In “Another awaits me elsewhere”, the tumultuous liaisons of Marguerite Yourcenar – Libération

Christophe Bigot immerses the reader in the heartbreaking relationship between the first woman elected to the French Academy, a “consenting victim” of a man forty-six years her junior.

It’s a song by Véronique Sanson, They’re waiting for me thereas the title of this novel suggests. Sanson is a great lover, and it is under these same features that Marguerite Yourcenar is painted by Christophe Bigot. He catches his narcissism, too. A professor of literature in addition, the novelist knows the life and work of the first academician like the back of his hand. With this book, he fills a void: he invents dialogues, gives depth to the little-known and little-documented relationship that she had with a man forty-six years her junior. She met him when she was 76 years old. He, Jerry Wilson, aged 30, is an American photographer. He is homosexual, in a relationship but in an open relationship with a producer, Maurice Dumay, who comes to find Yourcenar on his island in Maine for French television. It’s 1978, she’s showered with honors. His claims to fame are “heavy as Greek vases. Pompous like princely epitaphs.” She lives in her house, Petite Plaisance, with the American Grace Frick, her companion and translator, who is dying when the quartet becomes acquainted. Jerry’s presence gave Marguerite a boost but it saddened Grace, who died in 1979. The story with Jerry Wilson lasted until his death in 1986 from AIDS. The writer died a year later. These lovers do not know how to love each other quietly. Sometimes Wilson hugs Yourcenar and encourages him to share his room. By