The art of making history out of politics. A conversation between Le Maire and Da Empoli

Paris. “Literature feeds on politics because it is a highly literary theme. Politics is a sort of magnifying glass on the character of individuals. Abraham Lincoln said, ‘If you would test a man’s character, give him power.’ It is something extremely passionate and romantic. Politics is the one activity that prevents our societies from sinking into violence, but consequently concentrates much violence in itself. To the question of whether power reciprocally feeds on literature, the answer is more nuanced. This is certainly the case for French politics. Politics and literature have a very intimate relationship in France. This specificity has its roots far back in time, particularly in the fourteenth century, and continues today. There has been almost no interruption in the wake of the characters who have been able to combine these two fields. That’s why I’m in France, there’s no other country that knows how to link politics and literature to such an extent”. Julian of EmpoliItalian-Swiss writer and intellectual, but born in Paris and entered the Olympus of belles lettres thanks to the “Wizard of the Kremlin”, a formidable novel on contemporary Russia winner of the Grand Prix de l’Académie française, he was invited by the Figaro to dialogue with the current French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, who has recently published his latest work, “Fugue americaine”, dedicated to the life of the great Russian naturalized American pianist Vladimir Horowitz. The result was an exchange of ideas both enthusiastic and refined around the two passions that unite them, politics and literature, against the backdrop of the Drouant restaurant, where every year, since 1914, the winner of the Goncourt prize is decided.