Jean Anouilh

Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh 23 June 1910 3 October 1987 was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play Antigone an adaptation of Sophocles classical drama that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétains Vichy government His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue One of Frances most prolific writers after World War II much of Anouilhs work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise Anouilh was born in Cérisole a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux and had Basque ancestry His father François Anouilh was a tailor and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship He may owe his artistic bent to his mother MarieMagdeleine a violinist who supplemented the familys meager income by playing summer seasons in the casino orchestra in the nearby seaside resort of Arcachon MarieMagdeleine worked the night shifts in the musichall orchestras and sometimes accompanied stage presentations affording Anouilh ample opportunity to absorb the dramatic performances from backstage He often attended rehearsals and solicited the resident authors to let him read scripts until bedtime He first tried his hand at playwriting here at the age of 12 though his earliest works do not survive In 1918 the family moved to Paris where the young Anouilh received his secondary education at the Lycée Chaptal JeanLouis Barrault later a major French director was a pupil there at the same time and recalls Anouilh as an intense rather dandified figure who hardly noticed a boy some two years younger than himself He earned acceptance into the law school at the Sorbonne but unable to support himself financially he left after just 18 months to seek work as a copywriter at the advertising agency Publicité Damour He liked the work and spoke more than once with wry approval of the lessons in the classical virtues of brevity and precision of language he learned while drafting advertising copy Source Article Jean Anouilh from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30