Dear Departed: A Memoir [Hardcover]

Marguerite Yourcenar (Author), Maria Louise Ascher (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2, 1992

First published in French in 1974 under the title 'Souvenirs Pieux', DEAR DEPARTED is the first volume of a trilogy by Marguerite Yourcenar, one of the most celebrated French writers of the century, devoted to her own origins and background. Yourcenar describes the events surrounding her birth in 1903, then takes us back through the centuries to meet her mother's forebears: soldiers, essayists, idealists, heroines, even ambassadors. Throughout, the history of the family serves as a window on the history of a rapidly-changing Europe.Using memoirs, letters and momentos, Yourcenar richly evokes both the larger events on the European stage and the rhythms and textures of everyday existence. Though rarely visible, Yourcenar is everywhere present, her perceptions rendered in her unmistakable voice. The book is a tour-de-force of historical and literary imagination.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Part autobiography, but mostly family history, Yourcenar's (1903-1987) nuanced recollections evince the same lyrical precision and obsession with death that mark her work as novelist, essayist and playwright. Conjuring up her Belgian mother Fernande, who died a few months after giving birth to her in Brussels, the author denies that this sudden separation instilled a lifelong sense of loss and asserts that her nurse Barbara filled her mother's place in early childhood. Meanwhile, her French father Michel had mistresses who "provided me with an ample share of motherly and sisterly relationships." It's all very French, but one senses a mechanism of denial at work. The complex narrative tracks dozens of ancestors from the French Revolution to the Resistance, unveiling sensual incompatibilities, family skeletons, tragedies and joys with the aid of private documents, oral traditions, historical sources and a novelist's restless imagination.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Purported to be the first of three autobiographical volumes by the first woman elected to the prestigious Academie Francaise, this is more like a series of impressionistic portraits of her maternal ancestors set in their times. The author's eloquent, visual prose portrays an aristocratic family from the 14th century down to the end of the 19th century. Though there is a genealogical chart included, keeping the characters straight is often difficult because of similar names and because the text bounces back and forth in time. Yourcenar and her family are well versed in the classics and especially European history, but the overall flavor is that of the souvenir pieux ("reverent remembrance") of death, Catholicism unattenuated by the times, and the perpetuation of the effete life among the wealthy. For academic and large public libraries.
- Ann Irvine, Kensington Park Lib., Md.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Aidan Ellis Publishing (April 2, 1992)
• ISBN-10: 0856281867
• ISBN-13: 978-0856281860
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,653,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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