Pierre Louÿs
Pierre Louÿs (born December 10, 1870 in Ghent , † June 4, 1925 in Paris ) was a French poet and novelist . Along with de Sade , Verlaine and Mirabeau , he is considered a master of erotic literature in France.
Life
Pierre Louÿs attended the École Alsacienne in Paris at the same time as André Gide , with whom he was friends. As a schoolboy he wrote literary texts and published a magazine and had contacts to the literary movement Parnasse and its protagonists such as Leconte de Lisle and José-Maria de Heredia - whose daughter Louise married Louÿs in 1899; with her younger sister Marie (wife of Henri de Régnier ) he had a relationship. There were also connections to the French symbolists .
In 1891 he founded the literary magazine La Conque , in which Parnassians and Symbolists were published: in addition to the well-known authors such as Mallarmé , Moréas , Leconte de Lisle and Verlaine , poets who were still unknown at the time such as Valéry , André Gide, Jean de Tinan and Louÿs himself Many of his works inspired musicians, painters, draftsmen and filmmakers to create their own. Oscar Wilde dedicated his Salome to him . Louÿs conducted extensive correspondence with writers and intellectuals of his time, which has so far only been partially published.
Despite his literary success, Pierre Louÿs died lonely and impoverished at the age of 54. He was buried in the Montparnasse cemetery in Paris.
Literary work
Astarte , his first collection of poems, appeared in 1894, followed by The Songs of Bilitis, his most famous work and one of the famous forgeries in literary history.
Bilitis
The first edition of the Chansons de Bilitis appeared as an alleged translation of Louÿs' poems by an allegedly hitherto unknown Greek poet from the Sappho circle . The collection contains poems and lyrical prose, which are shaped by the influence of the poets and the world of thought of Parnassus : they cultivated a predilection for Hellenistic poetry and Greek mythology as well as a taste for heightened sensibility, the bucolic and refined eroticism. The poems are characterized by a highly artificial amalgamation of images from nature, antique sensuality and scenes of flaming eroticism. Their shape is also based on ancient poetry. Bilitis inspired various musicians, such as Wilhelm Kienzl or Claude Debussy , who u. a. set three poems in his Chansons op. 66 to music.
Novels
His first novel Aphrodite (mœurs antiques) appeared in 1896. The novel, with its atmosphere of refined feeling for nature, joie de vivre and sensuality, achieved a respectable success both in the literary scene and among the public.
The following novel from 1898, La femme et le pantin - The woman and the jumping jack is set in the presence of the author and is considered to be his most important novel. In addition to the aesthetic-erotic charm already present in his first work, there are also dramatic elements in this novel. In his novel Louÿs paints the complex emotional world of people from the metropolitan world of his time. This novel forms the basis for a series of settings and film adaptations, such as the musical drama Conchita (1911) by Zingarini and Vaucaire with the music by Riccardo Zandonai ; the film by Josef von Sternberg , The Devil is a Woman (1935) with Marlene Dietrich and finally This Obscure Object of Desire (1977) by Luis Buñuel .
Although his financial difficulties soon got over his head, he still wrote Les Aventures du roi Pausole (1901). At the beginning of the new century, he published hardly any new works, be it because of his financial problems or for personal reasons. He only published a collection of his articles scattered in newspapers and magazines as a book.
A volume with the two novels This Obscure Object of Desire and Aphrodite in translation from French and with an afterword by Vincenzo Orlando was published posthumously as an anthology in the Manesse Library of World Literature .
Late works
Amazingly, his most beautiful poems come from the period after 1917, but they were only published anonymously, like Isthi or not at all during his lifetime, like Poëtique , his lyrical masterpiece, and the Pervigilium mortis . His deeply pessimistic Derniers verse have not yet been published. The key novel Trois filles de leur mère is about his intricate relationships with mother and daughters Heredia.
Throughout his writing career, Louÿs has written a large number of erotic curiosa . These often ironic and parodic prose pieces take up the themes and material of his serious works in the form of travesties .
The library
Pierre Louÿs owned a library of around 20,000 volumes with an extensive collection of classic ancient authors, including a number of unique pieces. The fruits of his lifelong interest in antiquity are translations of Greek poets into French.
reception
His poems were set to music by Debussy, Wilhelm Kienzl, Ake Udden , Georges Dandelot , Charles Koechlin , Patrick Kardey , Joseph Marx and Arthur Honegger . The subjects of his works formed the basis for films by Joseph von Sternberg and Bunuel.
