History Weekend. The incredible destiny of Montpellier Jeanne Galzy, free woman and forgotten writer

Pionnière, esprit libre, écrivaine sensible, Jeanne Galzy a souvent été comparée à Colette. D.R.

La romancière et essayiste, née à Montpellier en 1883, avait reçu le prix Fémina en 1923. Histoire d’une écrivaine d’avant-garde, insoumise discrète, dont les écrits résonnent encore.

Was the insubordination of her parents the foundation of her existence? Jeanne Galzy was born in 1883 to a Protestant mother and a Catholic father. An uncommon ecumenical union at the end of the corseted 19th century which denotes two free, emancipated and rebellious spirits. So little Jeanne grew up at 27 rue de la Grand-rue in Montpellier, cradled by open-minded parents who encouraged her to study. "She had an important education for a girl of the time. Jeanne Galzy – who was actually called Baraduc – joined Clémenceau, the first high school for girls in France, created in 1880, says Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade, author of “Jeanne Galzy. An extraordinary woman of letters. The student Jeanne continued her studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and obtained “the’Female Agregation of Letters” in 1911.

She then comes very early to writing – influenced by her mother, who was passionate about poetry – and wrote verses published in the major literary magazine of the time, Mercure de France. Admiring his talent, a major signature of this publication then advised him to write a novel. But it was with the theater that Jeanne Galzy began her career as a writer. During his studies in Paris, one of his works was presented at the Odéon. Then in 1911-1912, she published “L’Ensevelie”, her first novel under the asexual name of J. Galzy. First signature as an indication of a life as a free woman, with discreet and prudent insubordination.

Not an activist

In the 1920s, Jeanne met the actress Caroline Segond-Weber with whom she fell madly in love. Her lesbianism is not shocking in this libertarian Paris of the Belle Époque with which she associates. She does not claim it either, no doubt out of Protestant puritanism, and because she abhors all activism. "She lived as she saw fit. But she didn't even want to call herself a feminist. She was not a suffragette, says Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade.

She sensitively describes everyday life as well as romantic troubles

When war breaks out and men go to the front, we have to find, among other things, teachers. This is how she landed a job as a teacher at the boys’ high school in Montpellier (today the Fabre museum). Which made her the first woman in France to teach in this establishment reserved for boys, between 1915 and 1917.

But Jeanne suffers from Pott's disease, bone tuberculosis which leaves her bedridden at the Saint-Pierre institute in Palavas and then in Berck in the North of France. After several months with her body imprisoned in plaster shells, she escaped the illness and regained her dear freedom, her body damaged but the desire to write increased tenfold. She then published “Les Allongés”, a novel in which she recounts her convalescence with lucidity and poetry, for which she received the prestigious Femina prize against Henry de Montherlant and Joseph Kessel.

Member of the Fémina jury until his death in 1977

In this year 2024, here it is! 120 years since the Fémina prize wasé created by twenty-two contributors to the magazine La vie humaine, who had taken this initiative to counter the Goncourt prize which they considered too misogynistic. The prize was also called Happy Life until 1914. Jeanne Galzy won it in 1923 for her novel “Les elongés” in which she recounts her painful Pott's disease and her convalescence. She joined the jury a few years later and remained a member until the end of the year. his death in 1977.

Jeanne Galzy then enters the restricted circle of successful novelists like Colette, with whom she is also friends. "They didn’not have the same personality at all. Jeanne was as discreet as Colette liked to go on stage. Their common point was this same taste and talent for description,” explains Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade. She also exchanges with Marguerite Yourcenar and frequents the salon reserved for women of the poet and amazon Natalie Barney.

She describes everyday life with sensitivity and acuity

What distinguishes her from other writers is the sensitivity and acuity with which she describes everyday life as well as romantic turmoil, but also her metaphysical and painful personal experiences, which she sometimes delivers in romans à clef. And she neither touches nor suggests her homosexuality in her novels.

On the contrary, she explores it, describes it without provocation or scandal, as in “L’Empty-handed Initiatrice”, “Les Démons de la loneliness” or “Young Girls in a Hothouse”, written between 1929 and 1934. But Jeanne Galzy wrote as many novels with heterosexual as with homosexual characters. She is compared to François Mauriac for the same talent for describing provincial society and romantic or financial intrigues. And even to Proust.

"She was above all a writer of great virtuosity and great flexibility in her writing. But also a model of courage and perseverance, underlines Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade who managed to have this forgotten novelist republished in 2017 in recent years.

“An extraordinary woman of letters”

Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade, former professor of sciences and languages ​​à the university Paul-Valéry and member of the Academy of Sciences and Letters of Montpellier wrote “An unusual woman of letters” (L’Harmattan. 2020). She managed à first published by chevrefeuille &etoil&eac;e, the publishing house of Celleneuve, “La cavalière” then convinced Gallimard to have it republished in 2017 and to publish it later. new “The lying down”.

Returning to Montpellier in 1945 after being retired by Pétain, she took care of her mother and sister and wrote radio plays. Without descendants and having promised that all her archives would be burned, Jeanne Galzy has difficulty passing to posterity.

Today, his republished writings are considered avant-garde literature, recounting transgressions, discreet freedoms and silent revolts. Novels devoid of activism or warlike feminism whose words struck the minds of an era and continue to resonate still.

Actress Caroline Segond-Weber, her love for more than 20 years

She was, as Jean Cocteau called her, one of the "sacred monsters" of the theater of the second century. goal of the century. Caroline Segond-Weber is a great interpreter of the tragic repertoire when she meets Jeanne Galzy in the 1920s. They will stay together until the end. the death of the actress in 1945.

The Montpellier novelist will never mention her love affair with the actress but "we know that she ’ oacute;summer “devastated by his death,” says Michèle Verdelhan-Bourgade. And during her funeral, at the cemetery of Father Lachaise, she paid homage to him in a long speech where: she retraces with admiration the life and career of the woman who nobly embodied all the figures of the theater, including Cassandre, in 1921, a play written by Jeanne Galzy and which she played the opera Comédie de Montpellier.

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