Ladies and Gentlemen Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament, Mr Ambassador, Madam President of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, dear Isabelle LEMESLE, Dear friends writers, dear Adrien GOETZ, Ladies and gentlemen, Dear friends,

Charles BAUDELAIRE said: «Every sentence must be in itself a well-coordinated monument, and all these monuments form the city which is the Book». This superb sentence seems to me to serve as a portico for a presentation of the book monumental » and nevertheless welcoming and airy, that Adrien GOETZ and Isabelle LEMESLE, as well as the hundred writers they knew how to gather around their project, have kindly offered us this year.

This book is a declaration of love both intimate and collective of our writers of today to these national monuments which constitute one of the most prestigious wings of the architectonic of our memory. I wanted absolutely to participate in this moment of presentation and in this meeting with the builders of this book and all its builders, in order to associate myself with this declaration of love, not only as a writer and as a citizen, but also and above all today, as Minister of Culture (and Communication).

I also wholeheartedly support it because I think the approach that guided the design and production of this book is the right one. It is about highlighting our heritage in the mirror of contemporary creation, exalting and enhancing our old stones in the rejuvenation of today’s styles. I am convinced that it is in this way, by the encounter and play of the old and the modern, and not by their quarrel, that we best wear the colours of our heritage, that we create bridges towards it for all audiences, that is to say for all French, and for all who visit our country and its unique heritage.

Unique, it is because of the diversity and the extent of the historical strata that shape it, since prehistoric times, the ornate caves that inaugurate this work and megalithic sites like the alignments of Carnac, or the Lascaux cave, which does not depend on your jurisdiction, dear Isabelle LEMESLE, but which we are considering with the greatest attention and I would even say with the greatest affection.

This book spells, in chronological order, all the epochs and most of the splendors of our heritage, those of antiquity with, like Glanum, the innumerable armada of castles, abbeys and cathedrals left by the Middle Ages, the masterpieces of the classical centuries, and to the «ideal monument of the twenty-first century» imagined by the authors of this book – without forgetting, of course, the Conciergerie that Robert BADINTER disputes with the passion that everyone knows him at the BALZAC des Lost illusions. This is not the time to list all these “places of memory” – such a list, worthy of those drawn up by BORGÈS or Umberto ECO, would make you “dizzy”, and perhaps laugh, like the Chinese lists Michel FOUCAULT talks about…

In any case, I wanted to tell you that this is obviously, let’s not forget, an open list of masterpieces and, in a way, a heritage in progress. I am not opposed, even though I know the opportunity in terms of management, wealth and creation. Not only because today’s heritage was the creation of yesterday, but because today’s creation – as we see in these pages – is nourished by this heritage and even because it is often capable, with that paradoxical form of piety that is sometimes irreverence, to find ways to him more lively than the admiration of circumstance and rigor. No, it is not by warning us in front of the monuments that we serve them, but by making them play, with respect, but also with imagination and inventiveness, in writing as in all forms of artistic language. Love cannot be ordered, and it is a protean god who knows how to declare himself in a thousand ways – or rather in a hundred ways – lyrical, ironic, nostalgic, fanciful, generous – whose rainbow this work declines.

But I know that love is also nourished by proof of love… You admire my almost conjugal realism…

This book is, of course, a brilliant one. But it is not the only one that heritage demands of us. And I have also come to tell you that the Minister of Culture whom I am knows and feels very deeply this attachment of each of us to our monuments, to their integrity, to their identity.

This is the reason why I fought, and I won this victory, for the 2010 Finance Law, and in particular an Article 52 that became suddenly famous, to be rebalanced in order to allow the State, the Ministry and the Minister of Culture to keep hands on national monuments and the possible devolution of some of them to local authorities.

Be careful, this is not a Jacobin retraction, nor is it some kind of abandonment or a big skidding. It is a question of a principle of modern management of the State, capable of holding the ridge line between, on the one hand, attention to the competences, the requirements, the fine appraisals of which the local authorities which house national monuments are bearers; and on the other, the stakes of general interest of which the State is and remains the guarantor.

I would point out, and I will remind the House, that the arbitration has been handed down, and it is the Minister of Culture who, in any event, will have the final say and, so to speak, a veto. He will be able to refuse the transfer and, if he accepts it, he will be able to choose the community that seems to him the most appropriate and the most timely. True to its prerogatives, it will oversee the management of these historic monuments which you have praised so vividly and so justly.

In addition, it will obviously be impossible to transfer these monuments in batches in some way to the cutting. Monuments will retain their unity and integrity. To paraphrase a famous word, “devolution is a block”—

Communities will have to submit projects that are consistent with the spirit of the monuments.

The furniture and the building form an inseparable entity and identity, they must form a whole as unbreakable as the atom.

During a security period of 20 years, the local authorities will not be able to surrender the monument without informing the ministry and therefore the minister;

Finally, in the event of failure of the local authorities to fulfil their obligations, the State may unilaterally terminate the transfer agreement.

You see that this policy is not only prudent but ambitious, that this love of heritage is based on tangible evidence of love, and that this “new covenant” of the State and the communities is based on a very clear marriage contract which is the guarantee of a healthy and lasting relationship.

After this beautiful book, we start to dream about other similar works, other projects of lighting and setting to music, in the sometimes surprising setting – and that’s good! – of contemporary creation, in all its states: not only prose writing, but poetry, song, the visual arts, why not the street arts that are founded, as well as design, to respond to architectural emotions – not to mention television, which, if I may say so, is becoming more traditional and creative. Heritage must benefit from all the vitality of contemporary creation in our country, which would not be what it is if we did not have this memory and which, contrary to what we sometimes hear, is still developing and exporting... It’s actually, as you understand, a reciprocal relationship— I only have to look around to see SOULAGES, BUREN, and so many other talents whose list is also open, in so many fields, and who are drawing the face of the France of tomorrow. In their own way perhaps, like the hundred talents gathered in these pages by Adrien GOETZ and Isabelle LEMESLE, they can help us to meet differently the riches of this unique heritage that we have received in sharing and on which we all watch lovingly.

Thank you.