Volume 32, Number 19 · December 5, 1985
Limpid Pessimist
By Mavis Gallant
WORKS BY MARGUERITE YOURCENAR DISCUSSED IN THIS ESSAY
Alexis
translated in collaboration with the author by Walter Kaiser
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 105 pp., $6.95 (paper)
Coup de Grâce
translated in collaboration with the author by Grace Frick
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 151 pp., $5.95 (paper)
A Coin in Nine Hands
translated in collaboration with the author by Dori Katz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 174 pp., $11.95
Memoirs of Hadrian and Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian
translated in collaboration with the author by Grace Frick
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 347 pp., $10.95 (paper)
With Open Eyes: Conversations with Matthieu Galey
translated by Arthur Goldhammer
Beacon Press, 271 pp., $19.95
The Abyss
translated in collaboration with the author by Grace Frick
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 374 pp., $9.95 (paper)
Oriental Tales
translated in collaboration with the author by Alberto Manguel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 147 pp., $12.95
The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays
translated in collaboration with the author by Richard Howard
232 pp., $16.95
Plays
translated in collaboration with the author by Dori Katz
Performing Arts Journal Publications, New York, 164 pp., $7.95 (paper)
Fires
translated in collaboration with the author by Dori Katz
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 129 pp., $8.25 (paper)
The long career of Marguerite Yourcenar—she was born in 1903—stands among a litter of flashier reputations as testimony to the substance and clarity of the French language and the purpose and meaning of a writer's life. In an age of slops, she writes the firm, accurate, expressive French that used to be expected in work taken seriously. Critics speak of language carved, etched, chiseled, engraved: simply, a plain and elegant style, the reflection of a strong and original literary intellect. She is a master of her native tongue and an honnête homme of French letters—novelist, critic, essayist, biographer, translator of Henry James and Virginia Woolf, interpreter of Constantine Cavafy and Yukio Mishima, and—perhaps less felicitously—poet and playwright. (Without rival, one could add, if it were not for the quiet, continuing career of Julien Gracq, now seventy-five.)
Review, 4538 words
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