Thursday, May 28, 2026

A02067 - Francoise Sagan, French Novelist, Playwright, and Screenwriter Who Wrote "Bonjour Tristesse"

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Sagan, Francoise

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Françoise Sagan
Sagan in 1958
Sagan in 1958
Born
Françoise Delphine Quoirez

21 June 1935
Cajarc, France
Died24 September 2004 (aged 69)
Équemauville, France
Resting placeCimetière de Seuzac, Cajarc, France
Occupation
Spouse
Guy Schoeller
​
​
(m. 1958; div. 1960)​

Bob Westhoff
​
​
(m. 1962; div. 1963)​
Children1

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"It's not doubt that drives people crazy, it's certainty that does."  (07/29/2024)

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Françoise Sagan (born June 21, 1935, Carjac, France—died September 24, 2004, Honfleur) was a French novelist and dramatist who wrote her first and best-known novel, the international best-seller Bonjour Tristesse (1954), when she was 19 years old.

Quick Facts
Pseudonym of:
Françoise Quoirez
Born:
June 21, 1935, Carjac, France
Died:
September 24, 2004, Honfleur (aged 69)

Educated at private and convent schools in France and Switzerland, Sagan attended the Sorbonne. She wrote the manuscript of Bonjour Tristesse in three weeks; it was made into a film in 1958. Among the novels that followed Bonjour Tristesse are Un Certain Sourire (1956; A Certain Smile), Aimez-vous Brahms? (1959), Les Merveilleux Nuages (1961; Wonderful Clouds), Un Profil perdu (1974; Lost Profile), De guerre lasse (1985; Engagements of the Heart, or A Reluctant Hero), and Un Sang d’aquarelle (1987; Painting in Blood). Most of Sagan’s novels feature aimless people who are involved in tangled, often amoral relationships. Almost all her protagonists are young women involved sexually with older, world-weary men or, less frequently, middle-aged women and their young lovers. Her plays, which resemble her novels in content, were generally well received. They include Château en Suède (1960; Castle in Sweden) and L’Excès contraire (1987; Opposite Extremes). She also wrote film scripts, short stories, and nonfiction.

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Françoise Sagan (French: [fʁɑ̃swaz saɡɑ̃]; born Françoise Delphine Quoirez; 21 June 1935 – 24 September 2004) was a French playwright, novelist, and screenwriter. Sagan was known for works with strong romantic themes involving wealthy and disillusioned bourgeois characters. Her best-known novel was her first, Bonjour Tristesse (1954), which was written when she was a teenager.

Biography

Early life

Sagan was born on 21 June 1935 in Cajarc, Lot, and spent her early childhood in Lot, surrounded by animals, a passion that stayed with her throughout her life. Nicknamed 'Kiki', she was the youngest child of bourgeois parents – her father a company director, and her mother the daughter of landowners.[1]

Her family spent World War II (1939–1945) in the Dauphiné, then in the Vercors.[2] Her paternal great-grandmother was Russian from Saint Petersburg.[3][4] The family had a home in the prosperous 17th arrondissement of Paris, to which they returned after the war.[5] Sagan was expelled from her first school, a convent, for "lack of deep spirituality". She was expelled from the Louise-de-Bettignies School because she had "hanged a bust of Molière with a piece of string".[6] She obtained her baccalauréat on the second attempt, at the cours Hattemer, and was admitted to the Sorbonne in the fall of 1952.[5] She was an indifferent student, and did not graduate.

Career

During a literary career lasting until 1998, Sagan produced dozens of works, many of which have been filmed. She took the pseudonym "Sagan" from a character (Princesse de Sagan [fr]) in Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Sagan's first novel, Bonjour Tristesse (Hello Sadness), was published in 1954, when she was 18 years old. It was an immediate international success. The novel concerns the life of a pleasure-driven 17-year-old named Cécile and her relationship with her boyfriend and her widowed playboy father.

