Brigite Salino is a theater critic at Le Monde. Her book is better than I anticipated when I started reading the first pages. Not bad at all, after all, if not the definitive biography. A short, easy read. Koltès was a very private man, and when I read on page 34: "Alors que Bernard-Marie a toujours considéré son homosexualité comme une affaire strictement privée et qu'il en a très peu parlé, il lui est arrivé de confier à certains amis que quelque chose s'est joué à travers les rencontres nouées dans les cafés algériens," and realized how often Koltès's letters, published earlier this year, were quoted, I suspected Salino's book would not provide much more than the letters. Not to diminish the interest of the letters: but very little is revealed in them on Koltès's homosexuality. In 1970 Koltès is 22 years-old. He lives in Strasbourg and attends the TNS school: "En même temps, Koltès réserve ses nuits à d'autres que ses amis. Sans leur en parler. Si étrange que cela puisse paraître, certains d'entre eux, hommes ou femmes, disent aujourd'hui n'avoir pas su qu'il était homosexuel." At the end of 1973 he spends one month visiting the Soviet Union with a friend, Alain Jeannenot, with whom he shares an appartment in Strasbourg. Are they lovers? It does not seem so... but their relationship is not discussed. "En 1974, Bernard-Marie Koltès a vingt-six ans. Sa vie tangue et bascule, il plonge dans la nuit blanche de la poudre, et les jours sombres des pissotières, la possible prostitution qui va avec. En dire plus n'ajouterait rien. Tout est raconté, sans que rien ne soit dévoilé, dans le roman inspiré par Strasbourg à ce moment-là: La fuite à cheval très loin dans la ville." No, we would have liked to learn more...
Starting with 1976, Koltès's move to Paris and the writing of his first major play, La nuit juste avant les forêts, Salino's biography becomes more informative and captivating. When Koltès decides to visit Central America in the summer of 1978 (a sojourn which will be one of the significant events in his short life), we learn that a Nicaraguan lover, met in Paris, had invited him to join him in his country. We meet Carlos Bonfil, a Mexican, "son ami-amant de coeur - un des rares hommes à avoir vraiment compté dans sa vie", Rasta and Momo, "deux autres hommes qui ont habité la vie de Bernard-Marie Koltès", Hammou Graïa, met on the shooting scene of L'homme blessé, Chéreau's 1983 movie, and Isaak de Bankolé, who will both act in Koltès's later plays. The so critical relationship (not sexual, by the way) with Patrice Chéreau is recounted in details. The Kaposi sarcoma, diagnosed in early 1984. His death in Laënnec Hospital in 1989.
It is commonly acknowledged that Koltès kept his private life, his homosexuality, very separate from his public life and his work. The exact opposite of the contemporary gay writer Hervé Guibert. In a rare interview to Le Gai Pied in 1983 he says:
Maybe. But at the core of two of Koltès's strongest plays, La nuit juste avant les forêts and Dans la solitude des champs de coton, lies an obscure desire between men, "l'érotisme indissociable de tout le théatre de Koltès," writes very rightly Ms Salino.
2009.10.11