The bright scandalous biography of the great French writer is full of love intrigues, parties, burning life and money, and also books that made a splash in literature.

The future star of romantic prose was born on June 21, 1935 in Cajar, France. On the same day with a loved one, whose works will be read in adolescence. Sagan's parents are the Quare couple, this is the real name of the writer.

The head of the family is a wealthy industrialist, Françoise's mother was happy to do household chores and shone at the secular evenings organized by her. In addition to Françoise, the couple had two more children with whom the future star of the pen was sincerely and tenderly friends.

From the very childhood, the girl adored reading - it became a real passion. She always surpassed her peers in intelligence, curiosity and mental alertness knew no bounds. But at the same time, the warlike spirit and disobedience played a cruel joke in the prim ascetic order of education, adopted in private schools, which the young rebel attended. Parents treated disobedience with condescension, considering behavior to be a manifestation of personality.

In 1953, an ambitious young lady entered the philological faculty of the Sorbonne, however, having failed the exam in english language, the unlucky student left the walls of the educational institution. However, for Françoise it was always more interesting to communicate with the bohemian elite in cafes and restaurants than to study boring in stuffy classrooms. As her whole life will show, boredom has become the most important enemy and phobia of the writer, from which she tried to hide.

Literature

The young writer promptly burst into the prim world of French literature with the novel Hello, Sadness, scandalous in its frankness and non-standard character of the characters. In 1954, an 18-year-old girl brought to the office of an experienced and grasping publisher Rene Juillard a manuscript about a cunning and cunning young nymphet who smashes the love of her own father and stepmother to smithereens. The story was full of details of romantic encounters and intimacy between a man and a girl.

The writer Françoise Sagan

For the literature of that time, such a story became exceptional, scandalous, but was wildly successful the very next day after its release on the shelves. Then, at the urgent request of her parents, who considered their surname too famous for the covers of dubious books, Françoise took the pseudonym Sagan. The adored, young intellectual named herself after the heroine of In Search of Lost Time.

Having received the first colossal fee, the girl was confused and turned to her father with the question of what to do with such a fabulous amount. The head of the family replied that the money is destructive for his daughter and should be spent immediately. Actually, the writer adhered to this philosophy throughout her life.

Soaring to the pinnacle of success, Sagan worried that in the absence of a second book, as brilliant as the debut, she would be called a one-day butterfly and be forgotten with contempt. In 1956 the second novel "Vague Smile" was published, which received no less success.

According to Sagan, she herself considered her work imperfect, and herself a lazy woman. The literary woman was forced to take up the pen by the need for money. She never let the publishers down and delivered work on time.

In total, Sagan has written about twenty novels. All works are filled with love, sadness and loneliness. Clear concise description of actions, accurate psychological portraits heroes are the hallmarks of Sagan's prose.

Such novels as "Do You Love Brahms?" (1959), “A little sun in cold water"(1969)," The Crumpled Bed "(1977).

In addition to novels, the great Frenchwoman wrote plays and short stories. In 1987, a biography written by Sagan was published, which the writer adored. And in 1980, an open letter was published to Sagan Sartre, where she enthusiastically calls the idol the most honest and intelligent writer of the generation.

Françoise Sagan's books have been filmed in cinematography, translated into hundreds of languages \u200b\u200bof the world and are still being reprinted in millions of copies.

Personal life

In addition to the overwhelming success in creativity, the biography of Sagan amazed with richness, recklessness and brightness. The writer's fees allowed her to lead a riotous life on a grand scale, which the eternal rebel did. She threw grandiose parties at which alcohol poured like a river, took out a crowd of friends abroad, paid for all the parties in restaurants.

Sagan's passion was gambling and speed throughout his life. In a casino, a carefree spender wasted fortunes. And the passion for cars almost brought Françoise to death. At 22, a car overturned at great speed under the control of a playgirl. Doctors miraculously saved her, literally picking up the racing lover. After a difficult rehabilitation, when the writer had to take morphine to get rid of pain, Sagan became addicted to drugs.

