Guy Mazeline
Guy Mazeline (12 April 1900 Le Havre – 25 May 1996 Boulogne-Billancourt) was a French writer, winner of the prix Goncourt in 1932 for his novel Les Loups, surprisingly winning against Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
He is the son of Alphonse Mazeline and Elise Hélène Suzanne Jaquereau. He married on 18 December 1924, to Claire Louise Dors (7 June 1901 Nevers).[1]
Works
- Piège du démon, 1927
- Porte close, 1928
- Un royaume près de la mer, 1931
- Les Loups, 1932
- Le Capitaine Durban, 1934
- Le Délire, 1935
- Les Îles du matin, 1936
- Bêtafeu, 1937
- Le Panier flottant, 1938
- Scènes de la vie hitlérienne, 1938
- Pied d'alouette, 1941
- La Femme donnée en gages, 1943
- Tony l'accordeur, 1943
- Un dernier coup de griffe, 1944
- Le Souffle de l'été, 1946
- Valfort, 1951
- Chrétienne compagnie, 1958
- Un amour d'Italie, 1967
Les Loups/The Wolves (Synopsis)
Maximilien Jobourg is the lead protagonist. Due to inheriting his father's business, initially he lives comfortably with his wife Marie-Jeanne and his children Didier (who aspires to be a sailor), Vincent (who is disabled after a childhood accident affected one of his legs), Benoît (who is impulsive, violent and hires prostitutes regularly), Geneviève (who's the fiancee of the wealthy Gilbert), and Blanche (who's married to her banker husband Georges, whom Vincent and Benoit privately refer to as the 'Hypocrite', due to his ambition and duplicity. Blanche and Georges still live in the family home).
Maximilien has become jaded with the shallow Marie-Jeanne, who is obsessed with appearances, and who worries that her husband has little business acumen. His mother Virginie detests Marie-Jeanne due to her working class origins. Marie Jeanne and Virginie are estranged from one another due to this mutual distrust. Virginie also seems to loathe Maximilien too, as she connives with Georges to bankrupt him by persuading him to invest in worthless shares. Maximilien is no judge of human character and cannot detect the duplicity of his son-in-law, assuming that given their family relationship, Georges would not deceive him in financial matters.
Maximilien's niece Valérie appears in Le Havre. Valérie, however , is Maximilien's illegitimate daughter, the child his lover Pauline bore after she left Le Havre for Martinique twenty years before, when she married Labrête. Valérie was brought up as the child of Pauline and her husband . But discovering the truth that Valerie is not his daughter, Labrête drowns himself. Now dying herself, Pauline has sent Valérie to her 'uncle' Maximilien in Le Havre. Maximilien conceals her presence in a servant's home but comes to love her more than his other, legitimate children from his marriage to Marie-Jeanne.
Valérie learns that Maximilien is her real father. She cannot live with the deceptive nature of her previous life and commits suicide with an 'ornamental' weapon that Maximilien provided inadvertantly within her room. Traumatised by Valerie's death, Maximilien lines his trouser pockets with rocks and drowns himself at sea. [2]
Critical Response to Les Loups
According to one reviewer, Tony Shaw, Les Loups was condemned as overly lengthy, 'unreadable' and dull in Figaro and Le Parisien even in 1999, which indicates that there is still critical opinion that Journey to the End of Night should have won the prix Goncourt in 1932 instead. French critic Eugene Saccomano novelised the consequent debate over the relative merits of The Wolves and Journey to the End of Night, in a book entitled Goncourt '32. [3] In 2017, Les Loups was cited as a "literary Atlantide" in a French critical collection that assessed the posthumous oblivion that has attended the novel, its author's legacy and several other French 'forgotten authors ', some of whom also previously received the prix Goncourt [4]
Les Loups has not been republished in English since 1935, or in French since 1951, according to bibliographic data. It became available in microfilm format in 1989.
None of Mazeline's other work is available in English translation.
English Translations
- The wolves; translated from the French by Eric Sutton. New York, The Macmillan company, 1934.
References
- ^ "Guy Mazeline, Quercinois dans l'Histoire". Archived from the original on 2008-11-16. Retrieved 2010-02-09.
- ^ Tony Shaw: "Guy Mazeline: Les Loups/The Wolves (1932)" http://tonyshaw3.blogspot.com/2016/12/guy-mazeline-les-loups-wolves-1932_24.html
- ^ Aude Lancelin: "The Day Goncourt Missed Louis-Ferdinand Celine" BibliObs 03.11.2016: https://bibliobs-nouvelobs-com.translate.goog/sur-le-sentier-des-prix/20151103.OBS8747/le-jour-ou-le-goncourt-a-rate-louis-ferdinand-celine.html
- ^ Yvon Houssain et al (eds) Literary Atlantides: Forgotten Writers: Press of the University of France-Comte: 2017: ISBN 9782848675749
- v
- t
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- 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