Partner Angelo Rinaldi
Queer Places:
Cimetiere de Vaugirard
Paris, City of Paris, Île-de-France, France
Hector
Bianciotti, born March 18, 1930 in Calchín Oeste, province of Córdoba in
Argentina, and died June 12, 2012 in Paris 16th, is a film actor, journalist
and writer of Argentine origin, naturalized French, member of the Académie française. A discreet homosexual, Hector Bianciotti lived a large part of his life with the writer Angelo Rinaldi, who entered the French Academy in 2001. Together, they were the first gay couple to sit on the Academy.
Hector Bianciotti was raised in a family of farmers of Piedmontese origin. His parents spoke the dialect among themselves but forbade the use of it to their son, who was forced to speak Spanish. Entering the Franciscan minor seminary of Moreno, he came into contact with theological thought but appeared devoid of any religious vocation. However, he developed his literary culture there. At the age of fifteen, he began to study French from the confrontation of texts by Paul Valéry with their Spanish translation. In 1955, he left his country for Italy and stayed in Rome in great poverty. After a stint in Naples, he spent four years in Spain. In 1956, he participated in the film División Azul - Embajadores del infierno, whose libretto was written by Torcuato Luca de Tena, as well as in the film 091 Policía al habla, (1960). He was directed by Luis Lucía Mingarro in Molokai, la isla maldita (1959), and by Edgar Neville (Mi calle, 1960). He did not settle in Paris until February 1961. A year later, he began writing reading reports for Gallimard. In 1969, his first publisher, Maurice Nadeau, allowed him to publish his first literary criticism in La Quinzaine littéraire. He is also assistant director of operas. Three years later, he began a collaboration with Le Nouvel Observateur that did not become exclusive until 1974, the year he definitively left La Quinzaine littéraire. At the same time, he wrote novels in his mother tongue (Les Déserts dorés in 1962, Celle qui voyage la nuit in 1969, Ce moment qui s'achève in 1972) and a play, Les autres, un soir d'été (1970). He was consecrated in 1977 by the Prix Médicis étranger which he received for Le Traité des saisons (1977). Naturalized French in 1981, he stopped writing in his mother tongue the following year. The short stories collected in 1983 in L'amour n'est pas aimé (prize for Best Foreign Book) were written before. That same year, he sat on the reading committee of Gallimard and this until 1989. A great reader, he introduced the public to writers who were then little known such as Ferdinando Camon, Jean-Baptiste Niel and Eduardo Berti, and he played an important role in Hervé Guibert's literary career. Two years later, her first novel in French, Sans la miséricorde du Christ (1985), was awarded the Prix Femina. In 1986, he left his position as literary critic for Le Nouvel Observateur to work for Le Monde. In 1988, he published Only Tears Will Be Counted. Then, from 1992, an autobiographical trilogy (with Grasset). His articles on classical literature are collected under the title Une passion en toutes lettres (Gallimard, 2001). His last published novel, Nostalgie de la maison de Dieu (Gallimard), was published in 2003. From 1995, he was part of the jury of the prize for intimate writing. Then, suffering from memory problems, he ceased his literary activity.
Hector Bianciotti died on June 12, 2012 at the Henri-Dunant Hospital in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, at the age of 82, following a long illness. His body rests in the cemetery of Vaugirard (Paris 15th), in division 18, "under an anonymous and dilapidated concrete plate ». Dany Laferrière succeeded him in chair of the Académie française; received on May 28, 2015, he delivers a remarkable speech, in his honour.
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