Maurice Druon has passed away
Obituary
Maurice Druon, author, Resistance fighter, former Culture Minister (1973-1974), one of 40 "perpetual" French academics (1966), and recipient of the Legion of Honour Grand Cross, died in his Paris home on April 14. He would have been 91 in ten days' time. In Russia, the author of the seven-volume "The Accursed Kings" (1955-1977) was less well known but better loved than in his own country.
Druon was a conservative who believed that the genuine French language was the language of the 17th century and wrote multi-volume 19th-century style epics. His love affair with Russia has also been "multi-volume". It started at the height of the Khrushchev Thaw, thanks to "The Powers That Be" (1958), which was directed by Denis de la Patelier and based on the novel that won Mr Druon the Goncourt Prize (1948). Jean Gabin applied his talent to portraying the tragedy of a ruthless oligarch who drives his son to commit suicide.
Druon's popularity soared at the height of the Brezhnev era, because in exchange for waste paper people could acquire a bloody epic about the kings who nearly destroyed France in the 13th century. For readers, he became "the grandson of Alexander Dumas", who planted the idea in the popular imagination that the Templars were to blame for all the historical tragedies. Druon himself did not conceal that the "The Accursed Kings" was a collective work, and publicly thanked his ghost writers. In that way he also followed in the footsteps of Dumas.
In post-Soviet Russia, Druon became a symbol of French culture itself. Boris Yelstin presented him with the Order of Friendship of Peoples (1993). Viktor Chernomyrdin accompanied him to Orenburg, where he showed him how to chase vodka with beer. Vladimir Putin received him at the Kremlin, and visited him in Paris a year ago. In 2007, Druon was elected a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Druon reciprocated by comparing President Putin to General De Gaulle, with whom he was in exile in London from 1942 to 1944. In addition to that, it came to pass that Druon was also Russian. His father, Lazar Kessel, had come to France with his parents from Orenburg in 1908. In 1921 he committed suicide, cutting short a promising career with Comedie Francaise theatre, and his son took the name of his stepfather, a notary public.
In France, Druon's novels are not considered to be the main part of his legacy because they are too old-fashioned. Nicolas Sarkozy called him a "great writer, great Resistance fighter and above all the author of ‘Song of the Partisans'", which he wrote in 1943 together with his uncle, writer Joseph Kessel. Leaflets with that great song were scattered over Europe, and it was the signature tune of the BBC's "My Country's Honour", which was directed by Druon. Nevertheless, he eventually claimed authorship of the music written by Anna Marli, another Russian star in France. But that human foible was overshadowed by the memories of how Druon, a military cadet, heroically fought the Nazis in the spring of 1940.
Druon the politician is far more relevant to our day. He was a consistent conservative, a supporter of the "strong fist" policy, which in some ways accounts for his "love affair" with Vladimir Putin. Sometimes he went over the top, for example when he demanded the restoration of the Tuileries Palace burned down by the Communards. In his "Letters of a European" (1943), he placed all his hopes in the elites, who should bring peace to Europe after the war without allowing a civil war to break out. In 1968, he categorically condemned the rioters and strikers in his pamphlet "The Future Is Confused", and led a demonstration of Gaullists. George Pompidou appointed him Minister of Culture to pacify those who opposed the building of the architecturally radical Museum of Modern Art.
In spite of some successes, Druon's Ministry left poor memories as regards the development of culture in the provinces. One of his first acts was to threaten to withhold subsidies from "subversive" theatres whose directors came to him with a "begging bowl in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other". In response the great directors Roget Planchon and Jean Louis Barrault described him as the "troubadour of cultural repression", and staged a "funeral of free speech" attended by thousands. However, politics enabled Druon to remain amazingly young in spirit, something many of his opponents would envy. He no longer wrote epics, but remained a spirited contributor to the newspaper Le Figaro almost until his death. In traditionally leftish French culture, Maurice Druon was a foremost representative of the not very numerous but nevertheless necessary political right.
Mikhail Trofimenkov