Ladies and Gentlemen Ambassadors,
Ladies and gentlemen,
Dear friends,
You may have noticed on your invitation cards this card
of Al-Idrisi, the geographer of the court of Roger II of Sicily, who presents you
an inverted world on our usual planes. Political dynamics
news that animate today a part of the Arab world incite us,
I think, to revise our outlook.
In these times when we speak of the «Arab Spring», it is more than ever
time to talk again about bridges. The hope raised of a rapprochement
strengthened between our two shores also passes through that of its creators,
of its writers, its wordsmiths, its artists, its
musicians. Cultural dynamics between Europe and the Arab world
are part of the living heart of our relationship, and this must be reaffirmed
today.
The bridges are there to ward off the re-emergence of what Julien Gracq
in The Shore of the Syrtes called the Farghestan - of all the
Farghestan, those Leviathans of the Other who rise from the sea of our
imaginary.
Pay tribute to personalities who contribute in a
to the cultural dialogue between France, Europe and the world
Arab is also to remember that these bridges exist only in the
materiality of the exchange.
I thank the Collège international de la traduction littéraire d'Arles and
the French Institute to have joined us for this tribute, for a
presentation of the work of the Fabrique des Traducteurs, which has just closed
its Franco-Arab session. By giving us access to the creation of the other, the
translation is one of the best weapons against withdrawal;
it has always been one of the conditions for the creation of a public space
common. To you who are destined to become professional translators, I
would say that translation is probably one of the most beautiful crafts of art.
that by which you become the most intimate body of a culture: its
a way of conveying the concept and emotion through words.
Dear Khadija Al Salami,
A young woman from a poor and conservative background in Yemen, who
spent his childhood in the popular districts of Sanaa during the
civil war, forced marriage, divorce and prison, before
at the age of sixteen and a half to study cinema in Washington and
Los Angeles. She becomes director and then writer. It’s the story of
Weep, O Queen of Sheba! your first book, which you write with your
husband. It’s also the story of your life.
That of a director, first of all, who moved to France in 1986, and
whose images are at the service of women’s rights – and this from your
first film, Women in Yemen, in 1990, when you have only 24
years. Until Amina, which you present in Paris in 2006, where we find
under the guise of a young girl the themes of prison, the threat of the
death penalty; a leveraged film, too, since the awareness he has
for the most basic rights of women has allowed
to consider the redemption and liberation of the young woman in a
changing society. This fight against injustice, you continue
today: you are currently preparing a feature film on the
early marriage. I understand you have just completed a film
on the role of women in the profound changes taking place
currently your country, in their relationship to the political regime, but also
in the face of family and social oppression.
However, your commitment to justice and advocacy knows
also address other equally essential issues. I think
especially your Destructive Beast, your documentary produced by the
Yemeni TV on corruption, which has just been broadcast on Al
Arabiya. Selected at the Dubai Film Festival, this film addresses a problem
major that is far from affecting your only country has also been
nominated at the Monte-Carlo International Television Festival for the
next international award of the Union Radiophonique et Télévisuelle
International Author Documentary – a prize that is dear to me because I had
the honour of presiding over the jury. A project that deserves this
recognition, for which you risked arrest in full
turning, to finally succeed in negotiating with the security forces
the idea that it could be beneficial to a society working on itself.
Today, she is a woman who represents Yemeni culture in France,
where you founded the Yemeni Cultural Center. Despite the unrest that
know your country, the advisor in Paris for culture and
Press that you are did not interrupt its programming.
You continue to organize exhibitions on Yemen, which criss-cross the
cities of France, in order to make a country better known to the heritage
from the Hadramaut to the houses of Sanaa, whose image
is still too prejudiced. Yemeni artists
that you invite in France each year present themselves in a rhythm
demonstrations that you have no intention of breaking. This
for example, you have organized a seminar on
archaeology in Yemen, in partnership with French archaeologists,
on the work of bronze between happy Arabia and the Greco-Roman world,
and an exhibition is on the horizon 2013. With the Louvre still, you
conduct substantive cooperation for the training of
professionals in the field of conservation and
catering.
In the world of images and books, you have worked at the service of the
Women’s Cause and Democracy - values that are defended by
more topical than ever. As an actor of cultural cooperation
you show us all, through your commitment and perseverance,
that mutual understanding is a long-term work on
which we must not yield.
For all these reasons, I am particularly pleased, on behalf of the
French Republic, to give you the insignia of knight in
the Order of Arts and Letters.
