Les Pensées

Over a period of years in her too-short lifetime, Lucienne Hollard McKay transcribed many of her thoughts, her moods, her intimations into words. In them one finds pain as well as gaiety, fantasy and delight and ecstasy. Most of all they are intensely personal, set down in the author’s native French, never intended for publication.

Now, in her memory, her husband has collected more than fifty of these poems. They appear herein in all the nuances of and delicate iridescence of their original expression. Lilian Polk, in dedicated friendship, has thoughtfully translated these pieces into English for those unfamiliar with the French tongue. Side by side with the translations appear the words in which they were created.

In them daydreams commingle with reality, life and death are interwoven, and always there is an ethereal beauty—even in the midst of tragedy.

Lucienne Hollard had known the mighty and the lowly, she had enjoyed the society of the famous, and she had worked closely with the nameless ones of the French Underground in World War II. Everywhere her life took her, she remained a dauntless spirit with an unbounded verve for the things that happen.

No memorial other than this book could conceivably preserve, as if still alive, the exquisite personality of its author.