Paul Léautaud

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Paul Léautaud (born January 18, 1872 in Paris , † February 22, 1956 in Le Plessis-Robinson , Hauts-de-Seine department ) was a French writer and theater critic .

Paul Léautaud on a painting by Michele Catti from 1915

Léautaud grew up as the only child of an indifferent father and an absent mother from the age of two. He left school at the age of 15 and did odd jobs to survive. He trained himself as an autodidact by reading the great authors of the time late at night. He finally became known in literary circles in 1903 with Le Petit Ami , the wider public only in 1950 after his radio interviews with Robert Mallet, which made him famous. Otherwise he published little, as he shied away from literature that is written to earn a living (littérature alimentaire) . In order to be free to write what made him happy, in 1907 he accepted a poorly paid job as an employee at the Mercure de France . For a short time he was notorious as the author of the Chronique dramatique , which appeared under the pseudonym Maurice Boissard , and made himself noticeable through his openness, his mocking and subversive spirit.

He lived lonely and withdrawn, took in abandoned animals in his pavilion in Fontenay-aux-Roses and lived in poverty. For a total of more than 60 years, he devoted himself to his diary, which he later described as literary and in which he noted down his direct impressions every day, the events that influenced him. “I only lived to write. I've only felt, seen, heard, felt, only written. I preferred that to material happiness, an easily acquired reputation. In fact, I have often sacrificed my pleasures of the moment, my most secret joys and inclinations, even the happiness of some beings, to write what I liked to write. I consider it all to be a deep happiness. ”His last words before death were:“ Now give me peace ”.

Marie Dormoy, whose lover he was in 1933, became his executor and after his death helped to sift through and publish his literary diary.

Life

Childhood and youth

“A mother who was a bit picky and left me alone from birth, a father who was a brilliant and successful womanizer who didn't care about me. After all, these people who let me make my own life ... I think it's something. "

Paul Léautaud was born on January 18, 1872 in the first arrondissement of Paris at 37 rue Molière to a family of actors.

His father Firmin Léautaud (1834–1903), who came from a farming family from Fours in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence , came to Paris at the age of 20. He was accepted into the Performing Arts Conservatory and won a second prize in comedy. He played in various theaters, including the Odéon , and from 1874 worked in the Comédie-Française as a prompter, a position he held for 23 years. At Firmin Léautaud, women followed one another. Before he was in a relationship with Jeanne, Fanny Forestier, her older sister and actress, was his partner, with whom he also had a daughter, Hélène.

Paul's mother, Jeanne Forestier (1852-1916), was an operetta singer who resumed her profession soon after Paul's birth and went on theater tours.

Firmin Léautaud placed his son with a nanny until he was two years old, then brought him home and employed an old maid named Marie Pezé to look after the child for a decade. "Maman Pezé", who Paul took for his mother, took him to her room in the rue Clauzel every evening so that he would not have to experience his father's many female adventures. Paul met his mother eight times on short visits, who then moved to Geneva. She married Hugues Oltramare, had two children with him and only saw her son again twenty years later on the occasion of the death of her sister Fanny in Calais in 1901. This meeting provided Paul Léautaud with the subject of the last chapters of his first book Le petit ami . Then follows a moving correspondence (published in the Mercure de France 1956, Letters to my mother ) between the mother and the son, which lasts six months; then Paul's letters remain unanswered.

Rue de Martyrs (southern part)

Léautaud grew up in the districts of Saint-Georges and Rochechouart ( 9th arrondissement ). He lived with his father in house no. 13 and 21 on Rue des Martyrs . “At that time, my father came to the cafe every morning before lunch. He had thirteen dogs. He came down the rue des Martyrs with his dogs and held a whip in one hand which he did not use for dogs. If a woman he liked passed by, he would catch her from behind by wrapping the whip around her. "

As soon as they moved into this new home, Firmin gave his five-year-old son a key: "Do what you want, as long as you are here for dinner and not being brought back by a gendarme."

His father didn't care much about him, but he regularly brought him to the Comédie-Française and let him roam the aisles and behind the scenes of the theater. In 1881 Firmin Léautaud employed a young maid of 16, Louise Viale, in his house, whom he eventually married and with whom he had a son, Maurice, Paul's half-brother. He left Paul's nanny Marie Pezé behind and left Paris to move to Courbevoie . Paul Léautaud was taught at the Courbevoie Community School. He became friends with Adolphe Van Bever "with an astonishing speed and a bold, enterprising naturalness and organized literary conferences at the age of 15 in the town hall of Neuilly ". In 1887, at the age of 18, Paul Léautaud left school after graduating and began working in Paris. He practiced all kinds of casual activities and was considered a devoted and docile youth. In the evening he came home; the salary he had just paid was withheld by his father.

