Ilse’s Reviews > Marguerite Yourcenar > Status Update
Ilse
is on page 67 of 800
One cannot fail to notice Yourcenar’s pronounced pedagogical streak in her correspondence with young authors:'Learn to think; educate yourself. One can never read too much, see too much, or give too much thought to things. Devise for yourself an extensive and disinterested reading program (without any immediate intention of putting your reading to use as a writer). Let one work lead to, and inform, the next'.
— Dec 07, 2023 11:46PM
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Ilse’s Previous Updates
Ilse
is on page 143 of 800
So it was that in one month , just barely , Yourcenar wrote the initial version of a short novel — a hundred pages or so — that she would finish in Sorrento in August of the same year : Coup de Grâce , Even her fiercest detractors or perhaps especially they— " rescue " this little text , a dry and violent one, from an œuvre they judge in the main to be "pompous” and "overdone”.
— Jan 03, 2024 07:47AM
Ilse
is on page 109 of 800
The young woman that Yourcenar was when she wrote Pindare made some astonishingly premonitory remarks .Through Pindar, she sketched something of a self-portrait of the old woman she would become: It is toward the end , in the formless writing on the final pagespages ,that intimate tastes and torments are revealed. Regret : that remembrance of desire.
— Jan 03, 2024 07:05AM
Ilse
is on page 108 of 800
We find many more traces in Pindare of what was to be Yourcenar's universe , her thought , and even her style . We can glean a few aphorisms from Pindare that Yourcenar would be attached to all her life : "He was reaching the age where egoism is as much a virtue as it is a necessity“.
— Jan 03, 2024 05:41AM
Ilse
is on page 83 of 800
Some might well be surprised to find such a very young woman of that era travelling. hat historical moment (and modes of conduct) still wavered between the 19th & the 20th centuries. Yourcenar wrote: Wherever one goes, falsehood reigns. In the 20th century, which is crude, garish and loud, it most frequently takes the form of imposture; in the 19th century, a more subdues age, it took the form of hypocrisy
— Dec 20, 2023 01:46AM
Ilse
is on page 79 of 800
Y often expressed this need not to abandon her characters, to invent a future for them,a more rounded-out destiny.I have never been able to understand how one could have enough of any beloved,I have Hadrian say, speaking of his loves.Nor have I ever believed that I could have enough of any character I had created.I am not yet through watching them live.They will have surprises in store until the end of my days
— Dec 13, 2023 08:45AM
Ilse
is on page 71 of 800
Her father and Yourcenar were always careful to avoid the chatty intimacy that both parties would probably have deemed unseemly. Shared secrets were out of the question. She claimed to know the emperor Hadrian ‘about whom we have a great deal of documented information’ better than her own father and challenged ‘the misbelief of people who always think that the family is something one is excessively close to’.
— Dec 11, 2023 04:31AM
Ilse
is on page 68 of 800
Regarding Le Jardin des Chimères', she would confide to a correspondent, ‘it has surprised me to discover to what an extent the themes that would concern me later on and still concern me today are to be found there. One develops, let us hope so at least, but what is deep down does not change'.
— Dec 09, 2023 04:11AM
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Ulysse
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Dec 08, 2023 12:07AM
Extensive and disinterested reading. This is good advice!
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Ulysse wrote: "Extensive and disinterested reading. This is good advice!"At least it is advice we all like to hear, isn't it, Ulysse? An endorsement of what we love doing most :)?
If Marguerite Yourcenar says it’s all right, I guess it is!
Ulysse wrote: "If Marguerite Yourcenar says it’s all right, I guess it is!"Exactly what I thought :)!
Her other tips are:
Work. One must learn the art of writing: this involves saying what one thinks and what one feels as clearly and as forcefully as possible. Do exercises: make yourself describe, precisely and completely, a painting in a museum, a scene in the street; relate a conversation you participated in; sort out your ideas on a subject important to you and put them down in writing. Never write more than a few pages a time; write and rewrite until you have exactly what you want and have eliminated what is artificial or superfluous.
Learn to see and hear everything around you, from the smallest kitchen utensil to the stars, from a barking dog to the voice of the wind.
Devote little thought to yourself, and none to the nonsense of success or glory. Ask yourself why you want to write.
Savigneau discerns in these tips a pedantry which verges on the comical and comments on Yourcenar this woman who never stepped foot in a school was almost a caricature of the Third Republic Schoolmistress’ . I am not sure, how do the tips come across for you, Ulysse?
Ilse wrote:"I am not sure, how do the tips come across for you, Ulysse?"Oh I think it's sound advice. I find it far more sensible than Rilke's in Letters to A Young Poet. I especially like:Devote little thought to yourself, and none to the nonsense of success or glory. Ask yourself why you want to write.
This Savigneau guy sounds like he's got a chip on his shoulder. Maybe he just couldn't bear the idea of a woman at the Académie Française?
I've often thought it would be fun to read next the books or authors mentioned in the current read to create a thread. But it would become more like tentacles than a single path.
she is already the mentor writer by page 67! She must have become very quickly established as a literary giant?
Ulysse wrote: "Oops Savigneau is a woman, my bad!"Ulysse, her name reminded me of the ever embarassing moment I tried to pronounce the name of a girl at school - my tongue gets twisted just trying :)
While some biographies tend to the hagiographic, this one is a bit...unforgiving maybe towards its subject (I just came across a passage in which she describes Yourcenar as fat...
Jennifer wrote: "I've often thought it would be fun to read next the books or authors mentioned in the current read to create a thread. But it would become more like tentacles than a single path."Jennifer, more like tentacles is so well-put! Fionnuala is a master in creating such paths. Giving in to that temptation myself, I see an entangled web endlessly growing - and in this book many authors are mentioned because Yourcenar read a lot. I like that such connections show themselves serendipitously (and sometimes I am so glad I have by chance already read such book of author mentioned so I am not tempted to set my mind on another book I will not have the time to read :D). I was struck coming across a passage describing that Yourcenar read every book that she liked once more as soon as she finished it: I have done such a couple of times too and thought it quite rewarding - did you try that already as well?
Jan-Maat wrote: "she is already the mentor writer by page 67! She must have become very quickly established as a literary giant?"I have the feeling Savigneau cannot wait to show Yourcenar's grandesse in the future - to keep the reader curious? - while at the same time pointing at inconsistencies between some facts in her life and how Yourcenar presented them herself in her memoirs or in letters. After her first publications she moved to the US, after which it took quite some time before her writing returned to full force - so the recognition of her literary prowess didn't come fast at all...
Ilse wrote: "Jan-Maat wrote: "she is already the mentor writer by page 67! She must have become very quickly established as a literary giant?"I have the feeling Savigneau cannot wait to show Yourcenar's grande..."
that all sounds interesting and strange, I look forward to reading more in your updates!
