Vigée, Claude (Andre Strauss) 1921-
VIGÉE, Claude (Andre Strauss) 1921-
PERSONAL: Born January 3, 1921, in Bischwiller, France; son of Robert (in business) and Germaine (a homemaker; maiden name, Meyer) Strauss; married Evelyne Meyer (a homemaker), November 29, 1947; children: Claudine, Daniel-Francois. Education: University of Strasbourg, France, B.A. 1938; Ohio State University, M.A., 1945, Ph.D. (Romance languages), 1947. Religion: Jewish. Hobbies and other interests: Classical music, sculpture, archaeology.
ADDRESSES: Home—21 Radak St., Jerusalem 92187, Israel; and 12 bis, rue des Marronniers, Paris 75016, France.
CAREER: Poet, essayist, translator. Professor of French and comparative literature, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 1947-49, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, 1949-50, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, 1949-60, and The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, 1960-84.
MEMBER: Writers' Union (Israel), Societe des Gens de Lettres, Academie Mallarme, Academie d'Alsace, Societe des Ecrivains d'Alsace et de Lorraine, Deutsche, Akadamie fur Sprache und Dichtung.
AWARDS, HONORS: Pierre de Regnier prize, Academie Francaise, 1972, for body of work; Jacob-Burckhardt prize, University of Bale (Switzerland), 1977, for body of work; Femina-Vacaresco prize for criticism (Paris), 1979; Johann-Peter Hebel prize, 1984, for body of work; Rockefeller Foundation scholar, 1986; Grand Prix de la poesie de la Societe des Gens de Lettres, Paris 1987; Chevalier de la Legion d'honneur, Palmes academiques.
WRITINGS:
La Lutte avec l'ange (poems), Les Lettres (Paris, France), 1950.
L'Aurore souterraine, Pierre Seghers (Paris, France), 1952.
La Come du Grand Pardon, Pierre Seghers (Paris, France), 1954.
L'Ete indien (poems and journal), Gallimard (Paris, France), 1957.
Les Artistes de la faim (criticism), Calmann-Levy (Paris, France), 1960.
Revolte et louanges (criticism), Jose Corti (Paris, France), 1962.
Moisson de Canaan, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1967.
La Lune d'hiver, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1970.
Le Soleil sous la mer (poems), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1972.
Delivrance du souffle Flammarion (Paris, France), 1977.
Du bec a l'oreille, Editions de la Nuee-Bleue (Strasbourg, Fance), 1977.
L'Art et le demonique (essays), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1978.
L'Extase et l'errance (essay), Grasset (Paris, France), 1982.
Paque de la parole, Flammarion (Paris, France), 1983.
Le Parfum et la cendre (autobiography), Grasset (Paris, France), 1984.
Les Orties noires (poems and prose), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1984.
Heimat des Hauches, Elster Verlag (Baden-Baden, Germany), 1985.
(With Luc Balbont) Une Voix dans le defile (autobiography), Nouvelle Cite (Paris, France), 1985.
La Manne et la Rosee (essay), Descelee de Brouwer (Paris, France), 1986.
La Faille du regard (essays and interviews), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1987.
Wenderowefir, Association Jean-Baptiste Weckerlin (Strasbourg, France), 1988.
La Manna e la rugiada, Editiones Borla (Rome, Italy), 1988.
Aux Sources de la litterature moderne I, (essays), Entailles-Philippe Nadal (Bourg-en-Bresse, France), 1989.
Le Feu d'une nuit d'hiver (poems), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1989.
Leben in Jerusalem, Elster Verlag, 1990.
Apprendre la nuit (poems), Arfuyen (Paris, France), 1991.
La Terre el le Souffle, Claude Vigée, Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1992.
Dans le silence de l'Aleph (essays), Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1992.
Flow Tide: Selected Poetry and Prose, edited and translated by Anthony Rudolf, Menard-King's College Press (London, England), 1992.
L'Heritage du feu (essays, poems, and interviews), Mame (Paris, France), 1992.
Les Cinq rouleaux (Bible studies), Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1993.
