Julien Green
Encyclopedia
Julien Green was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 writer, who authored several novels, including Léviathan and Each in His Own Darkness. He wrote primarily in French.

Julian Hartridge Green was born to American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 parents in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, a descendant on his mother's side of a Confederate Senator, Julian Hartridge
Julian Hartridge
Julian Hartridge was an American politician. He was born in Beaufort County, South Carolina and graduated from Brown University in 1848 and Harvard Law School in 1850. He was admitted to the bar in 1851 and practiced law in Savannah, Georgia...

 (1829–1879), who later served as a Democratic Representative from Georgia to the US Congress, and who was Julien Green's namesake. (Green was christened "Julian", the spelling was changed by his French publisher in the 1920s to "Julien".)

The youngest of eight children born to Protestant parents. He had a very puritanical and overprotective upbringing, his mother being extremely sexually repressive (later Green would grow into an anguished and egodystonic homosexual). Green became a Roman Catholic in 1916, two years after his mother's death.The following year, still only 16, he volunteered his services as an ambulanceman in the American Field Service. When his age was discovered his enlistment was annulled. He immediately signed up with an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross
American Red Cross
The American Red Cross , also known as the American National Red Cross, is a volunteer-led, humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief and education inside the United States. It is the designated U.S...

, and when that six-month term of service ended in 1918, he enlisted in the French Army, in which he served as a second lieutenant of artillery until 1919. He was educated at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...

 in the United States from 1919-22. His career as one of the major figures of French literature in the 20th century started soon after his return from the United States.

In July 1940, after France's defeat, he went back to America. In 1942, he was mobilized and sent to New York to work at the United States Office of War Information
United States Office of War Information
The United States Office of War Information was a U.S. government agency created during World War II to consolidate government information services. It operated from June 1942 until September 1945...

. From there, for almost a year, five times a week, he would address France as part of the radio broadcasts of Voice of America
Voice of America
Voice of America is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government. It is one of five civilian U.S. international broadcasters working under the umbrella of the Broadcasting Board of Governors . VOA provides a wide range of programming for broadcast on radio...

, working inter alia with André Breton
André Breton
André Breton was a French writer and poet. He is known best as the founder of Surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as "pure psychic automatism"....

 and Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner was a Russian-born actor of stage and film. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film version; he also played the role more than 4,500 times on...

. Green went back to France right after the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. Most of his books focused on the ideas of faith and religion as well as hypocrisy. Several dealt with the southern United States, and he strongly identified with the fate of the Confederacy, characterizing himself throughout his life as a "Sudiste". He inherited this version of patriotism from his mother, who came from a distinguished southern family. Some years before Julien's birth, when Julien's father was offered a choice of posts (with his bank) in either Germany or France, Julien's mother urged the choice of France on the grounds that the French were "also a proud people, recently defeated in war, and we shall understand one another." (The reference was to France's 1871 defeat in the Franco-Prussian War).

In France, both during his life and today, Green's fame rests principally not on his novels, but on his journals, published in ten volumes, and spanning the years 1926-1976. These volumes provide a chronicle of his literary and religious life, and a unique window on the artistic and literary scene in Paris over a span of half a century. Green's style, austere and employing to great effect the passé simple
Passé simple
The passé simple , also called the passé défini , is the literary equivalent of the passé composé in the French language, used only in formal writing , journalism, and formal speech. As with other preterites, it is used when the action has a definite beginning and end and has already been completed...

, a literary tense nearly abandoned by many of his French contemporaries, found favor with the Académie française. Green resigned from the Académie shortly before his death, citing his American heritage and loyalties.

While Green wrote primarily in the French language, he also wrote in English. He translated some of his own works from French to English, sometimes with the help of his sister, Anne Green
Anne Green
Anne Green was an American writer and translator, the sister of Julien Green. While a child, Green's parents moved to France, where her father, ruined by a financial crisis and poor investments, came to settle. She spent her childhood in Le Havre, before her parents moved to Paris, where her...

, an author herself. A collection of some of his translations is published in Le langage et son double, with a side-by-side French-English format, facilitating direct comparison. Despite his being bilingual, Green's texts remain largely unknown in the English-speaking world. Thus far three of his books have been turned into films: Léviathan (1962), for which he wrote the screenplay, is the most famous. Adrienne Mesurat (1953), and La Dame de pique (1965) were also adapted to film.

