In the library of Charlotte Casiraghi — CHANEL and Literature

For me, going into a bookshop is like a candy store. I want to buy everything, take as many books as possible, pile them up, and I never manage to decide which book I'm going to read. So I accumulate, I accumulate, and without any guilt, because I tell myself that it's not so bad as being addicted to books. And so I read a lot of books at the same time. In the end, even the books that I can't finish, the intention in the book is already there. That is to say, for me, the book, it opens a world, even if you don't open it. There is an intention in having already bought it. So I have a lot of intentions. And so a lot, a lot of books around me. Yes and no. That is to say, it is very messy, there are everywhere, it's piles, it's not tidied up. But hey, at the same time, I don't want to tidy it up too much either, because that way, only I can find my way around it. I would say that there are two books that were shocking. First, it was Lettres à un jeune poète by Rilke, which left a big, big, big impression on me. I would say that it is more the rhythm of these letters, which is the rhythm of consolation, which almost shook me. And I remember a sentence by Rilke, which is addressed to this young poet, who asks him for advice on how to write, how to live. And I remember this sentence, life is something serious and difficult, which resonates a bit like that in my head. That is a great memory of reading. And I would say Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire, which, I think, opened up a world for me, of transfiguration, of transformation, where I realized that suffering, what can be more sticky, more morbid in us, could be absolutely transformed into beauty. And this sublimation by poetry, I met it with Baudelaire, and I also had a fascination for Baudelaire himself. I imagined Baudelaire, how he lived, how he was. I wanted to live at the same time. It was something that obsessed me a lot for a long time, reading Les Fleurs du Mal. I would say yes and no, because reading at the same time, yes, there is this part of consolation, and at the same time, there is also this disappointment, somewhere, that reading does not manage, at times, to console us, or there are times when we can't even find refuge in reading. So it's both yes and no. And at the same time, I think it's more the continuous presence of books in the moment when we feel something difficult, to say to ourselves, a book will help me, or will succeed in showing me the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't really believe that, because literature, philosophy, poetry, are useless, in the best sense of the term. It's not there to console us. There is something free too, and that must be accepted as a gift, somewhere, or someone gave us a little piece of his universe, and we shouldn't try to find a consolation. L'Ament by Marguerite Duras is a book I read when I was younger, when I started, and I didn't fit into the writing of the book at all. I didn't understand her voice, I couldn't fit into her universe, and this summer, for example, I reread L'Ament, I devoured it in a few hours, and where, finally, Marguerite Duras' voice completely crossed me, and I said to myself, what a great book, why didn't I read it earlier? And in fact, I really think there are moments where we can really discover books, and moments where we can completely ignore them. I have a relationship with reading, which is not very academic, I mean, I take books, I put them down, I take them back. I find that reading is a difficult process, even when you read a light book, because it's really getting into a world, and sometimes it's not always easy to let go and to have that time to get into a book. And so there are lots of books that I let go, picked up, let go, where I say to myself, why can't I read it? Why can't I finish it? What makes it block? And in fact, you have to insist. That's something I really learned, there are lots of examples like that, of books that I let go, where I said to myself, I won't read it, in the end, I won't fit in, and in fact, often, there is a resistance, and sometimes it can be a resistance because we don't like the book, but sometimes the resistance is also because there is something that we don't want to look for too, and now, with time, I say to myself, you always have to go back. A contemporary novel that I read, that I really liked, is Saturn, by Sarah Shish. And that's an example of a book that I took at first. I read the first pages, I said to myself, oh no, it's too stressful, I can't, I can't read it, it's too stressful, it's going to plunge me into something too difficult. I read the first pages, I put them down, for a few weeks, it stayed there, and in fact, I don't know, impulse, I took it again, and I finished it in one go, and it tells its very personal story, and it's really a journey into melancholy, and also to get out of this melancholy, while keeping it in a certain way, and I invite you to read it. Look, this is one of my books that I've had for a very long time, and there's ink everywhere. Yes, no, I mistreat them, yes. Well, not the editions of La Pléiade or the very beautiful books that I try to keep in good condition, but no, yes, I mistreat them because I love them, I scribble on them, I scorn the pages, I pile them up in my bag, yes. So, if I had three, I would say that I would take Éloge du risque, by Anne du Fourmentel, which is a very special book for me. Anne du Fourmentel was my great friend, a great psychoanalyst, a philosopher with an absolutely unique voice, and she really invites us to dive into life, to risk life, passion, love, rupture. There's really something that... In any case, it's a book that I would take with me right away. Then I would take Les Essais de Montaigne, because Montaigne's writing is so pleasant to read, it's like a walk. Montaigne reassures me. And then I would take maybe Emily Dickinson's poems, because I haven't read all of her poems, and on top of that, there's something so refined, so... In any case, I don't know, instinctively, I would take it with me on the desert island.