Politique Internationale — Which of the many roads that you have taken throughout your life are most familiar to you?
Jean-Christophe Rufin — The first roads I remember are those of my childhood: in addition to imaginary roads, there are the roads of the Berry, the region where I grew up. It is an area where the roads are particularly straight. When I’m in Africa, where the borders are drawn in a perfectly straight line, I can’t help thinking of the elongated lines of the Berry. Some of these lines have marked history. One example is the demarcation line: its outline may have disappeared, but the memory of this line that cut the country in two, the division between free and occupied France, is still vivid.
P. I. — Was it in reaction to the straight roads of the Berry region that you developed this taste for the mountains?
J.-C. R. — That could be! I quickly realized that to grow and develop as a person, I needed a different world from the Berry. At the age of ten, I joined my mother in Paris and that’s where I was a student. My taste for the mountains came a little later, at the age of around twenty. This enthusiasm was not instant: to start with, I went hiking with my partner at the time. Then I switched to climbing. I was lucky enough to be taught by a mountain guide who became a friend. This relationship between master and disciple, so essential to enter the world of mountaineering, is very rich: it gives meaning to things, introduces rationality, extends intuitions... I found a similar approach in medicine, my first profession, which is also learned by following the teaching of a master.
P. I. - Mountain roads are also more adventurous...
J.-C. R. - Certainly, but I don't deny my native Berry... The two worlds, the mountains and the plains, complement each other well. My literary success has enabled me to buy a chalet in the Val Montjoie, one of the five valleys surrounding Mont Blanc. It is a privilege to be able to immerse oneself in such a fantastic setting, but I don't claim to have put down roots there. I always make sure to remind myself that I am not a Savoyard! Does that make me a Berrichon? Some time ago, the Société généalogique du Berry kindly offered to draw up my family tree; I think they were disappointed not to find any ancestors of my family strictly from the region. In fact, I was born in Berry because it was the rallying point for ancestors from all parts of France. For me, roots owe nothing to genetics and everything to individual freedom: the freedom to choose the place you like.
P. I. — When you chose to become a writer rather than to continue with medicine, did you feel you were leaving a well-trodden path for a steeper one?
J.-C. R. — I have never regretted choosing medicine. First of all, it was a way of following in the footsteps of my grandfather, whose personality influenced me greatly. Not only was he a doctor but he had a very human approach to medicine. In his time, medicine was both a literary discipline - you had to learn Greek and Latin in order to read the great classical authors, from Hippocrates to Galen etc. - and a committed vocation, especially during the wars. By the time I studied medicine, all that had changed. Medicine had become a prodigiously efficient science, with biochemistry and biology replacing the humanities. And hyperspecialization led those like me who took the hospital exams to practice in over-equipped centers, far from the battlefields. So I found my commitment elsewhere, in the wake of Médecins sans Frontières [Doctors without Borders], which had just been founded. As for literature, I carved out my own path with great difficulty, first writing essays and then, quite late, moving on to novels. The early days were uncertain, materially speaking. It was the success of L’Abyssin [The Abyssinian] (editor’s note: published in French in 1997, Goncourt prize for first novel) that was the trigger.
P. I. — The roads in your stories seem to be inseparable from your childhood and History. How do you explain this connection?
J.-C. R. — Indeed, Berry is a region steeped in history: Bourges cathedral is a medieval jewel, the Jacques Coeur route is unique, with its parade of castles and monuments. Since not much happened in the countryside of the Berry region in the immediate post-war period, as a child I listened to the stories of the elders. And these elders put History into their tales; by talking about a place, a memory, a person or an action, they bridged the ages and, without knowing it, gave me the keys to become a storyteller myself one day.
P. I. — When you write, do you have a preferred rhythm? Do you need peace and quiet to work or, on the contrary, do you find that even your travels are a space for writing?
J.-C. R. — When I travel, I don’t take notes. In the moment, you don’t have enough distance or hindsight to know what’s important and what is not... The notes you take are often simply factual with no real emotional value. They are useless for a writer. If things are important, they will come back to mind sooner or later, after a phase of forgetting. I rely heavily on the creative activity of memory. My friend Sylvain Tesson does things completely differently: wherever he goes, he always has his notebook in his hand. And he is able to write on the spot and anywhere, which I have never been able to do. I need to put my memories back into motion by incorporating them into fiction. I am a novelist, not a travel writer. To write, I need peace and quiet and to feel removed from the world. The mountains provide this opportunity. Writing a book is like taking a break from oneself: to write the last adventures of Aurel, my diplomat hero transported around the world, I hid myself away in Bourges for two months.
P. I. — Mountain climbing is a pretty physical discipline whereas writing is more of an intellectual activity. How do your two worlds complement each other?
J.-C. R. — But writing is a physical discipline too! A novel like the ones that make up this volume of four means several weeks of non- stop work, with hundreds of pages at the end... This exercise puts a lot of strain on the body, and I come out of it exhausted, especially as I still write my books by hand! And the analogy with mountain climbing is not only valid in terms of the physical performance required. In both cases - literature and mountaineering - it’s about finding your way.
P. I. — You are a man of “the pen”, you still write by hand. Does this mean that you are resistant to digital technology?
