John Antoine Nau
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John Antoine Nau (1860–1918), real name Eugène Léon Édouard Torquet, was a French poet and writer most famous for his novel Enemy Force, which won the first Prix Goncourt in 1903.
Life
He was born on November 19, 1860, in San Francisco, California and was thus an American citizen. His father, an engineer and businessman, had emigrated from France to California about 1845 and become a naturalized citizen. Attacked by typhus, he died in 1864, leaving a widow and three children. In 1866 they returned to France, first to Le Havre and then to Paris. In 1881 at the age of 21 years Nau boarded a three-master doing business in Haiti and the West Indies as a pilot's assistant. Later he became Assistant Commissioner and traveled to Colombia, Venezuela and New York.
He returned to France during 1883 and married in 1885. For their honeymoon Nau and his bride went to Martinique, planning to stay, but family obligations forced them to return to France. Nau would never return to Martinique. In 1886, he lived in San Raphaél; 1887 in Piriac; then elsewhere. While living in Carteret in La Manche he wrote his first book of poetry, Au seuil de l'espoir (On the Threshold of Hope), which he published in 1897 at his own expense. He was 37 years old. Then to Majorca in 1898, to Tenerife in the Canaries. In Puerto de la Orotava he began his novel, finished in Andalusia. Between 1903 and 1906 he settled in Saint Tropez. In 1903, again at his own expense, he published Enemy Force. It was a commercial failure, and was not even reviewed because the author did not send it to the critics. But he never wrote to make a living; he wrote only for his own pleasure. He relocated to Algers, then to Corsica for seven years (his record). The war caused him to return to Paris from 1916 to 1917, then to Tréboul in Brittany, where he died on March 17, 1918, at the age of 57 years.
In 1903, age 43, he was awarded the first Prix Goncourt for Enemy Force, his first novel. It tells the story of Phillipe Veuly, a poet, who awakens in an insane asylum. He does not know how he got there or why, but learns this in time. He becomes enamored of a female inmate who eventually leaves, he becomes inhabited by a being from another planet, is tortured by the 'doctors' of the establishment, escapes and travels the world in search of the female ex-patient. Darkly humorous and satirical, it is considered by many to be a forgotten masterpiece of science fiction.
It is said that he was called Gino by family and friends and thus his name—pronounced the same as J. Nau in French; and that it is a mixture of his American birth (John) and French heritage (Antoine); and that Nau means 'vessel' in Catalan, showing his love for the sea; and that it is in homage to the Haitian poet Ignace Nau; or all or none of the above.
Many of his works remained unedited at his death and are unpublished as of 2011.
Prix Goncourt
In 1903 a group writers gathered in Paris (J. K. Huysmans, Octave Mirbeau, Léon Daudet, the brothers Rosny, Paul Marguerite, Lucien Desclaves, Élémir Bourges, Léon Hennique, Gustave Geffroy) and awarded Enemy Force the first Prix Goncourt (by a vote of 6 to 4). Edmond de Goncourt had stipulated in his will that they would award a prose work of imagination to distinguish and support a young literary debut full of promise. He rested in peace that first year. Nau was 43 years old. The author was almost completely unknown, except for a very few exotic stories in La Revue Blanche. He was living in Saint Tropez at the time and didn't even return to Paris to claim his prize money. His "outsider" status irked many a critic, but it only increased his status among the jury and other, younger writers. In 1906 Paul Léautaud: "The Prix Goncourt has really only been given once—the first time to Nau". And years later Huysmans would say, "It was the best one that we ever crowned."
English translations
- Enemy Force (Adaptation and Introduction by Michael Shreve), Black Coat Press, 2010, ISBN 978-1-935558-49-1
- "The Emerald Eyes" (translated by Michael Shreve), InTranslation (The Brooklyn Rail), August, 2009.
- Jethro Bithell, ed. (1912). "The Blue Lagoon". Contemporary French poetry. Walter Scott publishing co., ltd. p. 97.
John Antoine Nau.
Publications
- Au seuil de l'espoir—poetry (On the Threshold of Hope). Leon Vanier. 1897.
- 1903: Force ennemie—novel (Enemy Force, Adaptation and Introduction by Michael Shreve, Black Coat Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-935558-49-1)
- 1904: Journal d'un écrivain, translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (A Writer's Diary)
- Hiers Bleus — poetry (Blue Yesterdays). Librairie Léon Vanier, éditeur, A. Messein. 1904.
- 1905: Le Prêteur d'amour—novel (The Love Lender)
- 1906: La Gennia—novel
- Vers la fée Viviane — poetry (Toward the Fairy Vivian). La Phalange. 1908.
