SOURCE: "An Interview with Michel Tournier," in Partisan Review, Vol. LII, No. 4, 1985, pp. 407-13.

[In the following interview, Daly questions Tournier about his novel Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar, as well as about the function of myth in his work.]

The following interview with Tournier took place on a sunny summer day in Paris, in the offices of his publisher, Gallimard, after he had just published his seventh major fictional work, Gaspard, Melchior and Balthazar (The Four Wise Men).

[Daly]: Why did you choose the three Magi as the subject for Gaspard, Melchior and Balthazar?

[Tournier]: I always wanted to do something with my Christian background which is very important to me because I was brought up in Christian schools. Consequently, it was one of the things I wanted to talk about. I think that the choice of the three wise men was a particularly appropriate subject for me. First of all, no one had ever talked about it; second, on the contrary, there is an immense iconographical wealth concerning the three kings. The paintings are wonderful, aren't they?

In The Four Wise Men, did you try to relate the Christian philosophical system to any other philosophical system?

No. There is only one thing that is very modern in The Four Wise Men; it is the idea of image and likeness which is Balthazar's problem. As you know, I am preoccupied with photography; I am very interested it. That's very modern and is, at the same time, biblical because the question of image and likeness is in the beginning of the Bible. The political problem of Melchior is also very modern; in the problem of Herod's tyranny, there are characteristics that bring Stalin to mind: the idea of killing anyone however little he may be suspected. The person is destroyed, that's Stalin. The idea of telling the story of one's life at the end of a meal during the last courses—that was Hitler—he did it all the time. The portraits [in The Four Wise Men] are of rather modern tyrants, but there isn't any philosophy.

Nonetheless, concerning what you said, I think that perhaps one can make a connection between The Four Wise Men and Heidegger's essay "Das Ding" ["The Thing"] which speaks of pouring oneself out in order to attain a sort of immortality, to attain a fully human status. Couldn't one make an analogy between that idea and the life of Taor, the fourth king in The Four Wise Men?

I agree completely, but I didn't make the analogy; however, I think that you have the right—completely—to do it. At the moment, I have just submitted to Mercure de France [a French publisher] an anthology of literary studies with a preface about reading. It will come out at the end of the year and will be entitled Le Vol du Vampire. I think that it would interest you because it is literature once removed. For the same reason it won't interest many people. You will see that I defend the idea of a reading as an act of possession, so the reader is also the author, a coauthor. There is still something that I would like to say about the Magi. There are two things that I like about them. The first is that they are foreigners: they are people who came from far away who are not part of the "family"; I like that very much; they are travelers who arrive, who learn things that they didn't know; who make grotesque errors, for example, as does the one who arrives with his rahat loukoum [a pistachio-flavored dessert found in Arabic countries that is the raison d'etre of the quest of the fourth wise man]. The second thing is wealth, because the wise men are rich. In Christianity there is a sort of heretical idealization of poverty that I detest because Jesus always defended himself against misconceptions concerning poverty; for example, when Mary Magdalene poured out a very, very expensive perfume on his feet, the disciples were indignant and said, "But that's idiotic, with all that money we could have done …" etcetera, and He said, "So then, I have no right to precious ointment? I like nard!" Then, there is the parable of the talents which is a banking parable…. There is also the Transfiguration on Mount Tabor where Christ's beauty was resplendent—a divine beauty. It was not a humble beauty; it was shattering, awe-inspiring: He very much resembled the sun. That is how I conceive of Christianity; I envision a solar Christ, not a mendicant Christ.

Why then does Christ appear only in an oblique fashion in The Four Wise Men? Was it a political question?

No. It was simply a matter of my inability as a novelist. You know that depicting Christ is overwhelming. It is terribly difficult…. Who can allow himself to do it? First of all, I have a model—Flaubert's Herodiade—Christ is in it too … but He is far off—on the horizon—you know? Everything goes on more or less behind His back.

You employ myths very often in your novels. For you, what is the importance of myth in twentieth-century literature, not only in your works, but in literature in general?

Well, I'll tell you, that doesn't really interest me very much. What interests me a lot is the role of myth in the daily life of people. For example, if you watch advertisements on television, you see myths appear: the myth of purity, everything that concerns cleanliness, etcetera … the myth of nature; the myth of Robinson Crusoe who appears everywhere—doesn't he? The desert island, the Club Med, vacations, tans, fixing things—all that is summarized by Robinson Crusoe.

