Henri Troyat - French academician and writer

[nairakev]

Henri Troyat

French writer, biographer, Member of "Academie Française".

 

In few words hard-working writer.

May interest those who are looking for some precise research on Tolstoi's biography and Russian History in general between 18-20 centuries.

 

---------------

from Voila.fr (Francetelecom's portal) http://encyclo.voila.fr/cgi-bin/mframe?str=troyat

 

Romancier français d'origine russe arménienne (né à Moscou, 1911 ).

Depuis Faux Jour (1935 ) et l'Araigne (prix Goncourt 1938 ), qui le firent connaître, il touche un vaste public avec des romans cycliques de forme traditionnelle, dans lesquels il fait revivre la Russie d'autrefois (la Lumière des justes, 1959 -1962 ; les Héritiers de l'avenir, 1968 -1970 ; le Moscovite, 1974 -1975 ; la Gouvernante française, 1989 ; Aliocha, 1991 ) ou peint la société française contemporaine (les Semailles et les Moissons, 1959 -1962 ; les Eygletière, 1965 -1967 ). Il a aussi écrit des biographies (Tolstoï, 1965 ; Catherine la Grande, 1977 ; Pierre le Grand, 1979 ; Ivan le Terrible, 1982 ; Tourgueniev, 1985 ; Gorki, 1986 ; Flaubert, 1988 ; Maupassant, 1989 ) et des pièces de théâtre : les Vivants (1946 ). Il fut élu à l'Académie française en 1959.

 

 

-----------

P.S.

Personally, I find him extremely boring. Though many of his books were bestsellers in France. Let's precise bestsellers!

Somehow, boring bestsellers. It is personal!

[Aratta-Kingdom]

HENRI TROYAT

 

The Times (London)

March 6, 2007, Tuesday

 

Henri Troyat, writer, was born on November 1, 1911. He died on March 4,

2007, aged 95

 

Vastly prolific writer whose interests ran from multivolume novels

to popular history and biography

 

A popular novelist and biographer of enormous fecundity, Henri Troyat

was the doyen, or oldest member, of the Academie francaise, and the

author of a bewildering number of books reflecting his chief passions:

France and Russia.

 

Despite the name he assumed as a young man in France, Troyat was a

Russian of Armenian extraction. He was born Lev Aslanovitch Tarasoff

in Moscow in 1911, the son of Lucien Tarasoff, an immensely rich cloth

merchant and railway baron, and his wife, nee Lydia Abessolomov. When

the Revolution broke out in 1917 Troyat, then 6, began a hair-raising

journey with his family. The first stage took them from Moscow to the

Caucasus. At one point they were stranded on the Volga while the Reds

closed in. The only way out was the river, but the one available boat

refused to take them -it was already too packed. Then it transpired

that the captain was a school friend of his father's. He allowed them

to travel -in the bathroom. Troyat claimed that saved his life.

 

Troyat's father possessed huge estates in the Crimea, but it was not

wise to stop.

 

They went to Constantinople and thence to Venice. The odyssey ended

in when they arrived in Paris in 1920. Troyat felt at home at once.

 

He had always spoken French, thanks to his Swiss governess, and he

adapted easily to life in his new country. He attended the Lycee

Pasteur in Neuilly where he was encouraged to keep a diary by a

schoolmaster who soon recognised his literary talents. He studied

in the law faculty of the university, taking a licence in law, but

instead of practising he passed the exam to become a functionary in

the prefecture that administers Paris.

 

He did his obligatory military service at Metz in Lorraine. He was

still in uniform when his first novel, Faux jour, was published in

1935. It snapped up the Prix du roman populiste, the first in an

impressive sequence of prizes he received in the years immediately

before the Second World War.

 

He returned to the prefecture, working in the budget department.

 

Neither he nor his employers seem to have had any problems with

him writing at the same time. In 1938 the corpus of his works were

"crowned" by the Academie francaise. That same year a colleague

dropped into his office and said: "Quick, go down to Plon (his

publishers). You've got the Goncourt." He had won it for his novel

L'Araigne (The Web).

 

Troyat served briefly as an officer in the war, but was demobilised in

1940, and from 1942 onwards he devoted himself entirely to literature.