Waking up in the hospital, the girl saw her longtime friend, publisher Guy Scheller, who was 20 years older than her, near the bedside. The man invited the writer to become his wife in order, as he specified, to save her. And the eccentric Sagan unexpectedly agreed. However, the marriage was not destined to last long. After a year of living together, the woman realized that a measured marriage was not for her, being afraid of everyday life, she, without explaining a word, packed her bag and left her husband.

The second attempt to start a family was made by the writer in 1962, when Sagan married Bob Westhoff, a former Air Force pilot. Leaving his military service, the man moved to Montmartre, tried to build a career as a model, calling himself a sculptor. As the son of the couple, Dani Westhoff, who was born in the same 1962, said in an interview, the father did not know how to do anything except to burn his life with his wife. He called himself a sculptor only because in his rented apartment there was a clay kiln.

Soon this marriage broke up, although after the divorce, the former spouses lived peacefully under the same roof for another seven years. The son of the great writer shares that, of course, Sagan was not a mother who mends socks for children, but she always treated her son warmly and caringly.

Françoise was credited with many novels, and not only with men, but also with women. The writer’s son confirms the mother’s bisexuality and recalls that for a long time one of her beloved women, Peggy Roche, lived in the same house with Françoise. She was even buried in the same grave with the writer, however, without mentioning her name on the monument.

But no one gives confirmation of the affair with the President of France. Sagan herself, like her son, said that it was a sincere warm friendship. An influential friend more than once pulled the carefree Sagan out of trouble. And there were a lot of them - accusations of possession and use of drugs, some mysterious scam in which the writer handed over a letter from businessman Andre Gelfi with a proposal to extract oil in Uzbekistan to the president.

When she was elected president, a tax audit raided the house of the star woman, as a result of which tax evasion was revealed. An overwhelming fine was imposed on the writer. As a result, the star of romantic prose was completely ruined.

Death

The lifestyle that Françoise Sagan led could not but affect her health. The body is tired of constant doses of alcohol and drugs. On September 24, 2004, at the clinic in Honfleur, the great writer died of pulmonary embolism.

The work and fate of the writer are still of interest to fans and ordinary people. In 2012, the book "Loneliness and Love" was published, which collected interviews, archive photos, correspondence of the great Sagan.

Bibliography

• 1954 - "Hello, sadness!"
• 1956 - Vague Smile
• 1959 - "Do You Love Brahms?"
• 1965 - "The Signal for Surrender"
• 1969 - "A Little Sun in Cold Water"
• 1972 - Bruises on the Soul
• 1977 - Crumpled Bed
• 1980 - Pribluda
• 1981 - "Woman in Makeup"
• 1985 - The Cup Was Overflowed
• 1991 - Roundabouts
• 1996 - In a Foggy Mirror

Françoise Sagan is a representative of modern women's prose, the founder of a new type of artistic thinking. With her work, this French writer has led to the emergence of the newest stereotype of female behavior, the priorities of which have become the need for self-improvement and self-realization in various spheres of life.

The writer borrowed her pseudonym from the novel “In Search of Lost Time” by the famous French writer Marcel Proust, one of whose heroines was the Duchess of Saganska.

Françoise Sagan (Cuarez) was born on June 21, 1935 in the family of a wealthy provincial industrialist in the city of Kazhark. Educated in the best religious educational institutions in France. She studied at the Sorbonne, but left the university for the sake of writing. The first novel "Hello, Sadness!" (1954) made her infamous at age 19. It was significant that early and loud fame did not overshadow her mind. F. Sagan came to her father and calmly asked what to do with the 1.5 million francs received for the publication of the novel. He advised: "Spend them immediately, because money is a big trouble for you." She did just that. Travels and yachts, an unsuccessful marriage with the then-famous publisher Te Schiller (they soon parted, he was twenty years older than her), the birth of a son (1962), several more attempts to arrange family life, craving for gambling. At 22, Françoise miraculously survived a major car accident.

Sagan's success seemed incomprehensible to many. The writer successfully combined life among the representatives of the bohemia, of which she was a member, with persistent creative work.

One after another, novels came out from under her pen, which brought her world recognition: "Strange Smile" (1956), "Do you love Brahms?" (1959), "Wonderful Clouds" (1961), "Signal of Surrender" (1965), "A Drop of the Sun in Cold Water" (1969).

