Background
Henry de Montherlant was born in Paris, France on April 21, 1896 into an old, aristocratic, Roman Catholic family.
(The romance of an Arabic girl and a French Lieutenant in ...)
The romance of an Arabic girl and a French Lieutenant in North Africa. Portraying the man as stupid but senstitve and his obession for this young girl; who he can love but not possess. A journey into the strange areas of the heart, and the mixture of two opposite cultures.
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dramatist essayist novelist poet
Henry de Montherlant was born in Paris, France on April 21, 1896 into an old, aristocratic, Roman Catholic family.
His early experiences at school inspired a number of works celebrating the benefits of a Catholic education.
In 1916 he enlisted in the army. His war experiences are recounted in the novel Le Songe (1922; The Dream, 1962) and the essays Mors et Vita (1932; "Death and Life"). Montherlant turned to sports after the war in an attempt to recapture the virile comradeship of the war years. In 1924, he published Les Olympiques ("Olympics"), a series of stories, poems, and essays dedicated to soccer and track. His constant desire for adventure led Montherlant to engage in bullfighting in Spain, his experiences inspiring his novel Les Bestiaires (1926; The Bullfighters, 1957).
Although there are indications in Montherlant's youthful autobiographical works of the pessimism and nihilism that predominate in his later works, the youthful works reflect for the most part a joie de vivre. Underlying them is one of the two principles that provide the philosophical framework for all of Montherlant's writing: all things in nature are fundamentally good and man must experience everything in order to find happiness. Montherlant left France in 1925 and traveled throughout the Mediterranean area for seven years.
The literary fruits were a novel, attacking French colonial abuses in North Africa, and the essays and stories of the trilogy Les Voyageurs traqués (1927, 1929, 1955; "The Hunted Travelers"). It was in these works that he developed the second of his principles, that of "useless service, " which postulates continued action as the only way of reconciling the idealism that requires service with the realism that marks its futility. Montherlant's literary production during the years preceding World War II falls into two categories, novels and essays.
The novels, unlike his earlier lyric constructions, reflect the author's search for objectivity. Les Célibataires (1934; The Bachelors, 1960), a realistic portrayal of two eccentric ruined noblemen, won the French Academy's "Grand Prix de Littérature. Litterature. " This was followed by the antifeminist tetralogy Les Jeunes filles (1936-1939; The Girls, 1971). The three volumes of essays, Service inutile (1935; "Useless Service"), L'Equinoxe de septembre (1938; "The September Equinox"), and Le Solstice de juin (1941; "The June Solstice"), the last of which, because of its glorification of the German superman, caused him to be censured after the war and made him lose his prestige as a moralist.
In the early 1940's Montherlant turned to drama, and it is his plays with their heroic Nietzschean philosophy for which he is best known. Notable are La Reine morte (1942; Queen After Death, 1951); Malatesta (1946; Malatesta, 1951); Le MaîtreMaitre de Santiago (1947; The Master of Santiago, 1951); and Port-Royal (1954, Port-Royal). In 1963, Montherlant returned to fiction with Le Chaos et la nuit (1963; Chaos and Night, 1964), a portrait of an old, embittered Spanish Republican. Les Garçons(1969) celebrates the purity and intensity of love between young males. Reaching a level of religious fervor, it is considered by some his greatest work. Montherlant committed suicide in Paris on September 21, 1972.
(The romance of an Arabic girl and a French Lieutenant in ...)
(Book by Montherlant, Henry De)