Raymond Radiguet

Raymond Radiguet (June 18, 1903 – December 12, 1923) was a French author.

He was born in Saint-Maur, Val-de-Marne close to Paris, the son of a caricaturist. In 1917 he moved to the city. Soon he would drop out of the "Lycée Charlemagne", where he studied, in order to pursue his interests in journalism and literature. He associated himself with the Modernist set, befriending Picasso, Max Jacob, Juan Gris and especially Jean Cocteau, who became his mentor. Radiguet also had several well-documented relationships with women. An anecdote told by Ernest Hemingway has an enraged Cocteau charging Radiguet (known in the Parisian literary circles as "Monsieur Bébé" – Mister Baby) with decadence for his tryst with a model: "Bébé est vicieuse. Il aime les femmes." ("Baby is depraved. He likes women." [Note the use of the feminine adjective] ). Radiguet, Hemingway implies, employed his sexuality to advance his career, being a writer "who knew how to make his career not only with his pen but with his pencil." [Thurston, Michael: "Genre, Gender, and Truth in Death in the Afternoon," "The Hemingway Review," Spring 1998] [Ernest Hemingway, "Death in the Afternoon," p.71] In early 1923 Radiguet published his first and most famous novel, "Le Diable au corps" ("The Devil in the Flesh"). The story of a young married woman who has an affair with a sixteen-year-old boy while her husband is away fighting at the front provoked scandal in a country that had just been through World War I. Though Radiguet denied it, it was established later that the story was in large part autobiographical. Critics, who initially despised the intense publicity campaign for the book's release (something not normally associated with works of literary merit at the time), were finally won over by the quality of Radiguet's writing and his sober, objective style.

His second novel, "Le bal du Comte d'Orgel", also dealing with adultery, was only published posthumously in 1924. Radiguet had died the previous year, aged 20, of typhoid fever, which he contracted after a trip he took with Cocteau. In reaction to this death Francis Poulenc wrote, "For two days I was unable to do anything, I was so stunned" (Ivry 1996). Alongside these two novels, Radiguet's works include a few poetry volumes and a play.

In 1947 Claude Autant-Lara released his film "Le diable au corps", based on Radiguet's novel, and starring Gérard Philipe. Coming just after World War II, the movie caused controversy in its turn. Among the other cinematic versions of Radiguet's story, the heavily adapted verssion by Marco Bellocchio of "Il diavolo in corpo" (1986) was notable as being among the first mainstream films to show unsimulated sex.

Notes

References

*Benjamin Ivry (1996). "Francis Poulenc". Phaidon Press Limited. ISBN 0-7148-3503-X

ee also

*Jean Cocteau

Persondata
NAME=Radiguet, Raymond
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=
SHORT DESCRIPTION=French novelist
DATE OF BIRTH=June 18, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH=Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France
DATE OF DEATH=December 12, 1923
PLACE OF DEATH=Paris, France