Paul Fort
Paul Fort | |
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Grand Prix de Littérature (1956) Chevalier, French Légion d'Honneur |
Jules-Jean-Paul Fort (1 February 1872 – 20 April 1960) was a French poet associated with the Symbolist movement. At the age of 18, reacting against the Naturalistic theatre, Fort founded the Théâtre d'Art (1890–93). He also founded and edited the literary reviews Livre d'Art with Alfred Jarry and Vers et Prose (1905–14) with poet Guillaume Apollinaire, which published the work of Paul Valéry and other important Symbolist writers. Fort is notable for his enormous volume of poetry, having published more than thirty volumes of ballads and, according to Amy Lowell, for creating the polyphonic prose form in his 'Ballades francaises'.[1][2]
Life and career
Paul Fort was born in
One of his works, "La Ronde", has become famous worldwide as a plea for world friendship.
Fort died on 20 April 1960, in Montlhéry, a suburb south of Paris where he had lived since 1921, and is buried in the Cimetière de Montlhéry.
Theater experience
At 17, Fort frequented the Left Bank hangout of the
Fort's two theatre ventures never had a single theatre home; instead, their programs circulated among eight rental performance spaces, mostly on the Right Bank. He engaged the leading Symbolist painters of the era to design and paint the sets and backdrops, particularly the "Prophets" of the
A former actor for Antoine's Théâtre Libre,
Under the two and a half years of Fort's leadership, the Théâtre d'Art presented poetry recitations, older, little-seen dramatic work by Marlowe, Shelley, and Hugo, as well as new plays by
Poet
Post-war creation
Following the theatrical adventure he had achieved, he dedicated his life to poetry. He gave his first poems to the Mercure de France in 1896. Those poems consisted the debut of the Ballades françaises (17 volumes written entering 1922 and 1958). He begins to publish into the Le Livre d'art magazine in 1892 where it was relaunched in 1896 with Maurice Dumont. With the latter, he edited L'épreuve, Journal-Album d'art in 1894.
By 1903 he organized and held Tuesday poetic lectures at the Closerie des Lilas. In 1905, he began publishing the magazine Vers et prose with Moréas and Salmon, who notably edited the works Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Pierre Louÿs. He edited it together with Paul Valéry. Pierre Louÿs, who wrote the prelude to the first volume of the Ballades, defines them as small poems in polymorphous form or in familiar alexandrins, but which bend towards the normal prose form, requiring the rules of rhythmic prose rather than those of verse diction.
Given the title “
In August 1913, his sixteen-year-old daughter Jeanne married futurist painter Gino Severini. Fort lead the ceremonies, Severini had as witnesses Guillaume Apollinaire, and Filippo Marinetti, the author of the Futurist Manifesto. Apollinaire wrote to Madeleine Pagès two years later: “I received the idiotic lyrical report of Paul Fort, the highfalutin prince of poets, who sings to battles in far away lands in a truly foolish language.”
Poet Laureate of the Third Republic
Paul Fort was a leading jury member of the Prix Jeunesse that was created in 1934. Running in 1943 for the Académie Goncourt seat left vacant by the death of Pierre Champion a year earlier, Fort lost to André Billy, though Billy was confirmed to the seat only after the Libération.
His work was banned by the CNE (National Writers' Committee of the intellectual resistance) at the end of war, but the interdiction was rescinded in a second list published in the Les Lettres françaises of 21 October 1944.
But he officially recovered when introducing an exhibition dedicated to him in 1954 at the Reims
In 1956, Paul married Germaine Pouget. His nephew married the daughter of Alfred Vallette (1858–1935), director of
Paul Fort was buried at Montlhery on his own property, called Argenlieu.
Legacy
Fort is mentioned by Ernest Hemingway as a customer of La Closerie des Lilas , in A Moveable Feast.[15]
Dutch composer Marjo Tal set several of Fort's works to music,[16] as did British composer Eva Ruth Spalding[17] and French composers Beatrice Siegrist,[18] Gabriel Pierné and André Caplet.[19]
Fort is mentioned in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, in the entry for October 1936 where Nin recounts the evening when they met at a party.[20]
References
- ^ "Paul Fort". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 5 August 2019.
- ^ Lowell, Amy A Consideration of Modern Poetry, North American Review, Jan 1917
- ^ Robichez, Jacques. Le Symbolisme au théâtre: Lugné-Poe et les débuts de l'Oeuvre. L'Arche, 1957, p. 87
- ^ Robichez 486-88.
- ^ Deak, Frantisek. Symbolist Theater: The Formation of an Avant-Garde. Johns Hopkins UP, 1993, p. 138-39.
- ^ Deak 142, 278.
- ^ Robichez 500.
- ^ Deak 278.
- ^ Robichez 142-44.
- ^ Robichez 486-505.
- ^ Robichez 136-41.
- ^ Deak 52.
- ^ Robichez 158-65.
- ^ "Bref, l'histoire du Théâtre d'Art est celle d'une expérience manquée mais féconde, et son principal, peut-être son seul mérite, est d'avoir engendré le Théâtre de l'Œuvre." Robichez 141.
- ^ The Restored Edition, Scribners, 2009.
- ^ trilobiet, acdhirr for. "Marjo Tal". www.forbiddenmusicregained.org. Retrieved 4 September 2021.
- ^ "Eva Ruth Spalding (1882 - 1969) - Vocal Texts and Translations at the LiederNet Archive". www.lieder.net. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
- )
- ISBN 978-0-19-924966-4. Retrieved 5 November 2022.
- ^ Volume II, 1934–1939
External links
- French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Paul Fort
- Quotations related to Paul Fort at Wikiquote
- Media related to Paul Fort at Wikimedia Commons
- Poems by Paul Fort