Dear Marwan Rashed,
In the palimpsests of our crossed identities, the figure of Aristotle is
probably the most called when we want to talk about traffic
texts between the European and Arab worlds. From Cordoba to
Byzantium through Mont-Saint-Michel, the transmission of corpus and
of its interpretations continues to haunt the common memories – quits
to be able to generate, even today, controversies that
the only circle of specialists. To this father
founder who fascinates since the fourth century BC, you must
to have chosen to devote your life as a researcher to the circulation of
the Greek heritage, which our history of philosophy in Europe will have
often fantasized in timeless monolith as the ruse of history we
would have for a long night stolen during an Arab moment of the
thought. Of this heritage and its transmission, you are precisely one
very rare experts in France able to trace the
fluctuations, cross-influences, in other words historicity, at the ready
of the two languages they borrowed: both Greek and Arabic.
Following your khâgne of the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, the Ecole normale
opened its doors to you in 1991. After your aggregation of
classics, it is in Germany, at the University of Hamburg, that
you are writing your doctoral thesis on Aristotle in Byzantium, from the 9th to the
15th century.
After a few years at the CNRS at the Centre de recherche sur la pensée
in 2005, at the age of 35,
a very young age for this prestigious function. From the cloister
of the Sainte-Geneviève Mountain, you propose a
unique teaching: that of Greek philosophy and
Arabic philosophy in the same chair.
In the slow work of languages and translations on the corpus
Aristotelian, you identify how, under the multiplicity of languages,
the unique language of human reason. From this profound
theoretical conviction, you make a field of practical investigation, in you
making the archaeologist of our common identity, of the poetry of
to the philosophy of the Mamluk era.
From this transmission of the Greek heritage, you remember that it is far from being
a long, quiet river: each Arab author went to the
which interested him for a project that was current to him. Yesterday
like today, translating a text means giving it life again – and the legacy
Arabic is no exception.
Despite what our access to Greek philosophical texts owes to their
transmission in Arabic, it is clear that the
in Arabic are still too little studied or even edited. To
this gap that sometimes resembles as much a scientific oversight as a
debt denial, you like to educate your students by reminding them of the
paradox of the Liar: there are dozens of Arab treaties on the issue
which have been very rarely discussed, while studies on
only three Greek references to this argument are legion.
When you leave the scriptorium, it is often to engage you in
contemporary debates on our relationship between Europeans and Arab culture
classic. In these controversies, you have so much opposed the
constitution of the Arab as the Other only to its identification with a kind of
precursor flat. In your conception of Arab culture as a
of human culture, you claim
clearly of universalism. For you have always fiercely
opposed to folklorisations of all kinds, whether positive or
negative. In this you follow in the footsteps of your father, who developed
from the 1970s to the 2000s, at the CNRS, a school of
Arab mathematics of international renown, whose objective was
precisely to break with the ambient orientalism that was unfolding its reign
even in this field of study, to the detriment of a universal that belongs
to all. Out of this conviction you have always claimed, in your
research as in your public positions.
Because your history of Greek and Arabic philosophy is developing
in the heart of the letter and the translation, in the very flesh of the text of our
cross-inheritance, because your commitments have always been able to maintain
the requirement of the common universal in the face of easy otherness, dear Marwan
Rashed, on behalf of the French Republic, we make you Knight
in the order of Arts and Letters.
- French reading by Catherine Bonjour, translator for Abu Hamid Al-
Ghazali (Access to the divine through the knowledge of the soul)
- Arabic reading by Ramia Ismaïl, translator by Marguerite Duras (La
Illness of death)
Dear Maïssa Bey,
The Algerian writer you are has been able to grow like no other
that Kateb Yacine called with a beautiful expression a «spoil of war»
for all who inhabit this land which was also that of Camus: the
french language.
This is your father, a teacher in Ksar el Bukhari in the Medea region,
who teaches it to you before you even go to school. This anchor
will take you to the Lycée Fromentin in Algiers and your studies
in the field of French literature, which will become
the object of your teaching.
Your father is also the story of an unspeakable tragedy, that of torture
and its execution during the Algerian War, when you did
that seven years. You will revive the memory of this tragedy, in a way
masterly, in the lock-up of a passenger car in Entendez-
you in the mountains. More recently, the indelible mark of
colonial inspired you Pierre Sang Papier ou Cendre, a fresco
of 132 years of French colonization, which earned you the
Grand Prix du Roman francophone du Salon international du livre d'Alger,
and adapted to the theatre by Jean-Marie Lejude under the title
Madame Lafrance.
