Philippe Sollers on Stendhal, Venice, and the New Novel 'Trésor d'amour'

Philippe Sollers discusses his latest novel Trésor d'amour, published by Gallimard, which celebrates passionate love as a 'sublime illness' and a 'hard drug.' The narrative follows a French narrator who meets a 24-year-old Italian woman, Minna Viscontini, in New York; she later becomes a literature professor in Milan and lives in Venice. Minna is a descendant of Mathilde Viscontini, the 'Métilde' of Stendhal's De l'amour. Sollers reimagines Stendhal's unfulfilled passion, aiming to succeed where Stendhal could not. The novel also features guest appearances by Sartre, Freud, and Debord. Sollers critiques contemporary culture, including the 'sinister Pinault museum' and the Guggenheim in Venice, and announces the creation of the Venetian Center Music, a new institution for Baroque Venetian music from Monteverdi to Vivaldi, set to open next summer. Cecilia Bartoli has joined its board. Sollers also reveals that his book Femmes is being published in Chinese by Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and he has been invited to teach at Shanghai University and participate in a Lacan conference. He reflects on his own 'multiple close identities' and the importance of clandestine life in Venice, where he has spent forty years. The novel explores the history of love from repression to libertinage to romantic passion and back, advocating for a 'counter-society' against contemporary banality.