Maxence Van der Meersch
Maxence Van der Meersch (4 May 1907 – 14 January 1951) was a French Flemish writer.
Life
Maxence, of delicate health, came from a relatively well off family — his father was an accountant. On 27 October 1918, he lost his sister, Sarah, who was just 19 years old, to tuberculosis, the disease that would eventually kill him too. His parents' marriage broke up. Marguerite, his mother, became an alcoholic, and his father, Benjamin, lived a life considered dissolute by the standards of the times. In 1927, Maxence fell in love with Thérèze Denis, a poor working-class girl, with whom he lived in Wasquehal, against the wishes of his father, who dreamt of a more prestigious union for his son. In 1929, from this union that was only regularised in 1934, a daughter, Sarah, was born, named in memory of his sister. Thérèze was the only love of Maxence's life and is the key to an understanding of his work. She was the inspiration for the protagonist of his trilogy La Fille pauvre (The Poor Girl).[1]
A lawyer by training, he in fact practiced this profession very little, preferring to devote himself to writing.[2] His work, replete with a spirit of realism, is essentially concerned with the life of the people of the Nord, his native region.[2] In 1936 he was awarded the Prix Goncourt for L'Empreinte du dieu (Hath Not the Potter). In 1943 he published Corps et âmes (Bodies and Souls), which was awarded the grand prix de l'Académie française for that year. The novel was an international success — it was translated into 13 languages. It centred round the ideas of a celebrated doctor, Dr. Paul Carton (1875-1947), for whom Van der Meersch had a profound admiration.[3] Carton emphasised the importance of cleanliness and good day-to-day living, work environment, nutrition etc.: "Le microbe n'est rien. Le terrain est tout." ("The germ is nothing. The terrain is everything.") The protagonists of the novel are followers of Carton.
Van der Meersch came from a family of freethinkers — his father was a Nietzschean atheist — but he converted to Roman Catholicism in 1936.[4] He wrote two religious biographies, one of the Curé d'Ars and the other of Thérèse of Lisieux. Quand les sirènes se taisent (1933) is set against the background of the Worker-priest movement active during strikes in northern French factories during the inter-war period. L'Elu (1936) explores the theme of the influence of the Flemish and latent religious past among a family of ostensibly successful rationalists.
Van der Meersch experienced great success in his lifetime, but today he has a far lower profile. Nevertheless, in 2010 some half a dozen of his books were still in print in France. In 1998 La société des Amis de Van der Meersch was created by a group of his admirers. In 1988 his first novel, La Maison dans la dune (1932), was made into a film by Michel Mees, with Tchéky Karyo in the principal role.
Criticism
The sometimes iconoclastic, distinguished historian Richard Cobb called van der Meersch "a regionalist who had written almost exclusively about Roubaix and who had brought honour to the town by winning the Prix Goncourt." In Cobb's opinion, "He was, in fact, a clumsy stylist, a Christian-Socialist Zola, who wrote off an accumulated stock of fiches [files]."[2][5] (Fiches meaning dossiers of people taken from real sources).
Death
He died in Le Touquet in 1951. He had gone there to be treated for tuberculosis.
Publications
Fiction
- La Maison dans la dune (1932) — The House on the Dune (1938)
- Car ils ne savent ce qu'ils font... (1933) — They Know Not What They Do (1958)
- Quand les sirènes se taisent (1933) — When the Looms Are Silent (1934)
- La fille pauvre Tome I: Le Péché du monde (1934) — The Poor Girl Book I: The Sins of the World (1949)
- Invasion 14 (1934) — Invasion '14 (1937)
- Maria, fille de Flandre (1935) — The Bellringer's Wife (1951)
- L'Empreinte du dieu (1936) — Hath Not the Potter (1937)
- Pêcheurs d'hommes (1936) — Fishers of Men (1947)
- L'Elu (1936) — The Dynamite Factory (1953)
- Corps et âmes (1943) — Bodies and Souls (1948)
- La fille pauvre Tome II: Le Cœur Pur (1948) — The Poor Girl Book II: Pure in Heart (1949)[6]
- La fille pauvre Tome III: La Compagne (1955) — The Hour of Love: The Poor Girl Book III (1956)
- Masque de chair (1958) — Mask of Flesh (1959)
Nonfiction
- Vie du Curé d'Ars (1936)
- Femmes à l'encan (1943) (an essay against prostitution)
- La petite sainte Thérèse (1943)
- Pourquoi j'ai écrit Corps et âmes (1956) (an essay in defence of Cartonian medicine)
Notes
- ^ Maxence Van der Meersch et la vie ouvrière dans le Nord de 1914 à 1939 Archived 2011-08-21 at the Wayback Machine, p. 7 (in French).
- ^ a b c Invasion, by Maxence van der Meersch, The Neglected Books Page, February 26th, 2012
- ^ Matthew Ramsey (1999). "Alternative Medicine in Modern France" Archived 2011-07-27 at the Wayback Machine, Medical History, 43: 286–322. Carton is discussed on pages 311–315.
