SOURCE: An interview in With Open Eyes by Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Beacon Press, 1984, 271 p.

In the following excerpt from a series of interviews conducted over many years and first published in France as Les yeux ouverts: Entretiens avec Matthieu Galey in 1980, Yourcenar discusses a number of topics, including her literary influences, some of her major works, and her thoughts on politics and feminism.

[Yourcenar]: In the course of preparing to write Quol? l'Eternité, the third volume of Labyrinthe du monde, I had occasion recently to list some of the books I read as a child and adolescent. Two periods are sharply differentiated: the childhood influences have nothing in common with those that follow. In the end there were so many influences, they must have cancelled one another out.

To begin with, there were the fairy tales, of which I was very fond. Like any other...