By the period of the 70s, F. Sagan tried almost not to remind of herself, but then the situation changed: she published the lyric novel "Bruises in the Soul" (1972), in which she directly addressed the reader, telling about her successes and failures, about "Bohemians" and her literary preferences.

Subsequently, "Memoirs" and the book "With best wishes" (1984) were published in a similar manner. their content confirmed that F. Sagan is not at all like her heroines. She treated life with genuine interest, thought a lot about social progress and the obstacles that were on his way. Sagan warned of the dangers of rampant and limitless consumerism when culture became an object of purchase and sale. The writer did not hide her political sympathies: she openly helped President Mitteran in his election campaign.

F. Sagan managed to save his work from being overwhelmed. She defiantly refused literary prizes, honorary titles and membership in the Academy.

Among the works written by her during the 80s - 90s, it is worth noting the following: "The Lost Profile" (1974), "The Spread of the Bed" (1977), "Sleeping Dog" (1970), "Immovable Thunderstorm" (1983), "Tired of enduring" (1985), "Watery Blood" (1987).

Her novel, a biography about Sarah Bernhardt (1987), written in the form of letters to the actress, caused a significant resonance in Europe.

Until 1991, the writer published 22 novels, 2 collections of short stories, 7 plays, 3 books of essays. In all these works, she tried to express her thoughts, views on modern world, customs and literature. It was felt that she was oppressed by the dullness and spiritual squalor of the "living society", her description of a bohemian or elite environment was due to the rejection of the way of life of the philistine, which acquired a global scale.

F. Sagan was also known as a public figure, publicist. She violated the problems of moral and spiritual crisis among young people, defended human rights.

The Parisian apartment of the writer became the most famous literary salon in France, which was visited not only by writers, but also by diplomats and prime ministers.

The most famous representative of women's prose has always repeated that she loves speed and excitement. However, these hobbies led to negative consequences: partial alcohol addiction, and later - and drug addiction.

In 1995, F. Sagan was conditionally convicted and brought to justice for the use and possession of cocaina. she would face a more serious punishment if the then French President F. Mitterrand, who highly appreciated the literary talent of the writer, had not intervened in the matter. In February 2002, she was again given probation, this time for tax evasion.

In the last years of her life, Sagan lived in Honfleur, a town in northern France, with her son and a close friend.

The writer died in a local hospital on September 24, 2004 from cardiopulmonary failure.

"Hello, sadness!" The plot of F. Sagan's first novel was surprisingly simple. Sagan, this "charming little beast" (according to F. Mauriac), through the lips of her heroine Cecile, told about a vacation on the seashore during the holidays in the company of her father, his mistress and friend of her late mother. Without embarrassment, she talked about bodily pleasures, her amorous relationship with a neighbor, which did not have to have a logical continuation. Suddenly, this idyll was broken by the mother's friend Anna, whose character was distinguished by integrity and depth. Fearing that her father would marry her, Cecile eventually became the cause of her death. It is clear that after returning to Paris, both the girl and her father continued to live their former carefree life. Despite the banality of the plot, the story told by the writer had a tangible subtext of sadness, which appeared in the title of the book. The world of fleshly pleasures has entered into Sagan's novel of hidden depth.

The novel "Hello, sadness!" became a bestseller, later more than a million copies were issued in different languages \u200b\u200band different countries the world. He immediately grew to a kind of symbol, a sign of the times, and the image of the main character personified the fortune tellers of the era of easy morals. He seemed to have absorbed the specific destinies of the writer's contemporaries - that's why the term “generation of Françoise Sagan” appeared. In one of my articles. Urden wrote that this novel "reflected the mood and position of the younger generation, which began to live after the tremendous shock that the world experienced during the war years, when the old ideas about Good and Evil, old moral values, old prohibitions and taboos perished."

"Do you love Brahms?" This is another story about "heart fever", when the heroine must solve a problem well known in the literature: make a choice between a young, ardent, but inexperienced lover and a calm, balanced middle-aged man. Sagan's work was reminiscent of A. Zhida's novel "Pastoral Symphony", in which the author argued about the impossibility of incarnating high spiritual and physical qualities in one person.