However - and I remember the interview you gave me
for a program of France Culture -, the work of Maïssa Bey is not
a work of resentment: it presents itself above all as a
research on the history of our two countries, their ties, their wounds. I
quote: I don’t denounce anything, I simply state, not my truth
but a truth. Besides, how could I condemn something
I am the product of…”
The wounds you are talking about are also those of the violence of the
Algerian society in the grip of civil war, in In the beginning
was the sea, which marks in 1996 your entry into literature, in News
of Algeria, which received the Grand Prix de la Nouvelle Société des Gens in 1998
of Letters, or in your last novel, Since my heart is dead, on
the memory of a mother who lost her murdered son. Wounds,
of a generation torn between tradition and modernity, like
in Blue, white, green, also adapted to the theatre by the company El
Ajouad. A Algeria where women suffer violence from men,
as in Cette fille là, which receives the Marguerite Audoux Award. As
works that mark the course of a major work of literature
French speaking Algerian, marked by the exploration of self and
of our contradictions, against silence and forgetfulness.
Dear Maïssa Bey, of the power of language, you have always had the concern
of its transmission. In your city of Sidi Bel Abbès, you have created, in
2000, a cultural association, «Word and writing», where readings
are queens. Since 2005, the association has
library that has become a real space of expression in the
city. You have masterfully reconciled this commitment to
in parallel with a mother’s life and a work that continues to
build, where try to exorcise with softness and modesty the violence
of our memories.
For all these reasons, I am particularly pleased, on behalf of the
French Republic, to give you the insignia of Officer in order
of Arts and Letters.
- Arabic reading by Dina Mandour, translator by Gilles Lipovetsky (La
third woman)
- Reading in French by Marie Charton, translator for Ghada Abdel Aal
(Ayza atgawwez / Desperate husband search)
Dear Elias Sanbar,
“And the land is transmitted as the language,” wrote Mahmoud Darwich.
This formula of the disappeared Palestinian poet, it could be yours – no
not only because you are the French translator, but also because
because she says something about your relationship to the world and your
plural commitments.
The militant commitment, first of all, of a man who has been leading since
Now forty years a struggle for the rights of a people. It is
the story of a family driven from Palestine in the late 1940s
like so many others, and who goes to settle in Lebanon. A Nakba lived
when you were only one year old, a buried memory, that you will
try your whole life to reconstitute. Your father knew how to transmit you,
in the family walls of your Beirut childhood, her altruism
and its opposition to all authoritarianism. This is probably what
give your fight a unique twist
Engaged in the national resistance movement, you are leaving for
Paris in 1969, where you continue the studies that will bring you by
elsewhere to teach international law, notably in Paris VII, Lebanon
and to Princeton. This coming to France made you a Palestinian of
Paris is deeply linked to a Parisian intellectual and artistic milieu where
meet your friends Jean-Luc Godard, whose
work on the image, Gilles Deleuze or Jean Genet, and also Jérôme
Lindon.
In 1981, at the Editions de Minuit, he hosted the
Review of Palestinian studies of which you are co-founder, and of which you
will become the editor. Then a
commitment made to writing. Besides your beautiful translations of
Mahmoud Darwich in French - through no less than fifteen
collections and anthologies -, you will, on the momentum of the Journal, multiply
tests, since Palestine 1948, expulsion in 1984, including
works that you publish with Farouk Mardam-Bey, editions Actes
South, whose house contributes so much to the dissemination of Arabic letters in
France; until the very recent Dictionnaire amoureux de la Palestine (2010),
which reflects in its fragmented form, I quote,
“the break-up of Palestinian reality”. A Dictionary whose humour is not
not absent, where loss becomes stimulating, where facetiousness awakens from
the absence, where the Christian child of Haifa that you had been described, by
example, Jesus of Nazareth as the “Son of the neighbors”. Of this
a multitude of daring writings, a remarkable effort of
1948 memory service, displacement memory, service
of a universal message also, against all stereotypes that can
influence Arab societies. An exceptional experience, which
made you a well-listened-to observer of the Arab Spring.
And then there’s Elias Sanbar, the institutionally committed man, through his
high office, by his responsibilities. You were indeed, during
8 years, a negotiator of the peace agreements, in Madrid in 1991,
Washington in 1992, before Yasser Arafat entrusted you with the
coordination of the delegation for negotiations on refugees until
1997.
