Luchini and Finkielkraut: When Two Great Men Admire Each Other

News Mondays – Jonas Follonier

There are moments on television that are true gems of live broadcasting—moments of intelligence and intimacy that uplift the viewer. The show The Big Bookshop The episode that aired on France 5 on October 26 really moved me—it was truly a great moment in television.

The show, hosted by the excellent presenter François Busnel, featured Fabrice Luchini. This French actor, who has become a household name, came to talk about his new show, «Writers Talk About Money.» Surprisingly, the neurotic star didn’t let himself get carried away to the point of the hysterical (and delightful) outbursts we’ve come to expect from him on television. Luchini was calm, without, however, pretending to be normal.

It was the perfect approach for engaging with the first guest to join him on set: Alain Finkielkraut. The philosopher and member of the Académie Française was, in fact, the one who urged Fabrice Luchini to include Charles Péguy in one of his shows. That has now come to pass with «Writers Talk About Money,» in which Péguy appears alongside Céline, Marx, and Bruckner. Finkielkraut had, in fact, invited Luchini on his show Replicas, on France Culture, to talk about it.

Luchini, on the Busnel show, reflected on that episode: «It was Alain Finkielkraut who helped me understand Péguy, who taught me about him.» One senses in the actor a deep respect for the philosopher, mixed with an admiration that Finkielkraut returns. It’s rare to see Finkielkraut smile so much, just as it’s rare to see Luchini take a back seat, his attention entirely focused on his conversation partner.

This discussion, moderated by François Busnel, also helped dispel the reactionary and «old fogey» image that certain media outlets have pinned on Alain Finkielkraut. Luchini was keen to share his own experience with the intellectual: «No one knows just how funny he is, how touching, and how likable.» It is important that public figures such as Luchini dispel the misunderstanding surrounding the author of The Unhappy Identity.

That aside, a meeting between two individuals of such caliber can only give rise to brilliant insights and flashes of inspiration touching on their shared passion: literature. When Finkielkraut steps into Flaubert’s shoes to discuss his vision of the novel, he says: «It is the union of beauty and truth that makes prose great.» Luchini, who is also deeply inspired by this major writer, quoted one of his most striking lines: «So I will return to my poor, dull, and quiet life, where sentences are adventures.»

Another passion shared by the three men on the set—and one that is closely tied to literature—is language. If there is one thing Alain Finkielkraut would like to see preserved above all else, it is the French language, at a time when it is increasingly being mistreated. «Even actors, sometimes, when they step offstage, speak any old way.» The philosopher naturally contrasts this behavior with that of Luchini, one of the few who still embodies the language and makes us love it.

These television moments are unique for the intellectual emotion they evoke—an emotion that the two French men in their sixties discover in one another; an emotion they share for literature and for a French school of thought that no longer exists; a feeling that Finkielkraut detects in the leftist movement to which he belonged in May ’68 and which he recalls with nostalgia tinged with a certain humor; a feeling, finally, that Luchini displays in response to the courage and clarity of his new friend.

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