Poirier, Louis 1910-

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POIRIER, Louis 1910-

(Julien Gracq)

PERSONAL:

Born July 27, 1910, in St. Florent le Vieil, Maine-et-Loire, France; son of Emmanuel, Jr. (a merchant) and Alice (a merchant; maiden name, Belliard) Poirier; married; children: a son. Education: École des Sciences Politiques, diplômé, 1933; École Normale Supérieure, agrégation, 1934. Hobbies and other interests: Chess.

ADDRESSES:

Home—3 rue du Grenier à Sel, 49420 St. Florent le Vieil, France.

CAREER:

Writer, beginning 1939. Professor of history and geography at numerous public schools in French cities, including Nantes, 1937-38, Quimper, 1937-39, Amiens, 1941-48, and Angers; Lycée Claude-Bernard, Paris, France, history teacher, 1947-70. University of Caen, faculty assistant, 1935-47, teacher, 1942-46; University of Wisconsin—Madison, guest professor of literature, 1970; lecturer in France and elsewhere; guest on radio programs. Military service: French Army, Infantry, 1934-35, 1939-40; became lieutenant; taken prisoner of war; repatriated to France, 1941.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prix Goncourt, 1951, for Le rivage des Syrtes (refused by author).

WRITINGS:

UNDER PSEUDONYM JULIEN GRACQ

Au château d'Argol (novel), José Corti (Paris, France), c. 1938, translation by Louise Varèse published as The Castle of Argol, J. Laughlin (Norfolk, CT), c. 1951.

Un beau ténébreux (novel), José Corti (Paris, France), 1945, reprinted, 1975, translation by W. J. Strachan published as A Dark Stranger, New Directions (New York, NY), c. 1950.

Liberté grande (prose poetry), José Corti (Paris, France), 1946, reprinted, 1985.

André Breton: quelques aspects de l'écrivain, José Corti (Paris, France), 1948.

Le roi pêcheur (three-act play; first produced in Paris, France, at Theatre Montparnasse, 1949), José Corti (Paris, France), 1948, translation by Rollo H. Myers and E. J. King Bull issued on microfilm as The Fisher King, Columbia University (New York, NY), 1957.

La littérature à l'estomac (nonfiction), José Corti (Paris, France), 1950, reprinted, 1987.

Le rivage des Syrtes (novel), José Corti (Paris, France), 1951, translation by Richard Howard published as The Opposing Shore, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(With Jacques Hérold) La terre habitable, José Corti (Paris, France), 1951.

Prose pour l'étrangère, José Corti (Paris, France), 1952.

(Coauthor) Farouche à quatre feuilles, Grasset (Paris, France), 1954.

(Translator) Heinrich von Kleist, Penthésilée (play; produced in Paris, France, 1955), José Corti (Paris, France), 1966.

Un balcon en forêt (novel), José Corti (Paris, France), 1958, translation by Richard Howard published as Balcony in the Forest, G. Braziller (New York, NY), 1959, reprinted, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1987.

Préférences, José Corti (Paris, France), 1961, new enlarged edition, 1969, reprinted, 1986.

Lettrines, José Corti (Paris, France), Volume 1, 1967, Volume 2, 1974.

La Presqu'île (title means "The Peninsula;" contains novellas La Presqu'île, La route, and Le roi Cophétua), José Corti (Paris, France), 1970.

Les eaux étroites (memoir; title means "Narrow Waters"), José Corti (Paris, France), 1976.

En lisant, en écrivant, José Corti (Paris, France), 1981.

La route (novella), illustrated by Jean Solombre, Broutta, 1981.

La forme d'une ville (autobiographical novel; title means "The Shape of a City"), José Corti (Paris, France), 1985.

Julien Gracq: "paysages," Bibliothèque municipale de Nantes (Nantes, France), 1986.

Proust considéré comme terminus, Editions Complexe (Brussels, Belgium), 1986.

(With Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio) Sur Lautréamont, Editions Complexe (Brussels, Belgium), 1987.

Autour des sept Collines (nonfiction; title means "Around the Seven Hills"), José Corti (Paris, France), 1988.

Œuvres completes, two volumes, edited by Bernhild Boie, Gallimard (Paris, France), 1989.

Carnets du grand chemin, José Corti (Paris, France), 1992.

