Imaginary interviews
A voice reconstructed from what sources tell us. Each interview is a dramatisation — not attested historical testimony.
Imaginary interviewVictor Hugo · 1802 — 1885
June 1883. In the drawing-room of the house on Avenue d'Eylau, the shutters are half-open to the noise of Paris. The old man with the white beard receives visitors, upright in his armchair, and his…
Imaginary interviewStendhal · 1783 — 1842
Civitavecchia, an evening in 1836. The French consul receives in an office cluttered with crossed-out manuscripts, the window open onto the port and the smell of salt. Henri Beyle, whom they call…
Imaginary interviewSrinivasa Ramanujan · 1887 — 1920
Cambridge, a gray winter afternoon in 1918. In a room at Trinity College where the cold seeps in despite the fire, a slight man, wrapped in a shawl over his English jacket, pushes aside a notebook…
Imaginary interviewTheodosius · 583 — 602
Constantinople, under the reign of the Byzantine sun. In a hall of the Sacred Palace, where the distant sound of masons on the ramparts can be heard, a still-young emperor receives us, surrounded by…
Imaginary interviewThomas Hobbes · 1588 — 1679
Hardwick Hall, an autumn evening in 1675. The old philosopher receives us in the Cavendish library, a wool blanket on his knees, his eye still sharp at eighty-seven. Outside, Derbyshire sinks into…
Imaginary interviewVincent van Gogh · 1853 — 1890
Arles, autumn 1888. The yellow house smells of linseed oil and turpentine; barely dry canvases line the walls, yellow upon yellow. Vincent van Gogh, his gaze feverish under a straw hat, agrees to set…
Imaginary interviewThéophile Gautier · 1811 — 1872
October 1865. The Parisian salon smells of wax and cold tobacco; on the walls, Italian engravings sit alongside a drawing of a mummy brought back from the Orient. Théophile Gautier, waistcoat…
Imaginary interviewSocrates · 469 av. J.-C. — 398 av. J.-C.
Athens, a morning in spring 399 BCE. The man receives us barefoot under the portico of the agora, where merchants and young men still linger. His trial has just begun; yet he speaks unhurriedly, as…
Imaginary interviewSor Juana Inés de la Cruz · 1651 — 1695
Mexico City, summer 1690. In a cell of the convent of San Jerónimo where four thousand volumes pile up, the air smells of ink, wax, and cold chocolate. A nun in a white veil sets down her quill to…
Imaginary interviewVictor Schoelcher · 1804 — 1893
Paris, winter 1890. In an apartment cluttered with books and maps of the colonies, an old man with white whiskers receives visitors near his window. At eighty-six, Victor Schœlcher still speaks of…
Imaginary interviewThales · 624 av. J.-C. — 545 av. J.-C.
The port of Miletus smells of salt and the wood of merchant ships. Under a portico of light stone, an old man in a gray himation traces figures in the dust with his finger, without lifting his eyes…
Imaginary interviewSofia Kovalevskaya · 1850 — 1891
Stockholm, winter 1889. Snow falls on the roofs of the Royal University, and in a cluttered office where the stove purrs, a thirty-nine-year-old woman sets down her pen. Sofia Kovalevskaya, the first…
Imaginary interviewVercingetorix · 79 av. J.-C. — 45 av. J.-C.
On the oppidum of Alesia, as the Roman fires encircle the hill with a second wall, the Arverni chieftain agrees to speak. He has laid his sword on a boar skin, his golden torc catches the last light.…
Imaginary interviewNikola Tesla · 1856 — 1943
Winter 1942. On the thirty-third floor of the New Yorker Hotel, a modest room numbered 3327, where an old man in a dark suit feeds pigeons on the windowsill. At eighty-six, Nikola Tesla agrees to…
Imaginary interviewSimone de Beauvoir · 1908 — 1986
Saint-Germain-des-Prés, a gray morning in 1965. Upstairs at the Café de Flore, at the corner table that was long her office, Simone de Beauvoir stubs out a half-smoked cigarette and closes a notebook…
Imaginary interviewPaul Verlaine · 1844 — 1896
Winter 1895, a smoky café in the Latin Quarter, at the hour when gas lamps yellow the smoke. Before a half-empty glass of absinthe, a balding man with the weary look of a faun agrees to speak — his…
Imaginary interviewPandora
On the slopes of Mount Olympus, where the gods shaped her from water and earth, a young woman adorned in gold agrees to revisit the first day of the world as she lived it. She speaks slowly, as one…
Imaginary interviewThomas Aquinas · 1225 — 1274
March 1272, the scriptorium of the Dominican convent in Paris smells of fresh ink and stretched parchment. A tall, slow-speaking friar waves away two secretaries waiting for his dictation. He…
Imaginary interviewRobert Schuman · 1886 — 1963
Scy-Chazelles, a morning in the autumn of 1962. In the small grey stone house where he has retired, Robert Schuman receives between his library cluttered with books in three languages and the window…
Imaginary interviewGiuseppe Verdi · 1813 — 1901
October, at the Villa Verdi in Sant'Agata. The master returns from the stables, his boots still heavy with the soil of Piacenza, and settles near a piano where a scored-over score lies. Outside, the…
Imaginary interviewRadia Perlman · 1951 — ?
Somewhere in a Silicon Valley office, late 2000s, a whiteboard still covered with half-erased graphs. Radia Perlman, coffee in hand, pushes aside a stack of algorithm drafts to sit down. She talks…
Imaginary interviewCoco Chanel · 1883 — 1971
Winter 1969. On the first floor of the Ritz hotel, Place Vendôme, an old lady receives us in a cloud of smoke and Coromandel screens. She never quite sits down: she keeps an eye on the rue Cambon…
Imaginary interviewRomulus and Remus
On the Palatine, as the sun sets over the freshly traced furrow, a rugged man, his cloak fastened with a bronze fibula, contemplates the nascent walls of his city. The earth still carries the scent…
Imaginary interviewMax Planck · 1858 — 1947
Göttingen, autumn 1946. In a living room lent by friends, far from the ruins of Berlin, an old man of eighty-eight receives us, his back straight despite everything, a pince-nez on his nose. Max…
Imaginary interviewPierre de Ronsard · 1524 — 1585
October 1584. At the priory of Saint-Cosme, near Tours, a half-deaf old man greets us in his garden, a withered rose still between his fingers. He says he slept poorly, but smiles as soon as the word…
Imaginary interviewRamesses II · 1302 av. J.-C. — 1212 av. J.-C.
Pi-Ramesses, in the eastern Delta, at the hour when scribes light the lamps and the river turns copper. The old pharaoh, stooped but still sharp-eyed, receives in a hall where his own colossi stand…
Imaginary interviewMao Zedong · 1893 — 1976
Beijing, winter 1975. In an overheated room in Zhongnanhai, cluttered with books piled on the floor, an old man receives visitors at nightfall, as was his habit. The cigarette never leaves his…
Imaginary interviewSophocles · 495 av. J.-C. — 405 av. J.-C.
Athens, a warm evening at the end of the 5th century. The old poet receives visitors near the sanctuary of Colonus, where he was born, draped in his light wool himation. His voice is calm, his…
Imaginary interviewPhilippe Pétain · 1856 — 1951
Winter 1949. In the gray light of the fortress on the Île d'Yeu, a very old man in civilian clothes receives, exceptionally, a visitor. The sea beats against the ramparts of Port-Joinville. Marshal…
Imaginary interviewMarco Polo · 1254 — 1324
Gênes, automne 1298. Dans une cellule humide où filtre l'odeur du port et de la poix, un marchand vénitien aux mains encore brunies par vingt-quatre années de soleil d'Asie reçoit son visiteur.…
Imaginary interviewHenri IV · 1553 — 1610
Winter 1105. In a bare room of a palace in Liège, far from the splendor of Goslar, a man stripped of his crown agrees to speak. He ruled the Holy Roman Empire for half a century, defied two popes and…
Imaginary interviewTomoe Gozen · 1157 — 1247
At dusk, in a wooden courtyard swept by the wind of Shinano Province, a woman in dark hakama cleans the blade of a sword that glistens like a mountain stream. They say she rode alongside Minamoto no…
Imaginary interviewRosa Luxemburg · 1871 — 1919
Berlin, December 1918. Barely out of the dungeons where the war had kept her locked away, Rosa Luxemburg receives visitors in a modest apartment cluttered with newspapers and leaflets, while…
Imaginary interviewMorgan le Fay
The mist of Avalon never quite lifts; it hangs over the lake like a veil no mortal hand can part. There, in a hall where bundled herbs dry suspended and a tarnished silver mirror reflects faces that…
Imaginary interviewMadame de Staël · 1766 — 1817
October 1813. The traveler climbing the avenue of the château de Coppet, on the shores of Lake Geneva, finds Madame de Staël in a salon where the fire struggles against the first Alpine chills. A…
Imaginary interviewRosa Parks · 1913 — 2005
Detroit, a winter afternoon in the 1990s. In a small living room where light falls on a sewing machine tucked away in a corner, an elderly woman with a soft voice and a steady gaze agrees to look…
Imaginary interviewRachel Carson · 1907 — 1964
Summer 1963. On the porch of her summer house on Southport Island, Maine, Rachel Carson watches the tide recede over the rocks. Weakened by illness but sharp-eyed, she agrees to look back on a life…
Imaginary interviewLouis Pasteur · 1822 — 1895
Paris, autumn 1892. In an apartment of the Pasteur Institute still smelling of culture broth, a half-paralyzed old man receives us, his right hand still refusing to shake ours. Behind him, on the…
Imaginary interviewPythagoras · 582 av. J.-C. — 490 av. J.-C.
On the heights of Croton, in a courtyard open to the sea where the sand still bears traces of a figure drawn with the tip of a stick, an old man draped in white receives us in silence. He waits for…
Imaginary interviewLéon Blum · 1872 — 1950
Jouy-en-Josas, a winter morning in 1949. In a country house in the Yvelines lined with books, an old man with a neatly trimmed mustache and fine glasses receives us in his bare garden. He led France,…
Imaginary interviewPericles · 493 av. J.-C. — 428 av. J.-C.