Sagan maintained the austere style of the French psychological novel, even while the nouveau roman was in vogue. The conversations between her characters are often considered to contain existential undertones.[7] In an interview in 1960, she said her main themes were "solitude and love."[8] In his study of Sagan’s cultural impact, French scholar, Flavien Falantin traces the links between Sagan and existentialism and its most-noted philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre.[9]

Though never his disciple, in a chapter titled “Love Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre” in her memoir, With Fondest Regards, Sagan recounts how important the philosopher’s writings were to her when she was young.[10] Sagan became friendly with Sartre and included a moment in her second novel, A Certain Smile, when the narrator “threw herself” into Sartre’s “very beautiful book, The Age of Reason.” Sartre returned the compliment: her writing was “innovative” and expressed “something new, drawn from her own experience.” Her success, he felt, was “justified.”[9]

In addition to novels, plays, and an autobiography, she wrote song lyrics and screenplays. In the 1960s, Sagan became more devoted to writing plays, which, though lauded for excellent dialogue, were only moderately successful. Afterward, she concentrated on her career as a novelist.

In 1960, at the height of the Algerian war, she signed the Manifesto of the 121. In retaliation, the extreme right-wing terrorist organization OAS planted a bomb at her parents' home on August 23, 1961, but the explosion caused only material damage.

Personal life

Sagan was married twice. On 13 March 1958, she married her first husband, Guy Schoeller, an editor with Hachette, who was 20 years older than Sagan. The couple divorced in June, 1960. In 1962, she married Bob Westhoff, a young American playboy and would-be ceramicist. The couple divorced in 1963; their son Denis Westhoff was born in June 1962.[11] She then had a long-term relationship with fashion stylist Peggy Roche. She also had a male lover, Bernard Frank, a married essayist and began a long-term affair with the French Playboy editor Annick Geille, after Geille approached Sagan for an article for her magazine.[12]

Fond of traveling in the United States, Sagan often was seen with Truman Capote and Ava Gardner. On 14 April 1957, while driving her Aston Martin sports car at speed, she was involved in an accident that left her in a coma for some time. During her recovery she became dependent on the pain medication she was prescribed, a topic she wrote about in her nonfiction work, Toxique.[13] She also loved driving her Jaguar automobile to Monte Carlo for gambling sessions.

In the 1990s, Sagan was charged with and convicted of possession of cocaine.

In 2010, her son Denis established the Prix Françoise Sagan.

Death

Sagan’s health was reported to be poor in the 2000s. In 2002, she was unable to appear at a trial in which she was convicted of tax fraud in a case involving the former French President François Mitterrand and she received a suspended sentence. Sagan died of a pulmonary embolism in Honfleur, Calvados on 24 September 2004 at the age of 69.[14] At her own request she was buried in Seuzac (Lot), close to her beloved birthplace, Cajarc.

In his memorial statement, the French President Jacques Chirac said: "With her death, France loses one of its most brilliant and sensitive writers – an eminent figure of our literary life."

She wrote her own obituary for the Dictionary of Authors compiled by Jérôme Garcin: "Appeared in 1954 with a slender novel, Bonjour tristesse, which created a scandal worldwide. Her death, after a life and a body of work that were equally pleasant and botched, was a scandal only for herself."[15]

Film

Sagan's life was dramatized in a biographical film, Sagan, directed by Diane Kurys, released in France on 11 June 2008. The French actress Sylvie Testud played the title role.

