« Romain Gary (1914-1980) and his Era: Commemorative One-Day Conference on the Occasion of the Centenary of his Birth »
This year 2014, the literary world celebrates the completion of one hundred years since the birth of Roman Kacew, the Russian-Jewish origin and naturalized (since 1935) French writer, known as Romain Gary (/Emile Azar) (Vilnius, May 8, 1914 – Paris, December 2, 1980). It is a particular case in French literature of the 20th century that not only was he loved and established due to his numerous novels, theatrical and cinematographic adaptations of his works and film scripts but also for his revolutionary action, his bravery, fighting spirit and his career as a diplomat. Resourceful and playful by nature, he liked to deceit both the public and critics alternating artistic pseudonyms and his successive literary personae. He is cited up to today for his unique double awarding of the Goncourt prize.
His rich author’s work covers a wide spectrum of literary genres and tones, from dramatic to caustic, from his autobiography to young adult literature. At the same time, he mingles masterly the recent history (Second World War, resistance, fascism, camps of concentration) with the major sociopolitical questions of postwar Europe (decolonization, immigration, racial discrimination, freedom of religion, multiculturalism, ecology), achieving via writing a universe of personal wrestle against close-mindedness and pusillanimity as a means towards human dignity and fraternity.
On December 2, 1980 at the age of 66, Romain Gary chose to put an end in his life. Thirty four years later, on the same day of this tragic loss, the Department of Literature and the Laboratory of Comparative Literature of the School of French Language and Literature of the Aristotle University organise a tribute to Romain Gary. The conference’s main objective is, through a retrospection in the turbulent life and the multifaceted work of the author, to highlight the particular position that he managed to achieve in the literary palimpsest of the last century. Since not only was Gary a prolific and charismatic writer, but also he personified and served persistently the ideals of the French Republic and culture, in which he was brought up and made up his works of fiction.