Marguerite Yourcenar

(1903 Brussels 1987 Bangor, US) Author of novels, poetry, theatre, and essays, the first woman to be elected as a member of the Acadmie franaise (1980) Major writings: Alexis ou le Trait du vain combat (1929, novel) Feux (1936, prose poem) Nouvelles orientales (1938, short stories) Le Coup de grce (1939, novel) Mmoires d'Hadrien (1951, novel) lectre ou la Chute des masques (1954, play) Sous bnfice d'inventaire (1962, essay) Le Mystre d'Alceste (1963, play) L'uvre au noir (1968, novel, Prix Femina) Mishima ou la Vision du vide, (1980, essay) Comme l'eau qui coule (1982, Anna, soror, Un homme obscur, Une belle matine) *** Animula, vagula, blandula Hospes comesque corporis Quae nunc abibis in loca Pallidula, rigida, nudula, Nec, ut soles, dabis iocos (P. Aelius Hadrianus Imp.) Petite me errante, accueillante visiteuse, compagne du corps, au pays pour lequel tu pars, toute transie, livide et nue, reprendras-tu tes anciens jeux?
(Trans. by M. Yourcenar)

Roving amiable little soul, Body's companion and guest, Now descending for parts Colourless, unbending, and bare Your usual distractions no more shall be there...
(Trans. by A. Birley)

*** Some further reading: Marguerite Yourcenar, Les Yeux ouverts: entretiens avec Matthieu Galey (Paris: Le Centurion, 1980) Marguerite Yourcenar, Portrait d'une voix: vingt-trois entretiens (1952-1987) (Paris: Gallimard, 2002) Marguerite Yourcenar: Une criture de la mmoire , textes runis par Daniel Leuwers et Jean-Pierre Castellani (special issue of the journal Sud, 1990)

Josyane Savigneau, Marguerite Yourcenar: l'invention d'une vie (Paris: Gallimard, 1990); in English: Marguerite Yourcenar: Inventing a Life, trans. by Joan E Howard (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993) C. Frederick Farrell Jr and Edith R Farrell, Marguerite Yourcenar incounterpoint (London: University Press of America, 1983) Nigel Saint, Marguerite Yourcenar: Reading the Visual (Oxford: Legenda, 2000) Judith Holland Sarnecki and Ingeborg Majer O'Sickey (eds), Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2004)