EAn old man who was in the public eye to the very last has died and France mourns the loss of its dearest child, little Nick. “Le petit Nicolas is an orphan” is the title of the tabloid “Le Parisien” in its obituary. France lived with him in the nostalgia of the fifties. In 1952, Sempé, whom all French loved, drew the boy for the first time – for a Belgian newspaper. René Goscinny recognized the potential of this character.
France is unsurpassed when it comes to mourning the loss of its “grands hommes” and women too. It knows what it owes them and is able to put the grief into words – from tweets to multi-column obituaries. Special programs have been popular for a long time. Representatives from politics, business, culture and the media take part in the farewell ceremony for Jean-Jacques Sempé. This time it also consists of drawings, which are also one of the great peculiarities of French.
The first commemorative plaque will be installed in Bordeaux in mid-September – where the father of “petit Nicolas” went to school. “Jean-Jacques Sempé was a student at the École David Johnston. He embodies the cheerful tenderness, which he implements with unspeakable grace. He is a draftsman of everyday happiness. Bordeaux thanks him today.”
From: Sempé The secret of the bicycle dealer
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Image: Diogenes
Sempé made life more bearable, says a man whose father went to school with Sempé. Emmanuel Macron praised his “tender irony and sensitive intelligence” and underlined Sempé’s passion for jazz, Duke Ellington and Ray Ventura: “We will miss Sempé’s eye and pen. He was always elegant and casual, and yet he never missed a detail.” The President illustrated his tribute on Twitter and Instagram with Sempé’s last drawing: “We will not be able to forget him.”
Fifteen million Nicolas volumes sold
“Paris-Match” and “Figaro” pay tribute to Sempé as a decades-long collaborator. The sports newspaper “L’Equipe” recalls an entire issue that he illustrated a few years ago. As a child, he followed the Tour de France and was a fan of the Girondins Bordeaux football club. “Even if he gets fouled, Johan Cruyff falls in style,” he explained his admiration of the footballer. Sempé’s breakthrough dated when he began working for the “New Yorker”: He designed more than a hundred covers for the magazine. The number is in all obituaries along with the ten albums and fifteen million “Nicolas” volumes sold.
Little Nick, from Goscinny & Sempé.
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Image: Diogenes
The farewell ceremony will survive the hot summer. The film “Little Nicolas” was shown at the Cannes Festival – subtitle: “What are we waiting for to be happy?” In Annecy at the end of June he received the gold crystal. Its subject is Sempé’s collaboration with Goscinny, who died in 1977. “It’s the story of a resilience between two men whose youth was stolen,” says the producer Amandine Fredon: “Through the Shoah in Goscinny, through the beating stepfather in the case of Sempé.” He once became the “most beautiful baby” in Bordeaux ‘, reports the local newspaper, ‘but was immediately disqualified because it was full of fleas and bites’.
The film about “little Nick”, in whose dream childhood Sempé and Goscinny worked through their injuries, will be released in cinemas in October. France is already celebrating it as the testament of two everyday humanists who refused to show any resentment.
