Henri de Montherlant

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Montherlant, Henri de (1896–1972), French writer, known chiefly for his novels until in 1942 the success of his first play, La Reine morte (based on the story of Inés de Castro), at the Comédie-Française turned his thoughts seriously to the theatre. Three more plays were produced at the Comédie-Française—Port Royal (1954), Brocéliande (1956), and Le Cardinal d'Espagne (1960). His other plays include Le Maître de Santiago (1948), about the struggle between love and religion, Celles qu'on prend dans ses bras (1950), about sexual obsession, Malatesta (also 1950), and Don Juan (1958). The most interesting, La Ville dont le prince est un enfant, was written in 1951 but not performed until 1967. It deals with a platonic friendship between two boys which is destroyed by a priest not, as he thinks, out of kindness but out of jealousy. This portrayal of spiritual agony, of the conflict between love and religion, is typical of Montherlant's plays, which contain little external action and are written in a sonorous prose that makes few concessions to realism. Although they have a religious context, Montherlant did not consider himself a ‘Catholic’ writer, preferring to describe himself as a ‘psychological’ dramatist. His plays have had little success in English, though in 1957 Donald Wolfit appeared in The Master of Santiago and Malatesta.

Henri de Montherlant , 1896–1972, French writer. His novels are decadent and egotistical and glorify force and masculinity. Montherlant fought in World War I and was later an athlete and a bullfighter. Among his novels are Les Bestiaires (1926, tr. The Bullfighters, 1927), Les Célibataires (1934, tr. The Bachelors, 1960), the series of four novels Les Jeunes Filles (1936–40; tr. Pity for Women, 1937, Costals & the Hippogriff, 1940, The Girls, 1968), Chaos et la nuit (1963, tr. Chaos and Night, 1964), and Les Garçons (1969). Montherlant's plays, all very successful, include Le Maître de Santiago (1947, tr. 1951), Port-Royal (1954), Don Juan (1958), Le Cardinal d'Espagne (1960), and La Guerre civile (1965, tr. 1967 in Theatre of War ).

Bibliography: See biography by L. Becker (1970); study by R. J. Golsan (1988).