Anna de Noailles

By Philip de László

Anna, Comtesse Mathieu de Noailles (15 November 1876 – 30 April 1933), was a Romanian-French writer.

Biography

Born Princess Anna Elisabeth Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan in Paris, she was a descendant of the Bibescu and Craioveşti families of Romanian boyars. Her father was Prince Grégoire Bibesco-Bassaraba, a son of Wallachian Prince Gheorghe Bibesco and Zoe Mavrocordato-Bassaraba de Brancovan. Her Greek mother was the former Ralouka (Rachel) Mussurus, a well known musician, to whom the Polish composer Ignacy Paderewski dedicated several of his compositions.

In 1897 she married Mathieu Fernand Frédéric Pascal, de Noailles (1873–1942), the fourth son of the 7th Duke de Noailles. The couple soon became the toast of Parisian high society. They had one child, a son, Count Anne-Jules de Noailles (1900–1979).

Anna de Noailles wrote three novels, an autobiography, and many collections of poetry. She had friendly relations with the intellectual, literary and artistic elite of the day including Marcel Proust, Francis Jammes, Colette, André Gide, Frédéric Mistral, Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, Paul Valéry, Jean Cocteau, Pierre Loti, Paul Hervieu, and Max Jacob.

So popular was Anna de Noailles that various notable artists of the day painted her portrait, including Antonio de la Gandara, Kees van Dongen, Jacques Émile Blanche, and the British portrait painter Philip de Laszlo. In 1906 her image was sculpted by Auguste Rodin; the clay model can be seen today in the Musée Rodin in Paris, and the finished marble bust is on display in New York's Metropolitan Museum.

Anna de Noailles was the first woman to become a Commander of the Legion of Honor, the first woman to be received in the Royal Belgian Academy of French Language and Literature, and she was honored with the "Grand Prix" of the Académie Française in 1921.

Countess de Noailles served as a juror with Florence Meyer Blumenthal in awarding the Prix Blumenthal, a grant given between 1919-1954 to painters, sculptors, decorators, engravers, writers, and musicians.^[1]

She died in 1933 aged 56 and was interred in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. She was a cousin by marriage of Prince Antoine Bibesco and Princess Marthe Bibesco.

Writings

• Le Cœur innombrable (1901)
• L'Ombre des jours (1902)
• La Nouvelle Espérance (1903)
• Le Visage émerveillé (1904)
• La Domination (1905)
• Les Éblouissements (1907)
• Les Vivants et les Morts (1913)
• Les Forces éternelles (1920)
• Les Innocentes, ou La Sagesse des femmes (1923)
• Poème de l'amour (1924)
• L'Honneur de souffrir (1927)
• Exactitudes, Paris (1930)
• Le Livre de ma vie" (1932)
• Derniers Vers et Poèmes d'enfance (1934)

References

External links

• Website on Anna de Noailles, in both English and French
• Anna de Noailles' Blog, in English
• A Swiss blog on Anna de Noailles, in French
• The Anna de Noailles Circle in France
• Catalog of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France from which it is now possible to download Anna de Noailles' works for free
• Works by Anna Elisabeth de Brancovan, comtesse de Noailles at Project Gutenberg
• Poems by Anna de Noailles
• The Anna de Noailles french school in Bucharest, Romania