In the history and the literature of the twentieth century one sees a sort of progressive atomization (perhaps related to the discovery of the atomic structure itself). Novels have moved from the interior monologue to those displaying a totally fragmented psyche. Don't you think that myth attempts to put man back into a sort of unified framework and by means of myth man is able to unify his experiences? That view is, however, from a critical perspective.

That seems a very, very good idea to me, because there are unifying myths. In general, however, myths are rather destructive. I mean, myth is almost always the exaltation of an antisocial hero—on the order of Don Juan. Don Juan is antisocial; Tristan is antisocial. Nonetheless, you can still have unifying myths: in France, that of Joan of Arc. So, the national myth, the national hero, which are unifying, those belong to another category. As for me, I am struck by the antisocial function of myth. I have the impression that everything in society tends toward order and that myth is a means for the individual to escape from an order that suffocates him, by means of a hero who is revolting against the established order. For example, the wife who cheats on her husband can think of Isolde. Tristan and Isolde is a story of a woman who deceives her husband, isn't it?

That is the question that Denis de Rougemont deals with in Love and the Occident.

Yes, exactly. So, the woman feels exalted because she experiences passion [of mythic proportions]. She can do nothing against it. She is consumed by passion for someone besides her husband; she is even exalted because of it. As for her husband, he doesn't understand—he is King Mark [Isolde's cuckolded husband].

He is overwhelmed by the events.

Exactly.

How do you see the literary hero of the twentieth century?

He doesn't really interest me enormously. I'm interested in the mythological hero. There is a big difference. The mythological hero exceeds the work and is more famous than his author. Don Juan, for example, is more famous than Tirso da Molina; Robinson Crusoe is more famous than Daniel Defoe, whereas the literary hero remains a prisoner of the work. That is the case of Balzac's Vautrin [in Le Pere Goriot] or Proust's Charlus [in Remembrance of Things Past]. The hero must not dominate the literary work, but he must have an organic place; in the last analysis, I conceive of the novel as a hero. My novel develops, it resembles a tree, and I am nothing but the gardener; I water it; I take care of it; I hope that it will grow—and it grows a little bit outside of me. For example, the three Magi who had been sleeping for years in my drawer suddenly sprang to life. I can explain it a little, but in the end, it is still bizarre. I'm explaining it after the fact—you know?

Was your conception of myth influenced by the structuralism of Levi-Strauss?

Yes, I was a student of Levi-Strauss's.

At the College de France?

No, at the Museum of Man. I was at the Museum of Man during the years 1950–1952 and I had Levi-Strauss as a professor.

Did you study the works of the great ethnologists, for example, Boas, Malinowski, and Durkheim?

As for Malinowski, yes. When I was at the Museum of Man, Levi-Strauss told me, "Listen, since you read German, there is a gentleman whose name is Guisinde, a German who has devoted his whole life to a tribe of Fuegians, the Selknams. You are going to study that and then give an oral report about it." Consequently, I became the "Selknam man." Malinowski is a marvel. The Trobriand Islands—an archipelago—are fabulous. The Trobrianders are extraordinary. They do not make the connection between intercourse and the birth of a child—that's wonderful. Nine months separate the two events—there is no relationship between them. It is the rain that makes the woman fertile. The gentleman who sleeps with her is not the father, but the uncle—he's a lover and a friend. It is a magnificent social structure, much more attractive than ours. It is the mother's brother who lives with the children, who brings them up … etcetera.

You use fairy tales as well as myths in your works. What is the difference between the fairy tale and the myth?

