Does writing about oneself is like signing an autograph? It’s hard to like to write about yourself. So, let’s keep to the facts! Just biological facts? Like some tales once told by the author, this world sometimes turns upside down. … My parents wanted a daughter. I confined myself to being a boy, the second, the last. We are two brothers, born under different signs.
I was born in Charleville, in the French Ardennes, I like the Ardennes. Christmas holidays, Easter holidays, in the Northeast. Like Rimbaud, my uncles, my aunts and cousins are there. But, after my confidence, I wouldn’t want to be called Arthur… My first name is Luc. It is a short name, my mother’s choice, my mother should know. My father did not want a long first name. Speaking like that, reminds me of the voiceover of Sacha Guitry in his movies. No, no, I’m not going to impose to the reader, neither some kind of a short film, nor a feature film.
I am not Cyrano. In my father’s village, the Delfosse family would never go to church… It would take too long to tell. I didn’t get the bike of my dreams that all boys and girls of my age received as a gift on the occasion of their first communion. I didn’t make it. Did all of them get a bike? Almost all of them … I didn’t get a bike, but I did have red balloons, blue surprise bags. At the time, I was not bold enough to woo the woman of my dreams, her name was Françoise, I was eight years old. However, she became the heroine of my first novel, a crime novel. In fact, it was a love story: my cry for love was already ringing out in the night. I was already fascinated by the beauty of the world, by female beauty. Feminine beauty has no secret for me, nothing but mystery. Am I obsessed? Almost.
By the way, this is supposed to be a biography, not a confession of the night. It is 4:54 a.m. Gabian, a small village loved by heroes, will soon wake up. At night, you my beauty, you appear immense… Very quickly, the ontological anxiety of the child, reinforced by the darkness, will be followed by the desire of the child, then that of the adolescent. In this noisy world of ours, desire, research, appreciation of the silences of the teens will become the rule. The desire for beauty will come out victorious. Intuition guided me, a sort of vague assault on my mind.
I loved to go to school, to all elementary, grammar schools, to colleges. I became a seller, a tramp, a traveler, I sold happiness to myself. I tried to bring some to others. I especially love the school of life. It is expressed through all the woman’s perfumes that I sell around the world.
I don’t like spiteful tongues. I love foreign languages. I learned a few. I love Marketing, I teach it. But enough about me. This exercise bothers me. On the other hand, I never get tired of constantly discovering, with desire, beauty. Here are a few words from the Still Alive Poets Society. They will suffice to express what the beauty of women can stir up in the poor hearts of men.
Here are these few words above promoted:
« Since beauty runs, I want to run faster » Jean Cocteau
« Beauty will save the world » Dostoevsky
It will be understood, to date, I have had no guide other than beauty. If I am redundant, it is because Beauty ricochets in me. I am told Beauty is fleeting. I do not believe that. They were called Amal, Nathalie, Virginie, Sylvie, Marie, Emma, Catherine, or Isabelle, if the king knew that. They still live in me. They were painted by Leonardo, described by Musset, stripped by Ingres and Modigliani, dreamed by Flaubert, unveiled by Baudelaire, sung by Aznavour and Bécaud. They burned Gérard de Nerval’s heart. When the poet died, smoked or hanged, they continued to live and dance, sometimes around a lamppost.
I also found the beauty of friendship in the South, not far from Gabian, in Vailhan, where the day is dawning now, where Victor Hugo offered me his triumphant mornings, where, finally, I have encountered Manou, the lovely holidays in the South, the smile of Anne-Marie, that of Reinette. What a number of feminine first names, will you tell me?
Life has given me four sons and a few friends. I stare at the first with my eyes, the second, I keep them in my heart. Their names are Maurice, Antoine, Philippe, Jean, Richard, Patrick, Serge. There are other friends of mine whom sometimes I have never met or barely approached, King Elvis, Little Richard, the great Charles, Jacques the friend, François-René, Victor.
This biography ends with first names, on the faces of others, on their smiles, without which the author would never have written any book.