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Pascal Quignard. Vie secrete. Paris. Gallimard. 1998. 465 pages. 130 F. ISBN 2-07-0748790.
At the age of fifty, Pascal Quignard, author of some forty books, of which Vie secrete is the most recent, has acquired a reputation as one of the most original, disconcerting, unclassifiable, and truly d*gage writers of his generation. The son of a philology-professor father and a music-teacher mother, he evinced the durable influence of this family background on his career and on his literary production. An uomo universale of our time whose impressive erudition is tinged with pedantry, he has an extensive acquaintance with Greek and Latin literature (frequently cited in Vie secrete), which inspired such works as Le sexe et l'effroi (on Roman sensuality) and Aprodemia Avitia. His interests extend beyond Europe, however, to include e.g. an admiration of traditional Chinese literature, especially Lao-Tse, more appealing to him than the socially conformist Confucius. His passion for music, especially of the Baroque (he founded a festival of Baroque opera in the chateau de...