She would have been 117 years old, this Monday 8 June. The writer Marguerite Yourcenar is being honored by Google has a doodle. Born Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour on June 8, 1903, Brussels, Belgium, she changes her name “Yourcenar” at the turn of the 1920’s, by making an anagram from his family name.
A 9-year-old in 1912, his father moved with Marguerite to Paris. Surprised by the war, they will spend a year in England, where she will begin studies of latin and teach in English. Marguerite Yourcenar will also study Greek. Big reader of the classics and european literature of the Nineteenth century, she spends a bachelor’s degree latin-Greek in 1919.
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In the 1920s, and throughout his life, Marguerite Yourcenar travelled extensively. She will go as in Italy, Switzerland, will be in Austria, in the countries of central Europe. In 1929, after having published poetry, she releases her first novel, Alexis or the Treaty of the vain combat. Subsequently, it will be fixed in the United States, in the island of Monts-Deserts, in the State of Maine, where she moved with her partner, the translator Grace Frick. It is there that she finished in 1950 The Memoirs of Hadrian, memoirs imaginary of the roman emperor of the same name, his first great public success, which allows him to win the Prix Femina and the Academy French in 1952.
First woman academician
In 1968, goes out the Work to The black, which earned him another Prize Femina. This novel tells the story of Zeno, alchemist and physician of the Sixteenth century, “the tragic fate of one extraordinary man”, according to the website of the éditions Gallimard. Poet, novelist, Marguerite Yourcenar is also an essayist. In 1962, she published Under the benefit of inventory, that brings together several essays which have appeared since 1954.
known for his writings, the writer will be elected to the royal Academy of the belgian language and literature, French, foreign title, in 1970. Ten years later, she was elected to the seat 3 of the Académie française, thus becoming the first woman to serve in the institution. It is received in the dome on January 22, 1981 by Jean d’ormesson. Then, in 1982, she was elected to the american Academy of arts and letters. Marguerite Yourcenar died on December 17, 1987, in his residence american Mount Desert. It is one of the few writers to have been published of them living in the famous bibliothèque de La Pléiade of Gallimard.
