Hélène Bessette
Hélène Bessette (born August 31, 1918 in Levallois-Perret , † October 19, 2000 in Le Mans ) was a French writer .
Life
Bessette's parents were taxi drivers and perfumery clerks. This life of ordinary people shaped them. In their short, unhappy marriage, she lived with a Protestant pastor in New Caledonia in the 1940s . Bessette worked as a primary school teacher in Roubaix , Saint-Perst and in Saint-Georges-sur-Eure until 1962 and then became a freelance writer.
Bessette published twelve novels and one play in the "Collection Blanche" of the publisher Gaston Gallimard , from whom she received a contract in 1952 for ten works. In contrast to Alain Robbe-Grillet and his concept of the Nouveau Roman , she called her literary technique "roman poétique". She was noticed and praised by critics and great minds. However, her books found no readers. Her debut novel Lili pleure won the “Prix Cazes” literary prize in 1954, but only sold 1,500 copies. Her other novels also appeared regularly on the nominations list for the Prix Goncourt .
Among their (few) readers were the colleagues Marguerite Duras , Nathalie Sarraute , Simone de Beauvoir and Dominique Aury , the writers Raymond Queneau and André Malraux , among the lauding literary critics Alain Bosquet and Claude Mauriac . Since the Éditions Gallimard dissolved the contractual relationship in 1973, she wrote for the drawer and lived off casual work, also as a cleaning lady. Bessette died a literary death as Poète maudit : seriously ill, impoverished and misunderstood.
Léo Scheer began to publish her works again in 2006, and two of her novels have since been translated into German for the first time in Switzerland.
Works (in German translation)
- You may not cold . Translated from the French by Christian Ruzicska. Secession Verlag für Literatur, Zurich 2011, ISBN 978-3-905951-09-7 .
- Ida or the delirium . Translated from the French by Christian Ruzicska. Secession Verlag für Literatur, Zurich 2010, ISBN 978-3-905951-02-8 .
literature
- Julien Doussinault: Bessette. Biography . Editions Léo Scheer, 2008.
Web links
- Literature by and about Hélène Bessette in the catalog of the German National Library
- Short biography and reviews of works by Hélène Bessette at perlentaucher.de
- Hélène Bessette in the Secession publishing house for literature
- Jürgen Ritte : Literature in the Blind Spot - On the rediscovery of the French writer Hélène Bessette. Neue Zürcher Zeitung , August 11, 2012, p. 26
Individual evidence
- ^ Jürgen Ritte: Hélène Bessette's novel about double standards. Neue Zürcher Zeitung of September 3, 2012, accessed on September 4, 2012.
- ↑ Sigrid Brinkmann: From the strange life of a cleaning lady. Review of Ida or the Delirium . Deutschlandradio Kultur , October 13, 2010, accessed on September 4, 2012.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bessette, Hélène |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French author |
| DATE OF BIRTH | August 31, 1918 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Levallois-Perret |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 19, 2000 |
| Place of death | Le Mans |