J.-C. R. — I’m well-paced to appreciate the rise of digital technology: thanks to connected objects, we can approach a climb with a mass of information that we didn’t have before. It is useful. The same goes for medicine: I recently had to undergo heart surgery. I had two options: either I took a life-long treatment or I opted for an operation that, thanks to technology, solved the problem once and for all. I didn’t hesitate for a second to choose the second option. That doesn’t mean we should be complacent about digital advances – which also have their share of errors and flaws – but it would be a mistake to ignore them.
However, for literature I remain faithful to the pen because handwriting offers a minimal barrier between the text and the author. There’s no machine interference, and when the conditions are right, the pleasure of hearing the pen scratching over the paper doubles the joy of writing.
P. I. — You have walked the Way of Saint James pilgrimage route and dedicated a book to it - Immortelle Randonnée [Immortal Trek] -, which has become a classic among the great literary travelogues. What made you want to embark on this adventure?
J.-C. R. — The idea of taking an interest in the Compostela pilgrimage route came to me after my three-year experience as French Ambassador to Senegal. It was a very enriching experience, in a complex environment, in a setting that was also a little out of place: a magnificent residence, two drivers, three chefs... After this type of mission, it’s useful to hit the reset button. Among the various avenues I studied, I thought that a writing project that combined walking with a certain simplicity would fit in well with this idea of returning to reality. I had planned to walk from Hendaye to Collioure, from the Basque country to the High Pyrenees, but this route does not have the same symbolic weight as the pilgrimage to Compostela. And finally, I found myself, without having planned it, on the Way of Saint James, this ancient route followed by thousands of pilgrims over the centuries. There is something moving about following in those footsteps.
P. I. — Emotion rather than History...
J.-C. R. — The cultural dimension contributes to this emotional intensity: the Compostela route is marked by monuments and hermitages that related back to chapters in the history of Humanity. Compostela is also a very political route: the Camino primitivo [Original way] was opened by King Alfonso II of Asturias (circa 760-842). At the time, Spain was the target of Moorish invasions and to counter them, the royal power needed to extend its territory: the setting in motion of the Christian crowds towards Galicia was one of the first acts of the Reconquista. Much later, there was another ostensible political use of Compostela; it may have been rather forgotten, but Marshal Pétain was French ambassador to Spain (editor’s note: from March 1939 to May 1940). At that time, against a backdrop of rising peril, Paris sought to ensure Franco’s neutrality and Pétain, as a symbolic gesture, did not hesitate to promote the pilgrimage to Compostela, encouraging French people to go there.
P. I. — Have you felt the need to draw spiritual inspiration when following the pilgrimage route?
J.-C. R. — The Compostela way is not the road to Damascus: you are not suddenly struck by the need to convert, like the apostle Paul. Those who believe in God before setting out to Compostela will continue to believe afterwards; and those who do not believe when they set out on the journey will not necessarily believe when they return home either. The journey is a spiritual test that deepens what is within you but does not impose anything.
Without being disrespectful to believers, I would say that the mystery of Saint James is a little bit convoluted, and requires a good dose of faith, not to say credulity. Indeed, Saint James died in Jerusalem, and his post-mortem geographical itinerary was a bit tortuous... It took quite a bit of imagination on the part of the religious authorities to explain how his remains could have ended up in this European Finisterre that is Galicia, where his bones were discovered in the 7th century and then "rediscovered" in the late 19th century. In any case, the objective for the Church was fulfilled: Compostela made it possible to rebalance the flow of pilgrims towards the West and to constitute a counterpart to the traditional Christian movements towards the East - Rome and the Holy Places.
P. I. - But are we leaving Compostela in a different state?
J.-C. R. - Although it is not a religious journey, the Way of Saint James is a real spiritual journey. If you want to walk in good conditions, you have to be sharpened up a little; this contributes all the more to this state of deprivation which is well suited to reflection. Because all reflection starts from the body.
P. I. — At what point did travel become an integral part of your novel-writing?
J.-C. R. — More than travel, I have a thirst for different experiences. This often involves the discovery of new horizons. I am fascinated, in the past as well as in the present, by the meeting of cultures and everything that comes from that. My first experience in this field, after my studies, was my military service as a volunteer in a medical center in Sousse, Tunisia. It wasn’t very far away. You only had to cross the Mediterranean. However, a whole new world opened up for me, especially as, following a mistake in my assignment, I found myself in a maternity hospital, an exceptional observation point for understanding a society. This experience taught me many things.
Later, I took part in the MSF (Médecins sans Frontières) adventure with Bernard Kouchner in particular. Based on this commitment, which was followed by many others, I wrote an essay (Editor’s note: Le Piège humanitaire [The Humane Trap], 1986). Then another, L’Empire et les nouveaux barbares [The Empire and the New Barbarians] (1991) in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Before underpinning the plot of my novels, my travels first fed a geopolitical thought process. Literature is a different exercise altogether, where more personal approaches and inspirations are combined. Some of them are rooted in childhood and/or adolescence: I remember devouring Alexandre Dumas, Paul Féval, Michel Zévaco (Les Pardaillan) with passion, works that are popular, picaresque and wild. And I have chosen to place myself in this vein.
P. I. — If you had to conclude, in the course of your many lives, on which strand would you draw first?
J.-C. R. — Storytelling is the very essence of my profession as a writer. It is basically an extension of medicine as I have chosen to practice it: a way of bearing witness to the diversity of the world. And perhaps also a way to do good to others...