Pierre Benoit (novelist)

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Pierre Benoit by Roubier
Pierre Benoit on his reception at the Académie Française in 1932

Pierre Benoit (16 July 1886 – 3 March 1962) was a French novelist, screenwriter and member of the Académie française.[1] He is perhaps most known for his second novel L'Atlantide (1919) that has been filmed a variety of times.

Biography

Early life and education

Pierre Benoit was born in Albi (southern France), the son of a French soldier, Gabriel Benoît, and his wife Claire-Eugénie Fraisse. He accompanied his father, who had been posted to North Africa from 1887 onwards (in Tunisia and then in Algeria, where he continued his studies at the Grand Lycée d'Alger).

In 1907, after completing his military service (still in Algeria), he went to Montpellier, where he prepared for a double degree in literature and law, then to Sceaux, where he became a boarding school teacher.

It was during this period that he discovered Charles Maurras and Maurice Barrès, who became, and remained, his masters of thought.

Literary beginnings

After obtaining a degree in literature, he narrowly failed the agrégation in 1910 but was accepted in the competitive examination for the Ministry of Public Instruction and Fine Arts: he was appointed agent in the under-secretariat for Fine Arts, then librarian in the Ministry of Public Instruction. At the same time, he published his first poems, for which he received a prize from the Société des gens de lettres. On the other hand, he would be less happy with the publication of his poetry collection Diadumène (1914): in ten years, only five copies were sold — to a single buyer, the patron André Germain, director of the poetic review Le Double Bouquet.

Mobilized at the beginning of World War I, Benoit fell seriously ill after the battle of Charleroi: he spent several months in hospital, then was demobilized. This experience at the front was sufficiently traumatic, however, to transform the young man into a convinced pacifist who, in a letter he sent to his mother in 1914, confided his enthusiasm at the idea of participating in a "holy war".

After the armistice, he reunited with his pre-war companions: Francis Carco, Roland Dorgelès and Pierre Mac Orlan, with whom he founded an association: "Le Bassin de Radoub" (Henri Béraud was also a member), which proposed to reward the worst book of the year. The first prize winner was awarded a train ticket to his native land accompanied by a letter asking him never to return. In 1919, the work chosen unanimously was a collective one: the Treaty of Versailles.

In addition, always heavily influenced by Maurrasian ideas and therefore close to the political circles that gravitated around the Action Française, Pierre Benoit gave his full support to Henri Massis's manifesto "For a Party of Intelligence".

His first novel, Koenigsmark, was published in 1918; L'Atlantide was published the next year and was awarded the Grand Prize of the Académie française. Benoit became a member of the Académie in 1931.

Despite his success, Benoit was bored in his position as librarian at the Ministry of Public Instruction and was therefore with enthusiasm that he accepted in 1923 the proposal of the daily Le Journal to travel to Turkey as a special envoy, which gave him the opportunity to leave the civil service. Crossing Anatolia at war, he was granted an interview with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk in Ankara. Benoit later visited other nations[2].

During the Nazi Occupation of France, Benoît joined the "Groupe Collaboration", a pro-Nazi arts group whose other members included Abel Bonnard, Georges Claude and Pierre Drieu La Rochelle.[3] This led him to be arrested in September 1944; he was eventually released after six months, but his work remained on the "blacklist" of French Nazi collaborators for several years afterwards.

He attempted to resign from the Académie Française in 1959 in protest over their refusal to accept the writer Paul Morand after his application was vetoed by General Charles DeGaulle.

Late in his life, Benoit gave a series of interviews with the French writer Paul Guimard. He died in March 1962 in Ciboure.

Style of novels

Each of Benoi's novels consist of exactly 227 pages and have the heroine's name begin with the letter "A"[4].

Works

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Novels

  • Koenigsmark (The Secret Spring; 1918)
  • L'Atlantide (Atlantida; 1919)
  • Pour don Carlos (1920)
  • Le Lac Salé (1921)
  • La Chaussée des Géants (The Giant's Causeway; 1922)
  • L'Oublié (The Forgotten Man; 1922)
  • Mademoiselle de La Ferté (1923)
  • Le Roman des Quatre (1923; with Paul Bourget, Henri Duvernois and Gérard d'Houville)
  • La Châtelaine du Liban (Lebanon's Lady of the Manor; 1924)
  • Le Puits de Jacob (Jacob's Well; 1925)
  • Le Roman des Quatre: Micheline et l'Amour (1926; with Paul Bourget, Henri Duvernois and Gérard d'Houville)
  • Alberte (1926)
  • Le Roi Lépreux (The Leper King; 1927)
  • Axelle (1928)
  • Erromango (1929)
  • Le Soleil de Minuit (The Midnight Sun; 1930)
  • Le Déjeuner de Sousceyrac (1931)
  • L'Île Verte (1932)
  • Fort-de-France (1933)
  • Cavalier 6 (1933; sequel to L'Oublié)
  • Monsieur de la Ferté (1934)
  • Boissière (1935)
  • La Dame de l'Ouest (1936)
  • Saint-Jean d'Acre (1936)
  • L'Homme qui était trop grand (The Man Who Was Too Tall; with Claude Farrère, 1936)
  • Les Compagnons d'Ulysse (1937)
  • Bethsabée (1938)
  • Notre-Dame-de-Tortose (1939)
  • Les Environs d'Aden (1940)
  • Le Désert de Gobi (1941)
  • Lunegarde (Moonkeep; 1942)
  • Seigneur, j'ai tout Prévu... (1943)
  • L'Oiseau des Ruines (Bird of the Ruins; 1947)
  • Jamrose (1948)
  • Aïno (1948)
  • Le Casino de Barbazan (1949)
  • Les Plaisirs du Voyage (1950)
  • Les Agriates (1950)
  • Le Prêtre Jean (1952)
  • La Toison d'or (1953)
  • Villeperdue (Lost City; 1954)
  • Feux d'Artifice à Zanzibar (1955)
  • Fabrice (1956)
  • Montsalvat (1957)
  • La Sainte Vehme (The Holy Vehme; illustrated by Jean Dries, 1958)
  • Flamarens (1959)
  • Le Commandeur (1960)
  • Les Amours Mortes (1961)
  • Aréthuse (posthumous unfinished work; 1963)

Poetry

  • Diadumène (1914)
  • Les Suppliantes (1920)

Translated into English

Filmography

Screenwriter

References

  1. ↑ French Twentieth Bibliography: Critical and Bibliographical William J. Thompson - 2001... - Page 17210 "Maltère, Stéphane: "Le monde littéraire antique dans L'Atlantide de Pierre Benoit, " Cahiers des Amis de Poirre Boneit Frenchaises, no. 10 (1999), 21-30. [BNF] X1361. Monestier, Louis: "Histoire de l'association des 'Amis de Pierre Benoit'. Première partie ..."
  2. ↑ p.74 Flower, John Historical Dictionary of French Literature Scarecrow Press, 17 Jan 2013
  3. ↑ Karen Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France. University of Chicago Press, 2009 ISBN 0226252019, (p.201)
  4. ↑ p. 33 Taylor, Karen L. The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel Infobase Publishing, 2006

Further reading

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  • Van den Bosch, Firmin (1944). Vagabondages littéraires. Bruxelles: Durendal/Paris: P. Lethielleux.

External links

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