Green adopted gay fiction writer Éric Jourdan
Éric Jourdan
Éric Jourdan is a French novelist and playwright.Perhaps his most famous book is his first, Les Mauvais Anges, published in 1955 at the age of 17. It was immediately a source of controversy for its frank and erotic depiction of a homosexual relationship between two adolescent boys. Despite being...

 as his son. According to Jourdan, Green decided to move to a house belonging to Caterina Sforza
Caterina Sforza
Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì was an Italian noblewoman, the illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan and Lucrezia Landriani, the wife of the courtier Gian Piero Landriani, a close friend of the Duke...

 in Forlì
Forlì
Forlì is a comune and city in Emilia-Romagna, Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the right of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre...

, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, in 1994. However, Green did not move to this house because his health was failing.

Green was the first non-French national to be elected to the Académie française
Académie française
L'Académie française , also called the French Academy, is the pre-eminent French learned body on matters pertaining to the French language. The Académie was officially established in 1635 by Cardinal Richelieu, the chief minister to King Louis XIII. Suppressed in 1793 during the French Revolution,...

. Fittingly, he succeeded François Mauriac
François Mauriac
François Mauriac was a French author; member of the Académie française ; laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature . He was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur .-Biography:...

, taking chair number 22 on June 3, 1971. It was commonly believed he had dual citizenship, but in fact, although born in Paris and writing almost exclusively in the French language
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

, he had never become a French citizen. President Georges Pompidou
Georges Pompidou
Georges Jean Raymond Pompidou was a French politician. He was Prime Minister of France from 1962 to 1968, holding the longest tenure in this position, and later President of the French Republic from 1969 until his death in 1974.-Biography:...

 reportedly offered him French citizenship in 1972 but Green declined.

He died in Paris, shortly before his 98th birthday, and was buried in the parish church of Klagenfurt
Klagenfurt
-Name:Carinthia's eminent linguists Primus Lessiak and Eberhard Kranzmayer assumed that the city's name, which literally translates as "ford of lament" or "ford of complaints", had something to do with the superstitious thought that fateful fairies or demons tend to live around treacherous waters...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

.

Selected works

  • Pamphlet contre les catholiques de France (1924)
  • Mount Cinère (1926)
  • Suite anglaise (1927)
  • Le voyageur sur la terre (1927)
  • Adrienne Mesurat (1927)
  • Un puritain homme de lettres (1928)
  • Léviathan (The Dark Journey, 1929)
  • L'autre sommeil (1930)
  • Épaves (The Strange River, 1932)
  • Le visionnaire (The Dreamer, 1934)
  • Minuit, (Midnight, 1936)
  • Journals I, II, III (1938–46)
  • Varouna (Then Shall the Dust Return, 1940)
  • Memories of Happy Days (1942)
  • Si j'étais vous... (If I Were You, 1947)
  • Moïra (1950)
  • Sud (1953)
  • L'ennemi (1954)
  • La malfaiteur (The Transgressor, 1956)
  • L'ombre (1956)
  • Le bel aujour-d'hui (1958)
  • Chaque homme dans sa nuit (1960)
  • Partir avant le jour (To Leave Before Dawn/The Green Paradise, 1963)
  • Mille chemins ouverts (The War at Sixteen, 1964)
  • Terre lointaine (Love in America, 1966)
  • Les années faciles (1970)
  • L'autre (The Other One, 1971)
  • Qui sommes-nous (1972)
  • Ce qui reste du jour (1972)
  • Jeunesse (1974)
  • La liberté (1974)
  • Memories of Evil Days (1976)
  • La Nuit des fantômes (1976)
  • Le Mauvais lieu (1977)
  • Ce qu'il faut d'amour à l'homme (1978)
  • Dans la gueule du temps (1979)
  • Les Pays lointains (The Distant Lands, 1987)
  • Les Étoiles du sud (The Stars of the South, 1989)
  • Paris (1991)

Further reading

  • Julien Green: Religion and Sensuality, Anthony H. Newbury. Editions Rodopi (1986) ISBN 9062037356


External Links

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