Arnaud Maïsetti: Bernard-Marie Koltès (2018)

Arnaud Maïsetti's Bernard-Marie Koltès is an enormous advance on Brigitte Salino's previous work on Koltès, and must be the definitive biography of the playwright. Although it contains much information on Koltès's work, it would be a mistake to call it a critical biography. Rather, its essential focus is on the reasons for and the amount of work involved in Koltès's plays, their genesis and each one's relevance to the main body of his oeuvre.

Maïsetti, whose principal interest is in theatre, covers all of Koltès's plays plus his only novel, Fuite à cheval très loin dans la ville, and his few short stories. What we have here is the development of the artist, of an essentially self-taught, original and major writer, a perfectionist who disowned his earlier plays, but which Minuit published after his early death from AIDS.

Travel is an important factor in Koltès's work, and it wouldn't be inaccurate to speak (but only in summary terms) of Combat de nègre et de chiens as his African play, Quai ouest as his outsider New York play, Fuite à cheval as his heroin work, etc: what he wrote was in essence autobiographical, pared down, Beckettian – although his influences were many.

To me, Koltès was an intellectual who refused to recognise himself as an intellectual, a supreme artist who lived on the edge, thrived on the edge, thrived on an existential and intellectual tightrope, a person of alarming honesty both to others and to himself. We are very lucky to have his work, and Minuit deserves full credit for publishing it.