François Charles Mauriac (October 11th 1885 - September 1st 1970) is a French writer.

Biography

François Mauriac, born with Bordeaux, passes his adolescence in several places of Gironde which will mark its work deeply: the Moors of Gascogne around Langon, Verdelais and Saint-Symphorien, boroughs dominated by the wine middle-class or forestry development, fraught with choked secrecies which it will paint in the majority of his novels.

He studies the literature at the university of Bordeaux from where he leaves in 1905. He goes then to Paris to prepare the École of the charters, where there remain only a few months, deciding to devote itself entirely to the writing.

Its first volume of poems, the united Hands , is published in 1909. Although holding the attention of the literary circles, of Maurice Bars in particular, it will be known later general public only one ten years.

Its literary career is stopped by the First World War, during which it is useful in a hospital of the Croix-Rouge of Balkans. After the Victoire of 1918, it takes again its activities and publishes, in 1922, the Kiss with the leprous .

In a life marked by literary society life (young person, he attends the living rooms, in particular that of Natalie Clifford Barney) as much as by political commitments, guided in particular by a Christian ideal socializing (he follows a time the Sillon of Marc Sangnier and is opposed to the French Action), Mauriac above all is occupied by the composition of a novel where he appears a remarkable analyst of passions of the heart ( Genitrix , the Desert of the love , Therese Desqueyroux , the Nest of vipers , the Mystery Frontenac ).

The quality of its novels is worth to him to be elected with the French Academy in 1933. Parallel to its literary production, it takes part in some political combats, in particular at the time of the Guerre of Spain, initially in favor of the nationalists, then against (cf its articles in Temps present ).

Under the Occupation, after some hesitations, then the publication of Pharisienne (1941), it comes into contact with Resistance and writing in clandestine publications, where it makes appear in particular, under the pseudonym of “Drill”, the black Book (1943). It belongs to the National committee of the writers and takes part in the French Lettres , which it will leave after the War because of their communist orientation. It will then join the Cahiers of the Roundtable , become the Roundtable , a review where young writers of right-hand side which one will call the Hussards will make their beginnings.

In addition to about thirty tests and novels, he writes several parts, of which some are played Comédie-Française.

He is made also journalist in his famous Bloc-notes (1952-1969), which he publishes in Le Figaro arts person and, during a seven year old bracket (1954-1961), in the Express train . Vigorous polemist, it then gives an opinion for the independence of Morocco, then of Algeria, and condemns the use of torture by the French Army ( the Imitation of the torturers of Jesus-Christ ). He supports a time Pierre Mendès France under the IVe République, but gives a support without fault to Charles de Gaulle under the Ve République.

He publishes also his memories and a biography of the general, of which it remains until the end one of the faithful admirors.

He is then a writer of international repute: he obtained the Nobel Prize of literature in 1952, and received the Grand Cross of the Légion of honor in 1958.

Its complete work was published in twelve volumes between 1950 and 1956.

He dies in Paris on September 1st, 1970 and is buried with the cemetery of Vémars (Val-d'Oise).

Claude Mauriac and Jean Mauriac, his sons, and Anne Wiazemsky, her grand-daughter, is also writers.

Principal works

Poetry

  • united Hands , 1909

  • Good-bye with adolescence , 1911

Tests

  • life of Jean Root , 1928

  • God and Mammon , 1929
  • Sufferings and happiness of the Christian , 1931
  • the novelist and his characters , 1933
  • Life of Jesus , 1936

Novels

Memories

Autobiography

  • Beginnings of a life 1932

Theater

The scratch pad

Literary prizes

Two literary prizes bear its name:

  • Price François Mauriac of the French Academy
  • Price François Mauriac of the Aquitaine region

External bonds

  • Biographical note of the French Academy
    • Video
  • : '' François Mauriac '' in 1968, it is expressed on the General Charles de Gaulle, on the site of the files of TSR
  • the field of Malagar (the Gironde), property of François Mauriac.
  • the literary site François Mauriac.

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