''Fires'' (french: Feux) is a 1936 prose book by the French writer
Marguerite Yourcenar
Marguerite Yourcenar (, , ; born Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour; 8 June 1903 – 17 December 1987) was a Belgian-born French novelist and essayist, who became a US citizen in 1947. Winner of the ''Prix Fem ...
. It consists of aphorisms, prose poetry and fragmentary diary entries alluding to a love story.
Reception
Stephen Koch reviewed the book for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' in 1981, and described it as an "unwritten novel", a type of fragmentary book he compared to works by
Rainer Maria Rilke
René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...
,
Colette
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (; 28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters. She was also a mime, actress, and journalist. Colette is best known in the English-speaking world for her ...
,
Cyril Connolly
Cyril Vernon Connolly CBE (10 September 1903 – 26 November 1974) was an English literary critic and writer. He was the editor of the influential literary magazine ''Horizon'' (1940–49) and wrote '' Enemies of Promise'' (1938), which combin ...
, and
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popular ...
: "These books insist - on everypage - that they are not novels. They refuse to be novels. Yet through their fragmented alternatives, we still can glimpse the novels they refuse to be - tales otherwise untellable, masked and revealed - for reasons ranging from discretion to despair to a certain visionary breathlessness. ... The unwritten novel among the fantasies and aphorisms of ''Fires'' is a classic tale."
See also
*
1936 in literature
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1936.
Events
*January 8 – Jewish booksellers throughout Nazi Germany are deprived of their Reich Publications Chamber membership cards, without which no one can ...
*
20th-century French literature
20th-century French literature is literature written in French from 1900 to 1999. For literature made after 1999, see the article Contemporary French literature. Many of the developments in French literature in this period parallel changes in ...
References
1936 books
French books
Works by Marguerite Yourcenar
Éditions Grasset books
Books of aphorisms
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