When Julian Green first set foot in New York in 1919 he felt it would have been better to die than to leave his beloved France. Although an American, he was Parisian born and bred and still immersed in memories of the war and of his dead mother. Recondite, proud and acutely sensitive, this devout young Catholic was exiled from his country, his language and his religion. Bu
When Julian Green first set foot in New York in 1919 he felt it would have been better to die than to leave his beloved France. Although an American, he was Parisian born and bred and still immersed in memories of the war and of his dead mother. Recondite, proud and acutely sensitive, this devout young Catholic was exiled from his country, his language and his religion. But from the moment he arrives in Charlottesville, where he is to spend three years studying at the University of Virginia, Green begins to feel more at peace. For he is in the South, the land of his parents; a land haunted by family shadows, by his mother's teachings of the tragic history of the Civil War and her memories of a place 'where roses bloom in the heart of winter'. Part of him had come home.
Beneath the sycamores and the gleaming white colonnades of a campus designed by Thomas Jefferson, this highly impressionable and unworldy youth is initiated into the beauties of the classics and the language of Shakespeare. But human beauty also makes its mark, and Green's early
éducation sentimentale
is both passionate and painful. Wanting to become a priest, his experiences in America engage him in a profound and obsessive battle between the desires of the flesh and his own zealous dedication to the spirit.
He describes with eloquence and honest how he gradually realizes that he is not alone; how he comes to accept the true nature of his sexual identity and, at last, allows himself to fall in love.
He also comes to terms with the Yankees -- who he initially thought of as 'barbarians' -- and with the South, a landscape that had filled his imagination from an early age and which went on to have a lasting and tangible influence on his career as a writer. Over sixty years later in
The Distant Lands
and
The Stars of the South
, Green's epic novels of the South before and during the Civil War, he recreates the splendour of his Uncle Will's home, 'The Lawn', where he spend many of his vacations from university. Altogether, a dozen of Green's books, including his play
South
and his classics novels
Moira
and
Each Man in his Darkness
, are set in America.
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Hardcover
,
285 pages
Published
1994
by Marion Boyars Publishers
(first published January 1st 1966)
Scriitor francez de origine americană, Julien Green a tot pendulat între cele două țări, iubindu-le în mod egal și simțindu-i lipsa fiecăreia dintre ele în momentele în care se afla departe. Deși cea mai mare parte a vieții și-a petrecut-o în Franța, Julien Green a studiat în America, la Universitatea din Virginia, perioadă a cărei descriere este cuprinsă în acest volum, ce reunește proze scurte publicate de-a lungul anilor în reviste franțuzești. Julien Green a participat și la operațiunile mil
Scriitor francez de origine americană, Julien Green a tot pendulat între cele două țări, iubindu-le în mod egal și simțindu-i lipsa fiecăreia dintre ele în momentele în care se afla departe. Deși cea mai mare parte a vieții și-a petrecut-o în Franța, Julien Green a studiat în America, la Universitatea din Virginia, perioadă a cărei descriere este cuprinsă în acest volum, ce reunește proze scurte publicate de-a lungul anilor în reviste franțuzești. Julien Green a participat și la operațiunile militare ale Primului Război Mondial, o parte din convingerile sale referitoare la acest subiect putând fi regăsite în America mea.
Ineditul descrierilor de peisaje sau de personaje celebre pe care a avut ocazia să le cunoască sau pe urmele cărora a călcat de-a lungul șederii sale în America este completat de tonul care oscilează între sentimentul apartenenței și cel al incapacității de a se integra pe deplin. Având dublă cetățenie, Green se simte permanent împărțit între cele două identități culturale ale sale, atât de diferite una de alta. Pe lângă tonul melancolic al descrierilor sale, cititorul se va putea bucura de povești cu personaje importante din istoria literaturii, cum ar fi Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe sau Gertrude Stein. Și de una dintre cele mai afectuoase declarații de dragoste făcute peisajului american. (cronică:
http://bookaholic.ro/america-lui-juli...
)
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