Tennessee Williams

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I'm going to talk to you today about Tennessee Williams, a character I did not know at all until I became interested in him by listening to Johnny Halliday's song. Indeed, he sang a wonderful song about Tennessee Williams that you can listen here :

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I translated the lyrics so that the anglophones could better understand and feel the emotion of this sublime song.

Lyrics of Johnny Halliday song

"To you, weak and wonderful men who put so much grace into removing you from the game
It takes a hand resting on your shoulder Pushes you towards life, that tender, light hand."

"We all have something in us from Tennessee This willingness to extend the night This crazy desire to live another life This dream in us with his words to him Something of Tennessee This force that pushes us to the infinite There is little love with so much desire So little love of love with so much noise Something in us from Tennessee So lived Tennessee The heart in fever and the body demolished With this great desire for life This dream in us was its cry to him Something of Tennessee Like a star which dies out in the night At the time when others love each other to madness Without a burst of voice and without a sound Without a single love, without a single friend Thus disappeared Tennessee At certain hours of the night When the heart of the city fell asleep It floats a feeling like an envie That dream in us, with its words to it Something Tennessee Oh yes Tennessee There's something in us from Tennessee"

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The life of Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams (he took the pseudonym of Tennessee because of a nickname attributed to him by his friends at the University) was born in Columbus, Mississippi, on March 26, 1911, and spent his childhood with his mother and sister at his grandfather's house, pastor. His father, whom he hated, was a traveling salesman, so almost always absent.

At 12, he claims a typewriter, indeed, already very small, he invented small stories. It was somehow saved because he had a very difficult childhood and it allowed him to escape and dream a little.

He died in 1983 at age 72, he rests in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri. He is now one of the most played American playwright writers in France and many other countries.

His work has toured the world on stage (Summer and Smoke 1948, The Tattooed Rose 1951, Camino Real 1953, The Night of the Iguana 1961) but also on the cinema screens (A streetcar named Désir 1951 The Cat on a Burning Roof 1958, The Loss of a Diamond Teardrop 2008), indeed, we adapted a large number of his pieces.

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You can find all his work described here on the site of Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams

Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and for The Cat on a Burning Roof in 1955.

The Pulitzer Prize is an award created by American journalist Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911), which has been awarded since 1917 to journalists, writers, photographers and music composers. The prizes are awarded each year under various sections (novel, theater, poetry, biography, history, essay, ...) by a jury convened by the board of directors of Columbia University.

The same author can receive a prize several times. The winners include SV Benet, Faulkner, James Agee, Malamud, O'Neill, Albee, Robert Frost, MacLeish, Wallace Stevens, Van Wyck Brooks and T. Williams.

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Her work is still present today because it shows the great human dramas: the thirst for love, the anguish of loneliness, the violence of power, ... which is still relevant today. But what comes up most often in these works is the question of God and that it remains a universal theme which concerns us all believers or not ...

Here is the summary story of Tennessee Williams, a great man. I say summarized because he has done so much, he has a work so great that it is impossible to summarize it in a single post.

Hope you enjoy 🤓