Anna de Noailles

Anna de Noailles (born Nov. 15, 1876, Paris, France—died April 30, 1933, Paris) was a poet, a leading literary figure in France in the pre-World War I period.

The daughter of a Romanian prince and granddaughter of a Turkish pasha, she adopted France and its language for her life and writings even before her marriage to a French count. Her friends included the novelists Marcel Proust and Colette and the poets Paul Valéry and Jean Cocteau. In her literary salon she kept most of the writers of her time under the spell of her artful conversation. Her volumes of poems, Le Coeur innombrable (1901; “The Numberless Heart”), Les Éblouissements (1907; “Resplendence”), and L’Honneur de souffrir (1927; “The Honour of Suffering”), are vibrant with a sensual love of nature. Her lyricism draws from the Romantic themes of the 19th-century poets Alfred de Vigny and Alphonse de Lamartine. Her later works reflect her fear of the thought of the inevitable collapse of her physical powers. She was made a commander of the Légion d’Honneur and elected to the Royal Academy of French Language and Literature of Belgium.