Works

Novels

  • Bonjour tristesse (1954, translated twice with the same title: by Irene Ash, 1955; and by Heather Lloyd, 2013)
The British edition of Ash's translation (John Murray) contained many small cuts and alterations to Sagan's text. Some of these were restored and rectified in the U.S. edition (E. P. Dutton). Lloyd's translation is unexpurgated.[16]
Dissatisfied with Ash's translation of Bonjour tristesse, the costs of which it shared with John Murray, E. P. Dutton ended the collaboration and turned to the Paris-based American writer Anne Green, who produced a "pacey" and "somewhat less coy"[16] translation of Sagan's second novel for the U.S. market. Ash's translation of Un certain sourire again suffered from cuts and alterations, although these were less extensive than those to Bonjour tristesse. Lloyd's translation is unexpurgated.[16]
  • Dans un mois, dans un an (1957, translated twice as Those Without Shadows: into American English by Frances Frenaye, 1957; and into British English by Irene Ash, 1957)
The second and last of Sagan's novels to appear in separate British and U.S. translations.
With Aimez-vous Brahms? John Murray and E. P. Dutton resumed their collaboration, minus Irene Ash and with Dutton initially choosing the translator. All of Sagan's work from this point was introduced to anglophone readers in a common transatlantic translation, localised for the British and U.S. markets as necessary, whether from these publishers or others.
  • Les Merveilleux Nuages (1961, translated by Anne Green as Wonderful Clouds, 1961)
  • La Chamade (1965, translated by Robert Westhoff with the same title, 1966; and by Douglas Hofstadter as That Mad Ache, 2009)
  • Le Garde du cœur (1968, translated by Robert Westhoff as The Heart-Keeper, 1968)
  • Un peu de soleil dans l'eau froide (1969, translated by Joanna Kilmartin as Sunlight on Cold Water, 1971; the American English version appeared as A Few Hours of Sunlight, 1971, credited to Terence Kilmartin)
  • Des bleus à l'âme (1972, translated by Joanna Kilmartin as Scars on the Soul, 1974)
  • Un profil perdu (1974, translated by Joanna Kilmartin as Lost Profile, 1976)
  • Le Lit défait (1977, translated by Abigail Israel as The Unmade Bed, 1978)
  • Le Chien couchant (1980, translated by C. J. Richards as Salad Days in the U.S., 1984; and as Le Chien couchant in the UK, 1985)
  • La Femme fardée (1981, translated by Lee Fahnestock as The Painted Lady, 1983)
  • Un orage immobile (1983, translated by Christine Donougher as The Still Storm, 1984; American English version, 1986)
  • De guerre lasse (1985, translated by Christine Donougher as Engagements of the Heart in the UK and as A Reluctant Hero in the U.S., both 1987)
  • Un sang d'aquarelle (1987, translated by Anthea Bell as Painting in Blood, 1991)
  • La Laisse (1989, translated by Christine Donougher as The Leash, 1991)
  • Les Faux-fuyants (1991, translated by Elfreda Powell as Evasion, 1993)
  • Un chagrin de passage (1994, translated by Richard Seaver as A Fleeting Sorrow, 1995)
  • Le Miroir égaré (1996)
  • Les Quatre Coins du cœur (2019, translated by Sophie R. Lewis as The Four Corners of the Heart, 2023)

Short story collections

  • Des yeux de soie (1975, translated by Joanna Kilmartin as Silken Eyes, 1977)
  • Musiques de scène (1981, translated by C. J. Richards as Incidental Music, 1983)
  • La Maison de Raquel Vega (1985)

Plays

  • Château en Suède (1960, translated by Lucienne Hill as Castle in Sweden, 1962)
  • Les Violons parfois (1961)
  • La Robe mauve de Valentine (1963)
  • Bonheur, impair et passe (1964)
  • L'Écharde (1966)
  • Le Cheval évanoui (1966)
  • Un piano dans l'herbe (1970)
  • Il fait beau jour et nuit (1978)
  • L'Excès contraire (1987)

Ballet

  • Le Rendezvous Manqué (1958)[17]

Autobiographical works

  • Toxique (1964, journal, translated by Frances Frenaye with the same title, 1965)
  • Réponses (1975, translated by David Macey as Night Bird: Conversations with Françoise Sagan, 1980)
  • Avec mon meilleur souvenir (1984, translated by Christine Donougher as With Fondest Regards, 1985)
  • Au marbre: chroniques retrovées 1952–1962 (1988, chronicles)
  • Répliques (1992, interviews)
  • ...Et toute ma sympathie (1993, a sequel to Avec mon meilleur souvenir)
  • Derrière l'épaule (1998, autobiography)

Published posthumously by L'Herne:

  • Bonjour New-York (2007)
  • Un certain regard (2008, compilation of material from Réponses and Répliques)
  • Maisons louées (2008)
  • Le Régal des chacals (2008)
  • Au cinéma (2008)
  • De très bons livres (2008)
  • La Petite Robe noire (2008)
  • Lettre de Suisse (2008)

