Yourcenar, Marguerite

(1903-1987)

   novelist, essayist

   Born in Brussels, Belgium, Marguerite Yourcenar (the pen name of Marguerite de Crayencour) was raised in a humanistic environment that explains her love of classical Greece (she authored an anthology of ancient Greek poets, La Couronne et la Lyre, 1979). She translated Pindar but also the Poèmes of Constantin Cavafy, for which she received a Présentation critique in 1958. Marguerite Yource-nar traveled to switzerland and italy before visiting the united states, where she settled with her companion, Grace Frick, in 1949. she did a translation of black spirituals, collected in Fleuve profound, sem-bre rivière (1964), and later in Blues et Gospels (1984). A translator of Virginia Woolf (Les Vagues, 1937) and of Henry James (Ce que Maisi savait, 1947), author of essays (Les Songes et les Sorts, 1938; Sous bénéfices d'inventaire, 1962), of poems in prose and verse (Feux, 1936; Les Charités d'Alcippe, 1956 and 1974), memoirs (Souvenirs pieux, 1974; Archives du Nord, 1977; Quoi? L'éternité, posthumous, 1938). Marguerite Yourcenar is above all known for her novels. After writing, in a style similar to that of andré gide, Alexis ou le Traité du vain combat (1929), she composed Le Coup de grâce (1939), in which her sophistication as a writer is also evident. In 1951, with Mémoires d'Hadrien, she again demonstrated her broad knowledge of ancient civilization and historical periods. other of her writings include a semi-historical novel, L'Œuvre au noir (1968), which won her the prix Femina, a series about her life and work entitled Le Yeux ouverts (1980), a biography, Mishima: ou la vision du vide (1981), and a collection of essays, Le Temps, ce grand sculpteur (1983). In 1980, Marguerite Yourcenar became the first woman to be elected into the Académie Française.