Memories of happy days
Memories of Happy Days is an autobiographical novel by Julien Green . The volume, published from the estate of the author, who died in 1998, deals with the childhood of the little American boy in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. The text appeared in an early version in 1942 in English under the title Memories of Happy Days at Harper Collins in New York and in 2007 for the first time in French ( Souvenirs des jours heureux ). The book was published in German in 2008 in a translation by Elisabeth Edl by Hanser Verlag .
background
In the second half of 1939 Julien Green was in the United States and wrote the series of articles L'Amérique et cette guerre for the Parisian Figaro , in which he tried to explain American politics to French readers. Half a year after his return to Paris, the German troops invaded France. Green fled via Bordeaux in Lisbon in order to return to America by ship. He only returned to Paris in autumn 1945. During this stay in America Julien Green published childhood memories in English under the title Memories of Happy Days . "They were a declaration of love for France - and an attempt to convince the Americans that it was worth going to war for this France and for old Europe," wrote Wolf Lepenies in the world .
Green later translated the memoirs into French himself, but the Souvenirs des jours heureux were only published from his estate in 2007. When translating, Green made slight changes, so he “took the liberty of following the rhythm of the French language in his book,” wrote Elisabeth Edl in the afterword of the German-language edition (2008). Edl's translation follows the French edition, with the American original being compared throughout. The stylistic feature of this edition has also been adopted to keep certain French terms or words as “splashes of color” in the original language. The German edition also contains the foreword to the American original edition, since it explains "both the historical situation and the intention with which Green had set out to write," wrote Edl.
In terms of content, the book overlaps with his autobiography Junge Jahre , the first volume of which appeared in 1963 and in which Julien Green also told of his youth in Paris. The translator Elisabeth Edl pointed out that these are two completely different books: Young Years is "the retrospective of a famous man, memories of happy days is the work of a forty-year-old who has a large part of his writing career ahead of him." Julien Green wrote this book in English for an American audience in 1942, hoping to inspire enthusiasm for the French culture and way of life that threatened to perish in the war against Germany.
content
In his memory book, Green described his childhood as a small American boy in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. In his memoirs, the author portrays the Belle Époque in Paris, the clatter of horse's hooves on the pavement, everyday life without radio and telephone, the horrors of a strict, inhuman school system and the security of the bourgeois family. It was only when France entered the First World War that a new era began for him too.
reception
"Because he wrote very objectively and without stylistic effort, Julien Green created a small masterpiece with his memories," wrote Wolf Lepenies in the world. “The author's happiness is communicated to the reader - not least because Green completely omits the dark topics of his novels and personal problems such as dealing with his homosexuality . The liveliness of the prose and the serene composure of the author do indeed make one think of an ' American in Paris ' - the dance miracle Gene Kelly in Vincente Minnelli's musical. "
expenditure
- Memories of Happy Days . Harper Collins, New York 1942
- Memories of Happy Days . JM Dent - The Book Society, London 1944
- Souvenirs des jours heureux . Flammarion, Paris 2007. ISBN 978-2-08-120487-4
- Memories of happy days . Translated from the French by Elisabeth Edl. Hanser, Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-446-23058-3
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Wolf Lepenies : An American from Paris. Die Welt, August 13, 2008, accessed November 20, 2019 .