Athens, an evening in late spring. The sun sets over the Acropolis, its scaffolding still silhouetted against the sky, and Pericles, his cloak thrown over his shoulder, agrees to talk at the foot of…
Imaginary interviewOsiris
In the oblique light of a chapel at Abydos, where incense still rises toward the carved walls, a figure wrapped in linen stands motionless on a low throne. His skin green as the river silt, his tall…
Imaginary interviewIsis
On the island of Philae, at the hour when the Nile still reflects the last torches of the sanctuary, a silhouette appears between the columns. Crowned with the sign of the throne, a sistrum in her…
Imaginary interviewJean-Baptiste Lamarck · 1744 — 1829
Paris, winter 1827. In a modest apartment adjoining the Jardin des Plantes, an old man nearly blind receives visitors near the window, a blanket over his knees and his daughter Cornélie sitting…
Imaginary interviewJules Ferry · 1832 — 1893
Paris, a winter evening in the 1880s. In his study on the Rue de Grenelle, cluttered with school textbooks and volumes of Auguste Comte, Jules Ferry receives visitors by lamplight. The man whom the…
Imaginary interviewMagellan · 1480 — 1521
March 1521. On a beach on the island of Cebu, at the edge of the known world, the captain general stands in the shade of a sail stretched between two palm trees. Three of his five ships remain, men…
Imaginary interviewGalileo · 1564 — 1642
Hills of Florence, winter 1641. In the Villa Il Gioiello in Arcetri, a blind old man receives us by the hearth, a viola leaning against the wall. Beyond the window, olive trees slope down toward the…
Imaginary interviewOedipus
The path that leads from Thebes to the sacred grove of Colonus ends under olive trees that no one prunes. There, a blind old man, his hand resting on a smooth staff, waits for someone to sit beside…
Imaginary interviewJean Racine · 1639 — 1699
April 1699, in a Parisian room with half-closed shutters, a stone's throw from Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Jean Racine, his face gaunt from illness, receives his visitor between a Latin Bible lying on the…
Imaginary interviewMehmet II · 1432 — 1481
Istanbul, late summer 1480. On the high terrace of the new Topkapi Palace, where the Bosphorus merges with the Golden Horn, the Conqueror receives, draped in a crimson caftan, a Greek book open on…
Imaginary interviewNapoleon Bonaparte · 1769 — 1821
St. Helena, autumn 1820. In the modest Longwood house battered by the winds of the South Atlantic, the fallen Emperor agrees to receive a visitor. The gray overcoat thrown over his shoulders, a…
Imaginary interviewMadame de Sévigné · 1626 — 1696
Hôtel Carnavalet, one morning in the winter of 1685. In the large paneled study of the Marais, a goose quill still waits on the inkwell, beside a half-folded letter. The Marquise de Sévigné receives…
Imaginary interviewGeorge Sand · 1804 — 1876
Nohant, an autumn evening in 1873. The lady of the house receives us in her study cluttered with herbariums and blue sheets, an extinguished pipe resting near the inkwell. Outside, the Berry park…
Imaginary interviewJoseph Stalin · 1878 — 1953
March 1949. Night falls on the Kuntsevo dacha, on the outskirts of Moscow, behind three rings of NKVD guards. The Generalissimo receives us late, as always, a cold pipe in his hand and a carafe of…
Imaginary interviewHera
On the marble terrace of the Olympian palace, where the ether lets through neither the cold of mortals nor their too-timid prayers, the queen of the gods has agreed to receive. A peacock trails its…
Imaginary interviewMarguerite Duras · 1914 — 1996
Rue Saint-Benoît, an autumn evening, late 1980s. The apartment smells of paper, cold tobacco, and tepid white wine. Marguerite Duras receives us in a bathrobe, a cigarette in her hand, her voice…
Imaginary interviewRaphael · 1483 — 1520
Rome, one morning in the year 1519. In a dwelling in the Borgo, a stone's throw from the Vatican, the air smells of fresh lime and varnish. Amidst scattered sketches and rolled-up cartoons leaning…
Imaginary interviewNeil Armstrong · 1930 — 2012
Summer 2005, a quiet farm near Lebanon, Ohio. The man who first walked on the Moon rarely receives visitors, and always without ceremony. He speaks softly, choosing his words like an engineer checks…
Imaginary interviewMaimonides · 1135 — 1204
Cairo, the district of Fustat, at dusk. The philosopher returns from the Ayyubid palace, his face marked by long hours of consultation, and lingers for a moment in the courtyard of his home, near the…
Imaginary interviewJustinian · 482 — 565
Constantinople, the Sacred Palace, under the dome of the Chrysotriklinos. Night falls over the Bosporus and a lamp still burns near the throne. Emperor Justinian, his gaze tired but sharp, agrees to…
Imaginary interviewJean Moulin · 1899 — 1943
Summer 1943, in a borrowed apartment somewhere in the southern zone. The shutters are half-closed, an identity card in the name of Monsieur Mercier lies on the table. The man speaking wears a scarf…
Imaginary interviewHernán Cortés · 1485 — 1547
December 1547, at Castilleja de la Cuesta, near Seville. In a room hung with tapestries, an old man with a hard gaze receives his visitor; beyond the window, the light of Andalusia resembles nothing…
Imaginary interviewGuy de Maupassant · 1850 — 1893
Autumn 1889. The villa 'La Guillette' in Étretat smells of polished wood and sea spray; through the window, one can make out the cliffs that the sea has been eroding forever. Guy de Maupassant,…
Imaginary interviewGeorges Bizet · 1838 — 1875
Bougival, spring 1875. In the country house by the Seine, the composer receives visitors, looking tired but sharp-eyed, a few weeks after the stormy premiere of Carmen. An upright piano occupies the…
Imaginary interviewBanksy · 1974 — ?
The meeting was arranged through encrypted messages, in an unmarked warehouse somewhere between Bristol and London. The room smells of spray paint and cut cardboard; on a table, dozens of stencils…
Imaginary interviewSappho · 650 av. J.-C. — 569 av. J.-C.
Evening falls on Mytilene, and the sea of Lesbos takes on the color of dark wine. In a courtyard bordered by columns, a woman tunes a lyre while young girls walk away laughing. She agrees to answer,…
Imaginary interviewMarie Tharp · 1920 — 2006
Palisades, New York, late 1970s. In an office at the Lamont Geological Observatory overlooking the Hudson Valley, a small woman leans over a huge drafting table covered with ink-drawn profiles. The…
Imaginary interviewLaskarina Bouboulina · 1771 — 1825
Spetses, an autumn evening in 1824. In the stone archontiko overlooking the port, a hard-eyed woman receives us, her pistols still lying on the table among sea charts and sealed letters. In the…
Imaginary interviewHenrietta Leavitt · 1868 — 1921
Cambridge, Massachusetts, winter 1912. In the great computer room of the Harvard College Observatory, piles of glass plates wait on the long tables. A woman in her forties, dark smock over her…
Imaginary interviewFanny Mendelssohn · 1805 — 1847
Berlin, a Sunday in the winter of 1846. In the grand salon of the villa on Leipziger Straße, the chairs are still lined up for the evening Sonntagsmusik. At the pianoforte, a forty-year-old woman is…
Imaginary interviewElizabeth I of England · 1533 — 1603
Richmond Palace, winter 1602. The queen receives in a gallery hung with tapestries, the virginal still open near the window overlooking the Thames. Her face powdered white, a red wig impeccably…
Imaginary interviewBan Zhao · 45 — 116
In the heart of Luoyang, in the Eastern Pavilion where the Han archives sleep, a woman in dark robes looks up from a bamboo scroll. The oil lamp lights her wrinkled face: it is Ban Zhao, whom the…
Imaginary interviewJean de La Fontaine · 1621 — 1695
One spring morning, on Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs, at Madame de La Sablière's townhouse. The poet receives us amidst a benevolent disorder of books and manuscripts, an Aesop collection open on the…
Imaginary interviewHélène Dorion · 1958 — ?
It is in a wooden house set at the edge of the Laurentian forests, on a snowy morning when the light still hesitates, that Hélène Dorion receives us. On the table, an open notebook, a cooling coffee,…
Imaginary interviewJanus
On the threshold of the Ianus Geminus, at the heart of the Roman Forum, the noise of sandals and merchants fades as soon as one passes under the arch. There stands a presence with two faces, one…
Imaginary interviewGolda Meir · 1898 — 1978
Jerusalem, late winter 1974. In a modest kitchen where the coffee pot never cools, a seventy-five-year-old woman, black handbag set beside her chair, lights a cigarette and sits down. Golda Meir has…
Imaginary interviewEpicurus · 341 av. J.-C. — 269 av. J.-C.
Athens, around 280 BCE. Behind a roughly hewn wooden door, halfway between the Dipylon and the Academy, opens a vegetable garden planted with fig and olive trees. An aging man welcomes us there, a…
Imaginary interviewThe Lady of the Lake
They say you must wait for twilight, when the mist settles on the water, for the lake's surface to open like a door. On the edge of a pond in Brocéliande, where oaks plunge their roots into black…
Imaginary interviewHorus
The sanctuary of Edfu sleeps under the midday heat, its walls covered with reliefs where a falcon pierces a hippopotamus. In the dimness of the naos, where priests each morning place bread and beer,…
Imaginary interviewBrothers Grimm · 1785 — 1863
Kassel, a winter evening in the 1840s. In an apartment where books rise from floor to ceiling, two men share the same desk, the same oil lamp, sometimes the same sentence. Jacob looks up from his…
Imaginary interviewJocelyn Bell Burnell · 1943 — ?
One morning in June, in her office at the University of Oxford where observation reports pile up, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell receives us with the calm of someone who spent her youth scrutinizing…
Imaginary interviewJean Anouilh · 1910 — 1987
Lausanne, autumn 1986. In a bright sitting room where the lake laps at the windows, Jean Anouilh receives, courteous and slightly distant, a cup of strong coffee within reach. He speaks softly, with…
Imaginary interviewErnest Rutherford · 1871 — 1937
Cambridge, a foggy afternoon in 1932. In his office at Newnham Cottage, pipe in hand, the man who has seen into the heart of the atom receives, his bass voice already resonating down the corridor…
Imaginary interviewChristina of Sweden · 1626 — 1689
Rome, 1685. In a gallery of the Palazzo Riario where paintings by Baciccio stand alongside celestial globes and shelves laden with manuscripts, a woman of fifty-nine receives us, dressed in a curious…
Imaginary interviewJoachim du Bellay · 1522 — 1560
Paris, winter 1559. In a modest dwelling on the Left Bank, a stone's throw from the colleges, a tired-faced man receives us near a window where a candle flickers. Joachim du Bellay, back from Rome…
Imaginary interviewHades
No living soul crosses these gates without reason, yet the interview was granted. In the great hall of basalt where the Styx murmurs in the distance and Cerberus dozes at the threshold, the Lord of…
Imaginary interviewFriedrich Nietzsche · 1844 — 1900
Turin, winter 1888. On the fourth floor of a building on Via Carlo Alberto, in a bare room furnished with a bed, a table, and stacks of books, a man with thick glasses and an imposing mustache…
Imaginary interviewEugène Ionesco · 1909 — 1994
Grey late afternoon at the Tuileries. In his apartment cluttered with manuscripts and canvases populated by rhinoceroses, Eugène Ionesco receives us, his round eyes behind thick glasses, a cup of…
Imaginary interviewÉmile Zola · 1840 — 1902
Médan, an autumn morning in 1898. Émile Zola has just returned from his English exile; he receives us in his vast study cluttered with notebooks and cameras, the Seine glistening beyond the windows.…
Imaginary interviewAeneas
On the shore of Lavinium, where the Trojan fleet finally touched a promised land, a man gazes at the sea that has tossed him so much. His face weathered by ten years of salt and fire, Aeneas agrees…
Imaginary interviewJames Cook · 1728 — 1779
We imagined him in the aft cabin of the Resolution, by the light of a lamp swaying with the swell, a table covered with still-damp charts. The man is lean, methodical, sparing but precise in speech.…
Imaginary interviewEuripides · 480 av. J.-C. — 406 av. J.-C.
We met him on the island of Salamis, where the murmur of the waves drowns out that of the city. The old poet receives us at the entrance of a cave facing the open sea, a papyrus scroll resting on his…
Imaginary interviewWinston Churchill · 1874 — 1965
November 1953. In the great drawing-room of Chartwell, the Kent fog clings to the windows and a cigar slowly burns in a crystal ashtray. The man who has just received the Nobel Prize in Literature…
Imaginary interviewVigdís Finnbogadóttir · 1930 — ?
Reykjavík, a spring morning. Cold light streams through the windows of the Vigdís International Centre, where the world's languages are stored like treasures. A ninety-year-old woman receives us, her…
Imaginary interviewToni Morrison · 1931 — 2019
Late autumn afternoon in a house in Princeton, the shelves bending under manuscripts and the smell of cold coffee still lingering. Toni Morrison, a dark shawl on her shoulders, settles near the…
Imaginary interviewSaladin · 1138 — 1193
Under the command tent pitched near reconquered Jerusalem, in the autumn of 583 AH, the Sultan receives visitors. A bronze lamp illuminates an illuminated Qur'an placed on a chest, and the…
Imaginary interviewRosalind Franklin · 1920 — 1958
Winter 1957. At Birkbeck College, in a laboratory still cluttered with film reels and sealed tubes, a researcher puts away her plates with methodical slowness. Rosalind Franklin agrees to speak, on…
Imaginary interviewThoth
At Khemenu, which the Greeks would later call Hermopolis, night falls on the hall of papyri. Under the lamp, an ibis-headed figure tilts his long beak toward the scale placed near the inkwell. He…
Imaginary interviewVirgil · 69 av. J.-C. — 18 av. J.-C.
