Marie-Claire Blais (5 October 1939 – 30 November 2021) was a Canadian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright from the province of Quebec. In a career spanning more than sixty years, she wrote novels, plays, collections of poetry and fiction, newspaper articles, radio dramas, and scripts for television. She was a four-time recipient of the Governor General’s literary prize for French-Canadian literature, and was also a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship for creative arts.
Some of her most famous works are: Mad Shadows (La Belle Bête, 1959), A Season in the Life of Emmanuel (1965), The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange (1968), Deaf to the City (1979), and the ten-volume series Soifs written between 1995 and 2018.
Early life Blais was born on 5 October 1939 into a blue collar family in Québec, the daughter of Fernando and Véronique (Nolin) Blais. She was the eldest in a family of five children. She studied at a convent school, but had to interrupt her education at the age of 15 to seek employment as a clerk and later as a typist. At the age of seventeen, she enrolled in a few classes at Université Laval, where she met professor and literary critic Jeanne Lapointe and priest and sociologist Georges-Henri Lévesque, both of whom encouraged her to write.
Career Blais published her first novel La Belle Bête (translated as Mad Shadows) in 1959, when she turned 20.Chantal Guy "Marie-Claire Blais: le long chemin vers la lumière" La Presse, 16 January 2018 She received a grant from the Canada Council of Arts which allowed her to begin writing full-time. She first moved to Paris and later moved to the United States in 1963 initially living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, then in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. She was also helped by American literary critic Edmund Wilson who introduced her to artists and writers in Cape Cod including feminist Barbara Deming and writer and painter Mary Meigs. The three lived together in Wellfleet for six years. Blais remained a longtime partner of Mary Meigs until Meigs' death in 2002.
During this time, Blais was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1975, after two years of living in Brittany, France, she moved back to Québec. For about twenty years she divided her time between Montréal, the Eastern Townships of Québec and Key West, Florida, where she maintained her permanent home."Marie-Claire Blais met un point final au cycle de «Soifs»"
In 1972, she became a Companion of the Order of Canada. Many of her works have been adapted for other formats: La belle bête was made into a ballet by the National Ballet of Canada in 1977. The same book was made into a movie by Karim Hussain in 1976. Hussain won the Director's Award at the Boston Underground Film Festival for his work. Some of Blais' other works that were made into movies included Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (Claude Weisz, 1973), which won the Prix de la Quinzaine des jeunes réalisateurs at the Cannes Film Festival, Le sourd dans la ville (Mireille Dansereau, 1987), which won an award at the Venice Film Festival, and L'océan (Jean Feuchère, 1971).
Blais won the Governor General's Prize in Canada for two of her novels, The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange (1968) and Deaf to the City (1979). She also wrote a 10-volume series starting with Soifs (1995) () translated into English as These Festive Islands. The series was set in an island town modeled on Key West and featured an interlocked cast of over a hundred characters including drag queens, painters, writers, and barflies, many of them based on acquaintances that she had made on the island where she had been a part of a community that included a journalist and novelist John Hersey and poet James Merrill. The writing was based on long sentences described as 'meandering' with a combination rapidly shifting between characters' internal monologues and dialogues. The books were written in a 'stream-of-consciousness' style, with no chapters and no paragraph breaks. The last book in the 10-volume series Une réunion près de la mer was published in 2018.
She sponsored the starting in 2005; awarded annually to a French author for their debut novel.
Blais enjoyed an ardent readership in French language literature and had won four Governor General's Literary Awards throughout her career. Writing in an article in a Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail, literary critic Jade Colbert called her "the 21st century Virginia Woolf" while Quebec novelist Michel Tremblay called her "one of our greatest national treasures".
In addition to her novels, Blais has written several plays, collections of poetry and fiction, newspaper articles, radio dramas, and scripts for television. Her works had characters that included delinquent children, wayward nuns and abusive priests and included issues like white supremacy, nuclear holocaust, and the AIDS epidemic. Her books included suffering as recurring themes, though she herself had noted in an interview that she preferred serenity to suffering.
Personal life Blais was a longtime partner of American writer and painter Mary Meigs. Meigs predeceased her in 2002.