In 1890, at the age of 18, he left Courbevoie and moved to Paris. He lived there from various jobs. “For eight years I ate lunch and dinner with four penny cheese, a piece of bread, a glass of water, and some coffee. Poverty, I didn't think about it, I never suffered ”. In 1894 he began training as a clerk in the Barberon law firm, 17 Quai Voltaire; from 1902 to 1907 he dealt with the liquidation of estates with a judicial administrator, M. Lemarquis, rue Louis-le-Grand. During this time he developed a preference for writing letters.

Alfred Vallette

Léautuad spent long evenings reading the works of Barres , Renan , Taine , Diderot , Voltaire and Stendhal , which was a revelation to him. "I learned all by myself, without anyone, without rules, without arbitrary instruction, what I liked, what seduced me, what was the nature of my mind (we do not learn what pleases)". In 1895 he brought the poem Elegy in the symbolist style of the time in the Mercure de France ; the editor, Alfred Vallette , agreed to publish it in the September issue of the citation.

Collaboration with the Mercure de France

"A collaboration of 45 years, a double of 33 years, an intimate collaboration from 1895 with Alfred Vallette ."

In this era, the Mercure de France was not just a literary magazine, but also a publisher and literary center, where the generation of symbolists came together, including writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire , Remy de Gourmont , Alfred Jarry , Henri de Régnier , Paul Valéry and André Gide . Paul Léautaud was 23 years old at the time; soon he becomes familiar with the Mercure . He was greeted with great compassion by his manager, Alfred Vallette, who encouraged him (but advises him to write in prose) and with whom he worked every Sunday afternoon. He especially connected with the then unknown Remy de Gourmont. The great friendship that Léautaud and Paul Valéry had for years also arose at the Mercure .

In 1899, Léautaud began, together with Adolphe Van Bever , to prepare the edition of Poètes d'aujourd'hui in order to make works by contemporary poets available to the public. They selected 34 authors and shared the presentation notes. Léautaud is the origin of the discovery of the talent of Apollinaire, of whom the Mercure published the long poem La Chanson du Mal-Aime , but he then distanced himself from poetry and followed Vallette's advice to write in prose himself. “I have lost ten years of my intellectual life to the purring of these poetic pranksters who I firmly believe are nil for spiritual culture and the advancement of the spirit. I realized that the day I read some books that woke me up, they taught me nothing (the books don't teach anything), but they made me pay attention. "

Le Petit Ami

First edition by: Paul Leautauds le Petit Ami 1903

In 1902 Léautaud brought the Mercure a largely autobiographical work, Souvenirs Léger , which Vallette wanted to publish under the title Le Petit Ami , according to the favorable opinion of Henri de Régnier . 1,100 copies of it were printed and only sold out in 1922. However, the book was well received by the literary scene. The Prix ​​Goncourt jury was interested; Octave Mirbeau and Lucien Descaves wanted to give him the award. Marcel Schwob introduced the author to his literary salon, where he met Gide and came into contact with Marguerite Moreno . But the form of the book did not satisfy Léautaud: “What a bad taste! What vulgar descriptions! I would have to get rid of it one day. There are too many things that I want in my life, too many things in my life to be able to present them. ”He will always resist his emphasis, rewrite the first two chapters and go no further.

He continued in the same way with In memoriam , the story of his father's death. “I want my writing career to begin with In memoriam . In two years I have made tremendous strides toward truth - the truth that consists of not hesitating - and in style. "

Building of the Mercure de France , 26 rue de Condé in the 6th arrondissement , former District hotel Beaumarchais. Léautaud had his office on the first floor, where he worked for more than 30 years.

In 1907, under the influence of Remy de Gourmont, Vallette offered him a place as editorial secretary at the Mercure at 26 rue de Condé. Léautaud agreed in order to guarantee his literary freedom: "This is linked to all my literary freedom, combined with the modesty of my tastes and needs." In 1911 he moved into his first office, in which he stayed for more than thirty years and for maintenance of manuscripts and advertising was responsible. “His chair was quite often vacant, and the search for bread croutons required him to go many corridors to the concierges on the left bank, which he had been interested in his menagerie. He usually reappeared around four or five o'clock, carrying a bag, the contents of which he placed on the floor of his desk. He knelt to clean it up, and when we entered we first saw the back of his body, ”wrote his friend André Billy . The collaboration with Valette was easy. There was perfect literary agreement between them, at least until 1914, but differences in financial matters often called them into question. Léautaud found that he was working too much for his meager salary, and he was not embarrassed to be absent often, as Vallette cited with the opposite reasoning.

In 1912 Léautaud moved to a pavilion at 24 rue Guérard in Fontenay-aux-Roses , a dilapidated building without any comfort in a large wasteland, where he stayed until January 21, 1956. “I have a large garden, completely abandoned, everything grows at will, trees and herbs, I'm never there.” Surrounded by animals - from 1912 until his death, he will collect more than 300 cats and 125 abandoned dogs - including the Female monkey Guenette, who was lost in a tree in 1934, where she sought refuge.