 

His novels examined human failure and inadequacy. They disappointed

some people in that they were not novels of ideas, but derived much

more from the Russian classics he had known from his childhood. He

was capable of lashing out at his detractors and his novel La Tete

sur les epaules is an attack on Jean-Paul Sartre.

 

Between 1946 and 1948 he published Tant que la terre durera (As long as

the earth lasts), one of his most important works, a trilogy that told

the story of a Russian family from the outbreak of the First World War

to their arrival in exile in Paris. The product of a decade of work,

it was naturally based on the experience of himself and his family.

 

He liked the old-fashioned canvas of the multi-volume novel. Both

Les Semailles et les moissons (the sowing and the reaping) and La

Lumiere des justes (the light of the just), for example, came out in

five volumes.

 

His novels were often dominated by female characters, and when asked

about this Troyat said they were better "fuel for the novelists,

their lives being closer to those of animals".

 

He liked to alternate between fiction and non-fiction. His approach to

biography was very broad brush, bringing with it the accusation that

he was "l'historien des concierges" -a historian for char ladies. He

gave his public what they wanted, and they definitely wanted it:

his books were printed in runs of 600,000 copies.

 

His productivity was phenomenal. Over the decades he brought out lives

of the great Russians -Dostoevsky, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Gogol,

Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander I, Alexander II,

Alexander III, Nicholas I, Nicholas II, Ivan the Terrible, Chekov,

Turgenev, Gorky and Rasputin -as well as of such French greats as

Flaubert, Maupassant, Zola, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Balzac and Dumas

pere.

 

Troyat was elected to the Academie francaise on May 21, 1959, taking

seat 28, which had previously been occupied by Claude Farrere.

 

He was appointed Grand-croix of the Legion d'honneur, Commandeur de

l'ordre nationale du Merite and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

 

At 65, in 1976 he published his memoirs, Un si long chemin. And the

road was to continue for another 30 years. In 2003 a court case

cast a shadow over his distinguished career when he was found to

have committed plagiarism in his 1997 biography of Juliette Drouet,

the mistress of Victor Hugo.

 

He lived in a detached house in the rue Bonaparte near the Metro

Pereire in the north of Paris, and then in a flat on the rue de

Rivoli. He impressed those journalists granted an interview by his

prodigious memory: he was able to recite some of the works of favourite

authors like Zola and Mauriac by heart, and read the dictionary every

day to expand his French vocabulary.

 

He was twice married, and had a son by his first marriage and daughters

by his second.

 

[MosJan]

Astvats hogin lusavori

[_femme333_]

In a Russian television news he was regardes as French-Russian.

There was no mention of him being Armenian.

 

 

 

 

 

Henri Troyat

French writer, biographer, Member of "Academie Française".

 

In few words hard-working writer.

May interest those who are looking for some precise research on Tolstoi's biography and Russian History in general between 18-20 centuries.

 

---------------

from Voila.fr (Francetelecom's portal) http://encyclo.voila.fr/cgi-bin/mframe?str=troyat

 

Romancier français d'origine russe arménienne (né à Moscou, 1911 ).

Depuis Faux Jour (1935 ) et l'Araigne (prix Goncourt 1938 ), qui le firent connaître, il touche un vaste public avec des romans cycliques de forme traditionnelle, dans lesquels il fait revivre la Russie d'autrefois (la Lumière des justes, 1959 -1962 ; les Héritiers de l'avenir, 1968 -1970 ; le Moscovite, 1974 -1975 ; la Gouvernante française, 1989 ; Aliocha, 1991 ) ou peint la société française contemporaine (les Semailles et les Moissons, 1959 -1962 ; les Eygletière, 1965 -1967 ). Il a aussi écrit des biographies (Tolstoï, 1965 ; Catherine la Grande, 1977 ; Pierre le Grand, 1979 ; Ivan le Terrible, 1982 ; Tourgueniev, 1985 ; Gorki, 1986 ; Flaubert, 1988 ; Maupassant, 1989 ) et des pièces de théâtre : les Vivants (1946 ). Il fut élu à l'Académie française en 1959.

-----------

P.S.

Personally, I find him extremely boring. Though many of his books were bestsellers in France. Let's precise bestsellers!

