Marguerite Yourcenar

Marguerite Yourcenar , of her true name Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour (Brussels, June 8th, 1903 in literature - Mount Serves Island, the United States, December 17th, 1987 in literature) is one (E) writer (E) French (E), author of novels and news " humanistes" and also of autobiographical accounts.

Its pseudonym is the anagram (except for a letter) of its true name.

She was the first woman elected with the French Academy in 1980, after an active support of Jean d' Ormesson, which made the speech of its reception.

Biography

Born in a house from the Avenue Louise in Brussels of a Belgian mother (Fernande de Cartier de Marchienne) which it loses ten days after its birth, Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour is high in his/her paternal grandmother (of which it makes in Archives of North a portrait with the acid) by her father, a French, nonconformist and large very cultivated traveller.

It spends its winters to Lille and its summers, until 1918, in the family property located at the Black Mont on the commune of Saint-Jans-Cappel (Northern). It validates the first part of its baccalaureat with Nice, without to have attended the school. Its first dialogued poem, the Garden of the dreams , is published in account of author in 1929 and is signed Yourcenar, quasi Anagramme of its family name.

It accompanies her father in his voyages: London during the First World War, south of France, Switzerland, Italy where she discovers with him the Villa Adriana with Tivoli. It observes it, witnesses its loves of which it will make the screen of What? Eternity . In 1931, she writes its first novel, of Gidian inspiration , but of a precise, cold and traditional style: Alexis or the treaty of the vain combat . It is about a long letter of a man, famous musician, who confesses to his wife his homosexuality and his decision to leave it in a preoccupation of truth and a frankness. The “Monique” of the text is not other than the great love of the father of Yourcenar, Jeanne de Vietinghoff (born Bricou), in addition former school-fellow of her mother.

After the death of his/her father, in 1929 (after it lute the first novel of his daughter), Marguerite Yourcenar carries out a life Bohemia between Paris, Lausanne, Athens, the Greek islands, Istanbul, Brussels… She loves women and fall in love with a man however homosexual, André Fraigneau, writer and editor at Grasset. The Eastern Nouvelles follow , echoes of its voyages, Feux , composed of texts of mythological or religious inspiration intersected with apophtegmes, where the author triturates in all the directions the topic of despair in love and the sentimental sufferings, three news which it will take again later and which will give Work to the Black (1968) and an obscure Man (1981) and the Death-blow (1939), short novel of an impossible history of love within the framework of the war polono-Russian of 1920.

In 1939, his/her father has died for ten years, it misses money and the Europe is agitated dangerously. It leaves to the the United States to join Grace Frick, her friend since 1937, with which it lived until the death of this one in 1979. They settle starting from 1950 on the island of the Mount-Deserts (Mount Desert Island that they had discovered together in 1942, in the Maine) and name their house Small-Pleasure. Yourcenar passes the remainder of its life there: American citizen in 1947, it teaches the French literature and the history of art until in 1953.

Its novel Memories of Hadrian , in 1951, is a world success and is worth to him the final statute of writer, devoted in 1970 by its election to the royal Académie of language and literature Frenchwomen of Belgium, and ten years later, by its entry with the French Academy, thanks to the active support of the writer and academician Jean d' Ormesson. It indicated a long time to have hesitated, for the choice of its subject, between the emperor Hadrian and the mathematician-philosopher Omar Khayyam.

Its life is divided between the writing in the insulation of the island of the Mount-Deserts and long voyages, of which tours around the world with Jerry Wilson, his last companion. She dies on December 17th, 1987 in the United States. She is buried with the Brookside cemetery with Somesville (Maine).

Romance S histories with the autobiographical memories, the work of Yourcenar is registered in margin of the committed current of its time with this return to the Esthétisme and the tradition, with the desire to affirm the finality of the Littérature: narration. Inspired by the Eastern wisdom, the thought of the writer never moved away from the humanism of the Renaissance:

The true birthplace is that where one carried for the first time an intelligent glance on oneself: my first fatherlands were the books.

A selected Correspondance of Marguerite Yourcenar was published at Gallimard. One learns there that it is it, Végétarienne convinced, which has in first drawn the attention of Brigitte Bardot to the fate of the babies seals.

Works

the Garden of the dreams (1921, poetry)
Alexis or the Treaty of the vain combat (1929, novel)
the News Eurydice (1931, novel)
the Denier of the dream (1934, novel)
Death leads the Attachment (1934)
Feux (1936, prose poems)
Nouvelles Eastern (1939)
the Dreams and the Fates (1939)
the Death-blow (1939, novel)
Memories of Hadrian (1951, novel)
Electra or the fall of the masks (1954)
Under benefit of inventory (1962, test)

* Ah, my beautiful castle (1962) (Castle of Chenonceau)

Which does not have its Minotaure? (1963)
Work with the black (1968)
the labyrinth of the world. I, pious Memories (1974)
the labyrinth of the world. II, Files of North (1977)
the Crown and the quadrant (1979, anthology of poems translated from the Greek)
Mishima or vision of the vacuum , (1981, test)
As the water which runs (1982) ( Anna, soror , an obscure man , a beautiful morning )
time, this large sculptor (1983)
charities of Alcippe , (1984, poem)
the labyrinth of the world. III, What? Eternity (1988)
Of Hadrian with Zénon: correspondence, 1951-1956 , 2004

Some quotations

When I lose all, there remains to me God.

Let us try to enter death the open eyes.

Many men are demolished, few men die.

There is no unhappy love affair: one has only what one does not have. There is no happy love: what one has, one does not have it plus.

Conventions end up forming the beings.

The history is interested only in the privileged people.

The relation between the writer and his characters is difficult to describe. It is a little the same one as between parents and children.

The beings always finish by you escaping.

The human nature changes little while being capable of an extraordinary plasticity outside.

Let us be subversive. We against ignorance revolt, the indifference, cruelty, which besides is so often exerted against the man only because they were made the hand on the animals. Recall us, if it is necessary always all to bring back to ourselves, that there would be less battered childs if there were less tortured animals, less leaded coaches bringing to dead the victims of unspecified dictatorships, if we had not taken the practice of the vans where the animals fail without food and water while waiting for the slaughter-house.

The animals are my friends and I do not eat my friends.

The protection of the animal, it is at the bottom the same combat as the protection of the man.

I doubt that all the philosophy of the world manages one day to abolish slavery; one will change the name at most it.

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