Naples, his final years. In a domus open to the bay, where the light falls slantwise on the papyrus rolls, Rome's most famous poet reluctantly receives visitors — he prefers, he says, shadow to the…
Imaginary interviewVirginia Woolf · 1882 — 1941
Monk's House, Rodmell, on a windy afternoon in the late 1930s. In the Sussex garden, under a low sky, Virginia Woolf receives between walks, a notebook on her lap. The conversation begins in a low…
Imaginary interviewSimone Weil · 1909 — 1943
Summer 1942, in a modest office of Free France in London, amid piles of pages blackened with feverish handwriting. A thin woman, round glasses and burning gaze, pushes aside her barely touched plate…
Imaginary interviewThor
Thunder rolled all night above the roofs of Bilskirnir, and in the morning the god receives us in his immense palace of five hundred and forty rooms, Mjölnir placed beside him on the table, still…
Imaginary interviewSigmund Freud · 1856 — 1939
Vienna, autumn 1938 — or rather London, already, because 19 Berggasse is nothing more than a memory sealed by the Nazis. In a study in Hampstead where, showcase by showcase, his collection of…
Imaginary interviewPierre Corneille · 1606 — 1684
Paris, winter 1675. In a modest candlelit dwelling, far from the bustle of the theaters that made his glory, an old man with a lively gaze receives us among his manuscripts. Pierre Corneille, the…
Imaginary interviewVasco de Gama · 1460 — 1525
Lisbon, a late afternoon in 1524, a few weeks before his third departure for the East. The admiral receives guests in a house near the Tagus, rolled maps and an astrolabe on the table. His voice is…
Imaginary interviewNicolas Copernicus · 1473 — 1543
Frombork, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, a winter evening in 1542. In the brick turret where the wind whistles through the arrow slits, an old man in a canon's robe puts away his instruments. He…
Imaginary interviewOlympe de Gouges · 1748 — 1793
Paris, autumn 1791. In a Right Bank apartment cluttered with sheets and printer's proofs, a candle is burning down on a writing desk. Olympe de Gouges has just had her latest Declaration posted; she…
Imaginary interviewSolon · 629 av. J.-C. — 559 av. J.-C.
Under the portico of the Agora, at the hour when the slanting sun strikes the freshly engraved stelae, an old man in a simple woolen cloak watches the passersby who stop to read his laws. He has just…
Imaginary interviewSolomon · 989 av. J.-C. — 930 av. J.-C.
Jerusalem, in the coolness of an audience chamber where the cedar of Lebanon still perfumes the walls. The king receives between two judgments, the royal seal on his finger, the evening light falling…
Imaginary interviewSun Wukong
On the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit, where waterfalls fall like curtains of jade, the Monkey King sits on a rock warm from the sun, twirling between his fingers a staff no larger than a sewing…
Imaginary interviewRené Descartes · 1596 — 1650
Holland, a morning in the winter of 1643. In a brick house rented under a false name, near a snoring tiled stove, a man in a dark doublet reluctantly receives us — he has barely left his covers, and…
Imaginary interviewWu Zetian · 624 — 705
Luoyang, a winter dawn, at the end of the first decade of the 8th century. In a palace hall where sandalwood incense mingles with the cold of Henan, an old woman receives, draped in purple, her face…
Imaginary interviewNellie Bly · 1864 — 1922
New York, a winter evening, in a smoky café on Park Row, a stone's throw from the presses that rumble until dawn. Nellie Bly, her hat still dusted with snow, sets her small leather bag on the table…
Imaginary interviewMontesquieu · 1689 — 1755
It is in the great library of the Château de La Brède, among the thousands of volumes lined up behind the medieval moats, that Montesquieu receives us, one autumn at the end of his life. The light…
Imaginary interviewSimone Veil · 1927 — 2017
Paris, a bright apartment in the 16th arrondissement, late autumn. On the coffee table, the proofs of a newly published memoir, Une vie (A Life). Simone Veil receives informally, her voice steady,…
Imaginary interviewNathalie Sarraute · 1900 — 1999
Paris, a late autumn afternoon, in an apartment in the 16th arrondissement where books reach the ceiling and a typewriter sleeps under its cover. Nathalie Sarraute, petite, with a sharp gaze, serves…
Imaginary interviewPablo Picasso · 1881 — 1973
Mougins, winter 1972. The master receives us at the villa Notre-Dame-de-Vie, between a table covered with Vallauris ceramics and a barely begun canvas. At ninety-one, his eye remains that of a…
Imaginary interviewPhilippe Auguste · 1165 — 1223
Palais de la Cité, on the island at the heart of the Seine. King Philip, the second of that name, surnamed Augustus, receives us in a great vaulted hall where the wax of seals is still drying.…
Imaginary interviewOscar Wilde · 1854 — 1900
Paris, November 1900. In a cramped room at the Hôtel d'Alsace, rue des Beaux-Arts, an emaciated man receives visitors, draped in a threadbare dressing gown, his smile intact despite ruin. Under the…
Imaginary interviewRobespierre · 1758 — 1794
Summer 1794. In a modest room of the carpenter Duplay's house, rue Saint-Honoré, a few steps from the Jacobin Club, a slight man, in a blue coat and freshly powdered wig, sets aside his papers to…
Imaginary interviewMolière · 1622 — 1673
Paris, winter 1672. In a smoky box at the Palais-Royal, between two rehearsals, a hollow-faced man puts away his texts and coughs more than he would like. Molière agrees to set aside the mask of…
Imaginary interviewMachiavelli · 1469 — 1527
San Casciano, winter 1521. At the end of a muddy road in the Val di Pesa, a Tuscan stone house watches over the bare vineyards. In a cramped study where ink is still drying, a fifty-year-old man…
Imaginary interviewZenobia · 240 — 275
Palmyra, at dusk. The sandstone colonnades redden one last time while the last caravans come to a halt at the city gates. In an audience hall still carrying the scent of myrrh, a woman wearing a…
Imaginary interviewTarana Burke · 1973 — ?
It's in a community center in Harlem, between folding chairs and the smell of lukewarm coffee, that Tarana Burke agreed to sit for an hour. The founder of Me Too speaks softly, as one speaks to…
Imaginary interviewRanavalona III · 1861 — 1917
Algiers, 1916. In a modest villa on the heights of the white city, a fifty-five-year-old woman receives, draped in a worn but crown-like lamba. The last queen of Madagascar agrees to speak — of lost…
Imaginary interviewMother Teresa · 1910 — 1997
Calcutta, late monsoon afternoon. In a bare cell of the mother house, a wooden bed, a cross on the wall, a small woman in a white sari bordered with blue folds her correspondence. She agrees to…
Imaginary interviewJunko Tabei · 1939 — 2016
Tokyo, autumn 2015. In a suburban house where a piano still occupies the living room, Junko Tabei receives, a steaming cup of tea in her hands, a scarf tied over hair thinned by illness. Behind her,…
Imaginary interviewPrometheus
On the flank of a mountain in the Caucasus, where the wind scours the bare rock, adamantine chains hold a Titan with an immense gaze riveted. The eagle has just departed for the day; the wound is…
Imaginary interviewLouis Aragon · 1897 — 1982
Saint-Arnoult-en-Yvelines, an autumn afternoon. In the country house where Elsa is no more, the libraries still overflow with books in several languages and a Matisse keeps watch over the desk…
Imaginary interviewNadine Gordimer · 1923 — 2014
Parktown, Johannesburg, late afternoon. In a low house surrounded by books and African masks, a small woman answers with sharp precision, the golden Highveld veld visible through the window. Nadine…
Imaginary interviewZeus
You do not meet the king of the gods: you are summoned. The cloud opens at the summit of Mount Olympus, the air smells of ozone and hot bronze, and a deep voice, slow as thunder ripening, agrees to…
Imaginary interviewPoseidon
The promontory of Sounion, at the hour when the sun falls into the Aegean Sea and the temple columns cast their long shadows over the waves. The air smells of salt and warm stone. The god does not…
Imaginary interviewTristan and Iseult
On the deck of a ship gliding from Ireland to Cornwall, the wind still carries the scent of salt and a spilled brew. Tristan holds a harp against his hip; Iseut, a crown set beside her, watches the…
Imaginary interviewKarl Marx · 1818 — 1883
London, a damp afternoon in the late 1870s. In two cramped rooms in Soho, amid piles of newspapers and collapsing manuscripts, a man with a thick beard relights his pipe and brushes aside British…
Imaginary interviewVercors · 1902 — 1991
Paris, a winter evening in an apartment in the Latin Quarter. The lamp is low, the chicory coffee has gone cold. The man France knew as Vercors, and whose civil status names Jean Bruller, agrees to…
Imaginary interviewPepin the Short · 714 — 768
Verberie, on the banks of the Oise, a winter evening when the great wooden hall still smells of the banquet's smoke. The King of the Franks, short but sharp-eyed, agrees to linger by the fire while…
Imaginary interviewOdysseus
On a beach in Ithaca, at dusk, a man with a face tanned by salt mends a net near a boat pulled ashore. He has placed his crown farther off, on a stone. He agrees to talk, provided he can keep his…
Imaginary interviewPersephone
No one descends here without paying passage, yet she consented to the interview, seated on a throne of black marble veined with gold, an opened pomegranate resting on her knees. Above us, the distant…
Imaginary interviewJules Verne · 1828 — 1905
Amiens, one morning in the winter of 1897. In the red brick tower on rue Charles-Dubois, at the top of a spiral staircase, a sixty-nine-year-old man closes a notebook covered in tight handwriting.…
Imaginary interviewWilliam Shakespeare · 1564 — 1616
London, an afternoon in the year 1613. On the south bank of the Thames, where the still-warm ashes of the Globe mingle with the mud of Bankside, a man in a sober doublet and trimmed beard receives us…
Imaginary interviewOrpheus
On the slopes of Mount Haemus, where the stone still echoes with songs of mourning, a man tunes a lyre whose strings seem to vibrate on their own. He wears the draped himation of Thracian poets, and…
Imaginary interviewPierre de Fermat · 1607 — 1665
Toulouse, a winter evening in 1662. In the study of a private mansion, behind the black robe folded on an armchair, a councilor to the Parliament closes a judicial file and opens an old annotated…
Imaginary interviewGustave Courbet · 1819 — 1877
Autumn 1876. On the shores of Lake Geneva, in the small town of La Tour-de-Peilz where exile has relegated him, a massive man with graying beard receives between two still-wet canvases. Ruined,…
Imaginary interviewToussaint Louverture · 1743 — 1803
April 1802, at Fort de Joux, in the biting cold of the Jura that this man of the tropics had never known. Behind the dripping stone walls, an old general in a worn uniform receives his visitor…
Imaginary interviewPablo Neruda · 1904 — 1973
September 1973. In his house at Isla Negra, where the Pacific Ocean pounds beneath windows cluttered with seashells and ship figureheads, Pablo Neruda receives visitors, weakened but lucid, wrapped…
Imaginary interviewVictoria · 1819 — 1901
Osborne House, Isle of Wight, a grey afternoon in 1898. The Queen receives in her private study, dressed in black, a widow's cap on her hair. On the desk, an open journal, a quill, and the framed…
Imaginary interviewJean Calvin · 1509 — 1564
Geneva, autumn 1563. In a modest house in the upper town, a stone's throw from St. Peter's Cathedral, a man exhausted by fever receives his visitor without ceremony, a pile of manuscripts still damp…
Imaginary interviewMulan
At the threshold of a rammed-earth house, in a small town in northern China, a woman puts away a loom near the central hearth. A warrior's armor rests, folded, on a wooden chest; beside it, a silk…
Imaginary interviewMarie-Antoinette · 1755 — 1793
October 1793. In a damp cell at the Conciergerie, by the light of a candle, a thirty-seven-year-old woman in a white dress agrees to answer, one last time, questions that are not those of her judges.…
Imaginary interviewTheseus
On the terrace of the palace of Athens, at the hour when the sun sinks behind the Acropolis, the king receives us. A bronze sword rests against the column of the megaron, and the sea gleams in the…
Imaginary interviewJohn Locke · 1632 — 1704
October 1703. In the study that the Mashams lend him at Oates, deep in the Essex countryside, an elderly asthmatic man receives us among his books and scientific instruments. The teapot steams, the…
Imaginary interviewNelson Mandela · 1918 — 2013
Qunu, late afternoon. Old Madiba receives us in the shade of a low wall, his gaze turned toward the green hills of the Transkei where he herded cattle as a child. His voice is slow, measured, without…
Imaginary interviewHonoré de Balzac · 1799 — 1850
Passy, 1847. In a house on Rue Raynouard where the furniture was bought on credit and candles burn in broad daylight, a massive man in a white woolen robe receives us, a cup of black coffee in hand.…
Imaginary interviewSirimavo Bandaranaike · 1916 — 2000
Colombo, early 1977. Under the ceiling fans of Temple Trees, between two files, Sirimavo Bandaranaike receives in a white sari edged with gold. The tea steams, the monsoon taps at the windows, and…
Imaginary interviewNoah
The construction site still smells of pitch and green wood. In the shadow of Mount Ararat, where the great hull has finally come to rest, an old man with a white beard sits on a beam, his hands…
Imaginary interviewRobert Desnos · 1900 — 1945
Place Blanche, late afternoon. At the back of the Café Cyrano, where the surrealists remade the world between glasses of bistro wine, a man with a restless gaze fiddles with a matchbox while rolling…
Imaginary interviewMarcus Aurelius · 121 — 180
Night falls on the camp at Carnuntum, on the banks of the swollen Danube. Under the praetorium tent, an oil lamp illuminates a man crouched over wax tablets — the emperor who commands by day and…
Imaginary interviewMartin Luther · 1483 — 1546
Wittenberg, winter 1545. In the great hall of the former Augustinian monastery, a long table still littered with supper scraps. Near the hearth, a massive man with keen eyes, a lute leaning against…
Imaginary interviewSamson · 1117 av. J.-C. — 1077 av. J.-C.