Blais died on November 30, 2021, in Key West, Florida.Deborah Dundas, "Québec writer Marie-Claire Blais, once the enfant terrible of French Canadian fiction, has died at the age of 82" Toronto Star 1 December 2021
Works Source:
La Belle Bête (Mad Shadows) – 1959 Tête blanche (White Head) – 1960 Le jour est noir – ("The Day is Dark" in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers) 1962 Pays voilés ("Veiled Countries" in Veiled Countries/Lives) – 1963 Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel (A Season in the Life of Emmanuel) – 1965 L'insoumise (The Fugitive) – 1966 Les voyageurs sacrés ("Three Travellers" in The Day is Dark and Three Travellers) – 1966 Existences ("Lives" in Veiled Countries/Lives) – 1967 Les manuscrits de Pauline Archange (The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange) – 1968 L'exécution (The Execution) – 1968 Vivre! Vivre! (The Manuscripts of Pauline Archange) – 1969 Les apparences (Dürer's Angel) – 1970 Le loup (The Wolf) – 1972 Un Joualonais, sa Joualonie (St. Lawrence Blues) – 1973 Fièvre et autres textes dramatiques – 1974 Une liaison parisienne (A Literary Affair) – 1975 Océan suivi de murmures – 1977 Les nuits de l'underground (Nights in the Underground) – 1978 Le sourd dans la ville (Deaf to the City) – 1979 Visions d'Anna ou Le vertige (Anna's World) – 1982 Sommeil d'hiver (Wintersleep) – 1984 Pierre, la guerre du printemps (Pierre) – 1984 L'Île (The Island) – 1988 L'Ange de la solitude (The Angel of Solitude) – 1989 L'exilé; Les voyageurs sacrés (The Exile, and the Sacred Travellers) – 1992 Parcours d'un écrivain: Notes américaines (American Notebooks: A Writer's Journey) – 1993 Soifs series (1995–2018) Soifs (These Festive Nights) – 1995 Dans la foudre et la lumière (Thunder and Light) – 2001 Augustino et le chœur de la déstruction (Augustino and the Choir of Destruction) – 2005 Naissance de Rebecca à l'ère des tourments (Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom) – 2008 Mai au bal des prédateurs (Mai at the Predators' Ball) – 2010 Le jeune homme sans avenir (Nothing for You Here, Young Man) – 2012 Aux jardins des Acacias (The Acacia Gardens) – 2014 Le festin au crépuscule (A Twilight Celebration) – 2015 Des chants pour Angel (Songs for Angel) - 2017 Une réunion près de la mer - 2018 The Collected Radio Drama of Marie-Claire Blais – 2007 Petites Cendres ou la capture - 2020 Un cœur habité de mille voix (Nights Too Short to Dance) - 2021 Augustino ou l'illumination - 2022
Awards and honours Source:
1961: Prix de la langue-française de l’Académie française for La Belle Bête 1966: Prix Médicis for Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel 1966: Prix France-Québec for Une saison dans la vie d'Emmanuel 1969: Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Les Manuscrits de Pauline Archange 1972: Companion of the Order of Canada 1979: Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Le Sourd dans la ville 1982: Prix Athanase-David 1983: Prix Anaïs-Ségalas de l’Académie française for Visions d'Anna 1986: Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Arts & Humanities) 1988: Ludger-Duvernay Prize 1994: Member of the Académie des lettres du Québec 1995: Officer of the National Order of Quebec 1996: Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Soifs 1999: Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres du ministère de la Culture (France) 1999: Prix international Union latine des littératures romanes 2000: Grand prix Metropolis bleu 2000: W. O. Mitchell Literary Prize 2001: Nominee for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Dans la foudre et la lumière 2002: Prix Prince-Pierre-de-Monaco 2005: Nominee for the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Augustino et le Chœur de la destruction 2005: Prix Gilles-Corbeil 2006: Matt Cohen Award 2008: Governor General's Award for French-language fiction for Naissance de Rebecca à l'ère des tourments 2009: Honorary degree (Université Laval) 2012: Grand prix du livre de Montréal for Le Jeune Homme sans avenir 2012: Honorary degree (Université de Montréal) 2016: Molson Prize for her body of work 2016: Companion of the Ordre des arts et des lettres du Québec 2017: Finalist for the Grand prix du livre de Montréal for Des chants pour Angel 2018: Grand prix du livre de Montréal for Une réunion près de la mer 2019: Prix de la revue Études françaises for À l'intérieur de la menace
References
"Marie-Claire Blais" in Canadian Writers, an examination of archival manuscripts, typescripts, correspondence, journals and notebooks at Library and Archives Canada
Weightman, John (29 January 1960) "Fiction in France" Review section The Observer
External links "Marie-Claire Blais" in The Canadian Encyclopedia Archives of Marie-Claire Blais (Fonds Marie-Claire Blais, R11710) are held at Library and Archives Canada