Having become Ambassador of Palestine to UNESCO, it is now the
cultural action that will be the main focus of your action. You
you are particularly involved in issues that concern the
protection and presentation of the World Heritage – in particular
which concerns the preservation of the old city of Jerusalem. You have
also launched, with the complicity of Ernest-Pignon Ernest, the
a collection fund that could eventually become the nucleus of a future
National Museum of Modern Art of Palestine, which already benefits
donations from very great artists.
To the bearer of a fight by the words of poetry and those of the
negotiation, diplomat and reviewer, translator and author, rare are
fields of action that are foreign to the one who chose to wear his
commitment to the universal register of intercultural dialogue. It is therefore
for me an honor, Mr Ambassador, dear Elias Sanbar, of you
to present the insignia of Commander in the order of Arts and Letters.
- Reading in French of Lotfi Nia, translator of Abdelwahab Benmansour
(Fussus at-tayh / Les Perles de l'égarement)
- Reading in Egyptian dialectal Arabic by Heba Zohni , translator by René
Goscinny (Little Nicolas)
Dear Jordi Savall, dear Montserrat Figueras,
On the occasion of this tribute, I wanted to focus on dialogue and
of the language, it is a great pleasure to receive you this afternoon, both
musicians, especially the greatest, can also be
translators of another type. For almost four decades, you
illuminate with your presence the world of ancient music; and these
In recent years, you have directed part of your repertoire to
other shores, those of the meeting of the musical universes of our
common Mediterranean space – like the concert you’re going to
perform tonight at the Cité de la Musique remarkably directed by
Laurent Bayle, entitled Mare Nostrum.
Jordi Savall and Montserrat Figueras, it is the alliance of the stamp of the viola
with an exceptional voice. It is also the great adventure
Hespèrion XX - now Hespèrion XXI -, Capella Reial de
Catalunya and the Concert of Nations. As many international ensembles
whose level of requirement, quality and warmth of interpretations
radiate throughout the world. Besides a musicological work that you
allowed to revisit in an unforgettable way the great figures of the
baroque music, you have offered the public the opportunity to discover
lesser-known Renaissance or 17th century composers – I
of course, Marin Marais and the extraordinary success of
Every morning in the world of the late Alain Corneau; but also in
composers of the sixteenth century, or collections of music
for which you have used this balance between rigour and
freedom given to the imagination in the reconstitution of stamps and
soundscapes, which characterize the great masters.
In recent years, your label Aliavox has launched a new format of
albums whose quality may lead us to believe that the formats
The physics of the record can still have beautiful days ahead of them.
You propose historical routes in music where you can
listen, amazed, the sound of history in motion. By the sound of voices
and the brilliance of the instrumentarium, you manage to resurrect the otherness
that are buried in the substrate of our collective memories –
from the Cathar tragedy in "Jerusalem, city of two peace" and the conquest
of the New World.
With East-West, you also know how to revive paradises
lost, and you remind us at every record, at every concert, that it does not
there would be free nostalgia for Al-Andalus. By the crosses that
you operate with Ottoman music – I think of your magnificent
album on the music transcribed by Dimitri Cantemir -, but also with the
Maghrebian musical heritage, Sephardic singing and Arabic repertoire,
offer the listener and spectator a range of traditions
In this way, the European Union will be able to play an active role.
For this, you were able to surround yourself with exceptional musicians who came
the most varied musical horizons that have joined you in Barcelona and
in your tours at an unusual pace. In this capacity I greet Driss
El Maloumi and Pedro Estevan who also do us the honor of being
with you today.
Among the many distinctions you have received, I am
pleased to recall that you have been appointed, dear Jordi Savall,
European Union Ambassador for Intercultural Dialogue in
2008, then both named Artists for Peace as part of the
UNESCO’s “Goodwill Ambassadors” programme.
Intercultural dialogue can remain a hollow word when it is not
put into practice. This is the spirit in which you precisely created the
Fontfroide Festival, in the South of France, where
you have reserved a space for young interpreters
professionalization, coming from both sides of the Mediterranean and beyond.
Some say that in Barcelona there is the Alliance of Civilizations, the Union for
and the Mediterranean, which we all hope will
will allow us to consider a recovery; and there are the Savall. This
dynamic that you embody is a model for us all.
For all these reasons, dear Montserrat Figueras, dear Jordi Savall, I
on behalf of the French Republic, I am particularly pleased to
award you the insignia of Commanders in the order of Arts and
Letters.