Somehow, boring bestsellers. It is personal! images/smiles/converted/icon_rolleyes.gif

 

[Armenak]

He was a Russian of Armenian ancestry.

 

Many regard Khachaturian as Russian as well.

[Aratta-Kingdom]

In a Russian television news he was regardes as French-Russian.

There was no mention of him being Armenian.

 

I too saw that news report... In 3 minutes they have mentioned about 6-7 times that he was russian. With enough confidence, they didn't have to go to that extreme. If you look to his picture, he look just like any other ordinary armenian you might see on the street.

 

 

 

 

 

The Irish Times

March 10, 2007 Saturday

 

Russian exile became one of France's favourite authors

 

 

Henri Troyat: Henri Troyat, who has died at the age of 95, was one

of the most prolific and popular French writers of the 20th century.

The author of short psychological novels, long, multi- volume

historical frescos, short stories, plays, reportage and biographies,

he had a literary career that spanned 70 years and was particularly

distinctive for its blend of French and Russian cultures.

 

Troyat was born Lev Aslanovich Tarassov in Moscow, the son of a

wealthy Armenian draper who had made a fortune through investment in

railways and banking. He was brought up in a privileged environment,

with a coachman, a chauffeur and, most significantly, a Swiss

governess who taught him French. All this came to an end, however,

when the Russian revolution broke out in 1917.

 

Initially, the family retreated to their estate in the Caucasus to

await the collapse of Bolshevik rule; but by 1920 it was clear that

the counter-revolution was failing and that they would have to leave

their homeland. They managed to catch the last emigre boat from the

Crimea to Constantinople, from where they joined the exiled Russian

community in Paris, settling in the prosperous suburb of Neuilly,

where Troyat attended the Lycée Pasteur.

 

Like many Russian exiles, however, the family found life in the west

difficult and drifted slowly into debt, culminating with the arrival

of the bailiffs and an enforced move to the Place de la Nation.

 

Although his parents experienced the classic problems of once-wealthy

emigres - loss of status, isolation and a growing reliance on an

unreal Russian community, still transfixed by a belief in the

imminent downfall of the Soviet regime - Troyat himself adapted

quickly to his new environment. True, the themes of exile and

political caution remain powerful in his fiction, but he studied law

at the Sorbonne, acquired French citizenship in 1933, and was

appointed as a civil servant in the prefecture of the Seine, a post

he held until 1942.

 

At the same time, he began a literary career with a series of short

psychological novels, which derived a great deal from his attendance

at lectures on psychoanalysis at the Sainte-Anne Hospital. Faux Jour

(Deceptive Light) appeared in 1935 and immediately won the Prix du

Roman Populiste. It was followed that same year by Le Vivier (The

Fish-Tank), by Grandeur Nature (Life-Size, 1936) and La Clef de Voûte

(The Keystone, 1937). In 1938, he won both the Prix Max Barthou de

l'Académie Française and the Prix Goncourt for the novel L'Araigne

(The Web).

 

Thus by the age of 27, Troyat was a well-known and relatively

prosperous writer, although his parents' experience had taught him

caution and he retained his post in the prefecture. With the outbreak

of the second World War, Troyat was mobilised as a lieutenant in the

supply section at Tulle and returned to Paris in 1940 - at which

point his career took a major shift. Although he continued with his

short psychological fiction - such as La Neige en Deuil (Snow in

Mourning, 1952) - he embarked on two major innovations that would

dominate his subsequent work: the long novel cycle and biography.

 

Immediately after the completion of L'Araigne, he had begun preparing

for a biography of Dostoevsky. Not only did this introduce him to the

work of archival research, which was to prove invaluable for his

historical fiction, it initiated a sequence of biographies of Russian

writers and tsars.

 

This continued to develop until his death and included studies of

Pushkin, Tolstoy, Gogol and Chekhov, together with works on Catherine

the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander I and Ivan the Terrible.

Troyat's biographies were major achievements, not least because they

brought to the attention of a broad French public an introduction to

Russian literary and political culture.

