BNDigital

La mer toujours recommencée.
Paul Valéry

When I contemplate the relations between France and Brazil, my mind turns to Joaquim Nabuco’s memoirs, born of a deep and emotional bond with his remarkable book My Formative Years.

“I sometimes amuse myself by pondering which nation I would save, were it in my power, should humanity have to be reduced to a single one. My hesitation would lie between France and England (...). Between France and England, however, I am always uncertain. My duty, perhaps, should be to rescue France. “If Madame Récamier and I were drowning, which of us would you save?” Madame de Staël once asked her friend Talleyrand. “Oh! Madame, vous savez nager.” England, too, knows how to swim.’”

In Joaquim Nabuco’s western sea, and in the cultural pursuits of so many generations of Brazilians, France emerges in the plural of all her voices. In the theatre of Artaud and Molière, in the poetry of Valéry and Baudelaire, Claudel and Bonnefoy. Between the philosophy of Sartre and Descartes, the painting of Balthus and Monet, the ardent prose of Rabelais and Perec, the anthropology of Mauss and Lévi-Strauss, the history of Febvre and Marc Bloch, the compositions of Satie and hip-hop.

I’ll stop the vertiginous list here, unable as I am to translate a singular and multiethnic France, its fluid, porous and open territory, upon which the powers of Francophony are inscribed.

But there is also the counterpart: all the fascination that Brazil exerts in the country of Balzac, ever since the France Antarctique and the Equinoctial France. The inspiration behind Claudel’s pages and Milhaud’s scores. The legion of readers of Clarice, Machado, and Guimarães. The admirers of Tom Jobim and Villa-Lobos, Gil and Caetano, Chico. And the Afro-Brazilian voices that bind us.

I think of Blaise Cendrars, the Franco-Swiss author of Etc... etc... (um livro 100% brasileiro), who regarded Brazil as a second spiritual homeland, or when he sought to describe Guanabara Bay in all its lines:

“scintillantes qui convergent et se nouent comme une torsade de perles lumineuses au cou d’une déité indienne, autour du sombre du majestueux piton du Pain de Sucre.”

There is no shortage of reasons to celebrate our two hundred and five hundred years of cultural proximity and convergence.

All of this is mapped in the memory of our holdings, for the FBN preserves rare and precious collections, testaments to this deeply rooted memory.

This is why its name appears in the Acts adopted on the occasion of the visit to Brazil of the President of France, Emmanuel Macron – 28 March 2024: “initiatives of cooperation between the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.”

The relations between our National Libraries reflect and reinforce the cultural ties that underpin the diplomacy of the book, since the agreement signed in 2009 on the occasion of the Project La France au Brésil, when high-profile virtual documents were brought together on the web portals of our respective institutions.

Today, in November 2025, the FBN and the BNF have signed a far more substantial and comprehensive agreement, centered on new technologies, with an unprecedented agenda based on transversal and interactive concepts.

The first outcome of this agreement is the present exhibition celebrating 200 years of diplomatic relations between Brazil and France. Inaugurated within the framework of Rio as World Book Capital, this event is supported by representative institutions such as the City of Rio de Janeiro, the Institut Français, the Embassy of France, the Instituto Guimarães Rosa, and Itamaraty.

The tripartite curation reveals, in the selection of objects, the semiotic structure, and the framing of the exhibition design, the successful dialogue between Armelle Enders (Paris 8), Gisele Venâncio (UFF), and Mônica Carneiro Alves (FBN). It is important to highlight the general spirit of this meeting of knowledge and sensibilities, according to the curators, in asking whether:

“Are Franco-Brazilian relations the result of special affinities forged by history and geography, or is this supposed specificity merely rhetoric and cliché? Do they differ from the relations that Brazil and France maintain with other countries or cultural spheres? Whenever possible, the exhibition will seek to broaden the scope of face-to-face comparison and will adopt a transnational perspective, incorporating other actors or other areas.”

A series of open-ended questions invites reflection, a journey of engagement and empathy, following a critical approach that is at once playful, serene, and sensitive, decolonial in its design.

Seven sections, or chapters, encompass a synchronic and diachronic cut – in that order precisely – with an emphasis on the economy of relationships, on duets that are dynamic, decentered, extensive, governed by the criterion of infinite engagements. Blending is the watchword, the leitmotif, the recurring idea, the delicate network that shapes the imaginary, the symbolic exchanges, the metaphors of a profound dialogue.

May this year of celebration fulfill its utmost purpose: the sum of knowledge, the dimension of the imaginary, the friendship between peoples – Joaquim Nabuco’s Atlantic sentiment, of a sea that always begins anew.

Marco Lucchesi
President of the National Library Foundation