Frédéric Mari was born in Aix-en-Provence, France, in 1964. His father played a key role in the Free-Europ network, in charge of creating “cultural fissures” in the iron curtain by passing European books through to Russian intellectuals. So Frédéric spent his whole youth in the vicinity of that time’s great French thinkers, from Charles de Gaulle to Raymond Aron, and from Hubert Beuve-Méry to Albert Camus.
On March 20th, 1980 his father dies after a long and painful illness, and 15-year old Frédéric plundges deep into a traumatised state. Emerging from that “phase” he starts to fill up dozens of notebooks, writing poems in which, having a dialogue with God, he questions himself about the necessity of having introduced the human race into such an admirable Universe. He also writes his first draft of a vast fantasy tale called “Histoire d’Outre-Monde,” as well as two short plays, “Sabine” and “Un Mouvement Perpétuel.”
Yet, coming face to face with death didn’t lead him to the conclusions he might have expected…
After graduating his vocation is clear: he is going to be a writer. He thus leaves for the quiet of the Alpine forests, two thousand metres above Sion, legendary birthtown of alchemy. There he writes a poetry collection entitled “Au Nom de l’Éphémère” and his first novel, “Hypophyse”. Frédéric Mari is then only twenty years old.
After a year and a half in total solitude, he comes down the mountain back to the hills of southern France, where he was born, and short after that he experiences a new unexpected inner journey which, more intensely and more profoundly than anything before, changes his life forever… It enables him to completely revolutionize his Art, infusing it with the humanist goal with which it is still imbued today. He understands that thanks to the grace of his pen he will be able to enlighten rather than accuse, construct rather than destroy, unite rather than divide.
He then sends the manuscript of his first novel to several writers. They are more than encouraging, and an uncommonly sincere Prix Goncourt winner even tells him: “You have the style I’ve always longed for.” But despite all this Frédéric Mari isn’t really satisfied – for him, the importance lies in having something to say, not just writing for writing. He feels that his book lacks balance between “life as he can imagine it” and “lived experience,” so he decides not to publish “Hypophyse” but leave for Chili, where his grandmother was born.
Along the way he meets a Chadian artist named Joseph “Africa”, and the two artists decide to work together. During the next three years they bring Creole Art back to life in Basse-Terre, in the Antilles, then in Europe. Their work on the roots of giant ferns leads them to sculpture, their work on calabash leads them to engraving, and they finally combine both through painting. (Frédéric Mari will later work with great painters such as Ralph Rumney, Gareth Williams, Sama, Arputharani and Amitaph Sengupta). Strangely enough, it was while working with pictorial art that he realized how to enrichen his literary work: use words like a brush, to accurately depict colours and shapes.
By 1990, Africa and Frédéric Mari have to separate – fortunately a true friendship binds them forever.
By then convinced that western civilization was digging its own grave and rushing to its own destruction, Frédéric Mari decides to fly to India, where he has now been living for almost twenty year, amidst a rich and vibrant people, in a country where life seems more real and hearts seem more pure…
Frédéric Mari has written a dozen works to date, including film scripts, plays, poetry, short stories and novels. |