Les Chroniques de Maurice Boissard

Octave Mirbeau

For a long time Léautaud was known only as a literary critic; the success of the Petit Ami was now forgotten. From 1907 to 1921 he held the theater section at the Mercure under the pseudonym Maurice Boissard , who was portrayed as an old man without being a secretary and only responsible for the section in order to get to the theater for free, Octave Mirbeau , who in the third chronicle recognizes the style of Léautaud, mystify.

His sense of independence, his brutal openness, his nonconformism were remarkable. For the most part, his reviews were devastating and brought him into conflict with the authors. Readers found the contributions immoral, scandalous, subversive. If he disliked a piece, he spoke of other things, of himself, of his dogs, of his cats.

Readers loved or hated Léautauds / Boissard's articles, they wrote to the Mercure that they only bought or canceled the magazine because of the theater chronicle. In 1921, tired of the complaints of readers and his wife, Rachilde, who blamed Léautaud for exhausting the people who visit her literary salon, Valletta withdrew the theatrical chronicles from him, but created the Gazette d'hier et d 'aujourd'hui (German "Yesterday and Today"), in which he will publish some of the essays taken up in Passe-Temps (1928).

Jacques Rivière immediately got him the theatrical section in La Nouvelle Revue Française , and Gaston Gallimard asked him to publish two volumes of a selection of his theatrical reviews that had appeared in the Mercure de France . Léautaud accepted, but then neglected the project; the text of the first volume appeared in 1927 and the second in 1943. In 1923 Rivière asked him to delete a derogatory passage about Jules Romains , then one of the most important employees of the NRF; but Léautaud refused and preferred to resign from his position.

Paul Léautaud 1929. “Alceste, a satirist, a man of evil cheerfulness, with biting politeness, cruel truths discussed with bursts of laughter, the excess of clairvoyance and disillusionment leading to a kind of wild mockery with good humor. What I am"

Then Maurice Martin du Gard offered him the same section in Les Nouvelles littéraires and published the article rejected by the NRF. Three months later, Léautaud resigned again and did not give in when asked to delete the sentence: “The word liberated is also used for soldiers and convicts.” He writes: “The people are downright funny. You're looking for a gentleman because his ears are crooked. It's been less than two months since they started: 'You couldn't straighten them?' "

Paul Léautaud, André Billy and André Rouveyre around 1938

Limited to his salary at the Mercure , Léautaud experienced difficult moments: “When I look at my expenses for each day, if I put 20 francs on it, there are 15 francs for the animals and 5 francs for me. I walk with perforated shoes, ragged clothes, which are often dirty for reasons of economy, which is a great suffering for me, I do not eat enough and things that disgust me, I wear my clothes for far too long and always for reasons of economy or because of the impossibility to replace them; I don't buy anything, I don't indulge in any pleasure or imagination. I may even have to stop lighting candles for work, which I love so much. This is my life at the age of 52, completed or almost. "

In 1939 Jean Paulhan asked him to resume the Chronique dramatique in the NRF , this time under his name. Láutaud accepted, but three months later a new break occurred in an episode of the Chronicle , when he described the scientist Jean Perrin as a “talkative demagogue” and a “foolish fool” because he had declared in a public meeting that “thanks soon in their free time everyone has access to great culture. "

In November 1940, Pierre Drieu la Rochelle asked him to resume the Chronique dramatique of the NRF. A first Chronique appeared in February 1941, the next episode was rejected. All of these columns were finally published in full by Gallimard in 1958.

In 1939, it seemed time to Léautaud to start publishing his diary at the Mercure . The editor Jacques Bernard immediately agreed. The publication began on January 1, 1940 and then appeared monthly in the Mercure ; this lasted until June 1, the period from 1893 to 1906.

Jacques Bernard released him in September 1941, "for no other reason than the wish not to see him again, and in the crudest way."

awareness

Paul Léautaud, previously a “writer for writers”, only became known to a broader public through radio in the 1950s. He was now nearing 80, and the fame - and the money - came too late. After his withdrawal from the Mercure , Léautaud withdrew more and more with his animals to his Fontenay pavilion. He often came from Paris exhausted; it took the devotion of Marie Dormoy and a few friends so that he did not live completely isolated.

In 1950, at the request of the writer Robert Mallet (1915–2002), he reluctantly agreed to record a series of 28 interviews for the radio, which he actually disliked (he had no radio at home). On the national program of the French broadcaster RTF , broadcast on Mondays at around 9:15 p.m. and Thursdays at 9:40 p.m., each interview lasted approximately 15 minutes.

Léautaud did not know the questions in advance. The contrast between Mallet's voluntarily conformist and solemn tone and Léautaud's anti-conformist panache was astonishing. “The old man is Mallet, the young man is Paul Léautaud,” wrote the critics. Paul Gilson, the station's artistic director, said: "We have never had such lively, interesting and successful conversations."

