Patrick Poivre d'Arvor : A man of images and a writer

Gérard Lhéritier, Plume :
As a writer, you must know the meaning of the wording “to turn a page”. Do you miss the 8 o’clock news these days?

Patrick Poivre d’Arvor:
Let say I have just gone through a one year rehab that I have filled with many different TV programmes, and from this point of view, this has enabled me to pursue multiple passions that have helped me forget a bit and put behind this 8 o’clock news that I nevertheless enjoyed presenting so much.

You are now free to go back to reporting and go towards your passions: geopolitics and culture…
Yes I am, and what makes me really happy now is the monthly TV show I shall make for Arte on foreign literature, country after country, which will be broadcasted from June the 11th. I already recorded 52 minutes in Egypt… And this is where we will start. Then I also went to South Africa where I met the famous writers of this country. Then to Haïti… and now I will go to Quebec, Malta, Serbia, Czech Republic… All this is fascinating and it enables me to meet writers and go back to reporting.

What is the title of this programme?
This programme will be called “Horizons lointains”. It is, by the way, the title of one of my own books in which I wrote about my passion for travelling writers. In this book you can find all the writers I like and for whom I have hardly and even never been able to acquire a single manuscript line, namely: Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, Rimbaud, Malraux, Kessel, Paul Morand and so many others that I loved and filed under this category. This book was published by Toucan almost a year ago.

Do you have any literary projects, on your own or with your brother Olivier?
I have just released an anthology of my favourite poems with Le Cherche-Midi publisher which was tremendously welcomed by the readers, and it pleased me as it is rather unusual to see a poetry book become a best-seller. This pleased me even more for very famous poems of the 19th century were mixed with less famous poems of 20th century poets in this anthology. I also managed to insert two poems written by my grandfather and even one of my own poems! I titled this book “Et puis voici des fleurs…” inspired by one of Verlaine’s verses.

Plume readers will be particularly interested in understanding your passion for written heritage. How did this passion for autographed letters and manuscripts start?
Honestly, I do not know! I think it comes from the fact that I wish I had lived the lives of these writers. When I was young and even very young, as a child, I used to identify myself with some of them, especially those of the 19th century, and I certainly did want to look like or live like them. If we consider Rimbaud for example – I was born in Reims, he was born in Charleville, when I reached my 14th birthday and received my first Solex, a lightweight motorcycle, I rode it to Charleville to visit his grave for I loved him very much. At first, I was admiring writers and then, when I realised I could afford buying their books or autographed letters, this is what I did. This is how it all started for me.

You are a book and manuscript collector. What kind of manuscripts do you have, can you tell us more about what is in your collection? As you know, collectors are generally quite secret about what they possess. I am very proud of my acquisition of one of Victor Hugo’s notebooks that I had missed at a previous auction sale and that I have been able to purchase later on. Also, without any direct connection with writing, I bought Proust’s watch at another auction sale where Proust’s manuscripts were for sale.

This is a fabulous object!
Yes, indeed. When you think that Proust wore it when he wrote “A la recherche du temps perdu” (“In search of lost time”)… It was the watch that he was wearing on his deathbed and that Céleste Albaret, his housekeeper, had kept afterwards.

Such a collection is above all a passion for culture; some say writing is the ink of emotion. How do you feel when you discover an intimate and unknown text by Saint-Exupéry for example?
Exactly the way you have just said it before: I think that writing is the ink of emotion because most of the time I feel their pulse, their blood inside the veins of these writer as writers are my greatest passion.
My emotions even reach a peak with a writer such as Saint-Exupéry who moves me particularly. I am going to confess one of the reasons for my fondness for this writer. When I was a kid, my grand-mother’s best friend was Consuello de Saint-Exupéry, the writer’s wife. So I met her many times and she talked to me a lot about her husband and her Little Prince… And she even used to draw little princes. She wrote me letters, calling me “her little prince”. Afterwards I carried on nurturing this intimacy with Saint-Exupéry. I called my literature TV programme “Vol de nuit” as a tribute to my favourite author and I followed his traces almost everywhere…

At Plume magazine, we have even dreamt of a TV programme dedicated to manuscripts and their history… A TV programme that could be titled “Lettres d’Histoires, histoire de l’être” and presented by Patrick Poivre d’Arvor. What do you think of this idea?
No doubt it is a very good concept, yet it needs a TV channel to broadcast it, but  it is definitely a very good concept.

In some 100 years from now, Patrick Poivre d’Arvor’s manuscripts will probably be auctioned at Sotheby’s… What do you think of this assumption?
Let us be humble and smile at this idea. Nevertheless, I have thought of a tiny –very tiny- advantage over my numerous peers: I always use a fountain pen.
Here is page 216 of my next book which will be published in next September, and, as you can notice, I write with a fountain pen…
I find it a good thing to keep one’s own manuscripts. I have not kept them all, far from it. This is due to the fact that I used to throw them away at a certain time of my life. As a matter of fact, I have been keeping them for only a decade...

 Thank you Patrick!

 Interview conducted by Gérard Lhéritier, Publishing Director of Plume Magazine.This article is also published in Plume magazine, n°49 (June-July-August 2009 )