Guy de Pourtalès
Guy de Pourtalès (4 August 1881 Berlin – 12 June 1941 Lausanne) was a Swiss author.
Early life and education
He was the son of Herman Alexander de Pourtalès (1847–1904) and his first wife, Marguerite "Daisy" Marcet (1857–1888). Guy was born in Berlin, where his father at that time was an officer in the service of the Prussian king Wilhelm I. When he was six years old, the family returned to Switzerland, where they lived first at Malagny near Versoix in the Canton of Geneva and then, after his father's second marriage (with Hélène Barbey) in 1891, at Mies in the Canton de Vaud. Guy de Pourtalès went to schools in Geneva and in Vevey and then to the gymnasium in Neuchâtel. After his matura in 1899, he studied in Germany. In Karlsruhe, he began to study Chemistry, which he abandoned soon in favor of musical studies, which he continued from 1902 to 1905 at the University of Bonn. In 1905, he moved to Paris, where he studied literature at the Sorbonne.[1]
Career as a writer
Guy de Pourtalès published his first novel in Paris in 1910. One year later, he married Hélène Marcuard, with whom he had three children, and in 1912, his French nationality was restored upon his demand, since his family were Huguenots who had fled from France to Neuchâtel after the Edict of Fontainebleau revoking the Edict of Nantes. Just before World War I, his second novel appeared.[1]
In 1914, he was drafted into service in the French army as a translator for the British troops in Flanders. At Ypres, he was gassed in 1915 and evacuated to Paris where he slowly recovered. He co-founded the Société littéraire de France, where he also published in 1917 his Deux contes de fées pour les grandes personnes ("Two fairy tales for grown-ups"). At the end of the war, he again served as a translator, this time for the American troops. After he was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis in 1919, he rented the castle of Etoy in the Canton of Vaud in Switzerland in 1921 and henceforth would spend several months a year there. A large part of his literary work was written in Etoy.[2]
From the 1920s on, Pourtalès published a series of romantic biographies of musicians and also wrote essays, critiques, and journalistic pieces for a variety of French magazines, amongst them the Nouvelle Revue Française. He also began to translate the works of Shakespeare in French, which raised the interest of Jacques Copeau.[3] Pourtalès's translation of Measure for Measure was performed by the company of Georges Pitoëff in 1920 in Geneva and in Lausanne (with music by Arthur Honegger), and his translation of The Tempest was played by the company of Firmin Gémier in 1929 in Monte Carlo and at the Odéon theater in Paris.[2]
In 1937, he published La Pêche miraculeuse, the novel for which he is best known today[4] and which won him the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française.[5]
Pourtalès's health had been slowly deteriorating, and when World War II broke out, he was severely ill and wouldn't leave Etoy anymore. His son Raymond (1914–1940), who served in the French army, fell in combat on 28 May 1940. The death of his only son and the surrender of France seem to have weakened Guy de Pourtalès,[4][6] who died at Lausanne on 12 June 1941.
Works
- La Cendre et la flamme, Félix Juven, 1910
- Solitudes, Bernard Grasset, 1913
- À mes amis Suisses, Crès, 1916
- Deux contes de fées pour les grandes personnes, Paris, Société littéraire de France, 1917
- "Odet de La Noue, soldat et poète huguenot de la fin du XVIe siècle", Bulletin de la Société d'histoire du protestantisme français, 1918–1919
- Marins d'eau douce, Paris, Société littéraire de France, 1919
- La parabole des talents, 1923
- De Hamlet à Swann, essais de critique. Gallimard, 1924
- La vie de Franz Liszt, Gallimard, 1925
- Chopin ou le poète, Gallimard, 1926
- Montclar, Gallimard, 1926
- Louis II de Bavière ou Hamlet Roi, Gallimard, 1928
- Trilogie Shakespearienne, traduction de Hamlet, Mesure pour Mesure et la Tempête, Gallimard, 1929
- Nietzsche en Italie, Bernard Grasset, 1929. Translated by Will Stone as Nietzsche in Italy (Pushkin Press, 2022). ISBN 978-1-78227-728-6. Review
- Florentines, Gallimard, 1930
- Nous, a qui rien n'appartient, voyage au pays Kmer, Flammarion, 1931
- Wagner histoire d'un artiste, Gallimard, 1932
- La Pêche miraculeuse, Gallimard, 1937 - Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française
- Berlioz et l'Europe romantique, Gallimard, 1939
- Les Contes du milieu du monde, Fribourg: Egloff, 1940
- Saints de pierre, Fribourg: Egloff, 1941 (posthumous)
- Chaque Mouche a son ombre, memoires, Gallimard, 1980
- Journal, diary, Gallimard, 1991
Prizes
- Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française 1937 for La Pêche miraculeuse
References
Literature
- Rougemont, Denis de: Guy de Pourtalès: Exposition du Centenaire, Genève: Château de Penthes, 1981
- Fornerod, Françoise: Histoire d’un roman : "La pêche miraculeuse" de Guy de Pourtalès, Genève: Slatkine, 1985. ISBN 2-05-100717-9.