“I can't believe it, we're just talking about it,” said André Gide shortly before his death in 1951. Against the backdrop of the success of the series, a second season of ten interviews began on the first Sunday in May 1951, at Paris-Inter.

Standing: Roger Martin du Gard , Lise and Jules Romains . Sitting: Maria van Rysselberghe (“la Petite Dame”), André Gide and Madame Roger Martin du Gard. Nice, dinner with the Jules Romains, April 27, 1936.

Léautaud's remarks were of course considered too bold at the time to be fully heard. Everything that touches on family, sexuality , homosexuality, and especially that of Gide, the French army and the homeland, was censored . Mallet and Léautaud had to come together again to record certain passages so that they correspond to what the broadcaster could expect of its listeners.

Léautaud wrote in his diary on November 2, 1950 about the scene he reported in which Firmin Léautaud slept in the same bed with his mother and aunt:

"The station's director decided that such a topic couldn't be offered to families, most of whom weren't doing well."

On April 9, 1951, a member of the National Assembly discussing the broadcasting budget called on the government:

“We recently heard a critic for weeks, whose name I got to know while listening to the radio, who made fun of all sorts of names of his contemporaries and pretended he was only comfortable in the company of animals. I do not think that it is essential that such reflections are produced in French broadcasting. "

The Socialist Information Minister replied: “I believe, and a very extensive correspondence confirms it, that it is the honor of the broadcasting company to bring Mr Paul Léautaud to a wider public than that of the Mercure , and that it is not in vain that out of a sometimes excessive conformism voices like his can be heard. "

The newspapers picked up the case. Le Canard enchaîné of April 11, 1951 presented a reply from Léautaud to the MP. The Combat newspaper defended the old writer.

His books sold well and the magazines asked for his help. The Mercure de France honored him on his 80th birthday with a special edition. Gallimard published Les Entretiens avec Robert Mallet uncensored with a circulation of 30,000 copies and included Mallet in order to get the author to publish the diary in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade . Léautaud refused.

The Mercure de France finally asked for the early work Le Petit Ami from 1903 to be reprinted ; Léautaud refused this too. Marie Dormoy then offered to publish the first volume of the diary instead. He finally accepted this offer and the first volume appeared on October 20, 1954 with an edition of 6,000 copies. All of them were sold within three weeks and a new edition was immediately issued.

The Vallée-aux-Loups castle in Châtenay-Malabry, where Léautaud lived shortly before his death in 1956

“Money keeps falling on me. I don't know what to do with it. I don't want any of this. The diet that I had to go on for most of my life as an employee gave me a wrinkle that I kept. "

On January 21, 1956, Léautaud left his house to settle in the valley after drowning his female monkey Guenette because he feared that she would be unhappy after his death. After entrusting the cats to his friends who remained, he settled down with his friend Le Savoureux in the castle of Vallée-aux-Loups , the former home of Chateaubriand . He died on February 22, 1956.

Aspects of the work

A free intellectual and "egoist"

“As a writer, I have always been closed to ambition or display, reputation, enrichment. One thing counted for me: the pleasure. For me, this word pleasure is the engine of all human actions. "

Paul Léautaud wrote for pleasure, without compromise, without concession, just concerned about himself. He said everything he thought completely freely, with an openness that could be brutal: “I don't want to be a madman, an apostle, a reformer. I want to stay funny, ironic and laughing. But stab, bite, flank on the floor while laughing, no, I'm not ready to change that for the rest. "

As a great admirer of Stendhal , he was happy to admit his weakness for selfish exploration: “I have a great interest in [...] talking about myself, about my memories. Also, in my dreams, I will have spent my life reviving myself. "

His principle is that when writing, "only what is written in one fell swoop is worth, the pen does not go fast enough". The style must be natural and without adornment. He hates the polite, well-prepared style.

“I don't have a dictionary, I don't have to search for a word, the beautiful stylists, the mannerisms , the people who swallow their canes for writing make me feel sorry for them. A Flaubert , a true literary carpenter who polished to shine everywhere. The result: mediocrity and boredom. Even so, at least characteristics of sound, sensitivity and characteristics of a particular personality are required. The big brand is to write in full relationship with who you are and to break it out of you. "

Stendhal in 1840,
portrait by Olof Johan Södermark

Writers valued by Léautaud are Saint-Simon , Molière , La Rochefoucauld , Diderot , Voltaire , Chamfort and Stendhal: “La Rochefoucauld, Der misanthrope , Chamfort, Rameau's nephew , Vie de Henry Brulard, memories of an egotist , the correspondence [von Stendhal] and what i have in mind Libraries can burn. "

As an autodidact , whose meager resources were only devoted to paying his rent and feeding his collected flock of animals, he remained closed to many things: music, painting, science, philosophy. Even in literature, his domain was narrow: he rejects romanticism , dislikes contemporary novels (neither Proust nor Celine ) and was cautious of poets.

