt, at the time of the reign of Nasser. Part of the family will go to Lebanon. I was inspired by the family story of Robert Sursock, a great friend who helped me a lot. From Byzantium to Aleppo, then to Palestine and Lebanon, a part will settle in Beirut where they will make their fortune in the banking sector while another part of the family will return to Egypt where they will be dispossessed of everything. It is the story of an imaginary family whose history is punctuated by real historical events. Because we all live in a historical context.

What do you think is the secret to happiness?

It’s being surrounded by people you love and who love you. Loneliness is the worst evil.