- Fornerod, Françoise: Guy de Pourtalès, pp. 473–490 in Francillon, R.: Histoire de la littérature en Suisse romande, Lausanne: Editions Payot, 1997. ISBN 2-601-03183-2.
- Delacrétaz, Anne-Lise: Pourtalès, Guy de in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland, 2005-02-11.
External links
- Works by or about Guy de Pourtalès at the Internet Archive
- Fondation Guy de Pourtalès
- Bibliography
- Family tree
- v
- t
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- 1915 Paul Acker
- 1916 Louis de Blois [fr]
- 1917 Charles Géniaux [fr]
- 1918 Camille Mayran [fr]
- 1919 Pierre Benoit
- 1920 André Corthis
- 1921 Pierre Villetard [fr]
- 1922 Francis Carco
- 1923 Alphonse de Châteaubriant
- 1924 Émile Henriot
- 1925 François Duhourcau
- 1926 François Mauriac
- 1927 Joseph Kessel
- 1928 Jean Balde [fr]
- 1929 André Demaison [fr]
- 1930 Jacques de Lacretelle
- 1931 Henri Pourrat
- 1932 Jacques Chardonne
- 1933 Roger Chauviré
- 1934 Paule Régnier
- 1935 Albert Touchard
- 1936 Georges Bernanos
- 1937 Guy de Pourtalès
- 1938 Jean de La Varende
- 1939 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
- 1940 Édouard Peisson [fr]
- 1941 Robert Bourget-Pailleron
- 1942 Jean Blanzat
- 1943 Joseph-Henri Louwyck [fr]
- 1944 Pierre Lagarde [fr]
- 1945 Marc Blancpain [fr]
- 1946 Jean Orieux [fr]
- 1947 Philippe Hériat
- 1948 Yves Gandon [fr]
- 1949 Yvonne Pagniez
- 1950 Joseph Jolinon
- 1951 Bernard Barbey [fr]
- 1952 Henri Castillou [fr]
- 1953 Jean Hougron
- 1954 Pierre Moinot / Paul Mousset [fr]
- 1955 Michel de Saint Pierre [fr]
- 1956 Paul Guth
- 1957 Jacques de Bourbon Busset
- 1958 Henri Queffélec
- 1959 Gabriel d'Aubarède
- 1960 Christian Murciaux [fr]
- 1961 Phạm Văn Ký [fr; vi]
- 1962 Michel Mohrt
- 1963 Robert Margerit
- 1964 Michel Droit
- 1965 Jean Husson [fr]
- 1966 François Nourissier
- 1967 Michel Tournier
- 1968 Albert Cohen
- 1969 Pierre Moustiers
- 1970 Bertrand Poirot-Delpech
- 1971 Jean d'Ormesson
- 1972 Patrick Modiano
- 1973 Michel Déon
- 1974 Kléber Haedens
- 1975
- 1976 Pierre Schoendoerffer
- 1977 Camille Bourniquel
- 1978 Pascal Jardin
- 1979 Henri Coulonges
- 1980 Louis Gardel
- 1981 Jean Raspail
- 1982 Vladimir Volkoff
- 1983 Liliane Guignabodet [fr]
- 1984 Jacques-Francis Rolland [fr]
- 1985 Patrick Besson
- 1986 Pierre-Jean Rémy
- 1987 Frédérique Hébrard
- 1988 François-Olivier Rousseau
- 1989 Geneviève Dormann
- 1990 Paule Constant
- 1991 François Sureau
- 1992 Franz-Olivier Giesbert
- 1993 Philippe Beaussant
- 1994 Frédéric Vitoux
- 1995 Alphonse Boudard
- 1996 Calixthe Beyala
- 1997 Patrick Rambaud
- 1998 Anne Wiazemsky
- 1999 François Taillandier / Amélie Nothomb
- 2000 Pascal Quignard
- 2001 Éric Neuhoff
- 2002 Marie Ferranti
- 2003 Jean-Noël Pancrazi
- 2004 Bernard du Boucheron
- 2005 Henriette Jelinek [fr]
- 2006 Jonathan Littell
- 2007 Vassilis Alexakis
- 2008 Marc Bressant [fr]
- 2009 Pierre Michon
- 2010 Éric Faye [fr]
- 2011 Sorj Chalandon
- 2012 Joël Dicker
- 2013 Christophe Ono-dit-Biot [fr]
- 2014 Adrien Bosc [fr]
- 2015 Hédi Kaddour / Boualem Sansal
- 2016 Adélaïde de Clermont-Tonnerre
- 2017 Daniel Rondeau
- 2018 Camille Pascal
- 2019 Laurent Binet
- 2020 Étienne de Montety
- 2021 François-Henri Désérable
- 2022 Giuliano da Empoli