As an atheist , he attended a mass and then poured his sarcasm on those practicing believers, "an incurable and monumental stupidity" who were "gullible to such a monkey, respectable ravines for such a monkey".

He was not interested in politics. He never voted. “I'm neither right nor left. I know very well what I am: nothing, neutral, independent, marginal. ”Rather, Léautaud was elitist; but in terms of the absence of prejudice he surpassed most of his contemporaries:

“At the age of 15 out of school, immediately hired by my father as an employee, learn only what I can know, having only given myself the culture that I can have (I never stopped), perfected myself as a writer that has didn't make me a democrat. On the contrary: an aristocrat. I hear it through my mind, my way of thinking and judging. An anti-pedagogue, an anti-popular. The word anarchist over the mind could be better. "

Dreyfus Affair 1898: List of subscriptions to the Henry Memorial initiated by Edouard Drumont's La Libre Parole magazine . Léautaud's provocation does not go away, but the newspaper publishes his letter of protest.

He didn't like democracy or egalitarianism . “The republic is freedom. Democracy is tyranny. We see it today with the dictatorship of the trade unions, of which the government is the servant. We rule people not by giving them complete freedom, but by maintaining them. Complete freedom is quick to follow disobedience and disorder, what is worse. And Rivarola's word remains true and will be forever: 'Woe to those who stir the soil of a nation.' "

Léautaud was against universal suffrage , free and compulsory education , the right to strike, civil servants' unions, compulsory military service and the idea of ​​the fatherland in the vulgar and aggressive sense. It was for hierarchy, for order, for elite rule, for freedom of the press , for workers' professional rights, for lowering high finances.

Completely indifferent to the First World War , in 1936 he rejected the government of the Popular Front , which he accused of spreading utopian egalitarianism in France.

“It is always the mistake of equality for all men. The inequality begins from birth. One has spiritual qualities. The other will be free from it. One will live a life of curiosity, of progress. The other one life more than vegetative. Without the privileged having to be proud of it and the others blushing to be the opposite. Different chemical compounds, nothing more. "

Jean Paulhan 1938

During the Second World War he was pro-German. His attacks against the Resistance are a virulent verdict: “The stupidity of all these crimes, besides their cowardice, is limitless” and considers the German reaction to be quite moderate. On the other hand, he does not hide his admiration for England in his diary:

“The only great nation in the world is England. As a citizen, as a society, as a civil law, if there is one country in the world in which a certain civilization exists, then this is it. There is only one country in the world that I wanted to get to know, England. "

The Vichy regime appeared to him as a bulwark against the return of the former political elite, which he hates, but he turned down offers to publish his diary made by the papers of the collaboration , as by Je suis partout . In 1947, at a “Malakoff lunch (a literary meeting organized by the American writer Florence Gould , to which he and his friend Jean Paulhan were invited), I said to the scandal of the whole table if Germany had succeeded in declaring war win, we would have peace and order today, although I think a little in my heart that it might be better that we didn't have to suffer the German 'order' . In any case, we need a French 'order'. "

In 1950 he joined the Association of Friends of Robert Brasillach .

In his early years on the side of the Dreyfus party (he said that in 1898 - now anti-Dreyfus - when he accompanied his friend Paul Valéry and then with the subscription to the memorial in honor of the officer Hubert Henry, he provocatively donated two francs : "For order, against justice and truth"), his friends are the writer Marcel Schwob , the actress Marguerite Moreno and the bookbinder and cabinet maker Rose Adler . His anti-Semitism shows up in his theater chronicles when he attacks “Jewish” theater, especially the boulevard theater , which he does not like ( Bernstein , Bataille , Porto-Rich , Donnay , Romain Coolus ). Although he does not see himself as anti-Semitic “socially speaking”, the word “ Jew ” appears very frequently in his diary from 1936 onwards, especially with mention of Léon Blum , “who enlightened with the voice of the castrated” and for Leautaud as Prime Minister of the Popular Front -Government stands for the source of all disturbances.

Le Journal littéraire

Léautaud in 1934 in a picture by Édouard Vuillard . “I kept a literary diary throughout my life. The devil is taking away this writing habit. "

Paul Léautaud's main work is his diary, which he wrote for more than 60 years - from 1893 to his death in 1956 - almost every day by candlelight during the long nights.

“I laugh at myself, in the evenings, locked up lonely in my room, sitting at my little desk, in front of my two burning candles, in order to intervene in writing, for what readers, sir! In the times in which we find ourselves. "

In 1903 the diary began in its literary form. Before this date, it was mostly notes and memories from the past. Leautaud spoke about his impressions, his loved ones, his animals. His greatest literary pleasure was discovering the gestures, words and traits of characters he met at the Mercure de France , such as Jammes , Coppée , Gide , Valéry , Schwob , Rachilde , Colette , Henri de Régnier , André Billy , Georges Duhamel , François Mauriac , Ernst Jünger , André Malraux , Jean Cocteau , Marcel Jouhandeau , Drieu and many others.