Paul is the main heroine of the novel - a thirty-nine-year-old woman, a master of décor of living quarters, who over time began to understand herself and her life in a new way. She did not have a family, children, she felt her loneliness. Her lover Roger Ferte, a forty-year-old owner of a transport agency, a man with an “uncontrollable appetite for life,” could never have given her what she dreamed of - the warmth of family comfort, the joy of learning the truths of life with children, etc. He was the kind of man who knew how to bring pleasure and confidence to a woman, but this feeling lasted only a moment.

After six years of periodic meetings, “the law of which was the concept of“ freedom ”, Paul felt even more lonely. An empty apartment, uncrumpled sheets, gloomy peace became attributes of her life and silent companions. The heroine suffered from the fact that no one needed, no one felt the need for her. “She was left alone, again alone that night ... Lying on the bed, mechanically stretched out her hand, wanting to touch the warm shoulder, she held back her breath, as if she was afraid to frighten off someone's sleep. Husband or child. It doesn't matter whose, as long as her living warmth helped them sleep and wake up. But nobody really needs it. "

Almost by accident, while completing another order to decorate the house of a wealthy sixty-year-old American woman, Van den Besch, dreaming of improving her financial situation with this work, the heroine met the twenty-five-year-old son of this lady, Simon. Handsome and charming, the young man immediately caught the woman's attention. This was facilitated by the exceptional traits of his character - nobility, good breeding, tact. "He embodied the type of young man who evoked maternal feelings for a woman of her age," - such was Paul's opinion of the hero after the first meeting.

Simon was also impressed by the meeting with a woman decorator. As a typical incarnation of the "golden youth", fulfilling the duties entrusted to him as an assistant lawyer - a longtime acquaintance of Ms. Van den Besch, he constantly struggled with laziness and routine. Among his peers, Simon was distinguished by the fact that he gave preference to elderly women, with their own established views on life. It was such a woman (he did not yet know her name) that the young man saw in the one who was fulfilling the order of his mother.

Simon was looking for a meeting with the one that filled his mind. Giddy, he broke the generally accepted rhythm of Roger and Paul's supper, and the next morning, in order to redeem his guilt, gave the woman an unforgettable breakfast in a restaurant in the Bois de Boulogne. Although each of them had his own life experience, his life values, at that moment they were united by a feeling of complete satisfaction with life. They joked and talked about the inevitability of loneliness, laughed and were sad, and were, no doubt, delighted with each other.

Feeling attracted to Simon, Paul continued to love Roger. For her, he remained at the same time the embodiment of vice and perfection. She had long been accustomed to forgiving his fleeting hobbies for other women, but she could not come to terms with his complete absence in her life.

She accepted Simon's courtship. she, as a woman, was pleased to feel her need. The heroine was pleased that she saw the enthusiastic eyes of a young man in love with her, but she did not feel completely happy. Allowing Simon to love herself, she constantly thought about her meetings with Roger. The heroine was not sure if she had ever loved someone other than herself, loved and whether she continued to love Roger. To such reflections, she was prompted by the invitation of Simon to attend a concert at which Brahms's music was supposed to sound. The seemingly ordinary question stirred up a wave of memories in the heroine's soul and made her think about her life. “Do you love Brahms? Does she love anyone other than herself and her existence? ... Perhaps she only knew that she loved Roger. Just well-learned truths. "

The picky judgments of the people around them about the age difference between Paul and Simon, the dominance of "established, generally accepted" truths over those that still require their proof, became the reason for the renewal of the relationship between the heroine and her former lover Roger.

The leading motive of the novel was the motive of loneliness. This is the worst sentence a person could receive. The main character of the work was afraid of this state, because he was well familiar to her: “she was disgusted with these Sundays of single women: a book that you read in bed, trying to pull with reading, crowded cinemas, perhaps a cocktail or lunch in some company, but at home upon returning - an unmade bed and a feeling as if not a minute had been lived in the morning. "

Choosing a title for her novel, the writer was probably guided by the eternal question that sooner or later every person asks herself in private - she loves her life, her loved ones, loved ones. It is the question "Do you love Brahms?" it seemed doomed in advance to the only correct answer: how can you not love what has long become a classic, what has already become an “established truth”? How can you question those feelings, those relationships that have long been inscribed in the life of each of us by an invisible hand?

