Julien Green

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Julien Green bigraphy, stories - American novelist

Julien Green : biography

September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998

Julien Green (September 6, 1900 – August 13, 1998), was an American writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness. He wrote primarily in French and was the first non-French national to be elected to the Académie française.

Biography

Julian Hartridge Green was born to American parents in Paris, a descendant on his mother’s side of a Confederate Senator, Julian Hartridge (1829–1879), who later served as a Democratic Representative from Georgia to the US Congress, and who was Julien Green’s namesake. (Green was christened "Julian"; his French publisher changed the spelling to "Julien" in the 1920s).

The youngest of eight children born to Protestant parents, he had a puritanical and overprotective upbringing, his mother being sexually repressive (later Green would grow into an anguished and egodystonic homosexual). Green became a Roman Catholic in 1916, two years after his mother’s death. The following year, still only 16, he volunteered his services as an ambulanceman in the American Field Service. When his age was discovered his enlistment was annulled. He immediately signed up with an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross, and when that six-month term of service ended in 1918, he enlisted in the French Army, in which he served as a second lieutenant of artillery until 1919. He was educated at the University of Virginia in the United States from 1919-22. His career as a major figure of 20th–century French literature began soon after his return from the United States with the novel Mont-Cinère (1926), which was well received by Georges Bernanos. In July 1940, after France’s defeat, he went back to America. In 1942, he was mobilized and sent to New York to work at the United States Office of War Information. From there, for almost a year, five times a week, he would address France as part of the radio broadcasts of Voice of America, working inter alia with André Breton and Yul Brynner. Green returned to France after World War II.

Julien Green died in Paris shortly before his 98th birthday and is entombed in a chapel designed for him in St. Egid Church, Klagenfurt, Austria. website. (in German). Retrieved 25 January 2013. His name on the tomb uses the original English spelling "Julian" instead of the French "Julien".

Writing

Most of Green’s books focused on the ideas of faith and religion as well as hypocrisy. Several dealt with the southern United States, and he strongly identified with the fate of the Confederacy, characterizing himself throughout his life as a "Sudiste" (southerner). He inherited this version of patriotism from his mother, who came from a distinguished southern family. Some years before Julien’s birth, when Julien’s father was offered a choice of posts (with his bank) in either Germany or France, Julien’s mother urged the choice of France on the grounds that the French were "also a proud people, recently defeated in war, and we shall understand one another." The reference was to France’s 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War.

In France, both during his life and today, Green’s reputation rests principally not on his novels, but on his journals, published in ten volumes, and spanning the years 1926-1976. These volumes provide a chronicle of his literary and religious life, and a unique window on the artistic and literary scene in Paris over a span of half a century. Green’s style, austere and employing to great effect the passé simple, a literary tense nearly abandoned by many of his French contemporaries, found favor with the Académie française. Green resigned from the Académie shortly before his death, citing his American heritage and loyalties.

While Green wrote primarily in the French language, he also wrote in English. He translated some of his own works from French to English, sometimes with the help of his sister, Anne Green, an author herself. A collection of some of his translations is published in Le langage et son double, with a side-by-side French-English format, facilitating direct comparison. Despite his being bilingual, Green’s texts remain largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Thus far three of his books have been turned into films: Léviathan (1962), for which he wrote the screenplay, is the most famous. Adrienne Mesurat (1953), and La Dame de pique (1965) were also adapted to film. Sud (South, 1953) was adapted for a British television production in 1959.Mark Brown , The Guardian, 16 March 2013