Anna De Noailles

Vocation

Romanian-French poet, a leading literary figure in France in the pre-World War I period. The daughter of a Romanian prince and granddaughter of a Turkish pasha, she adopted France and its language for her life and writings even before her marriage to a French count. Her friends included the novelists Marcel Proust and Colette and the poets Paul Valéry and Jean Cocteau. In her literary salon she kept most of the writers of her time under the spell of her artful conversation. Anna de Noailles wrote three novels, an autobiography, and many collections of poetry. Her volumes of poems, Le Coeur innombrable (1901; “The Numberless Heart”), Les Éblouissements (1907; “Resplendence”), and L’Honneur de souffrir (1927; “The Honour of Suffering”), are vibrant with a sensual love of nature. Her lyricism draws from the Romantic themes of the 19th-century poets Alfred de Vigny and Alphonse de Lamartine. Her later works reflect her fear of the thought of the inevitable collapse of her physical powers. Anna de Noailles was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor, the first woman to be received in the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, and she was honored with the "Grand Prix" of the Académie Française in 1921. She died 30 April 1933, Paris. Link to Wikipedia biography