Anne Cécile Desclos

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Anne Cécile Desclos (* 23. September 1907 in Rochefort , Charente-Maritime , † 27. April 1998 in Corbeil-Essonnes , Ile-de-France ) was a French editor and author, mainly under the pseudonym Dominique Aury is known . In 1954 she published the erotic novel Geschichte der O under the further pseudonym Pauline Réage .

Study and job

Desclos grew up with her grandmother in Brittany. After attending the Lycée Fénelon in Paris, she studied English at the Sorbonne . Introduced by her father to Jean Paulhan , then editor-in-chief of Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), she began to work there as a publishing secretary and journalist. Her articles appeared under the pseudonym Dominique Aury.

Together with Jean Paulhan and Marcel Arland she worked for the NRF for about 25 years, most recently as editor-in-chief. She also worked in the editing department of the renowned Gallimard publishing house . She has translated numerous English-language authors into French, including Evelyn Waugh , T. S. Eliot and F. Scott Fitzgerald , and was also a recognized literary critic and jury member for well-known literary prizes. She was awarded the Legion of Honor for her services.

Relationship with Jean Paulhan

During the German occupation in World War II, she had an affair with her superior Jean Paulhan , who was about 20 years older than her. She fell madly in love with him:

“I was madly in love with him. There was no one for me but him. I lived with him for 15 years, 11 years, I don't remember exactly. It was the last phase of my being alive, my life as a living person. After that I wasn't one anymore. I finished with everything. "

- Dominique Aury

After the relationship with Paulhan seemed to cool down towards the end of the 1940s, spurred on by a chauvinistic remark by Paulhan that no woman could write an erotic novel, she began to write the story of O at night in bed .

The “story of the O” and the consequences

Under the pseudonym "Pauline Réage" the novel History of O was published in 1954 by the young publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert . The book caused a sensation, became a bestseller in France and at times the best-selling French novel outside of France. There has been much speculation about the pseudonymous author. The fact that it could be the work of a woman was vehemently denied, and the intellectual, emphatically reserved Anne Desclos and Dominique Aury were not even considered as authors.

The publisher was charged several times, but the case was put down in 1959. Nevertheless, the book remained indexed in France until 1967. 1969 appeared under the title Retour à Roissy (" Return to Roissy ") a sequel, but according to the biography of Angie David was not written by Dominique Aury.

In 1975, based on an interview with the unknown author, the book Die “O” told me by Régine Deforges , Anne Desclos pseudonym was not dissolved. This happened publicly and as a revelation only in 1994 by John de St. Jorre as part of research for a book about the founder of the publishing house Olympia Press . After an interview with John De St. Jorre appeared with her on August 1, 1994 in the New Yorker   , she finally confessed publicly to her work.

The author was already known in 1975, at least in the German-speaking world: when the film Die Geschichte der O started in German cinemas in 1975, the book (as a double volume with the "Return to Roissy") was published in parallel in a large edition and with the appropriate layout Herbig publishing house in Munich. The blurb of the book names - almost twenty years before the "New Yorker" - "the well-known critic and translator Dominique Aury" as the author.

Works

  • Histoire d'O . Pauvert, Paris 1954 (German first edition: Geschichte der O. Melzer, Darmstadt 1967. BPjS -Index E 1942 No. 211 of November 9, 1967) - awarded the Prix ​​des Deux Magots in 1955
  • Return to Roissy . 1967 (German first edition: Return to Roissy . Melzer, Darmstadt 1969. It was not the first edition that was indexed, but rather the edition as rororo paperback 4172 according to the Federal Gazette No. 94 of May 22, 1982)

literature

  • Angie David: Dominique Aury. Paris: Editions Léo Scheer 2006, ISBN 2-7561-0030-7 , 560 pages (French biography)
  • Régine Deforges: O m'a dit (German: The "O" told me. Backgrounds of a bestseller. Charon, 2000, ISBN 3-931406-25-3 )
  • John de St. Jorre: Good Ship Venus - Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press. Hutchinson, 1994. ISBN 0-09-177874-3 , 288 pp. (Contains an interview with Dominique Aury)

Web links

Wikiquote: Pauline Réage  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ L'Ecrivain d'O / History of O, documentation by Pola Rappaport, Arte, August 25, 2006, 61 min.
  2. ↑ John De St. Jorre: Life and Letters, “THE UNMASKING OF O,” The New Yorker, August 1, 1994, p. 42
  3. ↑ The Story of O (1975) in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  4. ^ Pauline Réage: History of O. Return to Roissy. Herbig, Munich 1975, ISBN 3-7766-0747-5 , blurb. It cannot be a blurb that was added much later, since the text refers to the upcoming publication of Die “O” told me in spring 1976 .
personal data
SURNAME Desclos, Anne Cécile
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Réage, Pauline (pseudonym); Aury, Dominique (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH September 23, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Rochefort , Charente-Maritime department
DATE OF DEATH April 27, 1998
Place of death Corbeil-Essonnes , Île-de-France