In an Italian hotel facing the sea, Gabriel Matzneff has been living alone for a month. An anonymous among retirees on vacation who do not seem to recognize him. He hardly leaves his room, and takes his meals every day at the same time, at the same table, in the lounge of the establishment.
We went to meet him to interrogate him. Two interviews, which lasted almost two hours. He agreed to be filmed, provided he did not show his face. He also agreed to allow us to broadcast excerpts of our conversation, recorded on a telephone.
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On Vanessa Springora’s book: “I don’t want to read it”
At the mention of Vanessa Springora, who accuses him in his book The consent to have exercised a form of control over her and to have had a pedophile relationship with her when she was a teenager, his gaze changes. “I will never say anything against her because she is a bright person. I don’t want to read her book because I have wonderful memories.”
“We lived a lasting and magnificent love story,” he continues. “I still have her letters from the time (written under the influence, says Vanessa Springora today, editor’s note), and it’s this beautiful memory that I want to keep, and I don’t want to spoil it.”
In this book published earlier this year, already sold more than 75,000 copies, Vanessa Springora tells how she thought she loved Gabriel Matzneff when she was only 14 and he was almost 50, before realizing that she had been in his grip. That she was not old enough and, in fact, not sufficiently psychologically armed, to be able to refuse these sexual relations which are considered by law as rape of a minor.
“We have to go back to the era. Great writers like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault campaigned for the lowering of the sexual majority,” pleads the 83-year-old man without energy.
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On pedophilia in the Philippines: “At the time, nobody thought of the law “
On his pedophile practices of the past, in the Philippines, described in his books, Gabriel Matzneff takes refuge there again behind the time – “It was over 40 years ago!” – and minimizes the gravity of his actions. “You can sometimes do things without thinking about it. I must say that at the time, nobody thought of the law. There was no law. You were there as a traveler and you had boys and girls young people who flirted with you and jumped on you, under the benevolent eye of the police. “
“It was absolutely unfortunate,” he said today. “A tourist, a stranger, should not behave like that. One must, as an adult, turn one’s head, resist temptation. Naturally I regret, just as if I do something that is not right, I sorry. ”
Is he aware, does he feel like he has committed crimes? “No, not at all. Look, if we use this word crime, if it’s a legal definition, I can’t say anything about it, But still, it seems to me, this word, crime … At the time, we talked about hijacking of minors, incitement of minors to debauchery, indecent assault … But no one ever spoke of a crime! ”, replies Gabriel Matzneff.
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On the Minister of Culture: “The State plunges my head into the water”
And when we ask about the Minister of Culture Franck Riester who wishes to withdraw the aid he touches as a writer, he gets carried away. “In a few weeks, I feel socially destroyed. When the Minister of Culture, whose vocation is to protect writers, painters, sculptors, filmmakers, asks to delete that little help that I receive, which pays a part of the rent for my studio … “
“The state drives the point home to drive my head into the water,” he says. “That I kill myself, that I kill myself, that’s the trap! It’s really the Soviet Union! Come on, Matzneff, at the gulag. I don’t know how I get through it.”
Gabriel Matzneff threatens to interrupt our conversation when we start reading to him extracts in which he praises rape on a minor. “Now I am being thrown sentences isolated from my texts in my face, I find it really amazing, all my work as a writer, all my work … But there are other things in these books, which were in the libraries, in bookstores …. That it comes out to me in 2020, in the 21st century, it seems crazy to me. “
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On the cessation of the publication of his books: “I hope all this is only temporary”
The man, cut off from the news, kept informed by snatches by his friends of the extent of the outrage at him in France, awaits. “I hope that the investigation of the Paris prosecutor’s office will free me from all these attacks. As for my publishers who have stopped publishing my books, I hope that all this is only temporary …”
Gabriel Matzneff is the subject ofan investigation opened by the Paris prosecutor’s office for rape of a minor. For the moment, he has not been summoned by the investigators, and does not yet know when he will return to Paris. This investigation could conclude with a classification without follow-up: the facts denounced by Vanessa Springora are time-barred, and to date, no other alleged victim has filed a complaint.
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