Pascal Quignard is an enigmatic figure. In his literary and social life, if one can be split off at all from the other, there is always an understatement. His work is multifaceted: he is a brilliant novelist, a talented and enthusiastic essayist, and a musician. For some writers, literary activity is like a transparent veil: if you look closely through it, you will see the intimate details of private life. With Quignard, the situation is different, his writing is changeable, plastic and nimble, it, like an invisibility cloak, has helped him hide from prying eyes for many decades. He is a hermit creator who loves to stay in the background and not bother the world with his presence. Even having agreed to speak in public, he seems to be unwilling to open up and, before saying anything, weighs every word on an internal scale. Indeed, the reader has books, so if you please read, comprehending what was said and written.
It is about how books are born, how words are assembled into sentences, how thoughts are formed, pouring out onto paper, that Quignard discusses in his new work “The Man of Three Letters.” This is the eleventh volume in the Last Kingdom series, which began eighteen years ago and includes essays on burning topics. The current opus is completely devoted to literary creation and its essence. And “The Man of Three Letters” is none other than a thief (from the Latin fur), he is also a writer, whose life is entirely connected with theft. The person who writes takes away the language from the public space, he steals from his predecessors – he drags them plots, vivid speech turns, original thoughts and stylistic devices. But is it only the writer who steals them? To this question, Kinyar, looking back at himself, gives a negative answer.