Marguerite Yourcenar

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Marguerite Yourcenar was the pseudonym of French novelist Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour (June 8, 1903 - December 17, 1987). She was the daughter of Michel de Crayencour and Ferdinande (Fernande) de Cartier de Marchienne. Marguerite Yourcenar was the first woman to be elected to the Académie Française, in 1980.

1 Early life
2 Writing career
3 Works
- 3.1 Other works available in English translation
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Early life

Yourcenar was born in Brussels, Belgium, and educated privately to a prodigious standard at her father's estate in northern France. Her Belgian mother, died ten days after Marguerite was born, due to puerperal fever and peritonitis. Jeanne von Vietinghoff, an author née Bricou, the daughter of a Belgian architect and a schoolfriend of her mother, became for Marguerite a kind of idol, the mother dreamed of. Yourcenar read Racine and Aristophanes by the age of eight and her father taught her Latin at ten, and Greek at twelve.

[edit] Writing career

Her first novel Alexis was published in 1929. Her intimate companion at the time, a translator named Grace Frick, invited her to America, where she lectured in comparative literature in New York City. She and Frick became lovers in 1937, and would remain so until Frick's death in 1979. [1]

In 1951 she published, in France, the French-language novel Mémoires d'Hadrien (translated as Memoirs of Hadrian), which she had been writing with pauses for a decade. The novel was an immediate success and met with great critical acclaim.

In this novel Yourcenar recreated the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world, the Roman Emperor Hadrian, who writes a long letter to Marcus Aurelius, his successor and adoptive son. The Emperor meditates on his past, describing his triumphs, his love for Antinous, and his philosophy. This novel has become a modern classic, a standard against which fictional recreations of Antiquity are measured.

Yourcenar was elected as the first female member of the Académie française, in 1980. One of the respected writers in French language, she published many novels, essays, poetry, and three volumes of memoirs.

Yourcenar lived much of her life at Petite Plaisance in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Petite Plaisance is now a museum dedicated to her memory.

[edit] Works

Le jardin des chimères (1921)
Alexis ou le traité du vain combat (1929)
- (English) Alexis, translated 1965, ISBN 0-374-51906-4
La nouvelle Eurydice (1931)
Pindare (1932)
Denier du rêve (1934, revised 1958–59)
- (English) A Coin in Nine Hands
La mort conduit l'attelage (1934)
Feux (prose poem, 1936)
- (English) Fires (translated by Dori Katz), ISBN 0-374-51748-7
Nouvelles orientales (short stories, 1938)
- (English) Oriental Tales, ISBN 1-85290-018-0
Les songes et les sorts (1938)
Le coup de grâce (1939)
- (English) Coup de Grace, ISBN 0-374-51631-6
Mémoires d'Hadrien (1951)
- (English) Memoirs of Hadrian (translated by Grace Frick)
Électre ou La chute des masques (1954)
Les charités d'Alcippe (1956)
Constantin Cavafy (1958)
Sous bénéfice d'inventaire (1962)
- (English) Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays (1984)
Fleuve profond, sombre rivière: les negros spirituals (1964)
L'Œuvre au noir (novel, 1968, Prix Femina 1968)
- (English) The Abyss, translated by Grace Frick (1976) ISBN 0-85628-127-1, ISBN 0-374-51666-9
Yes, Peut-être, Shaga (1969)
Théâtre, 1971
Souvenirs pieux (1974)
- (English) Dear Departed: A Memoir translated by Maria Louise Ascher
Archives du Nord (1977)
- (English) How Many Years: A Memoir translated by Maria Louise Ascher
Le labyrinthe du monde (1974-84)
Mishima ou la vision du vide (essay, 1980)
- (English) Mishima: A Vision of the Void, ISBN 0-226-96532-5
Anna, soror... (1981)
Comme l'eau qui coule (1982)
Le temps, ce grand sculpteur (1984)
- (English) That Mighty Sculptor, Time
Quoi? L'Éternité (1988)

[edit] Other works available in English translation

A Blue Tale and Other Stories, ISBN 0-226-96530-9. Three stories written between 1927 and 1930, translated and published 1995.
Dreams and Destinies, ISBN 0-312-21289-5 (1999)
Two Lives and a Dream, ISBN 0-226-96529-5
With Open Eyes: Conversations With Matthieu Galey

[edit] References

Rousseau, George: Marguerite Yourcenar: A Biography. London: Haus Publishing (2004). ISBN 1-904341-28-4
Judith Holland Sarnecki: Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar (2004)
Josyanne Savigneau: Marguerite Yourcenar: Inventing a Life, 1993
Marguerite Yourcenar on Books and Writers, kirjasto.sci.fi.