 

The historical material developed in Troyat's biographies fed into a

series of long historical novels, mostly based in Russia, which

together constitute a fictional bio-graphy of the nation. Beginning

with his own experiences of exile, assimilation and the memories of

his parents, Troyat devoted a trilogy, Tant que la Terre Durera

(While the Earth Endures, 1947-50), to pre-revolutionary Russia, the

revolution and civil war, and the phenomenon of exile. Then, in its

pendant tetralogy, Les Semailles et les Moissons (The Seed and the

Fruit, 1953-58), he explored France from the same perspective - the

novels were made into a popular French television series of the same

name in 2001.

 

These long novel-cycles were followed by La Lumière des Justes (The

Light of the Just, 1959-63), Les Eygletière (The Eygletière Family,

1965-67), Les Héritiers de l'Avenir (The Inheritors of the Future,

1968-70) and Le Moscovite (1974-76). It could be argued that few

French writers have done so much to make historical Russia real to a

mass French readership.

 

However, as impressive as the short novels, novel cycles and

biographies are, it is probably in his short stories that Troyat

demonstrates the most originality and skill. Heavily influenced by

Gogol and by the German romantics, collections such as La Fosse

Commune (The Common Grave, 1939), Du Philanthrope à la Rouquine (From

the Philanthropist to the Redhead, 1945) and Le Geste d'Eve (The

Story of Eve, 1964) blend light social satire with a genuinely

disturbing sense of the fantastic and evil.

 

Troyat eventually abandoned his civil-service post in 1942 and

devoted himself full time to literature for the rest of his life. His

early achievement in combining critical recognition with commercial

success continued throughout his career: in the 1950s, he became one

of France's first best-sellers, and in 1959, at the age of 47, he was

elected to the Académie Française.

 

His second wife predeceased him, and he is survived by a son from his

first marriage.

 

Henri Troyat (Lev Aslanovich Tarassov): born November 1st, 1911; died

March 4th, 2007

 

 

[_femme333_]

Henri Troyat, born Levon Aslan Torossian or Lev Aslanovich Tarasov(rus:Лев Асланович Тарасов), (November 1, 1911 – March 2, 2007[1]) was a French author, biographer, historian and novelist of Armenian descent.

 

Born in Moscow, his family fled Russia in fear of the coming revolution. After a long exile, the family settled in Paris in 1920, where young Troyat was schooled and later earned a law degree.

 

 

 

 

 

Henri Troyat

French writer, biographer, Member of "Academie Française".

 

In few words hard-working writer.

May interest those who are looking for some precise research on Tolstoi's biography and Russian History in general between 18-20 centuries.

 

---------------

from Voila.fr (Francetelecom's portal) http://encyclo.voila.fr/cgi-bin/mframe?str=troyat

 

Romancier français d'origine russe arménienne (né à Moscou, 1911 ).

Depuis Faux Jour (1935 ) et l'Araigne (prix Goncourt 1938 ), qui le firent connaître, il touche un vaste public avec des romans cycliques de forme traditionnelle, dans lesquels il fait revivre la Russie d'autrefois (la Lumière des justes, 1959 -1962 ; les Héritiers de l'avenir, 1968 -1970 ; le Moscovite, 1974 -1975 ; la Gouvernante française, 1989 ; Aliocha, 1991 ) ou peint la société française contemporaine (les Semailles et les Moissons, 1959 -1962 ; les Eygletière, 1965 -1967 ). Il a aussi écrit des biographies (Tolstoï, 1965 ; Catherine la Grande, 1977 ; Pierre le Grand, 1979 ; Ivan le Terrible, 1982 ; Tourgueniev, 1985 ; Gorki, 1986 ; Flaubert, 1988 ; Maupassant, 1989 ) et des pièces de théâtre : les Vivants (1946 ). Il fut élu à l'Académie française en 1959.

-----------

P.S.

Personally, I find him extremely boring. Though many of his books were bestsellers in France. Let's precise bestsellers!

Somehow, boring bestsellers. It is personal! images/smiles/converted/icon_rolleyes.gif

 

[cycaroon]

Շուտով Երեւանում լույս կտեսնի Անրի Թրուայայի 'Աննա Պրեդայլ' հայտնի պատմվածքի բնագրից հայերեն առաջին թարգմանությունը: Խորհուրդ եմ տալիս բոլորին անպայման ձեռք բերել ու կարդալ: