Henri Fauconnier

Template:Hangon Henri Fauconnier (February 26, 1879 Musset Barbezieux (Charente) - April 14, 1973 Paris) was a French writer, known mainly for his novel, Malaysia, which won the Prix Goncourt in 1930. He was part of the group Barbezieux.

Family

• His father, Charles, was a small dealer in brandy, which also operated on his property near Cru Chevanceaux .
• Her mother, Melanie, lived in Limoges, where she was best friend Anna Haviland (Haviland porcelain).
  • The marriage (1874) was organized by Anna when the latter had married George Boutelleau, poet, playwright and novelist barbezilien. (His family produced and promoted brandy butter Charente.)
  • They had six children, from 1875 to 1891: Henry, Prix Goncourt 1930, was the third, and Genevieve Fauconnier (1886–1969), Prix Femina 1933, was fourth.
• His son, Bernard.

Biography

In Barbezieux

In a cultured, artistic and Catholic, six children, their cousins and friends live very free in the garden and cellars Musset. Henri Fauconnier is the eldest and instigator of the band. Jacques (later Chardonne) comes every day. We play and write much. A newspaper is published journals drama are played on the castle square, whose texts and music written by Henry. Jacques Henri and know they are writers. In 1901, the father's death, long illness, ease melted in Falconer. Henry ended his right to Bordeaux and then refusing a place at his uncle, went to England where he taught for two years and French music in the small college of Wells House. This is a journal article draws attention: it seems they can make a fortune in Borneo by planting sago. The idea took shape. If he wants to write, he must first ensure recreation and for this the easiest way is to make a fortune. Through his friend Jacques, he meets two young French volunteers for adventure.

Malaysia

The departure takes place in Marseille March 10, 1905. A stopover in Singapore, a month later, they decided to leave for Borneo rubber plantations of Malaysia, more promising. Falconer gets an internship at his expense in a planter Klang (near Kuala Lumpur) to learn the craft and the two essential languages, Malay and Tamil. In August, he discovers the land of their future planting in fertile land and located on the distant hills beyond the Selangor River. He obtained a grant of 600 acres and settled in Rantau Panjang in early 1906 when he built his first "Maison des Palmes". Falconer loves all people, places, landscapes, his hard work, the climate, life and the life. And he succeeded. Her mother mobilizes funds for his Russian for "give" her younger sisters. Thanks to these 20,000 francs, and the funds that his friend Jacques puts into his business, planting goes ahead and he became its principal owner. In 1908, he founded at Brussels the "Plantation Fauconnier & Posth, with the assistance of a Belgian banker Adrian Hallet. He converted all he had in stocks and shares founder. Some friends have joined the Charente and help expand its plantations. The fortune he arrives, with a doubling in the price of rubber in two years and the tripling of the value of its shares in the single year 1910. Falconer then Chief Hallet plantation group in the Far East (Sumatra, Java, Indochina and Malaysia). In 1911, an idea Hallet, it sends Sumatra in Malaysia a few bags of seeds of oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) which will cause the vast plantations of Malaysia. Itself to establish Tennamaram near-Rantau Panjang, his sister Mary, the first plantation of palm oil from Malaysia. After several visits to Malaysia's family joined him to settle. Falconer feels when a page is turned: this material success he desired, he has won the joy in a great work is enough. It was a means to an end. Keeping an eye on the plantation, he will arrange to delegate his powers and finally to devote his desire to write. Long ago he had a book in mind the joy of living in Malaysia.

The 1914-1918 war and marriage

But the war broke out. Nobody there expected. The French plantation undertake immediately, leaving the women who wait there until their return next Christmas. Falconer is getting married (to Madeleine Meslier, sister of a planter, a childhood friend of Barbezieux), but refuses the Consul of France to remain in place to ensure the production of rubber. Marriage and war complement its openness to life and experience of future writer. After a few months in a deposit of Périgueux (a true "dump" where the prevailing squalor, stupidity, settlement and military negligence), he arrives on his forehead where he will participate as a second class in most major battles except for two periods, training school officer Mourmelon late 1916 and permission in Malaysia (after his marriage in Charente in March 1917). From there it will be removed a few months in Indochina, with sharpshooters Annamese to attend Auguste Chevallier create strategic cultures. In autumn 1917, it is claimed by France as an interpreter for the British army. He leaves his wife Saigon pregnant and sick. (In the Mediterranean, the ship will be torpedoed without running when she returns with her daughter in April 1918.) Throughout the war, Fauconnier cursed Europeans and dreamed of being in Malaysia. In 1998, his Letters to Madeleine, 1914-1918 will be published by Editions Stock.

