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Autobiography, confession of adolescence, an exercise in the art of evoking past experiences ... Julian Green's memories of his childhood are full of many fascinations.
When he was born in 1900, the century was itself just beginning. Green's description of a happy family life reaches back to the American South in the 19th century and deep inside his burgeoning self, which he analyzes with amazing objectivity. The main factors in the author's development are his creativity, his conversion to Catholicism and his nascent sexuality. Julian Green's determination to 'say everything' is impressive. The narcissism of youth, the anguish of his mother and the brutal realities of the human condition, of which he became aware at an early age, are all explored in the first volume of his autobiography.
The Green Paradise closes on the young Green, aged just 16, joining an American contingent bound for ambulance service in the First World War.
The New York Review of Books described the French editions of Julian Green's autobiography (to be published in English in four volumes) as 'a major achievement' and 'a singular classic of confessional literature.'
Born of American parents living in Paris, Julian Green has spent most of his extraordinary literary career in that city, writing in French for a wide, enthusiastic readership. He continues to write at 92 and his oeuvre runs to over 65 books of fiction, plays, essays, non-fiction and autobiography.
Also available from Marion Boyars is The Distant Lands, an epic novel of the ante-bellum South ['meticulously crafted and intensely readable']; Paris, a collection of essays in a bilingual edition ['a series of love notes, subtle and charming']; South, a play set on the eve of the American Civil War, as well as a volume of essays and fiction written in English between 1920 and 1946, The Apprentice Writer. Julian Green, winner of many American and European literary prizes, is the only non-French member of the Académie Française and is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
'His work has achieved the status of being both a real and respected literary classic, something without parallel in either England or America.'
The Guardian.About the Author Born in 1900 of American parents living in Paris, Julian Green has spent most of his extraordinary literary career there, writing now in French for a wide and enthusiastic readership. He has published over sixty books in France: novels, essays, plays, a four-volume autobiography (of which this is the first), and, so far, fourteen volumes of his Journal. Initially writing in English, he published a number of celebrated books in England and the United States before writing almost exclusively in French.
As an American, Julian Green is the only foreign member of the Académie Française. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, winner of the Harper Prize, the Prix Marcel Proust, the Prix France-Amérique, the Prix Cavour and numerous other international awards. He is also one of the few living authors to have their collected works published in the prestigious Gallimard Pléiade series.
Julian Green's epic novel of the antebellum South The Distant Lands was published in 1991, simultaneously with his play South which is set on the eve of the Civil War. The sequel to The Distant Lands, set during the Civil War, will be published in 1993.
His book of essays about Paris with a selection of the author's own photographs of his favorite city is available from the same publishers. His early writings in English under the title The Apprentice Writer will also be published in 1993.
Julian Green lives in Paris.
Preface Memory ... I've sometimes been told, after the first publication of 'Partir avant le Jour' in 1963, that I had to have a good memory so as to remind myself of so many things. In that there is an element of illusion. My memory could be much better. It has its peculiar side which is a visual memory rather than an auditory one----except for music, a bit like a painter's memory. I wanted to be a painter, in fact, and to a certain extent I remained one. The words I call back are very rare, but those I do, I have in some manner recorded definitively. I don't remember twenty phrases my mother ever said to me. In another sense, there are numerous 'blanks' in the first volume of this autobiography, and quite as many also in the second. I am continually compelled to say that I don't remember anymore ... But put end to end, these recollections form a kind of continuity which can provide a false scent. For what I remember nearly always has an almost photographic clarity, but once again these are isolated moments and separated by intervals which I don't succeed in filling in. I have compared this to a museum gallery where the pictures are hung some distance from each other.
I have not tried to flesh out long conversations, where I have retained only a few words. One often finds these conversations in Memoirs and I recognize that they often convey the sound of truth, but they can't be literally exact and I love the truth to be literal. I have been told that there lies a characteristic trait of the Protestant. And it is possible that my early education, which was Protestant, has marked me in this manner.
Why have I written these books? I've said in the first volume what I intended to do. This applies to the entire autobiography. I wanted, in fact, to re-discover the driving force which dominated my life. I've spoken of God's progression in the human heart. First in childhood, then in adolescence (in the second volume), then in early manhood (in the third and fourth). This progression is not always easy to follow. This very thing is the greatest mystery in our lives, this progression of God. Often one does not see it except after the event. I believe one does not see it clearly until many years later, when life is drawing to its close. That is why one needs to wait before writing down one's recollections if one would try to understand the direction of the journey one has made on this earth. I'm not sure, moreover, that one understands anything really important in it. One glimpses rather than actually seeing. In my case, it seems that I have been protected during all the early part of my youth by some kind of invincible ignorance. Protected from what? From a carnal experience where one's faith would perhaps be lost, as often happens. The experience came at a moment when the danger it presented was not at its most serious. It seemed clear to me that the single fact of announcing that I had a religious vocation (even if I was wrong) created a kind of forbidden zone around me. I didn't doubt it for a moment.
When did I really understand? I understood it fully when I had written these volumes of my autobiography. It's a strange business. I've had to reach the age I am today so as to realize the meaning of certain facts, small as well as large, which have set their mark on my childhood and my youth. I don't say that I've understood everything. But what strikes me is the vigilance of God who, according to the words of the psalm, neither slumbers nor sleeps, but guards each of us as if he was alone in the world, so long as he offers no resistance . . . In the matters which concerned me, the most serious mistakes occurred much later.
There has been talk of impeaching the young man I used to be. In fact I've said that this book was a bit like an impeachment, but one should not go too far in that direction. I would find it alarming if a man, whom God could pardon, could not then pardon himself. However, souls do exist who hang onto their guilt as if it were a treasure. This is not the case with me.
I've also been asked about possible connections between this autobiography and psychoanalytic methods. I suppose that the man who entrusts himself to a psychiatrist, in other words a doctor of the soul, feels the need of a cure. Curing is not my purpose. Curing what? I only wanted to see clearly. Curing the child and the adolescent? What preoccupied me was to understand the child and the adolescent I used to be. And besides, I am almost completely ignorant about psychoanalysis. Perhaps I have a certain defiance in that respect. It doesn't seem good for us to know too much about what is going on inside ourselves because that leads to one losing the taste and the sense of mystery. But what really matters is to give speech to the child which has never stopped inhabiting our heart.
Julian Green 1970
Translated by Arthur Boyarswork under copyright
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