London, July 20 (ANI): French President Nicolas Sarkozy is reportedly in a quest to polish up his cultural credentials to join the ranks of well-read leaders like Francois Mitterrand.
He has embarked on a grueling drive to prove he is a nascent culture freak by obsessively watching entire Hitchcock and Rossellini film repertoires night after night and rummaging through volumes of French literary greats, reports the Telegraph.
Aides say his cultural transformation began in 2008 when he married Carla Bruni, a well-read polyglot with a wealth of artistic contacts.
Now, they say, the couple religiously spend their evenings playing catch up, during which Mr Sarkozy "consumes culture in an almost obsessively systematic way".
"Just like a revision programme, he functions by author," the daily quoted a guest as telling the Lib?ration newspaper.
As for literature, he is said to have digested a volume of six Maupassant works in one weekend, and spends all his spare time perfecting his knowledge of Stendhal, Balzac and other French classics.
In interviews, Mr Sarkozy has started casually dropping references to heavyweight authors from Louis-Ferdinand Celine to Jean-Paul Sartre.
Yann Moix, a writer and director, was more convinced. "Carla no doubt pushed him into the debate, that's for sure. Then she took the stabilisers off the bike and now I think Sarkozy takes real pleasure in pedalling all on his own," he said.
That said, he added, the President "meets you solely to show you the current state of his culture". He has "no interest" in what his guests have to say. (ANI)
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