“I write as I write, as I have always written: For me, my ideas, what concerns me, interests me, are happy or painful for me. I am totally in what I write, I bring everything back to me. You have to take me for who I am or leave me. ”“ As a writer, I am not a creator. I can be an original ghost. I can even be a personality with some emphasis. I didn't create anything, I didn't make anything up. I am a rapporteur of words, of circumstances, a critical mind that judges and values ​​extremely realistically, which is difficult to believe in. Nothing more. I can add: the merit of writing with warmth, spontaneously, without work, prompt and clear - and some understanding. "

“Most authors are compilers or inventors of fictional subjects. How much do your writings draw from yourself, from your inner life, from your observation of life and people? "

The original edition of the Journal littéraire contains 18 volumes, including an index volume on more than 6000 pages, to which fragments must be added that have been removed from the Journal littéraire or that Léautaud has classified as "too lively". These fragments tell in a crude way ("I will always say we have to be able to write what we want. The moral or immoral result is of no interest."), But never vulgar, also about his love affairs with Anne Cayssac (whom he called “the Scourge” (1914–1930)) and with Marie Dormoy1 (1933–1936). They appeared after his death in the form of four special journals ( Journaux particuliers, 1917–1930, 1933, 1935, 1936) and a small unfinished diary (Petit journal inachevé), which illuminate many pages of the Journal littéraire .

The style of the diary is natural and spontaneous. “Without being vulgar, Leautaud practices lively French, a tasty mix of writing and orality, through a stream of thoughts that is emotional, reactive and full of vigor. If you have discovered the voice of Léautaud in his famous radio interviews, the reader on every page has the impression of hearing it. Few writers have made the plastic dynamics of our language as great as he. As a man of the eighteenth century, lost in the first twenties, he has the drought, the natural, the ease of the great masters of French prose before Chateaubriand. "

From 1922 Léautaud also published literary reviews of the selected excerpts, but shied away from further publications despite repeated inquiries from publishers ( Mercure de France , Gallimard, Grasset and others) and because of the lack of money.

«De quelque côté que je me tourne pour sa publication posthume, si le temps me manque pour le publier moi-même, je ne vois que perspectives de tripatouillages, de suppressions, d'adultérations, de pusillanimités, de complaisances, de relations et de petits intérêts à ménager, moi bien enfermé dans ma caisse et mon publicateur ou ma publicatrice bien tranquille sur ce que je pourrais dire. »

“No matter how I look for its posthumous publication, if I don't have the time to publish it myself, all I can do is save myself the prospect of manipulation, suppression, falsification, faint-heartedness, complacency, relationships, and petty interests to be good at to lock my box and be very quiet to my publishers about what I could say. "

The first volume of the Journal littéraire appeared in the Mercure de France in 1954 , the second in 1955, and the third in 1956, two months after his death. All other volumes were published at the Mercure under the responsibility of Marie Dormoy, director of the Jacques Doucet literary library. She was Léautaud's last lover, remained a loyal friend, and ultimately his executor.

André Billy, 1923

“The patience he had every evening to record the story of his day does not deserve immortality, but it will secure it for him,” wrote his friend André Billy on March 3, 1956 in Figaro Littéraire.

Quotes

«Le mariage fait des cocus et le patriotisme des imbéciles. »

"Marriage makes the cuckold and patriotism the fool."

‹Lorsque l'enfant paraît…, je prends mon chapeau et je m'en vais.

"'When the child appears ...' I take my hat and go away."

"L'amour, c'est le physique, c'est l'attrait charnel, c'est le plaisir reçu et donné… Le reste, les hyperboles, les soupirs, les" élans de l'âme ", sont des plaisanteries, des propos pour les niais, des rêveries de beaux esprits impuissants. La passion, c'est le feu qui met en nous ce plaisir. Le sentiment, c'est l'attachement à ce plaisir. »

"Love is physical, it is carnal attraction, it is joy received and given ... The calm, the exaggerations, the sighs, the 'impulses of the soul' are jokes about idiots, the dreams of helpless spirits. Passion is the fire that gives us this pleasure. The feeling is the attachment to this pleasure. "

‹Aimer, c'est préférer un autre à soi-même. ›Dans ce sens-là, je n'ai jamais aimé.

“'To love means to prefer others to yourself.' In that sense I have never loved. "

“Je n'écris bien que si j'écris à la diable. Si je veux m'appliquer, je ne fais rien de bon. »

“I only write well when I write devilishly. If I want to apply, I'm not doing anything good. "

Léautaud in 1920. “Sometimes I say of certain things that I write: 'But it's not bad at all!',
Only to burst with laughter.” “Il m'arrive quelquefois de me dire, de certaines choses que j 'écris:' Mais ce n'est pas mal du tout! ' en éclatant de rire ”.