Biographical works

  • Brigitte Bardot (1975)
  • Sarah Bernhardt, ou le rire incassable (1987, translated by Sabine Destrée as Dear Sarah Bernhardt, 1988)

Screenwriter

Selected screen adaptations of Sagan's work

References

  1.  "Françoise Sagan: Life of Excess and Literature". AFSF.com. Alliance Francaise de San Francisco. Retrieved 24 September 2024.
  2.  Paris Match 2889 29 Sep 2004
  3.  "SAGAN Francoise, photo, biography". persona.rin.ru. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  4.  "Fransuaza Sagan - Women". the100.ru. Retrieved 13 April 2018.
  5.  Gaffney, John; Holmes, Diana (2007). Stardom in Postwar France. Berghahn Books. p. 178. ISBN 978-1-84545-020-5.
  6.  Berest, Anne (15 June 2015). Sagan, Paris 1954. Gallic Books, Limited. p. 7. ISBN 978-1-910477-15-1.
  7.  G., Foesser (1975). "Review: Réponses 1954-1974 by Françoise Sagan". Books Abroad. 49 (4): 729. doi:10.2307/40129813. JSTOR 40129813. Retrieved 24 September 2024. [She] tries to acquire 'a gay lucidity in the face of the absurdity of existence ... An existentialist by choice ... [she] sounds more resigned than happy
  8.  Borchardt, Anne; Sagan, Francoise (Summer 1960). "Do you like Flounder? A talk with Françoise Sagan". The Transatlantic Review (4): 89–91. JSTOR 41513912. Retrieved 9 October 2024. Two themes, always the same: love and solitude. Actually, I should rather say solitude and love ... Because my principal theme is solitude. Love, in some way, is the kill-joy.
  9.  Falantin, Flavien (2019). "Faut-il bruler Francoise Sagan?" [Should Sagan be burned?]. Simone de Beauvoir Studies (in French). 30 (2 Special Issue: Beauvoir in Conversation). Brill: 275-295. doi:10.1163/25897616-bja10005. JSTOR 48651383. Retrieved 25 September 2024.
  10.  Sagan, Francoise (1985). "Love Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre". With Fondest Regards. Dutton.
  11.  Paris Match 2889 29 Sep 2004
  12.  Campbell, Matthew, "Lesbian love triangle stirs Paris literati", The Sunday Times, 26 December 2007
  13.  Love, Paul (8 January 1965). "Book Review - Toxique". Los Angeles Free Press. 2 (2): 7.
  14.  "French literary icon Sagan dies", BBC, 25 September 2004
  15.  "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 September 2015. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
  16.  Heather Lloyd, "Translator's note" to Françoise Sagan, Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2013).
  17.  Kaufman, Wolfe (21 January 1958). Written at Monte Carlo. "Francoise Sagan's Ballet Promising Though Everything Wrong at Break-In". Variety. New York (published 22 January 1958). p. 2. Retrieved 20 October 2021 – via Archive.org.

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Selected Quotes by Françoise Sagan

Françoise Sagan (1935–2004) was a French novelist, playwright, and screenwriter whose sharp wit, candid observations, and exploration of love, life, and art have made her one of France’s most celebrated literary voices. Here are some of her most memorable quotes:

  • On love and life: “Love lasts about seven years. That’s how long it takes for the cells of the body to totally replace themselves.” A-Z Quotes

  • On passion: “I have loved to the point of madness; that which is called madness, that which to me, is the only sensible way to love.” A-Z Quotes

  • On art and reality: “Art must take reality by surprise.” A-Z Quotes

  • On desire: “For what are we looking for if not to please? I do not know if the desire to attract others comes from a superabundance of vitality, possessiveness, or the hidden, unspoken need to be reassured.” A-Z Quotes

  • On humor and jealousy: “To jealousy, nothing is more frightful than laughter.” A-Z Quotes

  • On fashion and attraction: “A dress makes no sense unless it inspires men to take it off of you.” A-Z Quotes

  • On life’s rhythm: “Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.” BrainyQuote

  • On writing: “I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.” Literary Ladies Guide

  • On spontaneity: “If you don’t have imagination you’re lost. But it’s a virtue that’s becoming increasingly rare, especially in its higher form: spontaneity. Mad, happy spontaneity.” QuoteFancy

