French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Pingaud, Filial Piety
Writers: Biography, Letters and Memoirs
Bernard Pingaud
Piété filiale et autres récits autobiographiques
Le Temps qu'il fait, 2018
136 p. — ISBN 978.2.86853.646.4 — 16.00 €
“The texts in this book were intended for an autobiography, started several times and abandoned several times. Out of laziness, no doubt, but above all because, wanting to retrace my intellectual and political journey, I kept falling back into brooding over a family drama I had no intention of discussing: the tumultuous separation of my parents in 1934. Many others besides me have suffered the ever-painful and sometimes comical consequences of such a breakup. It so happens that it left such a mark on me that I am still troubled by it today. At the risk of repeating myself, I have tried on three occasions to tell the story. It is these narratives, published and spread out over several years, that I bring together here, along with a few pages recalling my difficult relationship with my father. Sartre wrote that a life is nothing other than ‘a childhood served up with every sauce’. Here is how I have prepared mine.” — Bernard Pingaud
Bernard Pingaud was born in Paris in 1923. He served as secretary of debates for the National Assembly until 1974. During the Algerian War, he signed the Manifesto of the 121 (1960). He took part in founding the Writers' Union (1968) and the Socialist Writers' Section (1973). He coordinated the working group for the Cultural Action Secretariat of the Socialist Party (1973–1979). He also served as cultural counselor at the French Embassy in Cairo (1983–1987) and president of the Maison des Écrivains in Paris. He is the author of some twenty novels and essays published by Gallimard and Le Seuil, including: Bartoldi le comédien (1996), Au nom du frère (2002), and Vous (2015).
Excerpt
Enthroned on the table where a harsh light isolates it as well, presented for the child's adoration like an object of worship — this white tablecloth could well be an altar linen —, the violin reminds us not only that all life comes from the father and ends in him. It exposes the son to the most insidious of temptations. Nothing would be easier, in the father's absence, than to steal his prestige. All one would have to do is pick up the instrument and draw the bow across the strings. It is from this gesture that the child holds back, measuring his own clumsiness and anxious not to make it public. The child, who from memory could reconstruct the most perilous cadences, who from a very young age was initiated into the rites of the musical ceremony, would dearly love, for just one day — that famous day of the Charleville concerto — to take the place of the officiant. But he is incapable of it and knows it. Beneath his awkward fingers, the instrument of omnipotence would produce only discordant sounds. It is strange, truly, that he was never initiated. Perhaps the father is too proud to accept a successor. Or perhaps, on the contrary, he deems himself unworthy of training one. Unless, quite simply, the child, urged to learn, met his father's invitations with the robust force of inertia that serves as his defense. In which case, we might think that he deemed himself (and still deems himself) unworthy of the succession. In the first scenario, the scene is a trap: the father, hidden in the next room, is waiting; if the son touches the violin, what a pleasure it will be to catch him red-handed! He will not be punished. They will simply mock him because he does not know how to play. It is this ridicule that he dreads. In the second scenario, the image still represents a temptation. But it is the child who is tempting himself. Upon returning from school, when the father is away, he slips into the study. He loves the scent of cold pipe tobacco that lingers there, the sense of completeness born of disorder, and the total disregard for taste evidenced by the accumulation of the father's treasures. It is he who took the varnished wooden case and placed the violin on the table. Now he gazes at it as if trying to tame it. Knowing full well that he has no right to play, he grants himself at least the right to look. And this gaze is a silent discourse — the long discourse whose clumsy words, as the days pass, pile up in his head, but which he will not have the imprudence to utter.
Autobiographical writing often engages with the persistent echoes of early domestic disruption, tracing how foundational family dynamics shape a writer's lifelong self-perception. Within the broader tradition of French introspective prose, authors frequently return to the formative years of childhood to examine the complex emotional architecture of household relationships. Bernard Pingaud's collection reflects this sustained inquiry, gathering scattered texts that address the tumultuous separation of his parents in 1934 and his difficult relationship with his father. Readers interested in twentieth-century French autobiography and personal narratives may find this volume a relevant addition.
The texts collected in the volume bring together narratives composed over several years, initially intended for an autobiography, started several times and abandoned several times. The author notes that wanting to retrace his intellectual and political journey, he kept falling back into brooding over a family drama, the tumultuous separation of his parents in 1934, and a difficult relationship with his father.