Marguerite Yourcenar wrote the modern classic ‘Memories of Hadrian’
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour was born in 1903 into a wealthy Belgian family. She adopted the surname Yourcenar as her pen name and later legally changed it to become her official name.
A student of literature, Yourcenar could read English, French, Spanish and Italian. Her first novel, Alexis, was published in 1929. It tells the story of a young musician who writes to his wife, who has recently given birth to their first child, explaining that he can no longer deny his homosexuality. The novel was considered highly daring for its time.
In 1937 she translated Virginia Woolf’s The Waves into French. Throughout her career, Yourcenar wrote novels while also establishing herself as an acclaimed essayist, covering a wide range of subjects.
Yourcenar was bisexual and, as war broke out in Europe, she accepted an invitation from her partner, the literary scholar Grace Frick, to relocate to the United States. The couple remained together for decades until Frick’s death in 1979.
In 1951 Yourcenar published her most acclaimed work, Memoirs of Hadrian, a novel she spent more than a decade writing. Set in ancient Rome, it takes the form of a letter from the Emperor Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius.
In 1980 she became the first woman to be elected to the Académie française, the principal council responsible for matters pertaining to the French language, which was founded in 1635.
The author died in 1987 aged 84. She is buried alongside her longtime partner, and the house in which they lived now serves as a museum documenting her life and work.
Homosexuality was decimalised in NSW in 1984
On this day in 1984, New South Wales decriminalised homosexuality. The bill had been passed on 22 May, but it received Royal Assent on 8 June.
The proposal to change the laws was put forward by the Labor government led by Neville Wran and was passed with the support of some members of the Liberal opposition, including leader Nick Greiner.
The age of consent for gay men, however, was set at 18, while for lesbians and heterosexual people it remained 16. The age of consent was not equalised until 2003.
In 2014 the New South Wales government expunged the records of people charged with consensual same-sex activities prior to 1984 and formally apologised for the original discriminatory laws.
OIP Staff, Image: Marguerite Yourcenar by Bernhard De Grendel, from Wikipedia, published under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license. This post was first published in 2022.