We met him on a rocky ridge above Zorah, where the territory of Dan looks out toward the Philistine plain. The wind smelled of burnt straw and wild honey. The man with hair braided in seven locks…
Imaginary interviewLouise Michel · 1830 — 1905
January 1905, a narrow room somewhere between two train stations, on the road to yet another lecture tour. A woman dressed all in black, her face hollowed by seventy-four winters and as many…
Imaginary interviewMargaret Thatcher · 1925 — 2013
London, a winter evening in the late 1980s. In her first-floor office at Downing Street, a red box half-open on the table, Margaret Thatcher receives visitors at the late hour when she still works…
Imaginary interviewRichard the Lionheart · 1157 — 1199
Under the royal tent pitched near the reconquered walls, on the eve of a new assault, the King of England receives us, his red surcoat still dusted with the powder of the roads. The sea of the Holy…
Imaginary interviewKrishna · 3227 av. J.-C. — 3101 av. J.-C.
On the chariot halted between the two armies at Kurukshetra, in the suspended hour when the conches have not yet sounded, he who is called an avatar of Vishnu holds the reins of Arjuna's horses. Here…
Imaginary interviewWolfgang Amadeus Mozart · 1756 — 1791
Vienna, one morning in autumn 1791. In a rented apartment where sheets of ruled paper and a nearly dry inkwell lie about, a small man, already weary, sets down his quill near the pianoforte. He…
Imaginary interviewLéopold Sédar Senghor · 1906 — 2001
Verson, Normandy, one autumn evening. In a low house whose walls are studded with Serer masks and bookshelves rising to the ceiling, an old man with a gentle voice receives guests, a cup of tea in…
Imaginary interviewSandro Botticelli · 1445 — 1510
Florence, one morning in the year 1500, in a house-workshop in the Santa Maria Novella district. The smell of beaten egg yolk and turpentine hangs in the air between the easels. A stocky man, his…
Imaginary interviewJean-Jacques Rousseau · 1712 — 1778
Summer 1778, Ermenonville. Under the marquis de Girardin's poplars, an old man in a threadbare caftan returns from botanizing, his tin box still warm from the sun. He agrees to sit for a moment, his…
Imaginary interviewJohn von Neumann · 1903 — 1957
Princeton, winter 1955. In the grand living room on Westcott Road, the radio plays too loudly and a detective novel lies open on the armrest. John von Neumann, impeccably dressed in a three-piece…
Imaginary interviewPtolemy · 250 — 350
Alexandria, an evening in the summer of 150. On the terrace of a house in the Greek quarter, the air still smells of the salt of the harbor and the wax of lamps. Leaning over his papyrus rolls, a…
Imaginary interviewRita Levi-Montalcini · 1909 — 2012
Rome, Parioli district, a bright apartment cluttered with scientific journals and a few canvases signed by her sister Paola. At over a hundred years old, Rita Levi-Montalcini's gaze remains that of a…
Imaginary interviewIsabella I of Castile · 1451 — 1504
Medina del Campo, autumn 1504. In a chamber of the Castle of la Mota hung with dark tapestries, a queen with a pale complexion but a firm gaze receives us, a rosary between her fingers and, nearby, a…
Imaginary interviewMoses
At the edge of the desert, under a tent of goat hair that the wind of Sinai makes flap, an old man with a veiled face receives the traveler. The campfire lights up a shepherd's staff leaning against…
Imaginary interviewPaul Éluard · 1895 — 1952
November 1947. In a Parisian apartment whose walls are covered with canvases gifted by Picasso and Ernst, a man with a gentle gaze welcomes us, a dog-eared notebook beside him. The war is over, Nusch…
Imaginary interviewLudwig van Beethoven · 1770 — 1827
Vienna, an evening in the winter of 1826. In a cluttered apartment strewn with scores, dirty cups, and a piano with sawn-off legs, a man with wild gray hair gestures for us to write our questions in…
Imaginary interviewJohn F. Kennedy · 1917 — 1963
Washington, autumn 1963. The light is fading over the Oval Office as the president receives, between two files, in a light wooden rocking chair placed near the fireplace. He speaks softly, his voice…
Imaginary interviewRené Char · 1907 — 1988
The water of the Sorgue runs beneath the open windows, in L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, on this late afternoon in 1975. René Char receives us in a cool room with half-closed shutters, cluttered with books…
Imaginary interviewRama
On the banks of the Sarayu, in the shadow of the terraces of Ayodhyā, he whom tradition calls the seventh avatar of Vishnu consents to speak. The sun declines over the kingdom he calls his own; the…
Imaginary interviewJames Watson & Francis Crick · 1928 — 2004 / 1916 — 2004
Cambridge, a gray spring afternoon. In a room at the Cavendish Laboratory cluttered with metal rods and cut-out plates, two men pass the conversation back and forth without ever finishing each…
Imaginary interviewLeonhard Euler · 1707 — 1783
Saint Petersburg, autumn 1783. In a study cluttered with papers his eyes can no longer see, a blind old man dictates numbers to his son from daybreak. He agrees to interrupt his calculations for a…
Imaginary interviewHenri Bergson · 1859 — 1941
One afternoon in the winter of 1928, in a quiet apartment in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. The master, already tired but with a keen eye, receives between an imposing library and a pocket watch…
Imaginary interviewGutenberg · 1400 — 1468
Mainz, a grey morning in the winter of 1467. In a workshop where the smell of molten lead mingles with that of linseed oil ink, an old man with stained hands receives us among his now-silent presses.…
Imaginary interviewSigurd
In the great wooden hall where an oak fire crackles, a warrior with a pale gaze turns a gold ring between his fingers. Outside, the dark forest keeps watch. He agrees to speak of Gram, the dragon,…
Imaginary interviewRa
Before dawn, on the first hill of the world, where the east pales, the barque already waits. The sun god consents to a halt, the golden disk still low on the horizon, and agrees to speak of his…
Imaginary interviewEugène Delacroix · 1798 — 1863
Place Furstenberg, a winter morning in 1862. The oblique light falls on unfinished canvases and the large easel; in a corner, Jenny Le Guillou brings a light tea. Eugène Delacroix, in a dark frock…
Imaginary interviewAl-Khwârizmî · 780 — 850
Baghdad, under the reign of al-Ma'mun. In a cool room of the House of Wisdom, among Greek and Indian scrolls copied by candlelight, a man with a turban dusted with ink looks up from his tablets. He…
Imaginary interviewPlato · 428 av. J.-C. — 348 av. J.-C.
Athens, late afternoon. Under the porticoes of the Academy, a stone's throw from the garden consecrated to the hero Academus, an old man with broad shoulders puts away his wax tablets. The sun is…
Imaginary interviewMirabai · 1498 — 1546
At dusk, on a ghat of Dwarka where Gujarat meets the sea, a woman in saffron veils sets down her ektara against the still-warm stone. They say she was a princess of Mewar; she says she has never had…
Imaginary interviewMichel Foucault · 1926 — 1984
March 1979, late afternoon on Rue de Vaugirard. Bald head, round glasses resting on a pile of archival index cards, Michel Foucault tidies up the newspaper clippings scattered across his desk. He…
Imaginary interviewMargaret Hamilton · 1936 — ?
Cambridge, Massachusetts, a winter evening in the late sixties. The neon lights of the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory hum over desks strewn with annotated listings. Margaret Hamilton, cold coffee…
Imaginary interviewJean-François de La Pérouse · 1741 — 1788
We met him aboard the Boussole, somewhere in the warm seas of the South Pacific, in this year 1788 when no one yet knew he was living on borrowed time. The great aft cabin smells of salt, candle wax,…
Imaginary interviewIndira Gandhi · 1917 — 1984
New Delhi, late afternoon at 1, Safdarjung Road. A fresh white rose is pinned to her ecru khadi sari, as every day. In the garden she cherishes, between two Intelligence Bureau dispatches, Indira…
Imaginary interviewYaa Asantewaa · 1832 — 1921
Kumasi, in the shade of the trees where councils are held. The Queen Mother of Ejisu receives, upright despite her years, the gaze of one who has seen chiefs hesitate and guns fall silent. She speaks…
Imaginary interviewGermaine Tailleferre · 1892 — 1983
Montfort-l'Amaury, an autumn morning. In a house in the Yvelines where the grand piano takes up almost all the space, a slight ninety-year-old lady receives us, handwritten scores piled on the stool.…
Imaginary interviewSelma Lagerlöf · 1858 — 1940
Värmland, early autumn 1920. The mistress of Mårbacka receives us in the grand salon of her reclaimed estate, where the low light of Swedish forests falls on a desk cluttered with papers. Coffee…
Imaginary interviewEnheduanna · 2300 av. J.-C. — 2300 av. J.-C.