Created in the late 1960s, the novel A Drop of the Sun in Cold Water developed a theme characteristic of F. Sagan's early work, albeit on a different, deeper level.

The heroine of the book by Natalia Silveren is able to love and make another person happy, but life brought her to her ordinary husband, journalist Lantier. He is unable to understand the impulses of a woman who was ready to sacrifice everything for love. Therefore, the history of their meetings ended with the death of the heroine.

Philosophical works;

Penetration into the depths of female psychology;

Storytellers are confident women with a well-formed life position;

The image of a complex relationship between a man and a woman, due to the difference in worldview guidelines and the originality of the worldview;

The heroines are sensual natures, dreamy and romantic, able to feel the subtlest movements of life.

She herself often called herself an "old dragonfly" and "a playboy" and said that she lived like a stuntman. She liked to shock the audience and break prohibitions. The famous French writer, author of the novels "Hello, Sadness" and "A Little Sun in Cold Water" Françoise Sagan often heard accusations against her of the excessive lightness of her novels, that she writes as fast as she drives cars. She had to pay for her love of speed, as well as for her frivolity.

Françoise Couaret was born in 1935 in the family of a wealthy industrialist and since childhood she did not know anything about refusal. In an elite Catholic boarding school, she did not even think about studying - instead, she constantly protested against boring seminars: for example, one day she hung a bust of Moliere in the middle of the classroom, throwing a noose around his neck. Françoise lasted only one semester at the philological faculty of the Sorbonne - and after the very first session she was expelled. But she reread the entire home library, admiring Proust, Sartre and Camus.

At the age of 19, Françoise chose the pseudonym Sagan from Proust's work and, under a new name, released her first novel, Hello, Sadness, which instantly gained immense popularity. Nobody could believe that the author was a young girl. Fame and huge fees fell on her - within a year the novel, translated into 30 languages, reached a circulation of 2 million copies. France was seized by "saganomania".

Françoise did not know what to do with her unexpected wealth. “I'm afraid that at your age, wealth can turn into a big disaster. So spend everything as soon as possible, ”her father advised her. And she began to waste money, which became one of her favorite things in life. “Yes, I love money, which has always been a good servant and a bad master for me. They are always present in my books, in my life and in my conversations, ”the writer admitted. However, she generously donated large sums to charitable foundations. And when the money ran out, she went to the casino. Once she won 8 million francs and bought a house in Normandy with them.

Françoise Sagan loved to drive at top speed, and one day she had an accident and ended up in the hospital. Then her friend, a 40-year-old director of the publishing house, told her: "If you survive, I will marry you so that you will never do anything stupid again." They really got married, but marriage did not save her from "nonsense". They lived together for only two years, after which the girl got bored and left her husband.

For the second time, she married a life-burner and party-goer like herself. This marriage lasted 7 years, but even the birth of a son did not change the nature of the "protracted accident", as the writer called herself. “Family life is nothing more than asparagus and vinegar. This dish is not my kitchen, "Sagan told reporters after the divorce and promised that she would never marry again. She kept her word.

The writer liked to shock the audience. Rumors of her romance did not subside, while she was credited with having connections with both men and women. With one of them, Peggy Roche, she lived for a long time under the same roof, and when she died, she ordered to bury her in the Saganov family crypt. After the accident, doctors prescribed pain relievers for her, and since then Françoise has become addicted to drugs and alcohol. In 1995, she found herself in the center of a scandal: during a search, cocaine was found in her house. At the trial, she was found guilty of possession and distribution of drugs and sentenced to conditional imprisonment and a fine.

When Françoise was offered to become a member of the French Academy of Arts, she refused, motivating it like this: “Firstly, it doesn't suit me green color an academic uniform, and secondly, there is not a single writer I admire! "

Most of all she feared oblivion and poverty. This is exactly what happened to her in the last years of her life. She once received a large commission for mediating a deal: knowing about her close relationship with Mitterrand, she was asked to arrange a meeting with the president. She did not pay taxes on this amount, so she again received a suspended sentence and pledged to pay a million francs. All her property was described and her accounts were frozen. She had to mortgage the apartment and sell the mansion, but this did not deter her from going to the casino.

