Montherlant, Henri Marie Joseph Millon de (1896–1972)

French author and dramatist. His novels, which are marked by an obsession with the physical, include Aux Fontaines du désir/To the Fountains of Desire 1927 and Pitié pour les femmes/Pity for Women 1936. His most critically acclaimed work is Le Chaos et la nuit/Chaos and Night 1963. His plays include La Reine morte/Queen after Death 1942, Le Maître de Santiago/Master of Santiago 1947, and Port-Royal 1954.

He was born in Paris, into a Catholic family, but rejected the spiritual aspect as lacking virility and in his early works celebrated the glories of athletics and the prowess of the human body. Much of his best work is partly autobiographical. La Relève du matin/The Morning Relief 1920 is a story of college days. Le Songe/The Dream 1922, one of the finest French stories of World War I, is largely his own story. Les Bestiaires/The Bullfighters 1926 is a Proust-like book filled with the colour and thrill of bullfighting (Montherlant was himself an amateur bullfighter). Other plays are Malatesta 1946, Don Juan 1958, Le Cardinal d'Espagne/The Cardinal of Spain 1960, and La Guerre civile/Theatre of War 1962. In later years Montherlant published many volumes of essays, diary, and autobiography, including La Marée du soir/Evening Tide 1972.