Also author of "Aubrac: Julien Gracq" (portfolio edition), photographs by Jacques Dubois, F. Nathan (Paris, France), 1987; and "42 rue Fontaine, l'atelier d'André Breton," photographs by Gilles Ehrmann, A. Biro (Paris, France), 2003. Contributor to periodicals.

ADAPTATIONS:

Poirier's novel Le rivage des Syrtes was adapted by Luciano Chailly as the opera La riva delle Sirti, performed in Monte Carlo, 1959.

SIDELIGHTS:

French novelist, playwright, and poet Louis Poirier is famous for weaving elements of history, myth, and allegory into his work. A former teacher of history, Poirier writes under the pseudonym Julien Gracq, a name that hearkens back to the age of the ancient Roman orator and reformer, Gracchus. Critics have noted that, through his writings, Poirier asserts the superiority of a stable, natural universe—one that exists independent of man—over the impermanence and transiency of all that is human.

Poirier made his literary debut with Au château d'Argol during the 1930s, when the literary and artistic movement known as surrealism was fashionable. According to Elisabeth Cardonne-Arlyck in an article for the New York Times Book Review, André Breton, the French writer, critic, and founder of the surrealistic movement in France, considered Au château d'Argol to be the first truly surrealistic novel. Much debate exists, however, as to whether or not Poirier should be thought of as a surrealist. Proponents of the movement were dedicated to the free and dreamlike expression of the imagination. Although critics saw a seed of surrealism in Poirier's works that reflected a faith in the potential of the human mind, Cardonne-Arlyck argued that Au château d'Argol was "in fact, a departure from [surrealism]." Since surrealistic writers emphasize the associations and implications of words rather than their literal meanings, writings produced during the movement are considered to be obscure. Poirier, Cardonne-Arlyck asserted, diverged from the surrealistic style with "an idiosyncratic blend of linear storytelling and poetic reliance on language." Alluding to statements the author had made concerning the debate, Cardonne-Arlyck concluded that Poirier admired the movement, but "never joined" it.

Poirier first became well known outside of France in 1951 when he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for his novel Le rivage des Syrtes, the story of two imaginary countries engaged in a three-century-long war. Designed to honor a prose work that exhibits originality of form and spirit, the Prix Goncourt is the highest literary prize offered in France. Poirier, who censured writers for accepting literary awards in his essay La littérature a l'estomac, refused the laurel. His fourteen-dollar cash prize was donated to a fund for disadvantaged writers.

Le rivage des Syrtes was not published in English until thirty-five years after its first release in France. The critically acclaimed translation by Richard Howard, titled The Opposing Shore, is said to retain the semantic and imaginative brilliance of the original French version. Its plot centers on two fictitious countries, Orsenna and Farghestan, whose failure to communicate has perpetuated a state of war for three hundred years. Aldo, Poirier's protagonist and narrator, is an Orsennian eager to cross the line that divides the countries. In a review for the Los Angeles Times, Francis McConnel theorized that "Aldo's obsession with the mysterious Farghestan and his longings to break through and to make contact represent Orsenna's desire to embrace the void, to invite disaster, and with it, destiny." Several critics also pointed to blatant sexual overtones in the text, symbolic of what reviewer Cardonne-Arlyck called Poirier's "acute delight in the physical world."

Poirier admitted in an interview with Richard Bernstein for the New York Times Book Review that the ideas for his novels, though veiled in myth and allegory, grow out of a concern for particular historical circumstances. Fascism, a totalitarian political philosophy that holds the concerns of the state above those of the individual and strictly controls all aspects of its citizens' lives, was on the rise in Germany shortly before Poirier began writing. The eventual German occupation of France during World War II is thought to have moved the author to write Le rivage des Syrtes.

The 1970 publication of three novellas under the title La Presqu'île preserved Poirier's reputation as an accomplished and sensitive writer and supported an evaluation of the author that appeared in an article for the Times Literary Supplement almost two decades earlier. In the article, Poirier was described as a writer who believes "that the business of novelists is to give new meanings to old myths and not to describe and judge the world which surrounds them." It is Poirier's trademark to offer only a concrete description of his characters' thoughts and encounters in his writings, leaving an interpretation of those descriptions to his reader. The protagonists in each of the three stories contained in La Presqu'île are isolated and detached, unable to relate to the world around them. In a review of the collection written for the Times Literary Supplement, Poirier was cited for his "intense, absorbing descriptions," his ability to "exteriorize the inner world of characters," and his "superbly sustained evocative writing."

