As France’s ambassador to Malta Daniel Rondeau’s term draws to its end, Norbert Bugeja seeks out the writer behind the charming diplomat.
As I see it, beneath Daniel Rondeau’s charming personality and confident demeanour lies a far more intriguing man: a seasoned writer, a mind that has never ceased to inquire, to interrogate history and experience.
Instead of merely writing critiques or reviews of newly published books, I used to meet the authors, to sketch their portraits with my words
His sharp, mercurial intellect lets him relate to me – a writer half his age – as if we were best buddies at college. Rondeau does not hail from the bland hordes of careerists that crowd our world. He has earned his international stature – as well as his Légion d’Honneur – after more than four decades of writing, traversing and covering a culturally and politically volatile region, a human landscape he now knows by heart and carries effortlessly in his mind’s eye.
“At 30, when I began to work as a journalist, I decided to reinvent a new form of literary report,” he declares as we sip on our coffees.
Instead of merely writing critiques or reviews of newly published books, he used to meet the authors, to sketch their portraits with my words, to explain the story of their life, to focus on symbolic scenes from their personal histories or the places where they were living and writing. His papers were quite successful – he was the only one doing this work at that time.
“I liked to visit writers’ houses, to get to know their habits. Smoker or non smoker? Morning or evening? Sex or abstinence? Pen or laptop? Writing is also a ceremony, and writers have to start up their engine every day. In documenting these habits, I sought to draw up a map of the contemporary literary world.
“Moreover, through these travels and encounters, I was searching for my own way, and for that place on the map where I wanted to land as the new writer in town. During this time I discovered the Mediterranean too, and it was the beginning of a new path that finally led me to Malta.”
As he utters these words, Rondeau brandishes a Milan Kundera tome, complete with a warm, autographed note by the author addressed to him, and then belts out the astonishing series of acquaintances he made over those years.
“This was how I met Alexandr Solženitsyn, Umberto Eco, Mario Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Czesław Miłosz, Graham Greene, Alberto Moravia, Anthony Burgess, Paul Bowles and many others. Some of them became friends. Obviously, all the years dedicated to literary journalism were my formative years. I learnt a lot.
“I was concerned by the fate of Europe – I still am – and I realised at the time, after the revolution-ary mood of my youth, that this European heritage was our responsibility and that we have to treasure it like we do our memories.”
Also, nearly all of his encounters taught him the importance of work and of discipline. Most people have a romantic picture of writers. Behind the illusion, you have to know the importance of solid work. Writing is hard work, it brings both pain and happiness for those who choose it, he says.
I am quick to point out one common trait among many of the writers on his list that I find highly germane to the upheavals we are witnessing south of our shores, but Rondeau pre-empts me with his smile.
“This is what I remember from my youth: it is always right to rise up against oppression. The Arab Spring was a massive and unexpected movement for freedom. I do believe the first sign of the Arab claim for freedom was given in the late 1980s by the Lebanese people, both Muslims and Christians, when general Michel Aoun was battling Syrian terrorism.
“But at that time, the United States, quickly followed by all the democracies, decided to support Hafez al-Assad, and the Lebanese hopes were defeated. Some months ago, France and the UK decided upon – and won – a war to protect civilians and de facto to help the rebels.
“We have to point out, though, that the Arab Spring’s children are unpredictable. The fate of these countries – Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and others to follow – is now in the hands of their people. It is our duty to support them in building their new countries. The European future will be written not only in Berlin, Rome or Paris, but also in Tunis, Tripoli or Cairo. In Libya, the first battle for democracy has been won. The second has just begun, and it will be a very important one too.”
We also speak of his years as a student, when he was at the very forefront of the 1968 uprisings on the continent and, decades later, a vocal advocate for the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses and a vociferous supporter of the Lebanese resistance against Syrian aggression.
He says how, later on in life after he had published some books, he decided to live in Champagne in a remote house, distant from even the closest village. It was here that, besides preparing his weekly articles for L’Express, he laboured at an epic novel, Dans la Marche du Temps, a work that took him seven years to complete and brought him international acclaim and several literary accolades.
“My intent in writing this novel was to use fiction through two ordinary characters, a father and his son, to tell a story of the 20th century by writing about its complexity, its scavengers and its unknown or forgotten heroes, and our everlasting nostalgia for communion or brotherhood.”
I inquire about the vast knowledge of the Mediterranean Rondeau has acquired over the years, as he travelled and wrote about cities such as Alexandria, Istanbul and Tangiers, which he describes as “the gates” to the Mare Nostrum.
“I got to know the Mediterranean slowly, year after year,” he explains.
“The Mediterranean has shuffled many people, many societies, many human adventures. Through peace and war, trade and love, people have learnt to really know each other. Time is always working on our history like a tapestry. Across the two shores, we are all linked very deeply, more deeply than we can imagine.”
As our conversation inches towards its end, I quip that no writer has, in earnest, ever left Malta without either taking something of it with him or forgetting something behind.
I am referring to Rondeau’s forthcoming book Malta Ħanina, now close to completion and which will be published by Grasset in January.
“My time in Malta,” Rondeau points out, “has increased my love for my native Europe, fostered pride in my roots, and an understanding that these roots were born in the Orient as well as in the Mediterranean, forged in the magical triangle of Jerusalem, Rome and Athens.
“For the Maltese readers of my new book, I desire the pleasure of reading and the discovery of a personal insight on their island home. As for myself, adding my voice to the prose of the world, I feel doubly alive. I write precisely for this reason: to feel this shiver again, and to live twice.”
Dr Bugeja lectures at the University of Malta.