«Rien n'égale la mystification de ces mots: liberté, égalité, fraternité. Il n'y a pas d'homme libre au sens complet du mot, et il est nécessaire qu'il en soit ainsi. Il n'est pas, dès leur naissance, d'hommes égaux. Quant à la fraternité… Là, le rire vous prend! »

“Nothing is synonymous with the mystification of these words: freedom, equality, brotherhood . There is no such thing as a free person in the full sense of the word, and it is necessary that it be. You are not equal from birth. As for brotherhood ... it makes you laugh! "

«I love the sots qui coupent in the phrases on the armée, the drapeau, the patrie. Ces idées sont also malfaisantes que les idées religieuses. »

“There are still fools who intervene in the phrases about the army, the flag, the country. These ideas are as evil as religious ideas. "

«Lundi, 1 mars, Le Figaro: Abidjan, 28 février. Le directeur d'une plantation de Dimbokro, M. Armand vient de trouver une mort atroce au cours d'une partie de chasse dans la brousse. M. Armand rencontra un éléphant sur qui il tira à deux reprises. Le pachyderme prit la fuite mais, alors que le chasseur se trouvait dans une zone de savane, il le chargea, puis, l'ayant renversé, il lui arracha bras et jambes. Bravo pour l'elephant. »

“Monday March 1st, Le Figaro: Abidjan, February 28th. The director of a Dimbokro plantation, Mr. Armand, has just met an agonizing death during a hunting party in the bush. Mr. Armand encountered an elephant which he shot twice. The pachyderm ran away, but since the hunter was in a savannah, he stormed up to him and tore off his arms and legs. Congratulations to the elephant. "

Works

Work chronology

Léautaud published the Poètes d'Aujourd'hui series with Adolphe van Bever

Works in German translation

  • Literary diary 1893–1956. A selection. Edited and translated by Hanns Grössel . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1966, ISBN 3-499-25117-5 .
  • The little friend. A novel. Authorized transfer from Alexander Bergengruen and Mario Hindermann. Arche, Zurich 1967.
  • The father. In memoriam. Legitimate transfer from Jacqueline Pierini-Senn. Arche, Zurich 1968.
  • First love. A love story and aphorisms about love. Legitimate transfer from Alexander Bergengruen. Arche, Zurich 1969.
  • In memoriam. Translation and epilogue by Ernst Jünger . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1978.
  • Summer retreat, summer retreat. Translated from the French by Kay Borowsky . Heliopolis, Tübingen 1989.
  • The little unfinished work. Translated from the French by Bernd Wilczek. With a comment by Marie Dormoy and an afterword by Edith Silve. Bruckner & Thünker, Cologne / Saignelégier 1993.
  • Robert Mallet: Conversation with Paul Léautaud (1951). Translated from the French by Klaus Laabs. In: Sense and Form . 51 (1999), No. 3, pp. 413-432.
  • Words, expressions and anecdotes. Translated from the French by Daniel Dubbe . In: Krachkultur . 11/2007, pp. 145-151.
  • Diary 1939–1945. Ed., Translated and with an afterword by Hanns Grössel. Berenberg Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-937834-42-9 .

Film adaptation

literature

  • Martin Brinkmann: German-French friendship. Ernst Jünger and Paul Léautaud - a few remarks on the relationship between two intellectual aristocrats. In: Heinz-Peter Preusser and Matthias Wilde (eds.): Cultural philosophers as readers. Portraits of literary readings. Festschrift for Wolfgang Emmerich. Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0011-3 , pp. 227–243 ( preview in the Google book search).
  • Martine Sagaert: Paul Léautaud. La Manufacture, 1990, ISBN 2-85920-657-4 .