In his last novel, La forme d'une ville, Poirier conjures images of the French town of Nantes where he was a boarder at the lycée Clemenceau in the 1920s. The author "makes clear," wrote Philip Thody in the TimesLiterary Supplement, that "this is a fragment of autobiography presented as a portrait of the town." Richard Cobb, writing for the Spectator, characterized the book as "the vague muffled perception of a city, its movements, its noises, the clatter of its cream-coloured trams, its lowering or brilliant skies, its mists and fogs, as filtered through the high barrack-like walls and the closed iron gates of the grim lycée. " Critics applauded the rich and visually lustrous prose Poirier used to convey his impressions of the city from behind the school's walls.

In his interview with Bernstein for the New York Times Book Review, Poirier claimed that his writings are "based on elements furnished by the memory" and function "to give form, stability, and precision to things that are vague in the mind." Finding the work of a novelist too draining after the age of seventy-five, the author brought his fiction-writing career to a close with the publication of La forme d'une ville in 1985.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Coelho, Alain, editor, Julien Gracq, appareillage, Joseph K. (Nantes, France), 1997.

Coelho, Alain, Franck Lhomeau, and Jean-Louis Poitevin, editors, Julien Gracq, écrivain Siloé, (Laval, France), 1988.

Denis, Ariel, Julien Gracq, Seghers (Paris, France), 1978.

de Rambures, Jean-Louis, and others, Entretiens: Julien Gracq (interviews), José Corti (Paris, France), 2002.

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 83, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1989, pp. 93-103.

Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, 3rd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999, pp. 288-289.

Guide to French Literature, 1789 to the Present, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1992, pp. 293-296.

Hoy, Peter, Essai de bibliographie sur Julien Gracq: 1938-1972, Grant & Cutler (London, England), 1973.

Poirier, Louis, Les eaux étroites (title means "Narrow Waters"), José Corti (Paris, France), 1976.

Poirier, Louis, La forme d'une ville (title means "The Shape of a City"), José Corti (Paris, France), 1985.

PERIODICALS

French Review, September, 1985, Carol J. Murphy, "Louis Poirier/Julien Gracq: The Surreality of History in Un balcon en forêt "; March, 1991, review of Au château d'Argol, p. 659; February, 1996, review of Le rivage des Syrtes, p. 453.

L'Express International, February 14, 1992, Angelo Rinaldi, review of Carnets du grand chemin, p. 60.

Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1986, Francis McConnel, review of La rivage des Syrtes.

New Yorker, December 15, 1951.

New York Times Book Review, June 22, 1986, Elisabeth Cardonne-Arlyck, review of The Opposing Shore, p. 9; June 22, 1986, Richard Bernstein, "History on the Move," p. 9.

Romance Quarterly, February, 1989, Anthony Zielonka, "Spatial Images of Time in Julien Gracq's La Presqu'île. "

Romanic Review, March, 1989, Carol J. Murphy, "Gracq's Fictional Historian: Textuality as History in Le rivage des Syrtes. "

Spectator, December 7, 1985, Richard Cobb, review of La forme d'une ville.

Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, spring, 1984, Andrée Douchin-Shahin, "The Doubles in Julien Gracq's Au château d'Argol. "

Symposium, spring, 1983, Andrée Douchin-Shahin, "Metamorphosis in Julien Gracq's Une beau ténébreux; " summer, 1991, Marie-Sophie Armstrong, "Chess and Text in Julien Gracq's 'Une beau ténébreux,'" p. 83; fall, 1995, Ann L. Murphy, review of Les eaux étroites, p. 217.

Times Literary Supplement, August 29, 1952; July 16, 1970; August 30, 1985, Philip Thody, review of La forme d'une ville; June 2, 1989, John Taylor, review of Autour des sept Collines and Œuvres completes, p. 618; June 5, 1992, Philip Thody, review of Carnets du grand chemin, p. 25; December 3, 1993, review of Le rivage des Syrtes, p. 12; December 17, 1993, Julian Duplain, review of The Opposing Shore, p. 20; January 19, 1996, Jeremy Alden, review of Œuvres completes, Volume 2, p. 12; March 9, 2001, Robin Buss, review of Au château d'Argol, p. 31.

Washington Post Book World, July 27, 1986.

World Literature Today, summer, 1989, Edouard Roditi, review of Autour des sept Collines, p. 455.