- 1912: Cristobal le Poète—novel (Christobal the Poet)
- 1914: En suivant les goélands—poetry (Following the Seagulls)
Posthumous Publications:
- 1921: Thérèse Donati, moeurs corses—novel (Therese Donati, Corsican customs)
- 1923: Les Galanteries d'Anthime Budin—novel (The Gallantry of Anthime Budin)
- 1923: Pilotins—novel (Apprentice Pilots)
- 1923: Les Trois Amours de Benigno Reyes—stories (The Three Loves of Benigno Reyes)
- 1924: Poèmes triviaux et mystiques—poetry (Mundane and Mystical Poems)
- 1929: Archipel caraïbe—stories (Caribbean Archipelago)
- 1933 Lettres exotiques (Exotic Letters)
- 1949: Lettres écrites de Corse et de Bretagne (Letters written from Corsica and Brittany)
- 1972: Poésies antillaises. Illustrées par Henri Matisse (Antillean Poems)
External links
- Works by or about John Antoine Nau at the Internet Archive
- John-Antoine Nau at the French Wikisource
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- 1903 John Antoine Nau
- 1904 Léon Frapié
- 1905 Claude Farrère
- 1906 Jérôme Tharaud and Jean Tharaud
- 1907 Émile Moselly
- 1908 Francis de Miomandre
- 1909 Marius-Ary Leblond
- 1910 Louis Pergaud
- 1911 Alphonse de Châteaubriant
- 1912 André Savignon
- 1913 Marc Elder
- 1914 Adrien Bertrand
- 1915 René Benjamin
- 1916 Henri Barbusse
- 1917 Henry Malherbe
- 1918 Georges Duhamel
- 1919 Marcel Proust
- 1920 Ernest Pérochon
- 1921 René Maran
- 1922 Henri Béraud
- 1923 Lucien Fabre
- 1924 Thierry Sandre
- 1925 Maurice Genevoix
- 1926 Henri Deberly
- 1927 Maurice Bedel
- 1928 Maurice Constantin-Weyer
- 1929 Marcel Arland
- 1930 Henri Fauconnier
- 1931 Jean Fayard
- 1932 Guy Mazeline
- 1933 André Malraux
- 1934 Roger Vercel
- 1935 Joseph Peyré
- 1936 Maxence Van der Meersch
- 1937 Charles Plisnier
- 1938 Henri Troyat
- 1939 Philippe Hériat
- 1940 Francis Ambrière
- 1941 Henri Pourrat
- 1942 Marc Bernard
- 1943 Marius Grout
- 1944 Elsa Triolet
- 1945 Jean-Louis Bory
- 1946 Jean-Jacques Gautier
- 1947 Jean-Louis Curtis
- 1948 Maurice Druon
- 1949 Robert Merle
- 1950 Paul Colin
- 1951 Julien Gracq
- 1952 Béatrix Beck
- 1953 Pierre Gascar
- 1954 Simone de Beauvoir
- 1955 Roger Ikor
- 1956 Romain Gary
- 1957 Roger Vailland
- 1958 Francis Walder
- 1959 André Schwarz-Bart
- 1960 Vintilă Horia
- 1961 Jean Cau
- 1962 Anna Langfus
- 1963 Armand Lanoux
- 1964 Georges Conchon
- 1965 Jacques Borel
- 1966 Edmonde Charles-Roux
- 1967 André Pieyre de Mandiargues
- 1968 Bernard Clavel
- 1969 Félicien Marceau
- 1970 Michel Tournier
- 1971 Jacques Laurent
- 1972 Jean Carrière
- 1973 Jacques Chessex
- 1974 Pascal Lainé
- 1975 Émile Ajar (Romain Gary)
- 1976 Patrick Grainville
- 1977 Didier Decoin
- 1978 Patrick Modiano
- 1979 Antonine Maillet
- 1980 Yves Navarre
- 1981 Lucien Bodard
- 1982 Dominique Fernandez
- 1983 Frédérick Tristan
- 1984 Marguerite Duras
- 1985 Yann Queffélec
- 1986 Michel Host
- 1987 Tahar Ben Jelloun
- 1988 Érik Orsenna
- 1989 Jean Vautrin
- 1990 Jean Rouaud
- 1991 Pierre Combescot
- 1992 Patrick Chamoiseau
- 1993 Amin Maalouf
- 1994 Didier Van Cauwelaert
- 1995 Andreï Makine
- 1996 Pascale Roze
- 1997 Patrick Rambaud
- 1998 Paule Constant
- 1999 Jean Echenoz
- 2000 Jean-Jacques Schuhl
- 2001 Jean-Christophe Rufin
- 2002 Pascal Quignard
- 2003 Jacques-Pierre Amette
- 2004 Laurent Gaudé
- 2005 François Weyergans
- 2006 Jonathan Littell
- 2007 Gilles Leroy
- 2008 Atiq Rahimi
- 2009 Marie NDiaye
- 2010 Michel Houellebecq
- 2011 Alexis Jenni
- 2012 Jérôme Ferrari
- 2013 Pierre Lemaitre
- 2014 Lydie Salvayre
- 2015 Mathias Énard
- 2016 Leïla Slimani
- 2017 Éric Vuillard
- 2018 Nicolas Mathieu
- 2019 Jean-Paul Dubois
- 2020 Hervé Le Tellier
- 2021 Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
- 2022 Brigitte Giraud
- 2023 Jean-Baptiste Andrea