Between Corsica and Tuscany, this island was the place of exile of Napoleon I. But also of vacation of the French writer, death of AIDS, in 1991, who composed the major part of his work.
“I took trains, then a boat, an aliscaphe that slides on the water, I went up in a coach, I stopped on this unknown name, Rio Elba, I went down to the terminus. I only have a very small baggage, a plastic bag with my toiletries, some spare clothes, a book, this notebook and this pen, “writes Hervé Guibert (1955-1991) in a new of the singular adventures published At Editions de Minuit, in 1982. He was 22 years old when he discovered this earth full of sun, covered with a thick maquis and hemmed with perfect beaches for scuba diving (the famous apneist Jacques Mayol, Inspirator of Big Bleu, establishes its records there). His German friend, photographer and writer Hans Georg Berger (Gustave, in Guibert’s novels) invites him to discover the magical place he has just found: Santa Caterina, an abandoned hermitage that we join by a path between Cypress.
This friendly phalansère also welcomes Christine (who will become the wife of Hervé Guibert), Thierry Jouno (her lover, but also the father of Christine’s children), the writers Mathieu Lindon and Eugène Savitzkaya. “We had fun like crazy. It was a summer community life, interspersed with walks and swimming. Most of the time, Hervé did not participate. He was in his room or under the mosquito net, at his work table” , testifies the German photographer who published, in 2019, a very beautiful book, Hans Georg Berger: Hervé Guibert, a photographic love (Le Quai/Michel de Maule). The island of Elba, in black in white, is revealed there by bursts. Today we can approach the hermitage, even if the private apartments (with the wrought iron bed of Hervé) are not accessible. Going back down to the village of Rio Nell’elba, the name of the writer appears on a pink marble plate with the cemetery columbarium, without any other mention, as if to distinguish deceased with photo and plastic flowers on white stone .
” here, It sometimes looks like the time has stopped, “said Radio producer Laurent Goumarre, who made the pilgrimage of the island of Elbe with his friend David Teboul, director, in 2021, of the documentary Hervé Guibert, death Propaganda. “There are these rusty vestiges by the sea as ready to collapse. “These are old mining infrastructure, kept as an industrial archeology. One of the most impressive is on the beach of Cala Seregola where, naked, Hervé Guibert takes a last bath while he is already plagued by the AIDS (he films himself in modesty or immodesty, broadcast on TF1 in 1992). Further, at the foot of Mount Calamita, we visit the galleries from which we extracted the iron. The island is proud of his mining culture. It also produces wine from the Etruscans. And now welcomes many Italian, Swiss, German visitors … but, curiously, few French.
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