Julien Green - Biography

Biography

Julian Hartridge Green was born to American parents in Paris, a descendant on his mother's side of a Confederate Senator, Julian Hartridge (1829–1879), who later served as a Democratic Representative from Georgia to the US Congress, and who was Julien Green's namesake. (Green was christened "Julian", the spelling was changed by his French publisher in the 1920s to "Julien".)

The youngest of eight children born to Protestant parents. He had a very puritanical and overprotective upbringing, his mother being extremely sexually repressive (later Green would grow into an anguished and egodystonic homosexual). Green became a Roman Catholic in 1916, two years after his mother's death. The following year, still only 16, he volunteered his services as an ambulanceman in the American Field Service. When his age was discovered his enlistment was annulled. He immediately signed up with an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross, and when that six-month term of service ended in 1918, he enlisted in the French Army, in which he served as a second lieutenant of artillery until 1919. He was educated at the University of Virginia in the United States from 1919-22. His career as one of the major figures of French literature in the 20th century started soon after his return from the United States, beginning with Mont-Cinère (1926) which was well received by Georges Bernanos.

In July 1940, after France's defeat, he went back to America. In 1942, he was mobilized and sent to New York to work at the United States Office of War Information. From there, for almost a year, five times a week, he would address France as part of the radio broadcasts of Voice of America, working inter alia with André Breton and Yul Brynner. Green went back to France right after the end of World War II.

Julien Green died in Paris, shortly before his 98th birthday, and was buried in the parish church of Klagenfurt, Austria. His name on the tomb uses the original English spelling "Julian" instead of the French "Julien".