At the top of the ziggurat of Nanna in Ur, the crescent moon has just risen over the marshes and the evening libation is finishing its smoke. Enheduanna, high priestess and daughter of Sargon of…
Imaginary interviewRābiʿa al-ʿAdawiyya · vers 717 — 801
Basra, at the hour when the markets empty and the river reflects the last glimmers of daylight. In a mud-brick dwelling, almost bare, a woman in coarse woolen clothing receives us, her oil lamp…
Imaginary interviewCaroline Herschel · 1750 — 1848
Hanover, a winter evening in the 1840s. In a modest apartment cluttered with registers, letters, and ephemerides, a tiny old woman, nearly a centenarian, receives a visitor by candlelight. Caroline…
Imaginary interviewMedusa
One does not meet a Gorgon: one approaches her backward, eyes fixed on the polished bronze of a shield. It is thus, in a damp cave on the Libyan borders, that Medusa's voice reaches us — hissing,…
Imaginary interviewAmelia Earhart · 1897 — 1939
Oakland hangar, late spring 1937. The silver twin-engine glistens under the neon lights while mechanics and maps pile up around a woman in canvas trousers, sleeves rolled up. She agrees to set down…
Imaginary interviewIris Murdoch · 1919 — 1999
Steeple Aston, a grey afternoon in Oxfordshire. In a house where books rise in unstable piles along the walls and the garden spills in through the windows, Iris Murdoch pushes aside a half-filled…
Imaginary interviewJean-Paul Sartre · 1905 — 1980
A spring afternoon in 1975, on the first floor of the Café de Flore, where the marble tables still hold the smell of cold tobacco. The man sits down, pipe already lit, his strabismus fixed on an…
Imaginary interviewLeibniz · 1646 — 1716
Hanover, autumn 1715. In a low room cluttered with loose sheets, a man in a large gray wig receives us, a quill still in hand. All around, bundles of letters pile up to the windows — remnants of a…
Imaginary interviewHelen of Troy
The megaron of Sparta still smells of freshly dyed purple and warm lamp oil. Helen receives us near an unfinished loom, a bronze mirror resting on her knees. Her voice is low, unhurried, like that of…
Imaginary interviewPrimo Levi · 1919 — 1987
Turin, a winter evening, on the third floor of a bourgeois building on Corso Re Umberto. Primo Levi welcomes us into the study where he writes in the evening, his typewriter still open, as if the…
Imaginary interviewOdin
At the foot of the tree Yggdrasil, where nine worlds knot into a single trunk, a traveler found a one-eyed old man, hooded, a dark blue cloak thrown over his shoulder, two ravens dozing near him. He…
Imaginary interviewRoland
Day is fading on the heights of Roncevaux, in that Pyrenean pass where Charlemagne's rearguard was ambushed. Leaning against a gray rock, sword still in hand, the most illustrious of paladins agrees…
Imaginary interviewLouis XVI · 1754 — 1793
Winter 1792. In the damp gloom of the Temple Tower, a man in grey receives his visitor by candlelight, surrounded by a pile of geography books. A deposed king, a citizen without a crown, he agrees to…
Imaginary interviewMartin Luther King · 1929 — 1968
Memphis, April 3, 1968. A room at the Lorraine Motel, suitcases barely unpacked, thunder rumbling over the Mississippi. The man who welcomes us is thirty-nine years old, his voice still warm from the…
Imaginary interviewMadame de La Fayette · 1634 — 1693
One winter evening, on Rue de Vaugirard, the candles burn low in the salon of the Comtesse de La Fayette. The last visitors have left; she consents, for once, to speak of herself rather than listen…
Imaginary interviewMary Anning · 1799 — 1843
Lyme Regis, a low-tide morning. The mist lifts from the blue-gray cliffs of Dorset, and we find Mary Anning where she is always sought: on the foreshore, basket on arm and hammer in hand, eyes fixed…
Imaginary interviewGayatri Spivak · 1942 —
New York, late afternoon. In an office at Columbia University where books rise from floor to ceiling, in Bengali, English and French, Gayatri Spivak sets down a cup of spiced tea. A cotton sari over…
Imaginary interviewMarivaux · 1688 — 1763
Paris, winter 1758. In a modest apartment cluttered with loose sheets and crossed-out manuscripts, a seventy-year-old man receives us, his wig slightly askew, his eye still lively. Outside, the…
Imaginary interviewHugh Capet · 940 — 996
Winter 988. In the great hall of a fortified palace in Senlis, the central hearth crackles while outside the forests of Île-de-France sleep under the frost. A broad-shouldered man, dressed in a…
Imaginary interviewMichelle Bachelet · 1951 — ?
Geneva, late summer 2022. The Palais des Nations has just emptied of its delegations, and Michelle Bachelet is putting away the last files of her term as High Commissioner. Black coffee in hand, she…
Imaginary interviewJean de La Bruyère · 1645 — 1696
Chantilly, an autumn evening in 1693. In a study lined with books, by the light of a copper candlestick, a discreet man sets down his goose-feather pen on the inkwell. He has just been received into…
Imaginary interviewMiguel de Cervantes · 1547 — 1616
Madrid, winter 1615. In a house with a patio in the Letras district, an old man with a lifeless left hand receives us, a goose quill resting on still-damp pages. His voice is slow, but his eye…
Imaginary interviewHermes
We waited for him at a crossroads in Arcadia, where a stone pillar bears his face. He arrived without a sound, sandals barely touching the dust of the road, a smile like a boy who has just pulled a…
Imaginary interviewRobin Hood
Night falls on Sherwood Forest, and a campfire crackles in the hollow of a clearing that no path points to. Leaning against an oak, a longbow laid across his knees, a man in a green cloak signals to…
Imaginary interviewJacques Cartier · 1492 — 1557
Saint-Malo, a winter evening around 1550. The wind from the sea rattles the shutters of the Manoir de Limoëlou, and a wood fire lights the weathered face of the captain. On the table: rolled-up…
Imaginary interviewMark Antony · 82 av. J.-C. — 29 av. J.-C.
Alexandrie, dans le palais des Lagides au bord de la mer. La nuit tombe sur le port ; on entend encore les rires d'un banquet qui s'éteint. Marc Antoine, cuirasse posée, coupe à la main, accepte de…
Imaginary interviewAndreas Vesalius · 1515 — 1564
Padua, a winter evening in 1543. The candles still smoke above the table of the anatomical theater, where a body lies under a sheet. Andreas Vesalius, barely twenty-eight, has just closed the proofs…
Imaginary interviewGregor Mendel · 1822 — 1884
Brno, autumn 1883. In the already withered garden of St. Thomas's Monastery, a stout man in an Augustinian habit lingers near the last rows of peas. Now abbot, burdened with paperwork, he…
Imaginary interviewMerlin
Deep in the Forest of Brocéliande, where light shatters into a thousand fragments under the beech trees, a voice answers before it is even called. Merlin does not appear: he was already there, his…
Imaginary interviewMarguerite Yourcenar · 1903 — 1987
Northeast Harbor, Maine, late autumn afternoon. The wind comes from the ocean and makes the wood of Petite Plaisance creak, where thousands of books rise to the ceiling. Marguerite Yourcenar receives…
Imaginary interviewHercules
At the foot of Mount Oeta, where the pyre once smoked, a man in a wild beast's skin sat on a rock, his club laid across his knees. The sweat of the Underworld had not yet dried on his brow. He agreed…
Imaginary interviewMaryam Mirzakhani · 1977 — 2017
A clear morning in Palo Alto, the California sun falls on the floor of an office where long rolls of paper spread out like explorer's maps. Maryam Mirzakhani receives us in socks, a colored pencil in…
Imaginary interviewGorbachev · 1931 — 2022
December 2021. In a quiet apartment near Moscow, a ninety-year-old man receives us, his voice calm, his gaze still sharp beneath the famous birthmark. Thirty years after lowering the red flag,…
Imaginary interviewNero · 37 — 68
Rome, AD 65. In a room of the Domus Aurea still fresh with plaster, under a dome that turns like the sky, the emperor Nero sets down a cithara and agrees to answer, between two cups, a visitor who…
Imaginary interviewEuclid · 333 av. J.-C. — 284 av. J.-C.
Alexandria, end of the reign of Ptolemy I. In a room of the Mouseîon where morning light falls on aligned papyrus rolls, a gray-bearded man wipes a figure from a wax tablet with his finger. Euclid…
Imaginary interviewOvid · 42 av. J.-C. — 17
Tomis, on the shores of the Pontus Euxinus, a winter evening around the year 15. The Getic wind whistles against the shutters of a wooden house where an aging Roman fastens his cloak of thick wool.…
Imaginary interviewCharles Babbage · 1791 — 1871
London, a Saturday evening in the winter of 1864. At 1 Dorset Street, candles illuminate the brass fragment that sits like a relic in the middle of the drawing room. Charles Babbage, in a dark frock…
Imaginary interviewMelusine
At dusk, near a fountain in the forest of Coulombiers, a lady of water agrees to appear. Her gown trails on the moss, and one can guess, beneath the hem, something that is not quite a foot. She…
Imaginary interviewDavid Hume · 1711 — 1776
Edinburgh, an evening in 1776. In a brand-new house in the New Town, at the corner of the street that will soon bear his name, a jovial fat man welcomes us in his shirtsleeves, a glass of Bordeaux in…
Imaginary interviewHannah Arendt · 1906 — 1975
New York, winter 1974. In an Upper West Side apartment cluttered with books, a woman receives us cigarette in hand, the Olivetti still warm on the desk. Hannah Arendt speaks softly, with the accent…
Imaginary interviewEllen Johnson Sirleaf · 1938 — ?
Monrovia, a dry-season morning. In a living room of the Executive Mansion, facing the estuary where the Atlantic beats against a city still scarred by war, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf receives, her gesture…
Imaginary interviewRenart
It is at Maupertuis, in the maze of galleries dug beneath a motte in Flanders, that the fox agrees to receive us. He makes us sit on a stolen bale of straw, keeps an eye on the exit — an old habit —…
Imaginary interviewIbn Battûta · 1304 — 1368
At dusk, in a shaded courtyard in Fez, an old man in a white turban unrolls the roads of the world from memory. Nearly thirty years of dust and seas are still written on his face. He agrees to…
Imaginary interviewHans Christian Andersen · 1805 — 1875
Copenhagen, a winter evening. In a hotel room cluttered with notebooks and scraps of black paper, a very tall man stands near the window, scissors in hand. Hans Christian Andersen receives with the…
Imaginary interviewErasmus · 1466 — 1536
Basel, a winter morning in the house on Nadelberg. The old humanist receives us bundled in furs, a black bonnet pulled down to his eyebrows, his goose quill still wet near the inkwell. Froben's…
Imaginary interviewDenis Diderot · 1713 — 1784
Paris, an evening in winter 1782. In a cluttered apartment filled with books and proofs in the Saint-Germain district, an old man in a threadbare dressing gown receives us, his face still lively…
Imaginary interviewGeorge Boole · 1815 — 1864
Cork, autumn 1864. In the study of a Georgian house in Ballintemple, an oil lamp illuminates pages blackened with symbols. George Boole, in a dark frock coat and high collar, sets down his chalk to…
Imaginary interviewClaude Lévi-Strauss · 1908 — 2009
Autumn 2008. In his office at the Collège de France, lined with books up to the ceiling and a few masks from the American Northwest coast, a nearly hundred-year-old man receives visitors, his…
Imaginary interviewNefertiti · 1369 av. J.-C. — 1329 av. J.-C.
At dusk, in the open courtyard of the North Palace of Akhetaten, the disk of Aten tilts toward the horizon. The Great Royal Wife sets down her sistrum, dismisses her servants, and agrees to answer,…
Imaginary interviewJonas · 822 av. J.-C. — 719 av. J.-C.
