Jean-Michel Delacomptée

Jean-Michel Delacomptée is a French writer, author of essays, literary portraits and novels.

Writer and essayist, Jean-Michel Delacomptée worked for twenty years in the field of cultural diplomacy in Paris and abroad (Laos, Japan, Jerusalem). He then taught French literature at Bordeaux-Montaigne University in Bordeaux , then, from 2001 to 2012, at Paris-VIII University . He directed the “Nos vies” collection at Gallimard.

His production as a writer consists mainly of literary portraits of historical figures and men of letters. Historical figures: Henrietta of England with Madame la Cour la Mort (1993), François II with Le Roi Miniature (2000), Ambroise Paré with Ambroise Paré La main savante (2007). Gens de lettres: La Boétie and Montaigne with And only one be the friend (1995), Racine with Racine en majesté (1999), Ms. de Motteville with I will only be a painter for her(2003), Bossuet with Dead Language, Bossuet (2009), Saint-Simon with La grandeur, Saint-Simon (2011).

With the exception of Racine published by Flammarion, these works have all been published by Gallimard in the “L'un et l'autre” collection created and directed by Jean-Bertrand Lefèvre-Pontalis .

These are indeed literary portraits, not biographies. These portraits indeed use a narrative writing which, without recourse to fiction, tends to erase the conventional border between the romantic narrative, biographical erudition and the spirit of analysis proper to the essay. External to any specific genre, not entering into any predefined classification, they belong to general literature both by the freedom of their composition and by the importance given to style, without which, according to Delacomptée, "a work cannot claim to be literary.

To these portraits was added in 2014 Écrire pour somebody , the last book published in “L'un et l'autre”, the collection ending with the death of Jean-Bertrand Pontalis. In this book, Jean-Michel Delacomptée revisits his own past through the evocation of his parents, while exploring the question of the father (what is a father?), with descriptions and comments about the suburbs, literature, gratitude, in an intertwining of themes intended to open the story to broader horizons than a personal adventure.

Jean-Michel Delacomptée also published with Gallimard, in the "Le Promeneur" collection, a commentary on Montaigne's Letter to his father on the death of Étienne de La Boétie , a preface to the Discours de la Mummy et de la Licorne d 'Ambroise Paré, as well as a Petit eulogy of lovers of silence in the Folio collection.

He has published with Arlea Passions. La Princesse de Clèves , deeply renewing the reading of Madame de Lafayette's novel (2012). In 2015, he published with Fayard Adieu Montaigne , which questions the still current success of the author of Essays , of which he offers an approach that is eminently respectful of the time when Montaigne wrote. In 2016, he published with Robert Laffont a Letter of consolation to a writer friend where, asking the question of the reception of the works, he is surprised with humor and seriousness of the obscurity from which many high-flying novels suffer, unlike the hype around minor works. In 2018, again at Fayard, he published Notre langue française, an ardent and worried reflection on the evolution of our idiom, whose written and poetic origin he underlines, before insisting on the damage that threatens it, in particular the uniformity of the media, inclusive writing, or technical and managerial newspeak.

In addition, he published two novels with Calmann-Lévy, Jalousies in 2004, the story of two obsessively jealous people, and in 2006 La vie de bureau , a novel whose hero, employed in a law firm and in love with an American intern, abhors noise as much as he loves the art of kissing, of which he gives burning praise.

He also published a very different novel, under the pseudonym of Jacques Sarthor, Les Affreux , published by Robert Laffont (2016), where he predicts, in lyrical slang, the activism of ultra-rightists against a backdrop of terrorism Islamic. He then published in 2017, under his name, with Robert Laffont, Le sacrifice des dames , a novel devoted to a purely fictional heroine in a largely imaginary 16th century Hungary, and which, placed under the sign of Machiavelli and the game of chess, raises the question of whether a moral law can limit the use of violence in the defense of the fatherland.

InAugust 2019, he published a portrait of La Bruyère at Robert Laffont, in the collection Le Passe-murailles, entitled La Bruyère, portrait of ourselves, which sheds light on the life of the moralist and his work, Les Caractères , in a style that is both dense and clear, with a concern for the narration that brings this portrait closer to a real novel.

Several of these works have been nominated for the main literary prizes (Fémina prize, Renaudot prize, Médicis essay prize, December prize, style prize, in addition to the prizes awarded by the French Academy).

He participated in the program Secrets d'Histoire devoted to the King of France Henri III , entitled Et si Henri III n'éta pas mignon? broadcast on January 19, 2016 on France 2 3.