Brice Parain

Brice Parain (10 March 1897 – 20 March 1971) was a French

He appeared as himself in

Parain was primarily interested in the great intellectual and political movements of his time; his work focused in particular on Communism, Surrealism, and Existentialism, the failures of which he anticipated in part in some of his earlier works, such as Essai sur la misère humaine (1934) and Retour à la France (1936). Parain supported the newspaper Le Nouveau Détective ("The New Detective"), founded by Joseph and Georges Kessel in 1928 and specialising in the evocation of miscellaneous facts. Parain was also fascinated by linguistics. Critic Charles Blanchard dubbed him "le Sherlock Holmes du langage" ("the Sherlock Holmes of language").^{[citation needed]} Parain was particularly interested in the questions of the origin and evolution of words, expounded upon in essays such as Essay sur le Logos platonicien (1942), Recherches sur la nature et la fonction du langage (1942), and Sur la dialectique (1953).

After the

Parain was one of the chief collaborators in the beginnings of

Personal life

Although Parain was active in French Communist circles, and was initially attracted to Communism, he separated from the movement in the 1930s, and did not identify as a Communist. At the forefront of the Russian Revolution, Parain, who spoke Russian fluently and corresponded with various Russian writers, was critical of the new system.^[4]

Parain spent most of his life in Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, where he wrote the majority of his work. In 1926 Parain married the Russian illustrator Nathalie Tchelpanova. After Tchelpanova's death in 1958, Parain married Éliane Pérès, a painter, in 1961, with whom he would reside until his death. He owned a house, Le Pressoir, in Verdelot, Seine-et-Marne, where he is interred alongside Tchelpanova.

Selected publications

• Essai sur la misère humaine, Grasset, 1934
• Retour à la France, Grasset, 1936
• Recherches sur la nature et les fonctions du langage, Gallimard, 1942 (
  doctoral thesis
  )
• Essai sur le logos platonicien, Gallimard, 1942
• La Mort de Jean Madec, Grasset, 1945
• L’Embarras du choix, Gallimard, 1947
• La Mort de Socrate, Gallimard, 1950
• Sur la dialectique, Gallimard, 1953
• De fil en aiguille, Gallimard, 1960
• Noir sur blanc, Gallimard, 1962
• Joseph, Gallimard, 1964
• Entretiens avec Bernard Pingaud, Gallimard, 1966
• France, marchande d’églises, Gallimard, 1966
• Petite métaphysique de la parole, Gallimard, 1969
• Le Sophiste annoté, suivi de l’Invité de Pierre Pachet, Le Nouveau commerce, 1995
• Brice Parain, Georges Perros : correspondance, 1960-1971, Gallimard, 1998

References