His erotic works have been illustrated by many artists, including Louis Icart , Erich von Götha , Pascal Pia , Marcel Vertès , Rojan , Paul-Émile Bécat , Mariette Lydis , Jeanne Mammen , Milo Manara , Georges Pichard , Robin Ray and Willy Pogany .
Works
Poetic works
- Astarté , 1891
- Lêda ou la louange des bienheureuses ténèbres , 1894
- Ariane ou le chemin de la paix éternelle , 1894
- La Maison sur le Nil ou Les apparences de la vertu , 1894
- Les Chansons de Bilitis , 1894, Die Lieder der Bilitis (German: Franz Wagenhofen, Budapest 1900), Lieder der Bilitis (German: Richard Hübner, Leipzig 1907)
- Danaë ou le malheur , 1895
- Aphrodite - Mœurs Antiques , 1896
- La Femme et le pantin , 1898 (Eng. The woman and the jumping jack , 1899; filmed in 1977 by Luis Buñuel under the title Cet obscur objet du désir )
- Byblis ou l'enchantement des larmes , 1898
- Les Aventures du roi Pausole , 1901
- Pervigilium Mortis (not published), 1917
- Isthi 1917
- Poetique 1917
- Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation 1926
- Trois Filles de leur mère 1926. German (without translator information) Tabu, Hamburg and Editions Bel-Rose, Rotterdam 1970; again: Area, Erftstadt 2005 ISBN 3-89996-433-0 ; other title: Three daughters and their mother. The erotic experiences of a young man Nine editions since 1974, most recently in 1982 ISBN 3-453-50059-8
- Pybrac 1927
Diaries and letters
- Mon Journal (May 20, 1888– March 14, 1890) , ed. v. Alban Cerisier, 2003
- Mille Lettres inédites de Pierre Louÿs à Georges Louis 1890–1917 , ed. v. Jean-Paul Goujon, Fayard. (Correspondence with Claude Debussy , Paul Valéry et André Gide and his brother Georges Louis.)
- José-Maria de Heredia: Correspondance inédite , ed. v. Jean-Paul Goujon. Editions Honoré Champion 2006.
Film adaptations
- 1928: A Woman's Toys ( La Femme et le Pantin )
- 1932: König Pausole , directed by Alexis Granowsky
- 1935: The devil is a woman
- 1958: A woman like Satan ( La Femme et le Pantin )
- 1976: bilitis
- 1977: That obscure object of desire
- 1982: Aphrodite - In the Tropic of Desire ( Aphrodite )
literature
- Harry P. Clive: Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925). A biography . Clarendon Pr., Oxford 1978. ISBN 0-19-815751-7
- Mariella DiMaio: Pierre Louÿs ei miti decadenti . Bulzoni, Rome 1979. (= Biblioteca di cultura; 142)
- Paul-Ursin Dumont: Pierre Louÿs, l'ermite du hameau . Libraidisque, Vendôme 1985. ISBN 2-904695-14-1
- Robert Fleury: Le mariage de Pausole . Bourgois, Paris 1999. ISBN 2-267-01520-X
- Fathi Ghlamallah: Pierre Louÿs arabe et amoureux . Nizet, Paris 1992. ISBN 2-7078-1155-6
- Jean-Paul Goujon: Pierre Louÿs. Une vie secrète (1870-1925) . Fayard, Paris 2002. ISBN 2-213-61195-5
- Giorgio Mirandola: Pierre Louÿs . Mursia, Milan 1974. (= Civiltà letteraria del novecento / Sezione francese; 6)
- David J. Niederauer: Pierre Louÿs. His life and art . Ottawa, 1981. (= Canadian Federation for the Humanities; Monograph series; 2) ISBN 0-920050-97-2
Web links
- Literature by and about Pierre Louÿs in the catalog of the German National Library
- Works by and about Pierre Louÿs in the German Digital Library
- Works by Pierre Louÿs in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ↑ The small encyclopedia , Encyclios-Verlag, Zurich, 1950, volume 2, page 74
- ^ Pierre Louÿs: This obscure object of desire - Aphrodite , Manesse Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-7175-1990-5
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Louÿs, Pierre |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Louys, Pierre (common notation in German) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French poet and novelist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 10, 1870 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ghent |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 4, 1925 |
| Place of death | Paris |