Henry de Montherlant

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Henry de Montherlant (1922), painting by Jacques-Émile Blanche
Signature of Henry de Montherlant

Henry de Montherlant (born April 20, 1895 in Paris , † September 21, 1972 ibid) was a French writer , playwright and essayist .

Life

Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de Montherlant was born into a wealthy, Catholic- Royalist family, in which he only developed close relationships with his mother and grandmother. The noble family came from Picardy and had held high military posts for generations. He had a private tutor and then attended various schools, most recently from January 1911 the Catholic Collège Sainte-Croix in Neuilly . He had to leave this school in March 1912 because of an intimate friendship with a younger student shortly before graduation. When war broke out in 1914, he volunteered for the army and was seriously wounded. He processed the First World War in the autobiographical story Traum and the song Chant funèbre pour les morts de Verdun ( Song of the Dead for the Fallen of Verdun). Both works pay tribute to heroism in the First World War.

Montherlant made his first literary attempts at the age of ten, sometimes together with his childhood friend Jacques-Napoléon Faure-Biguet . After the war, he finally turned to the writing profession. His themes were initially youth, war, bullfighting. From 1920 to 1924 he was general secretary of the Douaumont military cemetery . From 1925 he traveled to Spain and North Africa, only to return to Paris in the 1930s. He had his greatest success with the romantic tetralogy Les jeunes filles (English title: Mercy with Women ) (1936-1939). In 1940 he was a war correspondent and from 1942 to 1945 he worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross .

After the war he turned to the theater . In 1960 Montherlant was elected to the Académie française . His health began to deteriorate; After a break of more than twenty years, he resumed work on novels and published, among others, La rose de sable and Les garçons , which go back to decades of preparatory work.

Montherlant died in 1972 at the age of 77 in his apartment in Paris, 25 Quai Voltaire, by suicide by chewing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head at the same time.

Background of his work

In addition to his family, the formative influences of his youth included sports, literature and bullfighting . In his early works, the cult of the self , masculinity and the struggle for existence are themes that he idealizes. Montherlant was mainly influenced by D'Annunzio , Nietzsche and Barrès . Only later did he take a critical look at the events and society of his time. His sense of style and his good ability to analyze people psychologically earned him the reputation of a classic early on .

Montherlant was known for anti-feminist and misogynist views, which Simone de Beauvoir covered in a chapter of The Opposite Sex .

Quotes

  • "Anyone who takes away the illusion of a woman pleads for total disarmament."
  • “You pay women to come and you pay them to go; that is their fate. ”- The lepers

Works (selection)

  • La Relève du matin (1920) ( Eng . The morning replacement )
  • Encore un instant de bonheur (1934), poems
  • Les Bestiaires 1926 German (Die) Tiermenschen Insel, Leipzig 1929 a. ö., most recently in 1998
  • Le Songe (1922) (German The Dream 1922)
  • Le Olympiques 1924
  • Service inutile (Ger. Useless serving . Edition Antaios, 2011, ISBN 978-3-935063-99-9 )
  • Les Célibataires (1934) ( Eng . The bachelors ), novel
  • Pitié pour les femmes 1936, German as a complete tetralogy 1957. Translated by Ernst Sander (most recently in German 1976):
    • 1: Les jeunes filles 1936 German The young girls , for the first time in 1936 (2 ed. Undated, according to DNB 1936 & 1937, only here: transl. Paul Amann ; later transl. Sander; individually last 1980)
    • 2: Title like the entire tetralogy, German mercy for women , individually first 1962 German TV
    • 3. Le Démon du bien 1937, dt. The demon of the good , individually first 1963 dtv
    • 4. Les lépreuses 1939, German The Lepers , individually 1963/1986
  • Histoire d´amour de la rose de sable (1932) (German bloom in the sand , 1964)
  • Le Solstice de juin 1941 ( June solstice , essays. Not translated. Interpret. And core quotation see H. Hofer, Lit.)
  • Carnets, Années 1930 à 1944 (German diaries , 1957)
  • Un Assassin est mon maître (Eng. A murderer is my lord and master 1971), novel
  • La Reine morte 1942 (Eng. The Dead Queen , 1948), play
  • Le Maitre de Santiago 1947 (German The Master of the Order 1948), play
  • La Ville dont le Prince est un enfant 1951 (Eng. The city whose king is a child ), play
  • Le Cardinal d´Espagne 1960 (Eng. The Cardinal of Spain , 1960)
  • Le Chaos et la Nuit , novel. Editions Gallimard, Paris 1963
    • German by Karl August Horst : The chaos and the night , Roman. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1964; Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1966.
  • Les Garçons 1967, German The Boys , 1974, most recently 2009, novel
  • La Rose de sable 1968, German The Desert Rose , 1977
  • Moustique (fragment, 1929), published posthumously 1986, German Moustique , 1990, story

Film adaptations

  • The cardinal of Spain . TV film (ZDF) 1965. Director: August Everding ; Actors: Paul Verhoeven , Maria Becker
  • Les jeunes filles (Eng. The love affairs of Mr. Costals). 1977
  • La ville dont le prince est un enfant (Eng. The city whose king is a child). TV film (La sept / Arte) 1997. Directed and cast by the Abbé de Pradts: Christophe Malavoy .

literature

  • Pierre Sipriot: Montherlant sans masque. Laffont, Paris:
    • 1. L'enfant prodigue 1895–1932 published 1982
    • 2. Ecris avec ton sang 1932–1972, published 1990. Biography & index for both volumes
  • Album Montherlant. Iconography réunie Commentée par Pierre Sipriot. Gallimard, Paris 1979 (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade)
  • Jacques Napoléon Faure-Biguet: Les enfances de Montherlant Plon, Paris 1941; ² Lefebvre, ibid. 1948 (memories of a childhood friend)
  • Patricia O'Flaherty: Henry de Montherlant (1895–1972). A Philosophy of Failure Series: "Modern French Identities" Vol. 22 Lang, Oxford et al. 2003 ISBN 0-8204-6282-9 ISBN 3-03910-013-0
  • Hermann Hofer: Interpretations of literary texts of the collaboration in: Karl Kohut (Hg): Literature of the Resistance and Collaboration in France Vol. 3: Texts and interpretations. Narr, Tübingen 1984, ISBN 3-87808-910-4 (p. 142ff. About "Le Solstice ...")
  • Gisela Riesenberger:  Henry de Montherlant. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 28, Bautz, Nordhausen 2007, ISBN 978-3-88309-413-7 , Sp. 902-922.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )

Web links

Wikiquote: Henry de Montherlant  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Munzinger-Archiv GmbH, Ravensburg: Henry de Montherlant - Munzinger Biographie. In: www.munzinger.de. Retrieved September 11, 2016 .
  2. ^ Munzinger-Archiv GmbH, Ravensburg: Henry de Montherlant - Munzinger Biographie. In: www.munzinger.de. Retrieved September 11, 2016 .
  3. ↑ SPIEGEL ONLINE, Hamburg, Germany: DIED: Henry de Montherlant - DER SPIEGEL 40/1972. In: www.spiegel.de. Retrieved September 11, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Simone de Beauvoir. The opposite sex, the custom and sex of women. P. 205. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg, 1972.
  5. ↑ Markus M. Ronner: The best punchlines of the 20th century: humorous-satirical flashes of inspiration, sorted alphabetically by keywords . Stuttgart: Gondrom. 1990
  6. ↑ La ville dont le prince est un enfant. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 8, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Montherlant, Henry de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Montherlant, Henry Marie Joseph Frédéric Expedite Millon de (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French author
DATE OF BIRTH April 20, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH September 21, 1972
Place of death Paris