On the shore where the great fish spat him out, an exhausted man, his clothes still stiff with salt, agrees to speak. Behind him, the dusty road leads back up to Nineveh; before him, the sea he tried…
Imaginary interviewKaguya-hime
One full moon night on the heights of Heian-kyō, in a dwelling that wealth has embellished without making it less foreign to its inhabitant. Behind a slatted bamboo blind, a silhouette in pale silk…
Imaginary interviewMechthild of Magdeburg · 1207 — 1282
Helfta, in Saxony, on a winter evening in the 13th century. In a cell lit by a single candle, an old woman almost blind sits near her desk, where the pages of her great book still lie. Mechtilde of…
Imaginary interviewPerceval
Deep in a forest of Brittany, where paths vanish under ferns, a knight with a tarnished helm stopped near a spring. His shield bears arms no herald could name. He agrees to speak, in a low voice, as…
Imaginary interviewHarriet Taylor Mill · 1807 — 1858
Autumn 1857. The villa at Walton-on-Thames smells of cold coal and ink. Harriet Taylor Mill receives us in a drawing room with dark woodwork, a shawl over her shoulders, a cough contained behind her…
Imaginary interviewJoan of Arc · 1412 — 1431
Spring 1429. Under a tent pitched not far from the Loire, by the flicker of a candle, a young woman of seventeen removes her iron gauntlets. Between two war councils, in a low voice, she agrees to…
Imaginary interviewMichel de Montaigne · 1533 — 1592
Autumn 1588. The Essays have just been reissued, augmented by a third book, and their author has withdrawn to his château in Périgord. We find him at the very top of his round tower, among his books…
Imaginary interviewLouis IX (Saint Louis) · 1214 — 1270
Vincennes, a spring morning. Beneath the foliage of a great oak, a man in a gray wool robe listens to the complaints of the humble before turning to his visitor. This is Louis, ninth of that name,…
Imaginary interviewJob
On the cracked soil of the land of Uz, where flocks once raised dust to the horizon, a man sits among ashes. His sores have dried, his fortune has returned, but his eyes bear the trace of a struggle…
Imaginary interviewIsaac Newton · 1643 — 1727
April 1726, in a house in Kensington where the fire crackles against the dampness of London. Sir Isaac Newton, octogenarian with still-sharp eyes, sets down an ink-stained goose quill and agrees to…
Imaginary interviewHegel · 1770 — 1831
Berlin, autumn 1830. In a study lined with books and manuscripts, not far from the university whose rector he has just been elected, a man in a black frock coat sets down his quill. Rhine wine waits…
Imaginary interviewGilgamesh
On the ramparts of Uruk, at dusk, where the sun-dried brick still holds the day's warmth, a man watches the river. He is twice as tall as his guards, his gaze burdened with something that resembles…
Imaginary interviewChrétien de Troyes · 1135 — 1181
It is in Troyes, on a winter evening when candles light the great hall of the court of Marie of Champagne, that we meet the master clerk. The vielle has fallen silent, the lords have returned to…
Imaginary interviewTheodora · 497 — 548
Beneath the gilded vaults of the Great Palace of Constantinople, where the stretched purple filters the light of the Sea of Marmara, the empress receives visitors, seated near a still-damp mosaic.…
Imaginary interviewMary Wollstonecraft · 1759 — 1797
London, autumn 1796. In a small lodging in Somers Town cluttered with annotated books and papers, a goose quill dries at the edge of an inkwell. Mary Wollstonecraft, a woolen shawl over her…
Imaginary interviewLyudmila Pavlichenko · 1916 — 1974
Moscow, winter 1965. In a modest apartment piled with staff reports and yellowed newspaper clippings, a forty-nine-year-old woman pours black tea. She has placed on the table, like a familiar object,…
Imaginary interviewHypatia of Alexandria · vers 355/370 — 415
Alexandria, an afternoon in the early 5th century. In the courtyard of a large peristyle house, between an armillary sphere and unrolled papyrus scrolls, a woman clad in the rough philosopher's cloak…
Imaginary interviewGeorgia O'Keeffe · 1887 — 1986
June 1977. The adobe house in Abiquiú smells of sun-baked earth; on a windowsill framing the desert like a picture, white bones and stones are arranged like sculptures. Georgia O'Keeffe, ninety years…
Imaginary interviewÉlisabeth Vigée Le Brun · 1755 — 1842
Paris, a spring morning, in the high-windowed studio on the rue du Gros-Chenet. The light falls just right—the light she waits for each day for her flesh tones; on the easel a barely sketched…
Imaginary interviewCamille Claudel · 1864 — 1943
Avignon, summer 1935. Behind the walls of the Montdevergues asylum, in a courtyard where the light falls harshly, a seventy-year-old woman looks at her hands. She has not modeled any clay for…
Imaginary interviewJason
On a beach in Thessaly, in the shadow of a ship's carcass bleached by salt, an aging man agrees to speak. He was the most illustrious of captains, the one who brought back the Golden Fleece and the…
Imaginary interviewGeorg Ohm · 1789 — 1854
Munich, winter 1853. In a modest study adjoining the university, an old man puts copper wires into a wooden box. He has finally obtained the chair he waited his whole life for, and agrees to look…
Imaginary interviewGustave Flaubert · 1821 — 1880
Croisset, an autumn evening. The Seine carries its barges under the windows of the pavilion, and in the upstairs study, wrapped in a vast dressing gown, the Norman hermit pokes at his pipe. He agrees…
Imaginary interviewJean Monnet · 1888 — 1979
Forest of Rambouillet, late afternoon in spring. In the low house of Houjarray, a man over eighty welcomes us around a simple table, his handwritten notes piled near a lamp. His voice is calm, almost…
Imaginary interviewHomer · 900 av. J.-C. — 800 av. J.-C.
It was at the evening banquet, in the smoky great hall of an Ionian lord, that we found him. The old man tunes his phorminx while the guests already call for the wrath of Achilles. He agrees to set…
Imaginary interviewLiliuokalani · 1838 — 1917
Honolulu, a late afternoon in 1916. On the veranda of Washington Place, an elderly lady in a dark dress receives us, a feather fan on her lap and a notebook of sheet music within reach. The kingdom…
Imaginary interviewEmily Dickinson · 1830 — 1886
Amherst, Massachusetts, late spring afternoon. The light falls slantwise on the Homestead garden, and a first-floor door remains ajar, just enough for a voice to pass without a face appearing. It is…
Imaginary interviewHammurabi · 1809 av. J.-C. — 1749 av. J.-C.
Babylon, end of reign. In an audience hall of mud-brick walls thickened by the heat, the king receives, a cup of barley beer within reach. Before him, erected, the tall black diorite stele that the…
Imaginary interviewImmanuel Kant · 1724 — 1804
Königsberg, a gray afternoon in the year 1798. The philosopher has just returned from his walk, cane still in hand, and receives us in his book-lined study where the inkwell awaits. The conversation…
Imaginary interviewJulius Caesar · 99 av. J.-C. — 43 av. J.-C.
Rome, early 44 BCE. In a house on the Palatine, by the light of oil lamps, a man is still dictating while the city sleeps — his toga thrown over his shoulder, a laurel crown placed near the wax…
Imaginary interviewIgnatius of Loyola · 1491 — 1556
Rome, summer 1556. In a narrow cell adjacent to the church of Santa Maria della Strada, an old man with a worn complexion receives his visitor between two bundles of letters from the Indies. His…
Imaginary interviewGabriela Mistral · 1889 — 1957
Elqui Valley, one evening of the austral winter. On the terrace of a low house in Vicuña, a woman in a dark shawl watches the mountains turn violet. She has placed her notebook on her knees, as every…
Imaginary interviewGeorges Clemenceau · 1841 — 1929
Rue Franklin, an autumn morning in 1928. The apartment smells of black coffee and crumpled newspaper. The old man in gray gloves receives us between two piles of books, sharp-eyed, his retort already…
Imaginary interviewFontenelle · 1657 — 1757
Paris, winter 1740. The perpetual secretary has just left his post after forty-two years of service; we find him in his study on rue Saint-Honoré, among his registers and a dusty celestial globe. At…
Imaginary interviewLoki
Under the roots of the world, where the cold of Niflheim oozes between the stones, a hoarse voice answers the falling drops. Loki is there, stretched out, bound, his face turned toward the shadows.…
Imaginary interviewGandhi · 1869 — 1948
At the edge of the Sabarmati Ashram, in the dusty light of a dry-season morning, a slight man wrapped in a simple dhoti spins cotton without looking up. The spinning wheel creaks, disciples hum a…
Imaginary interviewEmmy Noether · 1882 — 1935
Göttingen, a spring afternoon. In an apartment cluttered with books and handwritten notebooks, a woman with round spectacles welcomes us, a piece of chalk still between her fingers. Emmy Noether…
Imaginary interviewClarice Lispector · 1920 — 1977
Rio de Janeiro, an evening in the late 1960s. In her apartment in Leme, overlooking the sea at Copacabana, Clarice Lispector receives a visitor between wisps of cigarette smoke, the typewriter still…
Imaginary interviewDonna Strickland · 1959 — ?
October 2018, University of Waterloo. In an office cluttered with reprints and optical diagrams, a physicist with a measured voice receives us a few days after the announcement that turned her life…
Imaginary interviewLouis XIV · 1638 — 1715
Versailles, a winter evening in 1709. The king, already old, receives us in his study, the fire crackling behind him, the park frozen under frost beyond the windows. He speaks slowly, the measured…
Imaginary interviewFrancis I · 1494 — 1547
Gallery of Francis I, Château de Fontainebleau, an autumn evening. Amid the stuccoes of Primaticcio, the king has just returned from the hunt, still booted, his beret powdered with dust. He agrees to…
Imaginary interviewEpictetus · 50 — 138
Nicopolis, in Epirus, at dusk on an autumn day. In a house without a lock, furnished with a mat and a lamp, a lame old man receives us, leaning on his staff. He was a slave; he became the master to…
Imaginary interviewAlfred Dreyfus · 1859 — 1935
Paris, early 1930s. In a discreet apartment, an old man with an officer's bearing receives a visitor, straight as a ramrod despite his age. His voice is calm, almost administrative, but beneath the…
Imaginary interviewLakshmi Bai · 1828 — 1858
Jhansi, a night in March 1858. The cannons of General Hugh Rose rumble in the distance as the Rani receives us in a low chamber of the fort, lit by a single oil lamp. She already wears the cavalry…
Imaginary interviewEtty Hillesum · 1914 — 1943
Amsterdam, autumn 1942. In a room on Gabriël Metsustraat cluttered with books and school notebooks, a twenty-eight-year-old woman receives us, her fountain pen still in hand. Outside, the Occupation…
Imaginary interviewFreya Stark · 1893 — 1993
Asolo, a terrace overlooking the hills of Veneto, on a late summer afternoon. In Casa Freia, Persian rugs and copper lanterns brought back from Yemen sit alongside annotated maps pinned to the wall.…
Imaginary interviewJane Austen · 1775 — 1817
Chawton, in Hampshire, an autumn morning. The pianoforte has just fallen silent, and one can guess, on the little drop-front desk near the sitting-room window, a few sheets turned over. Jane Austen,…
Imaginary interviewColette · 1873 — 1954
A gray afternoon in 1950, rue de Beaujolais. On the first floor of the Palais-Royal, an old woman with a mop of bluish hair receives from a wide sofa pushed against the window, a blanket over her…
Imaginary interviewElizabeth Anscombe · 1919 — 2001
Cambridge, an autumn afternoon in 1985. In a cluttered office smelling of stale tobacco, a woman with a monocle welcomes us, a half-smoked cigar between her fingers. She speaks little but strikes…
Imaginary interviewFlora Tristan · 1803 — 1844
Bordeaux, October 1844. In a boarding-house room with drawn curtains, a woman of forty-one, her complexion hollowed by fever and the road, rests between two stacks of papers. She has agreed to answer…
Imaginary interviewEdgar Allan Poe · 1809 — 1849
October 1845. In the cramped office of the Broadway Journal in New York, the lamp still smokes. Edgar Allan Poe receives us between two proof sheets, his dark collar impeccable despite the poverty of…
Imaginary interviewAphrodite
On the heights of Paphos, where the salt of the sea mingles with the incense of myrtle, the goddess receives us in the cool shade of her sanctuary. The doves circle around the white marble columns.…
Imaginary interviewClovis · 466 — 511
Paris, around the year 510. In a hall of the ancient Palace of the Thermae, where Roman walls now mingle with Frankish tapestries and trophies, the old King of the Franks receives us. His long hair,…
Imaginary interviewDolores Huerta · 1930 — ?
