The historian and first woman at the head of the French Academy Hélène Carrère d’Encausse died this Saturday August 5 at the age of 94. “A major historian, she was the first female Permanent Secretary of the French Academy. Like her, her legacy is immortal”, reacted the President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron on Twitter, renamed X. “Attached to the homeland which saw her grow up, to her language and her heritage, she will become French at 21 years old” , he also noted.
For Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne, “Hélène Carrère d’Encausse was a historian inhabited by a passion for truth”. “A committed woman and a great writer, she drew from her roots an essential literary testimony on Russia and the USSR,” she said on Twitter.
“Immortal she was. Immortal she will remain,” current Culture Minister Rima Abdul Malak wrote on Twitter. “Hélène Carrère d’Encausse lived, until the end, to defend the richness of the French language with unifying energy. A convinced European, she was free and tenacious in her commitments. Perpetual recognition”.
“She dedicated her life to defending the French language and tirelessly promoted Francophonie,” continued – still on Twitter – the Minister Delegate for Relations with Parliament and former Minister of Culture Franck Riester. The new Minister of National Education Gabriel Attal paid tribute to a “great historian, immense pedagogue, attached to a certain idea of France and Europe”. “His passion for defending the French language, his commitment to the transmission of knowledge, will remain for us a model, a compass”, he continued.
“You said it so well Madame Carrère d’Encausse “It’s not us who are immortal, it’s the French language.” You will be, like everything you have transmitted to us, ”wrote the Minister for Small and Medium Enterprises Olivia Grégoire.
The former President of the Republic Nicolas Sarkozy hailed a “brilliant historian and [a] woman of commitment who will have devoted her life to the defense of the French language and culture”. “It is also to the friend so dear to my heart and whose loyalty has never failed me to whom I want to pay tribute this evening,” he added.
“We all had a real admiration and affection for her”, for his part reacted on LCI the academician and writer Jean-Marie Rouart. “He was someone I admired, but whom I loved because she had had an exceptional destiny,” he continued, saluting the past of Hélène Carrère d’Encausse, born stateless. “She joins all these people, all these writers like Henry Troyat or Kessel who basically adored France and the idea of France. She was French in her tolerance, in her universalism, in this idea of always wanting to achieve a form of excellence through her work”.
“I obviously feel great sadness, it was an incomparable personality”, reacted this Saturday evening the former Minister of Culture Jack Lang on BFM TV. “She was a great lady of letters and the arts. It gave this French Academy an incomparable luster and brilliance, he continued. She was a very serious, meticulous, courageous and very committed woman.
In an emotional tone, another former Minister of Culture – Frédéric Mitterrand – also paid tribute on BFMTV to someone who “embodied the idea of the French Academy with extraordinary elegance”. “He was a wonderful person. It was a power that aroused esteem and respect,” he continued.
The president of the Hauts-de-France region Xavier Bertrand hailed a woman who “all her life will have made France and the French language a fight”. “Immortally, perpetually”, he wrote on Twitter, renamed X, when the president of the Republicans Éric Ciotti honored the memory of a “great lady” whose “history is an example”.
On the National Rally side, the president of the group at the National Assembly Marine Le Pen argued that “her passion for our language will only equal her talent, becoming the 1st female Permanent Secretary of the French Academy”. For the president of the party Jordan Bardella, “Hélène Carrère d’Encausse was the very example of assimilation to our country, of which she became one of the most eminent and proud citizens”.
“She wanted to be called Madam Perpetual Secretary”, commented for her part the CEO of Éditions Fayard Isabelle Saporta, “Hélène Carrère d’Encausse was an exceptional woman, an author of genius”, a-t – she continued.