- ^ Maxence Van der Meersch et la vie ouvrière, p. 47.
- ^ Richard Cobb (Author), Julian Barnes (Preface). Paris and Elsewhere (New York Review Books Classic), 2004, ISBN 978-1-59017-082-3
- ^ Published with Book I: The Sins of the World in one volume entitled The Poor Girl.
- v
- t
- e
- 1903 John Antoine Nau
- 1904 Léon Frapié
- 1905 Claude Farrère
- 1906 Jérôme Tharaud and Jean Tharaud
- 1907 Émile Moselly
- 1908 Francis de Miomandre
- 1909 Marius-Ary Leblond
- 1910 Louis Pergaud
- 1911 Alphonse de Châteaubriant
- 1912 André Savignon
- 1913 Marc Elder
- 1914 Adrien Bertrand
- 1915 René Benjamin
- 1916 Henri Barbusse
- 1917 Henry Malherbe
- 1918 Georges Duhamel
- 1919 Marcel Proust
- 1920 Ernest Pérochon
- 1921 René Maran
- 1922 Henri Béraud
- 1923 Lucien Fabre
- 1924 Thierry Sandre
- 1925 Maurice Genevoix
- 1926 Henri Deberly
- 1927 Maurice Bedel
- 1928 Maurice Constantin-Weyer
- 1929 Marcel Arland
- 1930 Henri Fauconnier
- 1931 Jean Fayard
- 1932 Guy Mazeline
- 1933 André Malraux
- 1934 Roger Vercel
- 1935 Joseph Peyré
- 1936 Maxence Van der Meersch
- 1937 Charles Plisnier
- 1938 Henri Troyat
- 1939 Philippe Hériat
- 1940 Francis Ambrière
- 1941 Henri Pourrat
- 1942 Marc Bernard
- 1943 Marius Grout
- 1944 Elsa Triolet
- 1945 Jean-Louis Bory
- 1946 Jean-Jacques Gautier
- 1947 Jean-Louis Curtis
- 1948 Maurice Druon
- 1949 Robert Merle
- 1950 Paul Colin
- 1951 Julien Gracq
- 1952 Béatrix Beck
- 1953 Pierre Gascar
- 1954 Simone de Beauvoir
- 1955 Roger Ikor
- 1956 Romain Gary
- 1957 Roger Vailland
- 1958 Francis Walder
- 1959 André Schwarz-Bart
- 1960 Vintilă Horia
- 1961 Jean Cau
- 1962 Anna Langfus
- 1963 Armand Lanoux
- 1964 Georges Conchon
- 1965 Jacques Borel
- 1966 Edmonde Charles-Roux
- 1967 André Pieyre de Mandiargues
- 1968 Bernard Clavel
- 1969 Félicien Marceau
- 1970 Michel Tournier
- 1971 Jacques Laurent
- 1972 Jean Carrière
- 1973 Jacques Chessex
- 1974 Pascal Lainé
- 1975 Émile Ajar (Romain Gary)
- 1976 Patrick Grainville
- 1977 Didier Decoin
- 1978 Patrick Modiano
- 1979 Antonine Maillet
- 1980 Yves Navarre
- 1981 Lucien Bodard
- 1982 Dominique Fernandez
- 1983 Frédérick Tristan
- 1984 Marguerite Duras
- 1985 Yann Queffélec
- 1986 Michel Host
- 1987 Tahar Ben Jelloun
- 1988 Érik Orsenna
- 1989 Jean Vautrin
- 1990 Jean Rouaud
- 1991 Pierre Combescot
- 1992 Patrick Chamoiseau
- 1993 Amin Maalouf
- 1994 Didier Van Cauwelaert
- 1995 Andreï Makine
- 1996 Pascale Roze
- 1997 Patrick Rambaud
- 1998 Paule Constant
- 1999 Jean Echenoz
- 2000 Jean-Jacques Schuhl
- 2001 Jean-Christophe Rufin
- 2002 Pascal Quignard
- 2003 Jacques-Pierre Amette
- 2004 Laurent Gaudé
- 2005 François Weyergans
- 2006 Jonathan Littell
- 2007 Gilles Leroy
- 2008 Atiq Rahimi
- 2009 Marie NDiaye
- 2010 Michel Houellebecq
- 2011 Alexis Jenni
- 2012 Jérôme Ferrari
- 2013 Pierre Lemaitre
- 2014 Lydie Salvayre
- 2015 Mathias Énard
- 2016 Leïla Slimani
- 2017 Éric Vuillard
- 2018 Nicolas Mathieu
- 2019 Jean-Paul Dubois
- 2020 Hervé Le Tellier
- 2021 Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
- 2022 Brigitte Giraud
- 2023 Jean-Baptiste Andrea