Julien Gracq

Julien Gracq, born Louis Poirier on July 27, 1910, in St. Florent-le-Vieil on the banks of the Loire, between Nantes and Angers, was marked by his childhood in a boarding school. He initially attended a high school in Nantes, then moved to Paris to study at the renowned Lycée Henri IV, the École Normale Supérieure, and later the École des Sciences Politiques, from which he graduated in 1933. During this period, he came into contact with André Breton, whose work, particularly the novel "Nadja," inspired him to turn to literature. A history teacher, he balanced his dual career from 1937 onwards. On one hand, he wrote his first novel, "Au château d'Argol," described by critics as his most "violent and abstract book," dealing with the charged aspects of a love triangle, with references to Edgar Allan Poe and Lautréamont. On the other hand, he began teaching at high schools in Quimper, Nantes, Amiens, and from 1947 until his retirement in 1970 at the Lycée Claude-Bernard in Paris. He later retired to his birthplace on the banks of the Loire, in the village of St. Florent-le-Vieil, where he lived until his death on December 22, 2007, at the age of 97. He always wrote under the pseudonym Julien Gracq, producing novels, poetry, plays, and essays. His works were published by the same small Parisian publisher, Jose Corti, including: "Au château d'Argol" (1939), "Un beau ténébreux" (1945), "Liberté grande" (1946), "André Breton, quelques aspects de l'écrivain" (1948), "Le Roi pêcheur" (1948), "La Littérature à l'estomac" (1950), "Le Rivage des Syrtes" (1951, English edition: "The Opposing Shore"), "Prose pour l'étrangère" (privately printed, small format, 1952), "Un balcon en forêt" (1958, English edition: "A Balcony in the Forest"), "Préférences" (1961), "Lettrines I" (1967), "La Presqu'île" (1970), "Lettrines II" (1974), "Les Eaux étroites" (1976, English edition: "The Narrow Waters"), "En lisant en écrivant" (1980), "La Forme d'une ville" (1985), "Proust considéré comme terminus, suivi de Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola" (1986), "Autour des sept collines" (1988), "Carnets du grand chemin" (1992), "Entretiens" (2002), "Plénièrement" (Editions Fata Morgana, 2006, a reissue of a text on André Breton originally published in 1967), "Manuscrits de guerre" (2011, posthumously published).