  • On time and pleasure: “At night, time becomes a calm sea. It goes on for ever.” QuoteFancy

  • On the ideal man: “There is no such thing as an ideal man. The ideal man is the man you love at the moment.” A-Z Quotes

  • On shared laughter: “One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.” A-Z Quotes

  • On life’s pleasures: “Whisky, gambling and Ferraris are better than housework.” A-Z Quotes

  • On regret: “The one thing I regret is that I will never have time to read all the books I want to read.” QuoteFancy

  • On the end of love: “You should celebrate the end of a love affair as they celebrate death in New Orleans, with songs, laughter, dancing and a lot of wine.” BrainyQuote

These quotes reflect Sagan’s blend of literary insight, personal candor, and playful irreverence, making her words resonate with readers across generations.

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Françoise Sagan, Who Had a Best Seller at 19 With 'Bonjour, Tristesse,' Dies at 69

By Eric Pace

Françoise Sagan, the rebellious French writer who achieved fame as a teenager with her first novel, "Bonjour Tristesse," a precocious tale of sexual disillusionment, but whose international reputation dimmed as literary tastes changed, died yesterday in Honfleur, in northern France. She was 69.

The cause was a blood clot in a lung, friends of her family told Agence France-Presse. She had been in poor health for several years.

Ms. Sagan had an enormous international success with "Bonjour Tristesse," about an amoral teenager who sets out to keep her philandering widowed father from marrying again. The novel was originally published in France in 1954. The following year an English translation reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Ms. Sagan was only 19, making her the youngest author to achieve that feat at the time.

By early 1958, the book had sold 810,000 copies in France and more than a million in the United States and had been translated into 20 languages.


Serge Gavronsky, a professor of French literature at Barnard College, said in a 1995 interview that Ms. Sagan's early novels expressed the rebelliousness and cynicism of many of her peers in the French bourgeoisie. Those books, he said, "were perfectly in accord with a moment of time" -- the mid-1950's -- and "well connected" with France's literary past.

John Updike, writing in The New Yorker 20 years after "Bonjour Tristesse" appeared, praised "its sparkling sea and secluding woods, its animal quickness, its academically efficient plot, its heroes and heroines given the perfection of Racine personae by the young author's innocent belief in glamour."

Later works by Ms. Sagan appeared repeatedly on best-seller lists in France, and she went on to write more than a score of books, as well as plays, film scripts, short stories and song lyrics. Some of her novels were turned into movies -- "Bonjour Tristesse" and "A Certain Smile" in 1958 -- and she directed the 1977 French film "Les Fougères Bleues."

"Les Auteurs de la Littérature Française," a standard French work for students, described Ms. Sagan's terrain as somewhat limited: "a worldly, rich, idle, luxurious universe; some characters who live without material cares, who drink, who love themselves without conviction. A taste for the unfinished, for biting analysis, for narcissism. Sagan has forever been recounting the rotting of a generation."

Roger Shattuck, a cultural historian and professor of French at Boston University, said in 1995 that Ms. Sagan's reputation "had declined considerably after her first half-dozen novels" because she wrote too much and repeated herself and because of changing literary fashions.


Ms. Sagan's view of herself and her life was sometimes harsh. In "Et Toute Ma Sympathie," a 1993 book made up largely of reflections, she included a poem in which she called herself "this bizarre woman, childish and messed up."

In the first flush of Ms. Sagan's fame, she became known for drinking until dawn and gambling lavishly. It has been reported that she once made a killing at the gaming tables of Deauville and then turned around and used the money to buy herself a turn-of-the-century chateau.

She also praised the joys of driving sports cars. "Whoever has not thrilled to speed has not thrilled to life," she wrote in "With Fondest Regards" (1985). "However madly and hopelessly in love you may be, at 120 miles an hour you are less so. Your blood no longer congeals around your heart; your blood throbs to the extremities of your body, to your fingertips, your toes and your eyelids, now the fateful and tireless guardians of your own life."

She suffered a skull fracture and other injuries in 1957 when her Aston-Martin overturned while she was living in Milly, a resort town in northern France.