San Joaquin Valley, late afternoon. The dust from the grape fields settles over the rows of vines as a small woman, a scarf in her hair, packs a megaphone into the trunk of an old car. Dolores Huerta…
Imaginary interviewKing Arthur
Camelot, at the hour when the torches in the great hall cast their last glimmers upon the deserted Round Table. The king has remained alone, his heavy sword laid across his knees, his gaze turned…
Imaginary interviewDaedalus and Icarus
It is in Sicily, at the court of King Cocalus, that tradition allows us to approach the old craftsman. Daedalus sits near a workbench covered in bronze dust, his tools arranged like relics. And when…
Imaginary interviewDionysus
On the slopes of Mount Nysa, as dusk thickens the shadow of the vines, a man with an ivy crown receives us, a kylix in hand, panthers lying at his feet. His voice is both soft and unsettling, like…
Imaginary interviewCaracalla · 188 — 217
April 217. Somewhere in Mesopotamia, between Edessa and Carrhae, the imperial tent smells of leather, dust, and weapon oil. Caracalla receives without ceremony, his Gallic cloak on his shoulders…
Imaginary interviewChampollion · 1790 — 1832
Paris, winter 1831. In a study at the Collège de France, still brand new, where the first chair of Egyptology has just been created for him, a man whose complexion is already marked by fever receives…
Imaginary interviewFranklin D. Roosevelt · 1882 — 1945
April 1944. In the Oval Office, draped with heavy curtains, a man in a dark suit welcomes us from his chair, a long cigarette holder tilted between his fingers. The CBS radio sleeps in a corner, a…
Imaginary interviewCharlie Chaplin · 1889 — 1977
June 1972. The sun is setting over Lake Geneva, and from the terrace of the Manoir de Ban, in Corsier-sur-Vevey, an old man with white hair gazes silently at the Alps. He has just returned from…
Imaginary interviewAdolf Hitler · 1889 — 1945
Berlin, winter 1944. In the hushed silence of an office in the Reich Chancellery, the man who plunged Europe into the abyss agrees, for the duration of an imaginary meeting, to look back on his path.…
Imaginary interviewFrançois Rabelais · 1500 — 1553
Meudon, autumn 1552. The parish priest has just set down his pen after the Quart Livre has come off the press; a fire of vine clippings crackles, a bottle of Touraine wine waits on the table.…
Imaginary interviewAntoine de Saint-Exupéry · 1900 — 1944
Summer 1944, on an Allied airbase in the Mediterranean. Between two reconnaissance missions, a tall man struggles to extract himself from a cockpit, his face gaunt, his gaze already back in the sky.…
Imaginary interviewArtemis
You do not meet Artemis in a palace, but at the edge, where the forest devours the daylight. She stopped at the edge of a clearing on Mount Taygetus, her bow still on her shoulder, her hounds panting…
Imaginary interviewCarl von Linnaeus · 1707 — 1778
Summer 1758, at Hammarby, his country estate a few versts from Uppsala. The old naturalist receives us between flowerbeds, a magnifying glass hanging from his neck, still dressed in his field…
Imaginary interviewClaude Monet · 1840 — 1926
Giverny, a morning in September 1925. The master receives us under the veranda, his hands still stained with blue, his gaze turned toward the pond where his water lilies float. White beard, slow…
Imaginary interviewHephaestus
Beneath Mount Etna, where magma serves as a furnace, the heat makes the air tremble. The god sets down his hammer on a still-red anvil, wipes the soot from his brow, and agrees to speak — without…
Imaginary interviewFrancis Ponge · 1899 — 1988
Bar-sur-Loup, late 1980s. In a Provençal house where the olive tree casts its shadows against the shutters, a man of nearly ninety welcomes us, an open notebook and a dictionary within reach. Francis…
Imaginary interviewConstantine I · 272 — 337
The Great Palace of Constantinople, an evening in the year 336. From the imperial box, the murmur of the Hippodrome emptying can still be heard. The emperor Constantine, his diadem removed for the…
Imaginary interviewEva Perón · 1919 — 1952
Buenos Aires, one morning in 1951, long before dawn. In her office at the Ministry of Labor, where union delegations and mothers from the provinces are already crowding in, a woman with a platinum…
Imaginary interviewWilliam the Conqueror · 1028 — 1087
Caen, in the half-light of the still-unfinished Abbaye-aux-Hommes, the old king receives visitors between councils. His hands resting on the pommel of his sword, he speaks in a slow voice, where the…
Imaginary interviewCorazón Aquino · 1933 — 2009
Manila, February 1992. In the private apartments of Malacañang Palace, which she never wanted to inhabit like a queen, Corazón Aquino receives visitors in a pale yellow dress, a rosary between her…
Imaginary interviewBuffon · 1707 — 1788
October 1782. The tower of Montbard rises above the terraced gardens the master himself designed; inside, in the silence of a study without books, an old man in a dressing gown lays down his quill.…
Imaginary interviewDavid · 1038 av. J.-C. — 968 av. J.-C.
On the height of Zion, in the cool of the evening, the king of Israel receives guests at the threshold of his stone palace. A lyre rests against the wall, the Ark is only a few paces away. David, his…
Imaginary interviewCharles Perrault · 1628 — 1703
Paris, one winter evening in 1700. In his study on rue de l'Arbre-Sec, a stone's throw from the Louvre, Charles Perrault receives us with his wig slightly askew, a bound collection resting near the…
Imaginary interviewAssia Djebar · 1936 — 2015
Manhattan, a winter morning, in a Greenwich Village apartment where shelves overflow with manuscripts and an old tape recorder still lingers. Assia Djebar receives us between two classes at the…
Imaginary interviewMichelangelo · 1475 — 1564
Rome, winter 1560. In a workshop cluttered with marble blocks and sketches, lit by a candle stuck on a cardboard hat, an old man of eighty-five rests his chisel for a moment. White dust covers his…
Imaginary interviewCharles Baudelaire · 1821 — 1867
Brussels, winter 1865. In a furnished hotel room that smells of cold coffee and tobacco, Charles Baudelaire receives, sitting very upright, glove in hand, as if posing for a portrait. The…
Imaginary interviewClaude Debussy · 1862 — 1918
Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, an autumn evening in 1917. In a drawing room hung with Japanese prints, where the Blüthner piano gleams under the lamp, Claude Debussy receives a visitor, an eternal…
Imaginary interviewLancelot du Lac
Dusk falls on the ramparts of Joyous Gard, and in the great deserted hall a knight still keeps watch, his helmet set by the hearth. He agrees to speak in a low voice, as one confesses a fault too…
Imaginary interviewCharles de Gaulle · 1890 — 1970
Autumn 1969. At La Boisserie, in the silence of the Haute-Marne prairies, a seventy-nine-year-old man has just left power for the last time. General Charles de Gaulle receives in his study…
Imaginary interviewAverroes · 1126 — 1198
Cordoba, under the reign of the Almohads. In a house nestled around a patio planted with orange trees, the grand qadi receives between two hearings, a copper oil lamp already watching over the pile…
Imaginary interviewBlaise Pascal · 1623 — 1662
Paris, winter 1661. In a Left Bank study cluttered with papers, a copper machine, and glass tubes, a man with a face hollowed by pain receives us between bouts of fever. He is thirty-eight years old…
Imaginary interviewAntonio Vivaldi · 1678 — 1741
Venice, one morning in 1740, on the Riva degli Schiavoni, a stone's throw from the Ospedale della Pietà. The trunks are nearly packed: the old master is about to leave for Vienna. Between two bundles…
Imaginary interviewGrace Hopper · 1906 — 1992
Washington D.C., one evening in 1986. Grace Hopper has just taken off her US Navy uniform after more than forty years of service. In her office, where technical reports and coils of copper wire pile…
Imaginary interviewAlan Turing · 1912 — 1954
Manchester, winter 1953. In an office cluttered with papers covered in equations and circuit diagrams, a man in a crumpled tweed jacket receives us, still out of breath from a morning run. Alan…
Imaginary interviewChien-Shiung Wu · 1912 — 1997
Manhattan, a winter evening in 1975. In an apartment near Columbia University, shelves bend under physics journals and a few Chinese bronzes keep watch in the dim light. Chien-Shiung Wu, a cup of…
Imaginary interviewBerthe Morisot · 1841 — 1895
Mézy-sur-Seine, a summer morning in 1893. The garden smells of cut grass and turpentine. Berthe Morisot sets down her brush, wipes her fingers stained with pearly white, and agrees to speak in a low…
Imaginary interviewCatherine de Medici · 1519 — 1589
January 1589, Château de Blois. The cold bites the stones and the queen mother, dressed in her eternal mourning, receives in a room hung with tapestries, an astrolabe placed near her dispatches.…
Imaginary interviewEleanor of Aquitaine · 1124 — 1204
Fontevraud, in the year of grace 1203. In the dimness of the abbey where she has chosen to end her days, an old lady of nearly eighty receives her visitor, her back straight despite her age. Queen…
Imaginary interviewCúchulainn
At the edge of the plain of Muirthemne, where chariots leave their ruts in the frozen mud, a young warrior with flaming hair sharpens his blade near a ford. He says his name is Cúchulainn, champion…
Imaginary interviewAlexandra David-Néel · 1868 — 1969
Digne-les-Bains, a winter morning in the 1950s. In the house she named Samten Dzong, the "fortress of meditation," a tiny old woman receives visitors amid piles of Tibetan manuscripts and trunks…
Imaginary interviewAntigone
Thebes, before dawn. In a silent courtyard of the Cadmea palace, a young woman with hands still stained with earth agrees to answer a few questions. She already knows what awaits her; yet her voice…
Imaginary interviewAugustus · 62 av. J.-C. — 14
Rome, year 12 of our era. On the Palatine hill, in a brick house that could pass for an ordinary senator's, an old man receives, dressed in a white toga spun by his wife. The evening light falls on a…
Imaginary interviewCharles VII · 1403 — 1461
Mehun-sur-Yèvre, winter 1460. In a room hung with tapestries where a huge fireplace crackles, King Charles VII receives visitors, his face marked by anxiety. Outside flows the Yèvre; inside, a man…
Imaginary interviewChristopher Columbus · 1451 — 1506
Valladolid, spring 1506. In a modest room cluttered with rolled maps and travel chests, a man aged before his time, crippled with gout, receives his visitor. He still calls himself Admiral, speaks of…
Imaginary interviewArthur Rimbaud · 1854 — 1891
Harar, one evening in 1885. In a stone house in the old fortified city, a thirty-year-old man keeps his accounts by lamplight, his merchant's scale stored near the trunks. Nothing suggests that he…
Imaginary interviewAres
On Mount Olympus, away from the palace where the twelve feast, the god of war wipes the dried blood from his spear. He agrees to speak, but his gaze remains fixed on the plain of mortals, where…
Imaginary interviewAmbroise Paré · 1510 — 1590
Paris, a winter evening in 1585. In his lodgings near the court, cluttered with anatomical plates and instruments of polished iron, the old king's surgeon receives us, a notebook of observations…
Imaginary interviewBartolomé de las Casas · 1484 — 1566
Madrid, winter 1566. At the Dominican convent of Atocha, a ninety-two-year-old man still receives, despite his fatigue, those who wish to hear him. His cell smells of ink and wax; on the lectern,…
Imaginary interviewAttila · 500 — 453
Pannonian Plain, end of a 5th-century summer. Beneath a polished wooden palisade, at the heart of a camp that looks like a city without stone, the king of the Huns receives, seated on a carpet.…
Imaginary interviewAlfred Wegener · 1880 — 1930
Winter 1929, University of Graz. In an office cluttered with world maps pinned to the walls and leather-bound notebooks, a man with clear eyes, already marked by polar winds, prepares a new…
Imaginary interviewCatherine II of Russia · 1729 — 1796
St. Petersburg, winter. In a study adjoining the Hermitage, where the Rembrandt canvases she has just acquired are piled up, the Empress of All the Russias receives us after her morning coffee,…
Imaginary interviewAlbert Camus · 1913 — 1960
Lourmarin, late autumn 1959. In a stone house in the Luberon where the wind rustles the olive trees, a man with a lined face receives a visitor, raincoat thrown over a chair, cigarette between his…
Imaginary interviewBenazir Bhutto · 1953 — 2007
Karachi, late 2007. The white dupatta on her hair, Benazir Bhutto receives us in a spartan room still strewn with campaign files and handwritten notes in Urdu. The crowd from her return from exile…
Imaginary interviewAnnie Ernaux · 1940 — ?
It is in a modest house in the new town of Cergy-Pontoise, near the Val-d'Oise, that Annie Ernaux receives us, crossed-out notebooks laid on the table. Her voice is calm, almost clinical, without any…
Imaginary interviewBeaumarchais · 1732 — 1799
Spring 1788. We are received in the grand mansion Beaumarchais has just completed on the Rue du Pas-de-la-Mule, directly across from the Bastille, amid gardens and the music room where a harp still…
Imaginary interviewChe Guevara · 1928 — 1967
Sierra Maestra, one evening in the late 1950s. Under a shelter of branches, a kerosene lamp lights a short-breathed man, beret tilted, a steaming mate within reach and a notebook open on his knees.…
Imaginary interviewWilliam Tell
It was in a wooden inn in Altdorf, at the foot of the Alps of Uri, that we met the archer whose name spans the centuries. Outside, Lake Lucerne beats against the rocks; inside, the man sets his…
Imaginary interviewArchimedes · 286 av. J.-C. — 211 av. J.-C.
