The article to read to understand the Gabriel Matzneff case, a writer with assumed pedophile practices
By Archyde
The author, who has never hidden having had relationships with young children, is the central character in the book “Consent”, in which Vanessa Springora recounts the grip he had on her when she was 14 years old .
It is the affair which shakes the literary world and beyond. In the book The consent (Grasset editions), to be published Thursday January 2, the editor and author Vanessa Springora tells of her relationship under the influence of the writer Gabriel Matzneff, in the mid-1980s. She was 14 years old, then in her fifties. In the context of denouncing sexual violence, her testimony met with an important response and again questioned the concept of sexual consent.
Franceinfo returns in detail to this affair.
Who is Gabriel Matzneff?
Born on August 12, 1936, Gabriel Matzneff comes from a family of Russian exiles, who fled their country after the communist revolution of 1917. Winner of the Renaudot Prize for essay in 2013 and edited by Gallimard, the writer of 83 years has long been a popular figure in the literary world. He was regularly invited to his television mass, from “Apostrophes” on Antenne 2 to “La Grande Librairie” on France 5.
A prolific author, the man never hid his attraction for young children in his diaries, like My broken down loves (1990), or his essays, in particular Under sixteen (1974). “When you have held in your arms, kissed, caressed, possessed a 13 year old boy, a 15 year old girl, everything else seems bland, heavy, tasteless”, he writes in this last work.
For several years, he has been chronicling the news for Point. After the attacks of November 13, he had hit the headlines again with a violent text on the “Bataclan generation” and the victims of the terrorists.
And Vanessa Springora?
Vanessa Springora, 47, has been director of Julliard publishing since December 1, 2019. A graduate in modern literature from Paris-Sorbonne University, she began her career in 2003 at the Institut national de l’Audiovisuel, before joining les éditions Julliard in 2006 as assistant editor. She met Gabriel Matzneff in 1986 while accompanying his mother, press officer in publishing, to a dinner. The man begins to write to her, to wait for her at the end of college and to see her to erase the age gap. “As I had not read any of his books, I did not know that it was a process that he systematically implemented”, she told Bibliobs.
Why does the affair only explode today?
Vanessa Springora’s book marks a turning point. For the first time, an ancient relationship of the writer takes the floor. “At 14, you are not supposed to be expected by a 50-year-old man at the end of his college, you are not supposed to live in a hotel with him, or find yourself in bed, your penis in the mouth, at snack time “she wrote. Without acrimony or victimization, Vanessa Springora evokes the ambivalence of a time when sexual liberation flirts with the defense of pedophilia, the fascination exerted by the writer, then the weight of this story on his life.
And the author describes a hold that continues in the literary field: the writer writes a lot and lays down on paper his conquests and sexual adventures, including with young boys during trips to Asia. “As if his passage in my existence had not devastated me enough, he must now document, falsify, record and engrave his misdeeds forever”, writes Vanessa Springora. It evokes a “triple predation, sexual, literary and psychic”.
We let him do it because there was the artist’s aura. His work served as a bond. But in the name of what would the damage be less when the person who commits these acts is an artist?at “Bibliobs”
In the wake of the Weinstein affair and the #MeToo movement, which has been strongly denouncing sexual violence since 2017, the book does not go unnoticed. “Vanessa Springora’s book will be a major milestone in the history of pedophilia, since it is the first time that one of Matzneff’s relationships has spoken to give a very different story from that of Bell of Matzneff himself. He always presented the sexual relations he had with children (…) as euphoric and pleasant (…) “, explains to franceinfo Pierre Verdrager, sociologist and author of Child prohibited. How pedophilia has become scandalous.
No one had reacted before?
Not really. At the material time, in the mid-1980s, the way we looked at pedophilia was very different. When he published in 1990 My broken down loves, Gabriel Matzneff is invited on the set of “Apostrophes”. The tone of the questions asked by Bernard Pivot is light, not to say complacent: “Why did you specialize in high school girls and girls? Above 20 years, we see that you are no longer interested”, “why collect them so much?” The responses, greeted by laughter from the audience, are assumed: “I prefer to have people in my life who are not yet hardened. A very young girl is rather nicer, even if she very quickly becomes hysterical and as mad as when she is older.”
A single voice then rises against the writer. “Mr. Matzneff seems pitiful to me. What I don’t understand is that in this country, literature serves as an alibi for this kind of confidences, attack Denise Bombardier, Canadian writer. What Mr. Matzneff (…) tells us is that he sodomizes little girls aged 14 and 15, that these little girls are crazy about him (…). We know that old gentlemen attract little children with candy, Mr. Matzneff attracts them with his reputation. “ And to conclude: “How are these little girls doing afterwards? I think these little girls are withered and most of them for the rest of their lives”. “I don’t understand how you can publish things like that”, she pings again.
Questioned a few days ago by franceinfo, Denise Bombardier tells how this position earned him to be vilified by certain French intellectuals. “I took the floor because people said nothing about his book. There was a Catholic couple who were there to defend fidelity in marriage and who did not say a word. the lady just laughs, she remembers. I did what I had to do. Otherwise, I couldn’t have looked in the mirror. “ Gabriel Matzneff’s editor, Philippe Sollers, then called him “Cunt” on France 3, the literary criticism of World, Josyane Savigneau, quips in the columns of her journal: “Discover in 1990 that young girls aged 15 and 16 make love to men thirty years older than them, the great deal!”
