Illuminations

by Philippe Sollers

À l'heure où la question de Dieu est revenue au cœur de tous les débats, Philippe Sollers, romancier et essayiste, nous fait part de ses méditations... Dieu est-il mort? Vivant? A naître? Et si ces trois questions n'en formaient qu'une? Pour y répondre, Philippe Sollers convoque textes, prières, méditations, musiques et poèmes issus de toutes les traditions, de tous les siècles. Jésus côtoie librement Zarathoustra; Maître Eckhart; Tchouang-Tseu; Angélus Silésius; Lautréamont; tous ensemble au Paradis du Verbe. Chaque auteur - Rimbaud ou Roumi, Parménide ou Shakespeare - éclaire un chemin d'autant plus étroit qu'il ne s'ouvre jamais que le temps bref d'une illumination. Quête du sacré défini sur le mode précis de la révélation, Illuminations se veut un livre d'heures pour temps de dé une manière de poser la question de quelle vérité l'homme est-il capable? De quelle bonne nouvelle est-il porteur?

191 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2005

About the author

Philippe Sollers (born Philippe Joyaux) is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel (along with the writer and art critic Marcelin Pleynet), published by Seuil, which ran until 1982. In 1982 Sollers then created the journal L'Infini published by Denoel which was later published under the same title by Gallimard for whom Sollers also directs the series.

Sollers was at the heart of the intense period of intellectual unrest in the Paris of the 1960s and 1970s. Among others, he was a friend of Jacques Lacan, Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes. These three characters are described in his novel, Femmes (1983) alongside a number of other figures of the French intellectual movement before and after May 1968. From A Strange Solitude, The Park and Event, through "Logiques", Lois and Paradis, down to Watteau in Venice, Une vie divine and "La Guerre du goût", the writings of Sollers have often provided contestation, provocation and challenging.

In his book Writer Sollers, Roland Barthes discusses the work of Phillippe Sollers and the meaning of language.

Sollers married Julia Kristeva in 1967.