Syracuse, late summer afternoon. The oblique light strikes the limestone walls of the island of Ortygia, and on the floor of a workshop cluttered with pulleys, tablets, and figures traced in the ash,…
Imaginary interviewAlexis de Tocqueville · 1805 — 1859
Cannes, winter 1858. In a villa bathed in light too gentle for a man who knows he is ill, Alexis de Tocqueville receives visitors, a shawl over his shoulders and scattered sheets on his table. He…
Imaginary interviewApollo
On the slopes of Parnassus, where the smoke of offerings still rises toward the sky of Delphi, the archer god agrees to answer. He holds his lyre against him, the laurel crown tilted on his brow. His…
Imaginary interviewAesop · 619 av. J.-C. — 563 av. J.-C.
On the agora of Samos, at the hour when merchants fold up their stalls, a man with a hunched back and a rough face leans on a walking stick. They call him Aesop, the freedman of Iadmon, he whose…
Imaginary interviewAda Lovelace · 1815 — 1852
London, a winter afternoon in 1843. In her Mayfair study, cluttered with sheets covered in symbolic notation, the Countess of Lovelace has just completed her famous Notes. The pen still wet, she…
Imaginary interviewFreya
Twilight falls on Folkvangr, and the golden fields rustle with the footsteps of warriors who have just arrived. Seated in her chariot, two large cats curled at her feet, Freyja agrees to speak — not…
Imaginary interviewCicero · 106 av. J.-C. — 42 av. J.-C.
Late summer on the hills of Tusculum. In the villa where he has taken refuge to write, between two papyrus rolls, a man with tired features agrees to receive visitors; outside, Rome still rumbles.…
Imaginary interviewDanton · 1759 — 1794
Paris, late winter 1794. In an apartment on the Cour du Commerce-Saint-André, where the fire still crackles, a massive man with a scarred face receives us between two sessions of the Convention.…
Imaginary interviewCixi · 1835 — 1908
Autumn 1908, at the Summer Palace. Light fades over Kunming Lake, and the Empress Dowager Cixi, weakened but still sharp-eyed, receives behind a yellow silk screen. She is seventy-two years old, has…
Imaginary interviewFrançoise de Graffigny · 1695 — 1758
Paris, winter 1757. In a modest apartment on Rue Saint-Hyacinthe, cluttered with books and papers, a sixty-two-year-old woman receives us near a feeble fire, a writing desk on her lap. The pen has…
Imaginary interviewEdith Stein · 1891 — 1942
Carmel of Echt, an afternoon in the summer of 1942. Behind the grille of the parlor, a nun with a peaceful face places a stack of still-damp pages on the table. Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross —…
Imaginary interviewCharlotte Brontë · 1816 — 1855
January 1854. The wind off the Pennines rattles the windows of Haworth parsonage, and the fire in the sitting room struggles to warm the stone. A small woman in a dark wool dress, her face grave and…
Imaginary interviewÉtienne de La Boétie · 1530 — 1563
Bordeaux, an evening in the year 1562. In a study cluttered with Greek editions and parliamentary records, a young magistrate of thirty-two closes a vellum-bound manuscript and listens to the sound…
Imaginary interviewAlfred de Musset · 1810 — 1857
Paris, one evening in the late 1830s. In a Latin Quarter apartment where the oil lamp still smokes, Alfred de Musset receives a visitor, his frock coat undone, a glass within reach. He speaks…
Imaginary interviewAuguste Rodin · 1840 — 1917
Meudon, a winter morning in 1913. The Villa des Brillants smells of wet clay and fresh plaster; outside, the fog drowns the Seine valley. The master, stained smock and gray beard, turns a turntable…
Imaginary interviewAntoine de Lavoisier · 1743 — 1794
Paris, one winter evening around 1788. We are received in the apartment at the Arsenal, where the smell of mercury mingles with that of candle wax. Between a scale under a glass dome and ledgers…
Imaginary interviewAnansi
Under a kapok tree in the Ashanti Region, at the hour when storytellers light the fire, a thin voice descends along an invisible thread. The spider Anansi has slid down to ear level, eight legs…
Imaginary interviewBaruch Spinoza · 1632 — 1677
The Hague, winter 1676. In a rented room on the Paviljoensgracht, where the smell of polished glass mingles with that of tobacco, a thin man sets down his grinding lathe to receive us. He speaks…
Imaginary interviewBarbara McClintock · 1902 — 1992
Summer 1983, a few weeks after the announcement from Stockholm. Barbara McClintock receives visitors in her small office at Cold Spring Harbor, window open onto the cornfields she has walked for…
Imaginary interviewAmaterasu
One does not meet a sun goddess; one waits for her to deign to appear. It is at dawn, on the esplanade of white pebbles of the Grand Shrine of Ise, amid the scent of freshly cut cypress wood, that…
Imaginary interviewCharlemagne · 742 — 814
Aachen, a winter evening. The steam from the hot springs still rises from the baths while the emperor, a marten fur cloak over his shoulders, returns from the hunt. In the great hall of the palace, a…
Imaginary interviewAlexander the Great · 355 av. J.-C. — 322 av. J.-C.
Babylon, summer 323 BCE. Under the royal tent pitched near Nebuchadnezzar's palace, a thirty-two-year-old man receives visitors, the diadem still tied on his brow, the Iliad within reach. The fever…
Imaginary interviewAdam and Eve
The Garden of Eden, in the gentle hour when light has no name yet. Under the tree that stands in the middle of the orchard, a man and a woman stand, still close to the hand that shaped them. They…
Imaginary interviewAlbert Einstein · 1879 — 1955
Princeton, late winter 1955. In an office cluttered with papers where a violin lies, an old man with wild white hair receives his visitor without a tie, his pipe unlit in his hand. The conversation,…
Imaginary interviewAimé Césaire · 1913 — 2008
Fort-de-France, late morning. Heat rises from the bay while, in a book-cluttered office where a fan stirs the Caribbean air, a man sorts a bundle of municipal correspondence. Aimé Césaire, the poet…
Imaginary interviewAnne Frank · 1929 — 1945
Amsterdam, summer 1944. At the back of a commercial building at 263 Prinsengracht, behind a bookcase that swings on its hinges, a fifteen-year-old girl receives us in the dimness of a room with…
Imaginary interviewAbbé Prévost · 1697 — 1763
Chantilly, a gray winter morning in 1762. In a modest lodging lined with books, an old man in a black cassock sets down his quill beside a porcelain inkwell. The Abbé Prévost, a novelist whom all…
Imaginary interviewAung San Suu Kyi · 1945 — ?
A humid late afternoon on the shores of Inya Lake, in Rangoon. Behind the rusty gate of 54 University Avenue, a woman with flowers in her hair receives, for the duration of an imaginary conversation,…
Imaginary interviewEl Cid
Valencia, the year 1097. Under the vaults of a palace wrested from the Almoravids, a man with a face tanned by twenty years of campaigns receives the interviewer between war councils. Tizona rests…
Imaginary interviewAbraham Lincoln · 1809 — 1865
Washington, late winter 1865. Snow is melting on the lawns of the White House and the war, at last, seems to be drawing to a close. In an office cluttered with maps and telegraph dispatches, a tall,…
Imaginary interviewAlexandre Dumas · 1802 — 1870
Port-Marly, an afternoon in 1847. The Château de Monte-Cristo still smells of fresh plaster and new stone. Alexandre Dumas receives us in a study cluttered with sheets, his pen still wet, a valet…
Imaginary interviewAchilles
The sun sets over the plain of Troy. Under a vast tent where bronze weapons gleam, a warrior with blazing eyes sharpens his spear. He agrees to speak, he whom the Achaeans call the swiftest, the most…
Imaginary interviewSeneca · 4 av. J.-C. — 65
We meet Seneca in the columned study of his Rome townhouse on a still spring afternoon — wax tablets, papyrus scrolls, and a clay oil lamp arranged across a cedar table. He has been retired from…
Imaginary interviewPerseus
We meet Perseus not in a palace hall but at the edge of the sea, at the rocky coastline of Ethiopia, where salt air still carries — if you listen — the faint echo of chains against stone. He arrives…
Imaginary interviewMarie Curie · 1867 — 1934
We meet Marie Curie in the autumn of 1923, in her spare office at the Institut Curie on the rue d'Ulm in Paris — the research center she founded and has directed for nearly a decade. A stack of…
Imaginary interviewMansa Musa · 1280 — 1337
We meet Mansa Moussa in the great courtyard of the Djinguereber Mosque in Timbuktu, its banco walls still faintly warm from the Saharan afternoon. Around us, scholars in white robes pass between…
Imaginary interviewLeonardo da Vinci · 1452 — 1519
We meet Leonardo da Vinci in the early winter of 1517, at the Clos Lucé — the stone manor house near Amboise that King François has placed at his disposal. He is sixty-five, his silver-white beard…
Imaginary interviewLaozi · vers VIe siècle av. J.-C.
We find him in the dim corridors of the Zhou royal library at Luoyi — city of ceremony, city of slow dissolution — seated beside a low table, a calligraphy brush resting between two fingers and a…
Imaginary interviewJoséphine Baker · 1906 — 1975
We meet Joséphine Baker in the small apartment on the Rock of Monaco offered to her by Princess Grace — autumn 1974, a few weeks after her triumphant return to the Bobino stage in Paris, where the…
Imaginary interviewJohann Sebastian Bach · 1685 — 1750
We meet Johann Sebastian Bach in his study at the Thomasschule in Leipzig, on an October afternoon in 1742. The room smells of candlewax and fresh ink; a half-finished manuscript lies open on the…
Imaginary interviewJean Jaurès · 1859 — 1914
We meet Jean Jaurès in the late spring of 1914, in the editorial offices of L'Humanité on the rue du Croissant in Paris. Afternoon light filters through windows half-obscured by paper; he writes…
Imaginary interviewHildegard of Bingen · 1098 — 1179
We meet Hildegard at the monastery of Rupertsberg, perched above the confluence of the Rhine and the Nahe, in the late autumn of 1178 — weeks after an archiepiscopal interdict fell on her community,…
Imaginary interviewÉmilie du Châtelet · 1706 — 1749
We meet the Marquise du Châtelet in her private study at the Château de Cirey-sur-Blaise in 1748 — a room where prisms and clay-dusted trays share space with towers of annotated Latin manuscripts and…
Imaginary interviewCleopatra · 68 av. J.-C. — 29 av. J.-C.
We receive her in the great audience hall of the Brucheion palace, overlooking Alexandria's eastern harbor where the flame of Pharos burns day and night. She wears a diadem of gold and lapis-lazuli,…
Imaginary interviewCharles Darwin · 1809 — 1882
We find Charles Darwin in the book-lined study of Down House on a grey November afternoon in 1881, the year his final volume on earthworms goes to press. Specimen jars stand along the shelves; a…
Imaginary interviewAristotle · 460 av. J.-C. — 401 av. J.-C.
We find Aristotle at Chalcis, on the island of Euboea, in the autumn of 322 BC — driven from Athens by an accusation of impiety, he receives visitors in a borrowed room overlooking the Euripus…
Imaginary interviewAnubis
We meet at the threshold of the Hall of Two Truths — that antechamber where the newly dead pause before the scales are set and the feather of Maat is brought forward. Anubis does not sit; those who…
Imaginary interviewVoltaire · 1694 — 1778
We meet him at his writing table in the Château de Ferney, a few miles from the Swiss border, on a winter afternoon in the early 1770s. The room smells of coffee and ink; a half-finished letter lies…
Imaginary interviewConfucius · 550 av. J.-C. — 478 av. J.-C.
We find Confucius in the courtyard of his house at Qufu, on a late autumn afternoon — the light already pale, a bundle of jiandu bamboo strips spread across his knees. He has been annotating the…
Imaginary interviewAthena
We find her on the Acropolis at first light, before the city below has roused itself from sleep. The great chryselephantine statue within the Parthenon — gold, ivory, and twelve meters tall — is the…
Imaginary interviewFrida Kahlo · 1907 — 1954
We meet Frida Kahlo in the summer of 1954, in the studio adjoining the Casa Azul — the cobalt-blue house in Coyoacán where she was born and has spent most of her life. She is propped against the…