Maurice Rollinat

Maurice Rollinat, 1846-1903

Maurice Rollinat (born December 29, 1846 in Châteauroux , † October 26, 1903 in Ivry-sur-Seine ) was a French poet .

Early works

His father was a member of the French National Assembly for the Indre department , he was friends with George Sand , whose influence on Rollinat's first work Dans les brandes (1877) was of decisive importance.

Short term fame

Shortly after the first publication, Rollinat broke with literary realism and joined a circle founded by Émile Goudeau , which called itself Les Hydropathes and understood it as part of literary decadence . As a result, the poems for which Rollinat became famous were written. In his most famous work Les Névroses , he saw himself succeeding Charles Baudelaire . Rollinat's imagery takes up his fascination with death and decay. Far less provocative were his later works L'Abîme (1886), La Nature and a book with children's verses: Le Livre de la Nature (1893). Rollinat's friend Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote of his poems: "In the authenticity and depth of his Satanism, Rollinat is even superior to Baudelaire."

Rollinat was also heard as a musician, he set some of his poems to music himself. Several times a week he performed as a pianist at the Cabaret Le Chat Noir in Montmartre . Leconte de Lisle and Oscar Wilde were among his musical admirers .

Rollinat was married to the actress Cécile Pouettre. After the death of his wife, he increasingly fell into psychosis and, after several unsuccessful suicide attempts, died in the insane asylum in Ivry-sur-Seine. He is buried in the Saint-Denis cemetery in Châteauroux.

Works

• 1877: Dans les brandes
• 1883: Les Névroses
• 1886: L'Abîme
• 1887: Dix mélodies nouvelles
• 1892: La Nature
• 1893: Le Livre de la nature (anthology)
• 1896: Les Apparitions
• 1898: Ce que dit la Vie et ce que dit la Mort
• 1899: Paysages et paysans
• 1903: En errant, proses d'un solitaire

Posthumous publications

• 1904: Ruminations: proses d'un solitaire
• 1911: Les Bêtes

literature

• Régis Miannay, Maurice Rollinat, poète et musicien du fantastique , Badel, 1981.
• Hugues Lapaire, Rollinat, poète et musicien , Mellotté, 1932.
• Claire Le Guillou, Rollinat: ses amitiés artistiques , Joca seria, 2004.
• Association des amis de M. Rollinat, Actes du colloque 1996 (On the author's 100th birthday), 2005.

Web links

Commons : Maurice Rollinat  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The succubus , a typical poem from the Névroses , translated by Martin von Arndt
• Biography and numerous poems (French)
• A selection of his works ( Memento of January 2, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) (French)