Marguerite Yourcenar (1903–87,) pseudonym of Marguerite de Crayencour, was a French novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Known for her erudition and literary craftsmanship, Yourcenar explored profound philosophical and historical themes in her works.
Born in Brussels, Belgium, to a privileged and cultured household, Yourcenar demonstrated her passion for literature from an early age, immersing herself in the works of Greek authors and privately publishing her first poems as a teenager.
Yourcenar’s literary works are notable for their rigorously classical style, erudition, and psychological subtlety. Her novels, many of them historical reconstructions of past eras and personages, meditating thereby on human destiny, morality, and power, include Mémoires d’Hadrien (1941; Memoirs of Hadrian, 1954) and L’Œuvre au noir (1968; The Abyss, 1976.) She also wrote the long prose poem Feux (1939; Fires, 1981) and an autobiography, Souvenirs pieux (1977, ‘Pious Memories.’) The American Grace Frick, Yourcenar’s devoted secretary and life companion, translated her works.
Yourcenar also wrote numerous essays and translated African American spirituals and various English and American novels into French. She immigrated to the USA in 1939 but was later given French citizenship by presidential decree, and in 1980 became the first woman writer to be elected to the Académie Française.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Marguerite Yourcenar
The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their forgetfulness.
—Marguerite Yourcenar
Topics: Memory
I have come to think that great men are characterized precisely by the extreme position which they take, and that their heroism consists in holding to that extremity throughout their lives.
—Marguerite Yourcenar
Topics: Heroes/Heroism
A being afire with life cannot foresee death; in fact, by each of his deeds he denies that death exists.
—Marguerite Yourcenar
Topics: Death
Men who care passionately for women attach themselves at least as much to the temple and to the accessories of the cult as to their goddess herself.
—Marguerite Yourcenar
Everything that we do affects our fate for better or for worse. The circumstances into which we are born also exert a tremendous influence; we come into the world with debits and credits for which we are not responsible already posted to our account: this teaches us humility.
—Marguerite Yourcenar
Topics: Humility
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