John Antoine Nau
Encyclopedia
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
in 1903.
Life
He was born on November 19, 1860, in San Francisco, California and was thus an American citizen. His father, an engineer and businessman, had emigrated from France to California about 1845 and become a naturalized citizen. Attacked by typhusTyphus
Epidemic typhus is a form of typhus so named because the disease often causes epidemics following wars and natural disasters...
, he died in 1864, leaving a widow and three children. In 1866 they returned to France, first to Le Havre
Le Havre
Le Havre is a city in the Seine-Maritime department of the Haute-Normandie region in France. It is situated in north-western France, on the right bank of the mouth of the river Seine on the English Channel. Le Havre is the most populous commune in the Haute-Normandie region, although the total...
and then to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. In 1881 at the age of 21 years Nau boarded a three-master doing business in Haiti and the West Indies as a pilot’s assistant. Later he became Assistant Commissioner and traveled to Colombia, Venezuela and New York.
He returned to France during 1883 and married in 1885. For their honeymoon Nau and his bride went to Martinique, planning to stay, but family obligations forced them to return to France. Nau would never return to Martinique
Martinique
Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...
. In 1886 he lived in San Raphaél; 1887 in Piriac; then elsewhere. While living in Carteret in La Manche he wrote his first book of poetry, Au seuil de l’espoir (On the Threshold of Hope), which he published in 1897 at his own expense. He was 37 years old. Then to Majorca in 1898, to Tenerife in the Canaries. In Puerto de la Orotava he began his novel, finished in Andalusia. Between 1903 and 1906 he settled in Saint Tropez. In 1903, again at his own expense, he published Enemy Force. It was a commercial failure, and was not even reviewed because the author did not send it to the critics. But he never wrote to make a living; he wrote only for his own pleasure. He relocated to Algers, then to Corsica for seven years (his record). The war caused him to return to Paris from 1916–17, then to Bretagne at Tréboul, where he died on March 17, 1918, at the age of 57 years.
In 1903, age 43, he was awarded the first Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
for Enemy Force, his first novel. It tells the story of Phillipe Veuly, poet, who awakens in an insane asylum. He does not know how he got there or why, but learns this in time. He becomes enamored of a female inmate who eventually leaves, he becomes inhabited by a being from another planet, is tortured by the ‘doctors’ of the establishment, escapes and travels the world in search of the female ex-patient. Darkly humorous and satirical, it is considered by many to be a forgotten masterpiece of science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
.
It is said that he was called Gino by family and friends and thus his name—pronounced the same as J. Nau in French; and that it is a mixture of his American birth (John) and French heritage (Antoine); and that Nau means ‘vessel’ in Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
, showing his love for the sea; and that it is in homage to the Haitian poet Ignace Nau
Ignace Nau
Ignace Nau was a Haitian poet and storyteller. Born in Port-au-Prince, Nau studied in a renowned military school in Haiti before attending the Catholic University of New York. After returning to Haiti, Nau founded a literary society named "The School of 1836" with his brother, Emile Nau, and the...
; or all or none of the above.
Many of his works remained unedited at his death and are unpublished as of 2011.
Prix Goncourt
In 1903 a group writers gathered in Paris (J. K. Huysmans, Octave MirbeauOctave Mirbeau
Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...
, Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet
Léon Daudet was a French journalist, writer, an active monarchist, and a member of the Académie Goncourt.-Move to the right:...
, the brothers Rosny
Rosny
Rosny is the name of several places:*Rosny, Tasmania in Australia*Rosny-sous-Bois commune in the Seine-Saint-Denis département in France*Rosny-sur-Seine commune in the Yvelines département in France...
, Paul Marguerite, Lucien Desclaves, Élémir Bourges
Élémir Bourges
Élémir Bourges was a French novelist. A winner of the Goncourt Prize, he was also a member of the Académie Goncourt. Bourges, who accused the Naturalists of having "belittled and deformed man", was closely linked with the Decadent and Symbolist modes in literature...
, Léon Hennique, Gustave Geffroy
Gustave Geffroy
Gustave Geffroy was a French journalist, art critic, historian, and novelist. He was one of the ten founding members of the literary organization Académie Goncourt in 1900....
) and awarded Enemy Force the first Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
(by a vote of 6 to 4). Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt
Edmond de Goncourt , born Edmond Louis Antoine Huot de Goncourt, was a French writer, literary critic, art critic, book publisher and the founder of the Académie Goncourt.-Biography:...
had stipulated in his will that they would award a prose work of imagination to distinguish and support a young literary debut full of promise. He rested in peace that first year. Nau was 43 years old. The author was almost completely unknown, except for a very few exotic stories in La Revue Blanche. He was living in Saint Tropez at the time and didn’t even return to Paris to claim his prize money. His "outsider" status irked many a critic, but it only increased his status among the jury and other, younger writers. In 1906 Paul Léautraud: “The Prix Goncourt has really only been given once—the first time to Nau”. And years later Huysmans would say, “It was the best one that we ever crowned.”
English translations
- Enemy Force (Adaptation and Introduction by Michael Shreve), Black Coat Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-934543-49-1
- "The Emerald Eyes" (translated by Michael Shreve), InTranslation (The Brooklyn RailThe Brooklyn RailThe Brooklyn Rail is a political, artistic and literary magazine based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Coverage includes political andliterary essays, art criticism, interviews, original fiction and poetry, and reviews....
), August, 2009.
Publications
- 1903: Force ennemie—novel (Enemy Force, Adaptation and Introduction by Michael Shreve, Black Coat Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-934543-49-1)
- 1904: Journal d'un écrivain, translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (A Writer's Diary)
- 1905: Le Prêteur d’amour—novel (The Love Lender)
- 1906: La Gennia—novel
- 1912: Cristobal le Poète—novel (Christobal the Poet)
- 1914: En suivant les goélands—poetry (Following the Seagulls)
Posthumous Publications:
- 1921: Thérèse Donati, moeurs corses—novel (Therese Donati, Corsican customs)
- 1923: Les Galanteries d’Anthime Budin—novel (The Gallantry of Anthime Budin)
- 1923: Pilotins—novel (Apprentice Pilots)
- 1923: Les Trois Amours de Benigno Reyes—stories (The Three Loves of Benigno Reyes)
- 1924: Poèmes triviaux et mystiques—poetry (Mundane and Mystical Poems)
- 1929: Archipel caraïbe—stories (Caribbean Archipelago)
- 1933 Lettres exotiques (Exotic Letters)
- 1949: Lettres écrites de Corse et de Bretagne (Letters written from Corsica and Brittany)
- 1972: Poésies antillaises. Illustrées par Henri MatisseHenri MatisseHenri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
(Antillean Poems)
External links
- John-Antoine Nau at the French WikisourceWikisourceWikisource is an online digital library of free content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aims are to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has...