Un Panier de Houblon (memoirs), Albin Michel (Paris, France), Volume 1, 1994, Volume 2, 1995.
Treize inconnus de la Bible, Albin Michel (Paris, France), 1996.
La Maison des Vivants, Editions de la Nuee Bleue (Strasbourg, France), 1996.
Aux portes du labyrinthe (poems), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1996.
Demain la seule demeure (essays), L'Harmattan (Paris, France), 1997.
La Lucarne aux etoiles: Dix cahiers de Jerusalem, 1967-1997, Cerf (Paris, France), 1998.
Vision et silence dans la poetique juive: Demain la seule demeure: Essais et entretiens, 1983-1996, Harmattan (Paris, France), 1999.
Contributor of poems and essays to journals, including PMLA, Partisan Review, Comparative Literature, Webster Review, Southern Review, Poesie 42, and Chelsea Review. Contributor of poetry to anthologies, including Modern European Poetry, Bantam Classics, 1966; Jewish Frontier Anthology, 1967; and Voices within the Ark, Avon Books, 1978. Translator into French of poems by R. M. Rilke, D. Seter, David Rokeah, Yvan Goll, and T. S. Eliot.
SIDELIGHTS: A poet, essayist, and professor, Claude Vigée was born into a Jewish family in the Alsace region of France along the Rhine River. In 1939, Vigée and his family were expelled from the area by the Nazis, and they took up residence in southern France. While studying medicine in Toulouse, from 1940 to 1942 Vigée helped organize the Jewish resistance against the German occupiers and the collaborating Vichy government of France. Because his family had been residents of the Alsace region for ten generations, Vigée, though a Jew, was allowed to travel freely, and he used this freedom to recruit others into the resistance movement. Vigée's first poems were published in Poesie 42, a resistance magazine. During this time he met the poet and novelist Louis Aragon, as well as poet Pierre Emmanuel, who became his lifelong friend.
When his life was endangered by his resistance activities, Vigée and his mother used forged travel papers to escape to Spain and eventually to immigrate to theUnited States in 1943. He earned a doctorate degree in Romance languages and literatures from Ohio State University and married his longtime sweetheart, his cousin Evelyne. An illustrious teaching and writing career followed, in the United States and later in Israel, where Vigée and his family immigrated in 1960. Since the publication of his first collection of poetry La Lutte avec l'ange, in 1950, Vigée has published a steady stream of poetry, narratives, journal entries, essays, and translations. He has known and corresponded with many famous literary contemporaries, including Andre Gide, Albert Camus, Saint-Jean Perse, and T. S. Eliot, whose Four Quartets Vigée translated.
While his writings are varied, Vigée prefers to be described as a poet, "because narratives and essays constitute attempts at elaboration of the thematic cores of my poems," he wrote in Le Parfum et la cendre. "These throbbing cores are the primary elements of my sensibility. I am a storyteller but in no way a novelist. I am not gifted with the ability to invent characters or situations. But those that I live, those that I note around me, I seize them with my gaze, I garner them, I make them my own, and I know how to make them live in the eyes of others because I love to recount them. From mouth to ear first of all; in the secret of the thing written down, finally."
According to Freema Gottlieb in an article published in Flow Tide: Selected Poetry and Prose, it was in the United States that Vigée "first tasted true exile which, together with the longing for 'origins,' was to be the driving force in his writing." In the United States, Vigée felt deprived of a native land, a family, and a personal landscape. "In a sense, Vigée's whole oeuvre amounts to a yearning for lost origins, a perennial nostalgia transcended through return to Jerusalem, the 'origin of origins.' And yet, there remains the ache of betrayal that he tried to overcome," Gottlieb remarked.
Since retiring from teaching in 1984, Vigée has divided his time between France and Jerusalem, visiting Germany, Italy, and Greece.
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
BOOKS
Lartichaux, Jean-Yves, Claude Vigée, Seghers (Paris, France), 1978.
Vigée, Claude, Flow Tide: Selected Poetry and Prose, edited and translated by Anthony Rudolf, Menard-King's College Press (London, England), 1992.