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Claude Vigee was born on January 3, 1921 in Bischwiller, France. It is the Alsace region of France along the Rhine River. His family had been residents of the Alsace region for ten generations. In 1939, Vigee and his family were expelled from the area by the Nazis, and they took up residence in southern France.
Vigee attended University of Strasbourg in France, and earned Bachelor of Arts degree in 1938. He studied medicine in Toulouse, from 1940 to 1942. He was educated also at Ohio State University, and obtained Master of Arts degree in 1945, as well as Doctor of Philosophy degree in Romance languages and literatures two years later.
Vigee worked as a Professor of French and comparative literature at several educational institutions. At first, he held that position at Ohio State University, in Columbus for two years from 1947.
At Wellesley College he worked from 1949 till 1950. The next university, where he served was Brandeis University in Waltham, there he stayed for a long period of time – from 1949 to 1960.
He worked at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel for 24 years from 1960.
Since retiring from teaching in 1984, Vigee has divided his time between France and Jerusalem, visiting Germany, Italy, and Greece.
He is a contributor of poems and essays to journals.
Since the publication of his first collection of poetry La Lutte avec I'ange, in 1950, Vigee has published a steady stream of poetry, narratives, journal entries, essays, and translations. He has known and corresponded with many famous literary contemporaries, including Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Saint-Jean Perse, and T. S. Eliot, whose Four Quartets Vigee translated.
Vigee was awarded with a great amount of prizes and honors. Among them there are Pierre de Regnier prize from Academie Française in 1972, Jacob-Burckhardt prize from University of Bale (Switzerland) in 1977, for Vigee’s body of work, Femina-Vacaresco prize for criticism (Paris) in 1979, as well as Johann-Peter Hebei prize in 1984.
Vigee won Grand Prix de la poesie de la Société des Gens de Lettres, Paris in 1987 and Ordre des Palmes académiques.
In addition, On March 18, 2000, the "Claude Vigée" Cultural Center was opened in his home city of Bischwiller.
Vigee helped organize the Jewish resistance against the German occupiers and the collaborating Vichy government of France.
Quotations: “These throbbing cores are the primary elements of my sensibility. I am a storyteller but in no way a novelist. I am not gifted with the ability to invent characters or situations. But those that I live, those that I note around me, I seize them with my gaze, I garner them, I make them my own, and I know how to make them live in the eyes of others because I love to recount them. From mouth to ear first of all; in the secret of the thing written down, finally.”
Vigee married his longtime sweetheart, his cousin Evelyne Meyer on November 29, 1947. They have 2 children – Claudine and Daniel-François.