Web links

Commons : Paul Léautaud  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Marie Dormoy: Léautaud. La Bibliothèque idéale, NRF, Gallimard, 1958, p. 44.
  2. ↑ Entretiens radiophoniques avec Robert Mallet [radio interviews with Robert Mallet], huitième entretien.
  3. ↑ a b c Entretiens radiophoniques avec Robert Mallet, premier entretien.
  4. ↑ Entretiens radiophoniques avec Robert Mallet, septième entretien.
  5. ^ Letter to Samuel de Sacy on December 3, 1948. In: Correspondance générale 1878–1956. Flammarion, 1972.
  6. ^ Letter to André Billy of January 21, 1943, Correspondance générale 1878–1956. Flammarion, Paris 1972.
  7. ↑ Note on the copy by Léautaud of December 16, 1909. Bibliothèque nationale, Paul Léautaud, 1972, exposition présentée à l'Arsenal.
  8. ^ Diary. March 28, 1923.
  9. ↑ He earned 500 francs in 1923, which is the equivalent of 500 euros (2016). Source: Journal. January 5, 1924.
  10. ↑ Maison de Paul Léautaud in Fontenay-aux-Roses [archive] (Topic Topos).
  11. ^ Paul Léautaud à Fontenay-aux-Roses, documentary by Benjamin Roussel, 2009.
  12. ↑ Maurice Boissard at Leotaud.com .
  13. ↑ Inspired by the name of his brother and the name of his godmother Blanche Boissart, known as Miss Bianca from the Comédie-Française. Source: Ernest Raynaud: Jean Moréas and Stances, with an index of all names cited, 1929.
  14. ^ Journal Littéraire [literary diary] - August 17, 1940.
  15. ^ Letter to Édouard Champion, October 31, 1923, Correspondance générale. Flammarion, 1972.
  16. ^ Letter to Maurice Léautaud dated November 1, 1941, Correspondance générale. Flammarion, Paris 1972.
  17. ↑ La vie sexual de Paul Léautaud. In: L'Express. April 26, 2012.
  18. ↑ This impressive series of programs could be heard and downloaded via its re-broadcast by France Culture in September 2017. Entretiens avec Paul Léautaud. 1/10, parts 1 to 4 [Archives] (first broadcast: December 7, 11, 14 and 18, 1950, Chaîne Nationale).
  19. ↑ All information on the Léautaud-Mallet radio interviews comes from the presentation of the complete interviews on 10 CDs, which were published in 2001 with the support of the Société civile des auteurs multimédia (SCAM).
  20. ^ Journal littéraire. September 25 and 27, 1952.
  21. ^ Histoire du Journal littéraire par Marie Dormoy. In: Journal littéraire. Volume XIX. Mercure, p. 37.
  22. ^ Journal littéraire. February 28, 1951.
  23. ^ Journal littéraire. November 1907.
  24. ↑ Paul Léautaud, Le Fléau - Journal particulier 1917-1930. Mercure de France, Paris 1989, ISBN 2-7152-1582-7 , p. 25 (March 14, 1918).
  25. ^ Journal littéraire. 1955, [no date]. Volume xviii, p. 300.
  26. ^ Journal littéraire. April 12, 1944.
  27. ^ Paul Léautaud: Journal littéraire - Choix de pages. Folio, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-07-044891-6 , p. 380 - November 9, 1923.
  28. ^ Journal littéraire. April 26, 1951.
  29. ^ Journal littéraire. December 1, 1947.
  30. ↑ The complete quote from Leautaud is taken from: Philippe Delerm: Maintenant foutez-moi la paix. Mercure de France, Paris 2006, p. 102.
  31. ^ Journal littéraire. March 14, 1938.
  32. ^ Paul Léautaud: Journal littéraire - Choix de pages. Folio, Paris 1998, ISBN 2-07-044891-6 , p. 933: December 8, 1941.
  33. ^ Jean-Yves Camus et René Monzat: Les Droites nationales et radicales en France - répertoire critique. Presses universitaires de Lyon, Lyon 1992, ISBN 2-7297-0416-7 , p. 397.
  34. ^ Letter to Doctor Le Savoureux dated May 23, 1947. In: Correspondance générale. Flammarion, Paris 1972.
  35. ↑ a b c Journal littéraire. June 13, 1938.
  36. ↑ Léautaud made notes in his office in the Mercure , but did not write his diary until the evening.
  37. ^ Journal littéraire. January 10, 1941.
  38. ^ Journal littéraire. June 17, 1948.
  39. ^ Journal littéraire. November 9, 1943.
  40. ^ Journal littéraire. December 23, 1932.
  41. ^ Brumes, blog d'un lecteur. 17th January 2015.
  42. ↑ La vie sexual de Paul Léautaud. In: L'Express.fr, April 26, 2012.
  43. ↑ Passe-Temps. Mercure, 1929, p. 196.
  44. ^ Journal littéraire. Mercure, 1964, XVII.
  45. ↑ Amours. Mercure, 1965.
  46. ↑ Amours. Mercure, 1965.
  47. ↑ Passe-Temps. Mercure, 1929, p. 231.
  48. ↑ Passe-Temps. Mercure de France, 1946, p. 266.
  49. ^ Journal littéraire. July 11, 1951.
  50. ^ Journal littéraire. 1908.
  51. ^ Journal littéraire. 1954.
  52. ↑ This anthology, originally a single volume, was republished in two volumes in 1908 and also in three volumes in 1929 .
  53. ↑ Graphie du prénom adjusting qu'imprimée dans 2 premières éditions.
  54. ^ Pre- printed in 1902 in the Mercure de France .
  55. ^ The Journal particulier regarding his relationship with Marie Dormoy was written by Léautaud from about 1933 to 1939. Its publication began after the death of Marie Dormoy in 1974. The period 1937–1939 has not yet been published.
  56. ↑ Paul Léautaud in the Internet Movie Database (English)
personal data
SURNAME Léautaud, Paul
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Boissard, Maurice (pseudonym); Dupont, Alexandre (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French writer and theater critic
DATE OF BIRTH January 18, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris , France
DATE OF DEATH February 22, 1956
Place of death Le Plessis-Robinson , Hauts-de-Seine department , France