In 2013, when he received his Renaudot Prize, a few voices were raised. A petition to withdraw it is launched by the association La Mouette and Innocence in danger files a complaint against X for apologizing for sexual assault.
But why was pedophilia tolerated?
It seems difficult to imagine in 2019 but in those years there was a pro-pedophilia current, supported by prestigious intellectuals. In a column published on January 26, 1977 in The world, Gabriel Matzneff defends three men tried for indecent assault without violence on minors aged 15. “If a 13-year-old girl is entitled to the pill, what is it for? (…) Three years in prison for caresses and kisses is enough”, can we read in particular. By his side, in the list of signatories: Louis Aragon, Roland Barthes, Simone de Beauvoir, André Glucksmann, Bernard Kouchner, Jack Lang, or even Jean-Paul Sartre.
As sociologist Pierre Verdrager explained on Franceinfo, the “pedophilia did [alors] the object of an attempt at valorization in the intellectual world “.”It was a time when there was an attempt at liberation on all horizons and we considered that pedophilia was part of that: liberation of women, liberation of gays, liberation of sexuality and the discourse on sexuality “, situates there. The age of majority was just lowered to 18 in 1974 and, “dIn this context, we thought that it was possible to consider as valid the sexual relations between adults and children “. In a text in which he returned to the support of Release to this pro-pedophilia movement, the journalist Sorj Chalandon evokes a post-May 68 period where “any ban is felt to belong to the old world, that of the embittered, the oppressors, the employers’ militias, the bludgeoning police, the corrupt”.
How has the literary world reacted since the start of the affair?
The case divides. Many, like Bernard Pivot, plead the change of era. “In the 70s and 80s, literature came before morality; today, morality takes precedence over literature. Morally, this is progress. We are more or less the intellectual and moral products of a country and, above all, from an era “, wrote on Twitter the former president of the Goncourt academy. “A new court will be set up, as for Polanski, esteem for his part Frédéric Beigbeder in the columns of World. It is an era that judges another, but times have changed … The whole literary world is afraid (…). It’s over for him, he has become indefensible. “
Others, like the former critic of the World Josyane Savigneau, denounce on Twitter a “witch hunt”. “I don’t protect anyone but I don’t participate in human hunts either”, defended the boss of Point, Etienne Gernelle, clarifying that no chronicle of the writer did “the apology of love with children”. His predecessor, who is also a member of the jury for the Renaudot Prize, is on the same line. “He’s an excellent writer, some books I like, some not at all. I hate pedophilia, but I also hate the constabulary police. People who are pilloried always have my sympathy “, responded to World Franz-Olivier Giesbert.
Several voices also welcomed Vanessa Springora’s approach. “It is not a return to moral order, just a return to reason. 13 year old girls have more to do than fall in love with a 50 year old guy. They are not on an equal footing with him “, estimated in the columns of World the writer Patrick Besson. The essayist and MEP Raphaël Glucksmann, whose father had signed the rostrum with Gabriel Matzneff, expressed his disgust on Twitter.
How does Gabriel Matzneff defend himself?
Gabriel Matzneff refused all requests for an interview. He just split an email to The Obs. “To learn that the book that Vanessa decided to write during my lifetime is by no means the story of our bright and burning loves, but a hostile, nasty, disparaging work, intended to harm me, a sad mixed indictment by the prosecutor and diagnosis concocted in the office of a psychoanalyst, causes me a sadness that suffocates me “, he wrote.
Can the facts reported be prosecuted?
No, because they are too old. In an interview at Bibliobs, Vanessa Springora says it herself: “I took a long time to consider myself a victim because I had been consenting. But I was still below the sexual majority. I could therefore have gone to court, except that at each I said to myself, “I was consenting.” I thought about it much later, there was a prescription. “
According to his testimony, the facts amount to a “sexual abuse”, is “an act of sexual penetration without violence, coercion, threat or surprise, when it is committed by an adult on a minor under 15 years of age”. In this area, the limitation period varies between 10 and 20 years (with aggravating circumstance) after the majority of the victim. This deadline has long been reached since Vanessa Springora is now 47 years old. If ever the facts reported were to be classified as rape, the new 30-year prescription, which came into force on August 6, 2018, could not apply in any event because it is not retroactive.
For sociologist Pierre Verdrager, this book could however change the law, especially on the issue of the age limit for consent. In early 2018, the government had abandoned the introduction of such a measure, which would have made it possible to consider that any minor under the age of 15 cannot give consent to a sexual act with an adult. “I think this book will solve the problem and the fact that this book has such an impact, I think that politicians must intend to take this question seriously. The fact that we can both be consenting and consider that consent is a fiction “, explains Pierre Verdrager.
I was too lazy to read everything, can you give me a summary?
In The consent (Grasset editions), to be published Thursday January 2, the editor Vanessa Springora tells of her relationship under the influence of the writer Gabriel Matzneff when she was a minor. “At fourteen, you are not supposed to be expected by a 50-year-old man at the end of his college, you are not supposed to live in a hotel with him, or find yourself in bed, his penis in the mouth, at snack time “, she wrote in particular. The book brings back to the fore the pedophile practices of a writer, whose actions, assumed and claimed in some of his works, such as Under sixteen (1974), were viewed with complacency at the time. Its passage, in 1990, on the stage of “Apostrophes” shows it well: only the Canadian novelist Denise Bombardier is sorry that “literature serves as an alibi for this kind of confidences”. Today, the affair, which will not have a legal result because the facts denounced are prescribed, embarrasses the literary world, in which the writer retains some support.
ARCHIDE
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