Ursule Molinaro
Encyclopedia
Ursule Molinaro was a prolific novelist, playwright, translator and visual artist, the author of 12 novels, two collections of short prose works, innumerable short stories for literary magazines and dozens of translations from the French
and German
. She lived and wrote in French
in Paris
until shortly after World War II
, when she came to New York in 1949 to work as a multilingual proofreader for the newly formed United Nations
. Just a few years later, having realized that she would stay in the United States of America, she made the decision to systematically retrain herself not only to write, but to dream, think, and speak, in the language of her new soil.
, Rome
, Lisbon
, and provincial America
. She was fluent in English
, French, German
, Italian
, Spanish
, and Greek
, all of which she spoke without accent.
In 1958, she was co-founder and fiction editor of the Chelsea (magazine)
.
Molinaro's novels often portrayed women with a disregard for the exigencies of their social situation: In The Autobiography of Cassandra, Priestess and Prophetess of Troy, her most blatantly feminist novel, the prophetess relates her own doom and oppression from a privileged psychic level---that of a person who is dead. What Cassandra tells is not only the story of power robbed from women but also the shoddy treatment smug civilizations inflict upon the visionary, who is often an artist.
In her novel Fat Skeletons, a translator wary of serving unappreciative publishers attempts to pass her own novel off as a translation. In the Old Moon with the New Moon in Its Arms, a patrician poetess of ancient Greece scandalizes her parents by offering herself as a religious sacrifice. It is a self-destructive gesture that rejects birth and family, yet reaches out to a larger kind of social and spiritual truth.
Molinaro's greatest theme is the existential ability of the individual to remake herself. In her fiction, her characters fall into two types: insular, fiercely independent people whose entire identity has been self-created by the exercise of will—usually with a flouting disregard for convention or tradition—and people who are comically mired and rooted in their own pasts, a fact that usually makes them laughable, self-righteous clichés.
, who now serves as her literary executor. In the latter part of her life, she developed a method for teaching creative writing that relied wholly upon the oral and taught creative writing at several universities and in her home until her death in 2000.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. She lived and wrote in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
in 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...
until shortly after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, when she came to New York in 1949 to work as a multilingual proofreader for the newly formed United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
. Just a few years later, having realized that she would stay in the United States of America, she made the decision to systematically retrain herself not only to write, but to dream, think, and speak, in the language of her new soil.
Ideals
Molinaro's texts attempt to fulfill a Nietzschian ideal. They hinge on the belief that there is a human supra-psychology that transcends nationality, gender, psychosexual archetypes, and individual linguistic heritages. Using a vast battery of unusual and privileged literary tools, she hoped to arrive at a new set of universals by the stringent crafting of razor-sharp narratives, which come to merciless, acerbic conclusions about culture and go so far as to radically reinterpret Greek myth.Career
Molinaro was a linguist and a world traveler and a woman who participated in the artistic milieus of late Modernist Paris, Abstract Expressionist and then Off-Off Broadway New York, LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, and provincial America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. She was fluent in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, French, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
, all of which she spoke without accent.
In 1958, she was co-founder and fiction editor of the Chelsea (magazine)
Chelsea (magazine)
Chelsea was a small American, twice-a-year literary magazine based in New York City. The influential journal, edited for many years by Sonia Raiziss, published poetry, prose, book reviews and translations with an emphasis on translations, art, and cross-cultural exchange.-History:In 1958, The...
.
Style and themes
Like Nabokov, Molinaro was a fully realized transplanted writer; but unlike Nabokov, she did not write about the comedy that results when New and Old worlds collide. Instead, she wrote mostly about the immediate experiences and situations of her characters, who would resort to memory only as a repository of regrets and mistakes or as a grim tale of something that had to be escaped.Molinaro's novels often portrayed women with a disregard for the exigencies of their social situation: In The Autobiography of Cassandra, Priestess and Prophetess of Troy, her most blatantly feminist novel, the prophetess relates her own doom and oppression from a privileged psychic level---that of a person who is dead. What Cassandra tells is not only the story of power robbed from women but also the shoddy treatment smug civilizations inflict upon the visionary, who is often an artist.
In her novel Fat Skeletons, a translator wary of serving unappreciative publishers attempts to pass her own novel off as a translation. In the Old Moon with the New Moon in Its Arms, a patrician poetess of ancient Greece scandalizes her parents by offering herself as a religious sacrifice. It is a self-destructive gesture that rejects birth and family, yet reaches out to a larger kind of social and spiritual truth.
Molinaro's greatest theme is the existential ability of the individual to remake herself. In her fiction, her characters fall into two types: insular, fiercely independent people whose entire identity has been self-created by the exercise of will—usually with a flouting disregard for convention or tradition—and people who are comically mired and rooted in their own pasts, a fact that usually makes them laughable, self-righteous clichés.
Personal Beliefs
Molinaro's emphasis on the self-created individual set her against family values and procreation. She saw the family as a prison and childhood as a long period of bitter incarceration that provides no basis for true identity but is rather a powerful force that seeks to inhibit it. She believed that such a prison could be escaped by an act of the will, through clear-sightedness, linguistic prowess and the development of deep reflection. Her texts, which often employed unusual spacing between words and lines as a means to create spoken rhythms, could not have been written without her wide experience as a translator and linguist. She believed that truth could be captured in the careful crafting of language and that no human experience was beyond the power of language.Painting
Molinaro was also a painter in the style of the Haitian primitives. She was deeply interested in astrology and numerology and wrote two books (The Zodiac Lovers; Life by the Numbers) on these subjects. On several of her translations, she collaborated with her close friend, the writer Bruce BendersonBruce Benderson
Bruce Benderson is an American author, to Jewish parents of Russian descent, who lives in New York. He attended William Nottingham High School in Syracuse, New York and then Binghamton University...
, who now serves as her literary executor. In the latter part of her life, she developed a method for teaching creative writing that relied wholly upon the oral and taught creative writing at several universities and in her home until her death in 2000.
Fiction
- Green Lights Are Blue. New York: New American Library, 1967.
- Sounds of a Drunken Summer. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.
- The Borrower. New York: Harper & Row, 1970.
- Encores for a Dilettante. New York: Fiction Collective, 1977.
- Bastards: Footnotes to History New Paltz, NY: Treacle Press 1979. Published in paperback and 50 numbered and signed clothbound copies.
- The Autobiography of Cassandra, Princess & Prophetess of Troy. Canbury, CT: Archer, 1979; Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1992.
- Positions with White Roses. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1983.
- Thirteen Stories. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1989.
- A Full Moon of Women. New York: Dutton, 1990.
- The New Moon with the Old Moon in Her Arms. London: Women's Press, 1990; Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1993.
- Fat Skeletons. London: Serif, 1993.
- Power Dreamers: The Jocasta Complex. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1994.
- Demons & Divas: 3 Novels. Kingston, NY: McPherson, 1999.
Non-fiction
- The Zodiac Lovers: New York: Avon, 1969.
- Life by the Numbers: New York: William Morrow, 1971.