Yourcenar, the first immortal of French letters

She was born in Belgium and her name was Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour. She was 76 years old in 1980 when she entered the French Academy of Letters, known as La Coupole. With the appointment of her, “the most closed men’s club in the world” she gave up one of her seats to a woman, putting an end to more than three centuries of misogyny. “The Academy receives a writer, not a woman,” its members reluctantly declared when welcoming the author of passionate historical novels such as Memoirs of Hadrian and Opus nigrum. The ghetto of so-called women’s literature was put to an end. Yourcenar had clear ideas: “Academics are clowns, and women have nothing to do there.” The French letters were dyed black in December 1987, 35 years ago, when one of her “immortals” died.