Julien Green

Julien Green (1900–1998) was an American writer of French expression — novelist, playwright and diarist — the author of Adrienne Mesurat, Léviathan, Moïra and an immense Journal kept for nearly three quarters of a century. Born in Paris to American parents, he holds a singular place in twentieth-century French literature.

Raised in a Protestant family from the American South, Green wrote almost all of his work in French while retaining his American nationality. After several early texts, he made his name with Mont-Cinère in 1926, then Adrienne Mesurat in 1927 and above all Léviathan in 1929. His novels explore secret passions, solitude, guilt, desire and the tensions between flesh and faith.

This spiritual dimension took an ever greater place in his work. Converted to Catholicism in his youth, Green made inner struggle, temptation and the search for God some of his great themes; Moïra, published in 1950, offers one of their most powerful expressions.

But the major undertaking of his life remains his Journal, begun very young and continued until his death. Published over several decades, it constitutes an exceptional testimony to the intellectual, literary and spiritual life of the twentieth century, as well as an autobiographical work in its own right.

Julien Green was elected to the Académie française in 1971, to the seat of François Mauriac, becoming the first writer of foreign nationality to enter the Academy. He declared his resignation in 1996, though his seat was not officially declared vacant until after his death.

Green died in Paris in 1998, leaving an abundant body of work shot through with the conflict between desire and religion, with moral anguish and with a constant attention to the most secret movements of conscience. His manuscripts, including those of his Journal, have joined the collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.