Marguerite Yourcenar: A Life of Creation: A Life of Creation

Author: Yasmina Sa?d
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: In an article about the Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, Marguerite Yourcenar acknowledges the difficulties of evaluating a contemporary writer, primarily due to the lack of sufficient temporal distance. Moreover, "when the life of a writer is as varied, rich, intense, or as carefully planned as his works, when one recognizes the same flaws, the same deceptions, the same imperfections, and the same qualities—summarizing them as the same greatness—in both, the task of evaluation becomes even more challenging." The book is divided into five parts, detailing topics such as "the surnames beneath the surnames," children and maidservants, "I do not know if I love this gentleman," the first attempts at writing, "the self," signed below by Marguerite Yourcenar, "wandering years," and the wandering of the soul and spirit.