Anna, Comtesse de Noailles

Anna de Noailles was the daughter of a Romanian boyar Grégoire Bibesco-Bassaraba de Brancovan and a Greek-born mother, a remarkable pianist. Anna grew up in her traditionally Francophile family in Paris and was taught by governesses and tutors using her father’s library. She was often present in the salon of her mother in the family’s town palace. Already at the age of 13, she started writing passionate poems.

In 1897, she married the Comte de Noailles (1873-1942), a brother of the 1900 Olympian Adrien, Duke de Noailles, becoming part of the Parisian high society. In 1901, Anna de Noailles published the first of many collections of formally stringent and passionate poetry. The imagery and expressiveness of the poems enthused her contemporaries, adopting the flowery style of the time. In addition to lyrics, the wrote four novels and an autobiography.

The Comtesse’s literary salon was soon frequented by the intellectual elite. In 1910, she received the Literature Prize of the Académie française and, in 1931, she was appointed Commander of the Legion of Honor as the first woman.

Anna de Noailles had several passionate affairs with fellow poets. From the early 1920s, she was increasingly confined to bed by an illness and had to radically reduce her social activities. Her creative energy, however, remained undiminished until her death. She was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but her heart was in the park of her family’s former estate at Amphion-les-Bains.