In Tunisia

The slow handwriting of Malaysia. Upon his discharge, Fauconnier deposited his wife in Switzerland, near Chardonne (which still inhabits his friend Jacques). She was threatened with tuberculosis. Then he left to join the plantations who need it and want qu'Hallet expand and reorganize. He wants the same time is able to check whether or not to write this book which he believed for so long. He made several inspection trips until 1928 (Malaysia and Indochina), bound first by a long rubber crisis, remain in work for a living. Then, to ensure more stable income, he accepted positions as director of several companies of tropical plantations. Noting that neither Paris nor does the climate of France, he settled in Rades, near Tunis, in 1925, Compromise of remoteness and climate between Malaysia and the Charente. "The Terrace" is a large low house style Arabic surrounded by a huge garden. His book advance but slowly.

Malaysia and the Prix Goncourt

In early 1930, Jacques Boutelleau, who took the name of Jacques Chardonne his first novel, The Epithalame, published in 1921, Jean Paulhan offers to publish the books in Malaysia NRF They are both enthusiastic chapter has shown that their Fauconnier. Jacques has never ceased to have a great admiration for his friend Henry (who was five years older). He had tried everything during the war to get him out of the trenches. Now he wants so much to him the Goncourt prize that is at the limit of offending, and his friend, and the Goncourt jury. The popular success and esteem of Malaysia (Published in Stock) is significant and very positive press, even before the award [1]. Henri Fauconnier needs peace and time to write. It is not knocked out or disrupted by the celebrity following his Prix Goncourt. But his time it is eaten. He will give up nothing, neither his family and friends, or reading, music, gardening, tennis, chess, playing with his children, to stroll and his correspondence. Being a writer is not a priority for him. He sees himself rather as a "man of letters" and playing on words, it is true that his letters show all his qualities correspondent. (His correspondence with Chardonne and with his brother and sisters deserve to be published.) But he appreciates the meetings or exchanges of letters with his writers (John Amrouche, Georges Bernanos, Henri Bosco, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Lucie Delarue-Mardrus Alfred Fabre-Luce, Paul Géraldy, André Gide, Jean Giono, Jean Guéhenno, A. Guibert, Henri de Keyserling, Roger Martin du Gard, Maurice Maeterlinck, Jean Paulhan, Romain Rolland, Jean Schlumberger. ..). And it's joy awarded in 1933, the Prix Femina for her sister Jennifer for her novel Claude, who was also a big bestseller. (With two other books by Geneviève Fauconnier, three grandchildren and blue ponds of the Double, Claude was reissued in 1995 by Le Vif Grows.) The case is unique in France of a brother and a sister, Prix Goncourt and Prix Femina. This needs to be emphasized.

Visions

Falconer had hated the Treaty of Versailles. He knew that Europe and took the huge risk of repeating the vile war of 1914-18. During the thirties, although Malaysia gives him the means of crossing the ease in the years of the Depression, his morale is affected by the rise of Nazism, fascism in Italy and the conquest of Abyssinia and the Spanish Civil War. In October 1938 he published anonymously in yet, a collection of New Visions giving some of his past life (The Lady, Christmas Malay, Indian Dravidian, Barbara, The Asphodèles and Vision). Criticism is also good for Malaysia but readers think more threats of war. Fearing the ambitions of Mussolini on Tunisia, the family left the terrace in summer 1939 to settle in Musset.

The war and the last 39-45 years

Life is not easy during the occupation. The children grew up and Fauconnier, despite the reservations it had repatriated to France, is being gradually cut off from its resources (Belgium, England, Malaysia, Indochina). He has no desire nor the courage to write. Cold and supply are major concerns. His friend Jacques multiplied by imagining his letters to convince the German victory. He prefers to listen B.B.C. The postwar period also is difficult, but in 1947 he agreed to be the leader of the "Group of Writers Federalists" for "United States of Europe". In reconciling the peoples, we may prevent governments from claiming to be invested in national missions. In 1957, the Company plantations which had included his case (Socfin Rivaud Group) offers him a journey of remembrance in Malaysia. The old pioneer in him is enchanted, but conditioning and asphalt is no longer "his" Malaysia's past. He then settled into a quiet retirement and active, playing tennis and chess, gardening and swimming, dreaming for a moment to resume Malaysia II and still holding his correspondence. He divides his time between the Côte d'Azur, Paris (he would flee but where live children and grandchildren) and the Charente. Died in Paris in April 1973, he was buried in Barbezieux. His only wish was that Musset is kept in the family.

Sources

• Bernard Fauconnier, La fascinante existence d'Henri Fauconnier : Prix Goncourt 1930, préface Jean-Loup Avril, Editions G.D., Saint Malo, 2004.
• Annie David, interview de Bernard Fauconnier, son of Henri, Trente ans après la mort d'Henri Fauconnier, son fils Bernard évoque sa vie exotique et leurs relations houleuses... .
• Véronique Bonnet-Nora, La Maison des Palmes, 2003, documentaire de 50 minutes.