On March 6, 1980, Marguerite Cleenewerk de Crayencour, known worldwide by the anagram of her last name, Marguerite Yourcenar burst into the French Academy of Letters coinciding with the 155th anniversary of the illustrious institution, known as 'la Coupole'. With her appointment, the Academy thus puts an end to more than three centuries of misogyny. 'The most closed men's club in the world' allows access to a woman, an unprecedented event. Marguerite becomes the first 'immortal' of French letters by twenty votes in favor against twelve who choose to support the candidacy of Jean Dorst, director of the Museum of Natural History. A man, of course!
Marguerite, however, had not applied to join it. It would be the academic Jean d'Ormesson, director of the newspaper Le Figaro, who would have carried out the process. His argument from her? ‘Marguerite Yourcenar is currently one of the greatest writers in the world. If it is an honor for her to have been chosen as a member of the Academy, it is an honor for us to have her.
‘It is a victory for literature. There is no room for controversy, but we note that Marguerite Yourcenar puts an end to the myth of the so-called women's literature. The Academy receives a writer, not a woman.
That same day, Michel Droit was also elected a member of the institution, and no one issued macho statements of this caliber.
Did Marguerite's choice need to be qualified in relation to her sex? The writer's income... was it a literary or feminist victory?
That March 6, 'the immortals' gave the go-ahead to give up one of their august armchairs to a female, but reluctantly. The twelve academics who had denied him the vote were not resigned to rubbing shoulders with that colleague in skirts, who could become a dangerous precedent:
"A woman in our 'club'! How will she, if she dares, come forward to deliver her inaugural speech, this sort of faux country girl friend of making her own jams in her American kitchen? How will she manage to reconcile the green frock coat lined with gold with her wide peasant skirt and, even more serious, how will she manage to wield the famous and fine academic sword?''
'The immortals' were incapable of accepting a woman into their hosts, but there was something else. And it is that Marguerite was Belgian, although French by father and language, but she had also naturalized as an American citizen and lived since 1940 isolated on Mont Desert, an island off the eastern coast of the State of Maine. The 76-year-old writer lived in a small wooden house, 'Petite Plaisence', in the colonial style of the first Europeans who emigrated to those lands. In that idyllic corner, away from the madding crowd, she lived a quiet, almost village-like existence. There she would write practically all of her work and specifically two of her most outstanding novels, Memorias de Adriano and Opus nigrum.
But scholarly elitists had no choice. Just over two months after her appointment, Marguerite acquired dual nationality, also becoming a French citizen. She thus met all the requirements to occupy her chair with total legitimacy.
On January 22, 1981, the very feminine writer, dressed in a 'uniform' designed by Yves Saint Laurent, delivered her memorable entrance speech ('de remerciements') at the Academy. In it, she reprimands the 39 members of the Company for not having "given the alternative" before her, in their confraternity, to ladies as deserving as Madame Stael, Georges Sand, Colette, and so many women who "were queens of the halls and, above all, of the alleys»
The ceremony, which had generated great expectations, was broadcast live on television. Among the attendees was the President of the Republic Giscard d'Estaing, a confessed reader, like many other politicians, of his magnum opus, Memoirs of Adriano.
The writer stars in an unprecedented revolution in 'La Coupole', and it is that the new 'immortal' has very clear ideas. Madame Yourcenar said: 'The academics are clowns, and women have no business there.'
The French letters were dyed black on December 17, 1987, when one of their "immortals" died.
The die is cast.
