YOURCENAR MARGUERITE: (1903-1987) French-American Novelist. First woman ever elected to the ...

YOURCENAR MARGUERITE: (1903-1987) French-American Novelist. First woman ever elected to the French Academy. An excellent contant T.L.S., `Marguerite Yourcenar´, a bold black ink signature, three pages, on three sheets, 4to, Petite Plaisance, NorthEast Harbor, Maine, 5th January 1966, to Helene Abraham, in Paris, in French. A very interesting literary content letter, being a beautiful and lengthy dissertation on the theme of Jenny de Vasson's book, through which Yourcenar approaches many aspects of the human personality, referring to multiple main figures of the literature of all times, to the role of the woman in different periods, and stating in part `Le livre de Jenny de Vasson est depuis Juin dernier sur ma table, je l´ai lu et relu et abondamment annoté... Rien de plus enrichissant qu´un tel recueil. Une femme que nous aurions pu connaitre durant notre adolescence, que nous avions peut-être coudoyée dans quelque rue de Paris en 1918 ou 1919, mais dont nous ne savions rien, pas même le nom, devient tout à coup une amie et nous prouve une fois de plus combien grandes et variées sont ces richesses secrètes des êtres qui presque jamais n´affleurent à la surface.... Elle nous touche là même où ses opinions diffèrent en tout des notres. Ses vues sur la femme et sur l´amour nous scandalisent presque parce qu´elles sont à l´opposé de ce que nous tenons désormais pour naturel et raisonnable; mais j´avoue que sa ferme adhésion à ce qui nous semble des préjugés m´a fait réfléchir à nos préjugés tout contraires, et me demander si l´image que nous nous faisons aujourd´hui de la femme n´est pas aussi incomplète que celle que s´en faisait Jenny de Vasson´ (Translation: "Jenny de Vasson's book has been on my table since last June, I have read and re-read it and annotated extensively... Nothing is more enriching than such a collection. A woman whom we might have known during our adolescence, whom we had perhaps rubbed shoulders with in some street in Paris in 1918 or 1919, but of whom we knew nothing, not even the name, suddenly becomes a friend and proves to us once again how great and varied are these secret richness of beings which almost never surface.... She touches us even where her opinions differ in everything from ours. Her views on women and on love almost scandalize us because they are the opposite of what we now consider natural and reasonable; but I admit that her firm adherence to what seems to us to be prejudices made me reflect on our very contrary prejudices, and ask myself if the image we have today of women is not as incomplete as the one that Jenny de Vasson made of it") Further Yourcenar refers to specific parts of the work, saying `...il y a cette merveilleuse rencontre de la fillette de treize ans avec Dante, et plus tard le contact intelligent avec Goethe. Là même où elle se butte, contre Shakespeare, qu´elle aime peu, contre Pascal et Stendhal qu´elle juge trop sur leurs seuls défauts...´ (Translation "...there is this wonderful meeting of the thirteen-year-old girl with Dante, and later the intelligent contact with Goethe. The very place where she comes up against, against Shakespeare, whom she doesn't like, against Pascal and Stendhal, whom she judges too much on their only faults...") and further continues referring to Rimbaud, Shaw, Dostoievsky, Chekhov, Proust, Romain Rolland and many more authors. Further again, Yourcenar refers to the role of women only some decades earlier and how de Vasson could make such a so fine analysis despite her remoteness from large cities and even from people, and states in part `C´est à peu près ce que Proust, avec une extrême subtilité, a dit de sa mère et de sa grand.mère, et l´on voit comment les errements politiques de la France depuis plus d´un siècle avaient d´une part découragé ces bons esprits de toute action civique, et comment, de l´autre la Charité restait pour eux une vertu théologale, unie à la Foi quíls n´avaient plus...´ (Translation: "This is more or less what Proust, with extreme subtlety, said about his mother and his grandmother, and we see how the political errors of France for more than a century had on the one hand discouraged these good spirits from any civic action, and how, on the other hand, Charity remained for them a theological virtue, united to the Faith which they no longer had...") Before concluding this lengthy and very interesting content letter, Yourcenar states `Je me suis souvent demnandé en lisant ces Carnets ce que leur auteur serait devenue si au lieu de mourir à quarante-huit ans en 1920 elle était morte à soixante-huit ans en 1940, ou à soixante-treize ans en 1945. Mais peut-être a-t-il mieux valu pour elle que tant de dissonnances ne soient pas venues briser ce qui semble à distance un accord presque parfait...´ (Translation: "I have often wondered while reading these Notebooks what their author would have become if instead of dying at forty-eight in 1920 she had died at sixty-eight in 1940, or at seventy-three in 1945. But perhaps it was better for her that so many dissonances did not break up what seems from a distance an almost perfect agreement...") The three sheets are joined to the upper left corner. VG

Jenny Marie Nannecy Girard de Vasson (1872-1920) De Vasson was one of the first notable women photographers in France. During her relatively brief career, she created over 5,000 images. In her will, she requested that all her writings, drawings, and everything that could be linked to an artistic activity, be destroyed after her death. She omitted to mention her photographs, because she considered them to be memories, not creative works. A large number were destroyed, however, during World War II
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