Jérôme Tharaud

Pierre Marie Émile Ernest Tharaud (18 May 1874 – 28 January 1953), better known by his pen name Jérôme Tharaud, was a French writer. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1906, and was elected the fifteenth occupant of Académie française seat 31 in 1938.

Biography

Jérôme and his younger brother, Jean Tharaud, were born in Saint-Junien, Haute-Vienne, but spend their youth in Angoulême. They left their native Limousin at the end of the 1890s to go to Paris. Their baptismal names were Ernest and Charles, and it was Charles Péguy who later gave them the names of Jérôme and Jean.

Jérôme attended the École normale supérieure. In 1901, he became Maurice Barrès' secretary, a position he held until the World War I. He wrote many articles for Le Figaro, one of which, published after the World War II, was about the revelation of the Internment camps for Gypsies in France.

For fifty years the Tharaud brothers continued to work together, always signing their names, the younger one in charge of the first draft, the older one, Jérôme, responsible for the finalization.

Tireless travelers, they visited many countries, Palestine, Ottoman Syria, Iran, Morocco, Romania, Germany, Italy, Indochina, Ethiopia... and brought back from their travels the material of reports, novels or works with historical or sociological flavor.

Limousin and Saint-Junien (in particular) had a profound effect on both brothers. In 1939, when Jérôme was elected to the Académie française, he expressed the wish that the bell tower of the collegiate church of Saint-Junien would appear on one of the sides of the handle of his academician's sword. In fact, the two brothers put all their energy into the reconstruction of the collegiate church in 1922, after its central bell tower had collapsed due to lack of maintenance. A local scholar, Jean Teilliet, a painter, called on them and took advantage of their fame to collect funds for the reconstruction. The church was rebuilt in the following years and the Tharaud brothers were delighted to have contributed to the rescue of the church where they had been baptized.

Jérôme Tharaud's wife, Renée (daughter of Paul Puget), died in May 1963 in a convent in the Paris suburbs at the age of 85. She claimed to be a descendant of the famous sculptor of the same name, and had been a dramatic artist under the pseudonym of Renée Parny, playing notably with Sarah Bernhardt. Woman of letters, she published in 1955 at Arthème-Fayard, a work entitled Le Bois-perdu. The French Academy awarded her the Alice-Louis-Barthou Prize for this work in 1955 as well as to her husband for the whole of his work posthumously.

He died in Varengeville-sur-Mer.

Works

• Le Coltineur débile (1898)
• La Lumière (1900)
• Dingley, l'illustre écrivain (1902)
• Les Hobereaux (1904)
• L'Ami de l'ordre (1905)
• Les Frères ennemis (1906)
• Bar-Cochebas (1907)
• Déroulède (1909)
• La Maîtresse servante (1911)
• La Fête arabe (1912)
• La Tragédie de Ravaillac (1913)
• La Mort de Déroulède (1914)
• L'Ombre de la croix (1917)
• Rabat, ou les heures marocaines (1918)
• Une relève (1919)
• Marrakech ou les seigneurs de l'Atlas (1920)
• Un Royaume de Dieu (1920)
• Quand Israël est roi (1921)
• L'invitation au voyage (1922)
• La randonnée de Samba Diouf (1922)
• La Maison des Mirabeau (1923)
• Le Chemin de Damas (1923)
• L'An prochain à Jérusalem! (1924)
• Rendez-vous espagnols (1925)
• Causerie sur Israël (1926)
• Notre cher Péguy (1926)
• La Semaine sainte à Séville (1927)
• Petite Histoire des Juifs (1927)
• En Bretagne (1927)
• Mes années chez Barrès (1928)
• La Reine de Palmyre (1928)
• La Chronique des frères ennemis (1929)
• La Rose de Sâron (1929)
• Fès ou les bourgeois de l'Islam (1930)
• L'Empereur, le philosophe et l'évêque (1930)
• L'Oiseau d'or (1931)
• Paris-Saïgon dans l'azur (1932)
• La Fin des Habsbourg (1933)
• Quand Israël n'est plus roi (1933)
• La Jument errante (1933)
• Versailles (1934)
• Vienne la rouge (1934)
• Les Mille et un jours de l'Islam I: Les cavaliers d'Allah (1935)
• Les Mille et un jours de l’Islam II: Les grains de la grenade (1938)
• Le Passant d’Éthiopie (1936)
• Cruelle Espagne (1937)
• L'Envoyé de l'Archange (1939)
• Les Mille et un jours de l’Islam III: Le rayon vert (1941)
• Le Miracle de Théophile (1945)
• Fumées de Paris et d'ailleurs (1946)
• Vieille Perse et jeune Iran (1947)
• Les Enfants perdus (1948)
• Les Mille et un jours de l’Islam IV: La chaîne d'or (1950)
• La Double confidence (1951)

References

• Beaunier, André (1913). Les Idées et les Hommes: Essais de Critique. Paris: Plon-Nourrit.
• Boyd, Ernest (1925). "The Siamese Twins of French Literature: Jérôme and Jean Tharaud." In: Studies from Ten Literatures. New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, pp.41–48.

External links

• Works by Jérôme Tharaud at Gallica
• Works by Jérôme Tharaud at Hathi Trust