Ms. Sagan was convicted twice of narcotics offenses, in 1990 and 1995, receiving fines and prison sentences, which were suspended.

She once told an investigating magistrate: "I believe I have a right to destroy myself as long as it does not harm anyone. If I feel like swallowing a glass of caustic soda, that's my own problem."In 2002 she was also convicted of tax fraud in a case involving payments she received in the early 1990's to intercede with François Mitterrand, a friend and then the president of France, in an oil deal. Her health prevented her from appearing in court.

Ms. Sagan was born on June 21, 1935, in Cajarc, a village in southwest France. She was the third and youngest child of Paul Quoirez, a well-to-do businessman, and his wife, Marie.

Françoise Quoirez, nicknamed Kiki, grew up largely in Lyons and on an estate in the Vercors region in the southeast. When she was 15, her family moved to Paris. She attended convent schools before an unsuccessful academic experience at the Sorbonne.

She took the pen name Sagan because she liked the way it sounded. The name also harked back to the Prince and Princesse de Sagan, 19th-century Parisians on whom Marcel Proust is said to have based some of his characters.

After two years at the Sorbonne, with much time spent in cafes and little studying, she failed crucial year-end examinations in June 1953, angering her family. She felt she "had to do something" to placate them, she would recall, so she sat down and wrote "Bonjour Tristesse" in August. She had already been thinking about the novel and making notes for it for some months.


Ms. Sagan continued to weave fiction from sentences that were a bit abstract in the French way but that at their best dealt trenchantly and economically with the emotions.

Her other novels published in translation in the United States include "A Certain Smile" (1956), "Those Without Shadows" (1957), "Aimez-Vous Brahms?" (1960), "Wonderful Clouds" (1962), "La Chamade" (1966), "The Heart-Keeper" (1968), "A Few Hours of Sunlight" (1971), "The Painted Lady" (1983), "Incidental Music" and "Salad Days" (1984).

Writing in The New York Times Book Review in 1983, Nora Johnson praised "the grace and freshness of her early novels, those slender tales of love between aged children and middle-aged burnouts that seemed so remarkable when they began appearing in the 50's," observing that Ms. Sagan "seemed to know everything then."

Ms. Sagan won the Prix des Critiques in 1954 for "Bonjour Tristesse" and the Prix de Monaco 30 years later for her work as a whole.

Her 1958 marriage to Guy Schoeller, a publisher, ended in divorce in 1960. Her 1962 marriage to Robert James Westhoff, an American ceramicist and sculptor, ended in divorce in 1963.

Her survivors include a son, Denis, from her marriage to Mr. Westhoff.

Ms. Sagan's views on romance could be somber. In a 1980 interview, she said: "I think love is like an illness, an intoxication. Sometimes I've been intoxicated for three or four years, but never more. I think that people can be happy together for longer than I used to believe, but I still don't think it can be forever."

In a 1993 interview before her second drug trial, Ms. Sagan recalled: "I had incredible luck because just when I grew up, the pill came along. When I was 18, I used to die with fear of being pregnant, but then it arrived, and love was free and without consequence for nearly 30 years. Then AIDS came. Those 30 years coincided with my adulthood, the age for having fun."

A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 25, 2004, Section B, Page 9 of the National edition with the headline: Françoise Sagan, Who Had a Best Seller at 19 With 'Bonjour, Tristesse,' Dies at 69. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe


The book begins with what has come to be seen as a vintage Sagan sentence: "A strange melancholy pervades me, to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow."

In "With Fondest Regards," Ms. Sagan, noting that "Bonjour Tristesse" enjoyed a "succès de scandale" when it first came out in France, said that in those days she could not understand what all the fuss was about.

Looking back three decades later, she said the furor resulted partly from the relationship between the heroine, Cécile, and her boyfriend.

"It was inconceivable," she wrote, "that a young girl of 17 or 18 should make love without being in love with a boy of her own age, and not be punished for it."

Furthermore, she added, people couldn't accept that this girl "should know about her father's love affairs, discuss them with him, and thereby reach a kind of complicity with him on subjects that had until then been taboo between parents and children."








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