At the age of 69, Françoise Sagan died in a lack of money and loneliness. “Happiness is fleeting and deceitful, only sadness is eternal,” said the writer in her declining years. Many critics called her "a cheeky woman who got into literature by accident," but she took her rightful place in it:

ID 10522
Books: 45

Sagan Françoise

All works of Françoise Sagan are about love, loneliness, dissatisfaction with life; they are distinguished by the clarity of the narrative manner and the accuracy of the psychological drawing.Sagan's writing career began very early - at the age of 19 she publishes the story.Since then, the life of Françoise Sagan is closely intertwined with literature. Her pseudonym, which forever erased her real name from French history, is taken from the book of the compatriot writer, adored by Françoise, Marcel Proust. And Jean-Paul Sartre, with whom she was tenderly and anxiously friends, had a great influence on the formation of the philosophy of her whole life. Despite her not too attractive appearance - thin, large-nosed, with disproportionately large transparent eyes on a small face with a sharp chin - she was tying many novels, several times tried to establish family life and even gave birth to a son. And she continued to write like a man possessed. One after another, her novels came out, written in the same shocking detached manner, but with strict adherence to the classic traditions of writing novels. Small, it seemed

Françoise was brought up in a wealthy family and received an excellent education. After graduating from school, Françoise entered the philological faculty of the Sorbonne - University of Paris. But there was no time to study. How nice it was to sit in small cozy Parisian cafes, to meet and meet representatives of Parisian bohemia: artists, actors, poets; fall in love, argue, get drunk, and write your first story at night.

Her first novel, Hello, Sadness, written in 1954, appeared suddenly like a downpour from heaven. The reader of Paris seethed: it cannot be that an 18-year-old girl wrote it! The most incredible assumptions about authorship were invented. But no deception - it was she, Françoise Coaret, who had failed her bachelor's exam and took up the pen. The book needed a surname symbol. The young lady borrowed a pseudonym from the great Proust - Princess Sagan lived in his novel. It suited her perfectly. The daughter of wealthy parents, in love with Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Eluard, she went with her head and heart into writing. The title of the novel was prompted by lines from a poem by Paul Eluard:

Hello sadness
Love of supple bodies
The inevitability of love.

Readers were delighted with the ease and ease of the story, from her heroine Cecile, who is beginning to get to know people, love, betrayal, disappointment. In this novel, it was suddenly revealed to everyone that in addition to the kinship of souls and bodies there is also the joy of silence, glances, gestures, even laughter and restrained anger. To meet such closeness in a person is incredible happiness. The novel was translated into 30 languages \u200b\u200bof the world, and then filmed. A collapse of opinions, very different, and a huge fee - 1.5 million francs fell on the girl. My father advised: "Spend them immediately, for money is a big trouble for you." The young novelist bought a used Jaguar XK 140 - "Great, and I was proud of it," Françoise admitted.

This work was followed by other novels, stories, plays, and the story "Do you love Brahms?" (1959), A Little Sun in Cold Water (1969), The Lost Profile (1974), The Painted Lady (1981), War Tired (1985) and dr.

Sagan has written 22 novels, several plays. She loved her readers, even those who attacked her with criticism, who were dissatisfied with her novels, and never defended herself - she considered their criticism fair.

François Mauriac was struck by her brilliant prose, exclaimed cheerfully: "Little charming monster!" Academician Poirot Delpesh wrote about her novel On a Leash that for the first time since the time of Balzac and Zola, a book has appeared in which the power of money in the sphere of feelings is shown with such frankness and artistic force.

Françoise Sagan married twice. In 1958, for the forty-year-old publisher Guy Schueller, and then in 1962 - for the young American Bob Westhoff, a pilot who changed the helm of an airplane to the profession of a model. From her second marriage she has a son, Dani Westhoff.
Françoise Sagan died on September 24, 2004 from a pulmonary embolism in a hospital in Honfleur, Normandy.