The fairy tale—you will see in Le Vol du Vampire—I have a chapter on fairy tales—for me, they are broken and diminished myths—little myths. Fairy tales have an effect on us because we do not recognize the myth, but it is there…. For example, Charles Perrault's Bluebeard is full of unlikely events, and we accept these events because underneath there is a great myth, but we don't recognize it. Bluebeard leaves, saying to his wife, "I'm leaving on a trip, here are the keys to the house. You can use all the keys except the one that opens this chamber. If you open it, you will die." It is a crazy way to act. He is courting disaster, but he does it anyway, and we accept it. Why do we accept it? Because we recognize, without realizing it—it is a matter of remembering—Yaweh's saying to Adam and Eve, "You can eat of all the fruits of Paradise except that one, and if you eat from it, you will die." And Yaweh goes away. It is that memory that is at work—that explains why we accept Bluebeard's pronouncement. Naturally, the wife opens the chamber door and drops the key on the ground. The key is stained and she cannot get the stain out. In that respect too, the myth of the indelible spot is very much established, very profound—the anguish of the small stain and then besmirched honor, and then virginity…. There is a whole mythology of the indelible spot which makes us accept this story but which doesn't hold up apart from it. For me, that is what a story is, but not necessarily a fairy tale.

Which of your novels do you prefer, and why?

I prefer Gemini. Simply because it is the most my novel … it is the one that (but these are purely personal considerations) is based on nothing. Vendredi is based upon Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe; The Four Wise Men is based upon the Scriptures; The Ogre, although it is less obvious, is based upon Nazism; there is the war, etcetera…. These are ways of treating, of retreating those things, whereas with Gemini there is nothing. It is a thick book based upon nothing. It is I.

A personal invention?

Yes, that's right—and then, it is also the one that is the most ambitious.

How would you describe your literary style?

I was watching a television show the other day—a literary show, Apostrophes with Bernard Pivot. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Michel Déon, and Robert Kanters were on. There were two novelists with opposing points of view: Robbe-Grillet and Michel Déon, and two literary critics: Kanters and Poirot-Delpech. They were arguing about how one should write, etcetera. If I had been there and somebody had asked me: "And you, where do you stand in all of this?" I would have said, "Me, I'm not part of all that, I don't understand anything about everything you are saying because I"—what I am going to say is horrible—I wouldn't have told them, but I'll tell you—"I have something to say!" For example, in The Four Wise Men, I have Christianity, all of Christianity to discuss, you know? So, I am not going to ask myself questions about rhetoric. I have a huge subject matter, a tremendous amount of work to do, and I choose the literary form that is the easiest, the most obvious for me, and the closest to the Scriptures since I have a model. I would have told them, "You have questions that you ask yourselves about construction, all the problems of the nouveau roman." As for me, in the last analysis, I am not really literary. I don't have much of a literary bent, I think.

If you were a critic, what would be the aspect of your work that would fascinate you the most?

First, I want to say that there are things that I would criticize. For example, in The Ogre, I am sorry that there is only one character who dominates the whole. In my opinion, that isn't a novel. In a novel, there have to be several characters—all of them important and all different from the author. But there is only one of him. Then, there is much too much philosophy.

In The Ogre?

Not in The Ogre, but in Vendredi. It crops up everywhere.

If you'll permit me to say so, I think that Vendredi is a great success in the line of Flaubert's Bouvard and Pécuchet. Vendredi is a totally abstract work, but you have succeeded in putting enormous charm, lyricism, and a certain exotic spirit into it.

Thank you. Something that I prefer, perhaps over Gemini, is Pierrot ou les secrets de la nuit, because there, really, I succeeded in infusing the story with the maximum amount of philosophy, ontology, Bachelard, matter, color, solidity, smell, biological mechanisms, and nonetheless, it remains a story for children.

Yes, it is a lovely story; that is irrefutable. Now that you have published several very successful books, do you still see your work as an author the same way?

Let's say that formerly I had material concerns which I no longer have, and I also had worries about a public that I don't have anymore. So, now I can really say what I want to—no matter to whom, even to the Pope or to the President of the Republic; they would hesitate to throw me out the door!

Finally, the next-to-last question: in which philosophical current would you place yourself?

In what philosophical current would I place myself? But I abandoned philosophy twenty-five years ago! I no longer have a philosophical leaning.

The last question: Sartre, in his autobiography, The Words, says that for him language is a kind of absolute. Do you agree?

He is right. A novel is a thing that is produced with words, and words have a value in themselves. Absolute means cut off from the rest, doesn't it? And it is a verbal construction.

I would say that for Sartre it is not absolutely true, but that language acquires a transcendent aspect.

You are right. It is much truer of other writers; it is actually less true of Sartre.