Yourcenar was born in Brussels, Belgium, as Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour, to Michel Cleenewerck de Crayencour and Fernande de Cartier de Marchienne. Her father was of French bourgeois descent, originating from French Flanders, and a wealthy landowner.[5] Her mother, of Belgian nobility, died ten days after Marguerite's birth. She grew up in the home of her paternal grandmother, and adopted the surname Yourcenar as a pen name; in 1947, she also took it as her legal surname.[6]
Yourcenar's first novel, Alexis, was published in 1929. She translated Virginia Woolf's The Waves over a ten-month period in 1937.
In 1939, her partner at the time,[7] the literary scholar and Kansas City native Grace Frick, invited Yourcenar to the United States to escape the outbreak of World War II in Europe. She lectured in comparative literature in New York City and Sarah Lawrence College.[8]
Yourcenar and Frick became lovers in 1937 and remained together until Frick's death in 1979. After ten years spent in Hartford, Connecticut, they bought a house in Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Mount Desert Island, where they lived for decades.[7] They are buried next to each other at Brookside Cemetery, Somesville, Mount Desert, Maine.[9] Yourcenar's last companion was Jerry Wilson, with whom she had a tormented relationship; he died of AIDS in 1986.
In 1951, Yourcenar published, in France, the novel Memoirs of Hadrian, which she had been writing on and off for a decade. The novel was an immediate success and met with critical acclaim. In this novel, Yourcenar recreated the life and death of one of the great rulers of the ancient world, the Roman emperor Hadrian, who writes a long letter to Marcus Aurelius, the son and heir of Antoninus Pius, his successor and adoptive son. Hadrian meditates on his past, describing both his triumphs and his failures, his love for Antinous, and his philosophy. The novel has become a modern classic. The English version was translated by Frick.
In 1980, Yourcenar became the first female member elected to the Académie française. An anecdote tells of how the bathroom labels were then changed in this male-dominated institution: "Messieurs|Marguerite Yourcenar" (Gents/Marguerite Yourcenar). She published many novels, essays, and poems, as well as a trilogy of memoirs. At the time of her death, she was working on the third volume, titled Quoi? L'Eternité.[10]
Yourcenar's house on Mount Desert Island, Petite Plaisance, is now a museum dedicated to her memory. She is buried across the sound in Somesville.
Marguerite Yourcenar's funeral plate. The epitaph, written in French, is from The Abyss: «Plaise à Celui qui Est peut-être de dilater le cœur de l'homme à la mesure de toute la vie.», which can be translated to "May it please the One who is perchance to expand the human heart to life's full measure."
"La Couronne et la Lyre." Χατζηνικολής editions (1986)
Quoi? L'Éternité (1988)
Correspondence
Lettres à ses amis et quelques autres, Édition de Joseph Brami et de Michèle Sarde avec la collaboration d’Élyane Dezon-Jones, Paris, Gallimard, 1995, 736 p. ISBN 2070738574.
D’Hadrien à Zénon, Correspondance 1951-1956 de Marguerite Yourcenar. Texte établi et annoté par Colette Gaudin et Rémy Poignault avec la collaboration de Joseph Brami et Maurice Delcroix ; édition coordonnée par Élyane Dezon-Jones et Michèle Sarde ; préface de Josyane Savigneau, Paris, Gallimard, 2004, 640 p., ISBN 207075684X.
« Une volonté sans fléchissement ». Correspondance 1957-1960, texte établi, annoté et préfacé par Joseph Brami, Maurice Delcroix, édition coordonnée par Colette Gaudin et Rémy Poignault avec la collaboration de Michèle Sarde, Paris, Gallimard, 2007, 549 p.
Marguerite Yourcenar, Silvia Baron Supervielle, Une reconstitution passionnelle. Correspondance 1980-1987, édition établie, annotée et commentée par Achmy Halley, Avant-propos de Silvia Baron Supervielle, Paris, Gallimard, 2009, 99 p.
« Persévérer dans l’être ». Correspondance 1961-1963 (D’Hadrien à Zénon, III), texte établi et annoté par Joseph Brami et Rémy Poignault, avec la collaboration de Maurice Delcroix, Colette Gaudin et Michèle Sarde, préface de Joseph Brami et Michèle Sarde, Paris, Gallimard, 2011, 503 p.
« En 1939, L’Amérique commence à Bordeaux ». Lettres à Emmanuel Boudot-Lamotte (1938-1980), édition établie, présentée et annotée par Élyane DEZON-JONES et Michèle SARDE, Paris, Gallimard, 2016, 304 p.
« Le pendant des Mémoires d’Hadrien et leur entier contraire ». Correspondance 1964-1967, édition de Bruno Blanckeman et Rémy Poignault, avec préface d’Élyane Dezon-Jones et Michèle Sarde, Paris, Gallimard, coll. “Blanche”, 2019, 640 p.
«Zénon, sombre Zénon». Correspondance 1968-1970, texte établi et annoté par Joseph Brami et Rémy Poignault, avec la collaboration de Bruno Blanckeman et Colette Gaudin, Paris, Gallimard, coll. “Blanche”, 2023, 927 p.
Other works available in English translation
A Blue Tale and Other Stories; ISBN0-226-96530-9. Three stories written between 1927 and 1930, translated and published in 1995.
George Rousseau, Marguerite Yourcenar: A Biography (London: Haus Publishing, 2004).
Judith Holland Sarnecki, Subversive Subjects: Reading Marguerite Yourcenar (2004)
Giorgetto Giorgi, "Il Grand Tour e la scoperta dell’antico nel Labyrinthe du monde di Marguerite Yourcenar," in Sergio Audano, Giovanni Cipriani (ed.), Aspetti della Fortuna dell'Antico nella Cultura Europea: atti della settima giornata di studi, Sestri Levante, 19 March 2010 (Foggia: Edizioni il Castello, 2011) (Echo, 1), 99–108.
Les yeux ouverts, entretiens avec Mathieu Galey (Éditions du Centurion « Les interviews », 1980).
Bérengère Deprez, Marguerite Yourcenar et les États-Unis. Du nageur à la vague, Éditions Racine, 2012, 192 p.
Bérengère Deprez, Marguerite Yourcenar and the United States. From Prophecy to Protest, Peter Lang, coll. « Yourcenar », 2009, 180 p.
Deprez, Marguerite Yourcenar. Écriture, maternité, démiurgie, essai, Bruxelles, Archives et musée de la littérature/PIE-Peter Lang, coll. « Documents pour l’histoire des francophonies », 2003, 330 p.
Donata Spadaro, Marguerite Yourcenar et l'écriture autobiographique : Le Labyrinthe du monde, bull. SIEY, no 17, décembre 1996, p. 69 à 83
Donata Spadaro, Marguerite Yourcenar e l'autobiografia (ADP, 2014)
Mireille Brémond, Marguerite Yourcenar, une femme à l'Académie (Garnier, 2019);.
Rémy Poignault, L'Antiquité dans l'œuvre de Marguerite Yourcenar. Littérature, mythe et histoire, Bruxelles, coll. Latomus, 1995.
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