Jules Supervielle

Jules Supervielle (January 16 1884 - May 17 1960) was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.

Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century. Eager to propose a more human poetry and to rejoin the real world, Supervielle rejected the automatic writing (that the surrealist ones well quickly gave up themselves) and dictatorship of unconscious, without to disavow the assets of modern poetry since Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Apollinaire, like certain fundamental innovations of surrealism.

Attentive with the universe which surrounded it as with the phantoms of its interior world, it was one of the first to recommend this vigilance, this control that the following generations, moving away from the surrealist movement, put at the honor. It anticipated the movements of the years 1945-50, dominated by the powerful personalities of Rene Char, Henri Michaux, Saint-John Perse or Francis Ponge, then - after the bracket avant-gardist of the years 1960-70 - those of the poets eager to create a new lyricism and to introduce a certain form of crowned or, at least, a more modest approach to the mysteries of the universe, without radical questioning of the language: Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Eugene Guillevic, Jean Grosjean, Andre Frénaud, Andre of Bouchet, Jean Follain, to mention only a few.

Amongst his admirers are Rene-Guy Cadou, Alain Bosquet, Lionel Ray, Claude Roy, Philippe Jaccottet and Jacques Réda.

Great events of the life of Supervielle

A very plain family

From 1880 to 1883, Bernard, uncle of the poet, founded a bank in Uruguay with his wife Marie-Anne. This company quickly became a family-orientated business. Bernard asked his brother Jules, the father of the poet, to come to join him in Uruguay. Jules made the trio a perfect quartet by marrying his own sister-in-law, Marie, sister of Marie-Anne and mother of the poet.

Birth of an orphan

Supervielle was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to a father from Béarn and a Basque mother. The same year, the little Jules and his parents returned to France to visit their family. It is in Oloron-Sainte-Marie that a tragic accident occurs - his father and mother die brutally, either poisoned by tap water or victims of cholera. The child is therefore initially raised by his grandmother.

In 1886, his uncle Bernard brought the young Jules back to Uruguay, where he was raised by his aunt and uncle as if he was their own son.

Beginnings of a literary vocation

* 1893: At the age of nine, the young Jules learns by chance that he is only the adoptive son of his uncle and his aunt. He begins the drafting of a book of fables on a register of the Supervielle bank.
* 1894: His uncle and his aunt settle in Paris. Jules will receive all his secondary education there.
* 1898: Jules discovers Musset, Hugo, Lamartine, Leconte de Lisle and Sully Prudhomme. He starts to write poems in secret.
* 1901: He publishes in account of author a plate of poems entitled " Brumes du passé ". He spends his summer holidays in Uruguay in 1901, 1902 and 1903.
*From 1902 to 1906: Jules continues his studies, from the baccalaureat to the licence of literature. He makes also his military service but, of fragile health, he badly supports the life of barracks .

Entry into the adult life

* 1907: he marries Pilar Saavedra in Montevideo. From this union will be born six children, born between 1908 and 1929.
* 1910: he deposits a subject of thesis on " the feeling of nature in Spanish-American poetry ". Extracts will appear in the Bulletin of the American library.
* 1912: After many voyages, he settles in Paris, in an apartment, 47, boulevard Lannes, where it will remain during twenty-three years. But, very often, he will cross the Atlantic Ocean to go to Uruguay, his second fatherland.
*From 1914 to 1917: Jules is conscripted. He will carry on in particular activities with the ministry of War, because of his linguistic abilities. Since 1917, he reads much and discovers Paul Claudel, Arthur Rimbaud, Stéphane Mallarmé, Jules Laforgue and Walt Whitman.
* 1919: The publication of his poems retains the attention of Gide and of Valéry and puts him in contact with the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF).

Birth of a poet

* 1922: Publication of its first important collection of poems: " Débarcadères ".
* 1923: It is the beginning of a long friendship with Henri Michaux, who will become his close friend. It is as this year as he publishes its first novel: " L'homme de la pampa ".
* 1925: He binds with great German poet Rainer Maria Rilke and publishes one of the major poetic collections of the XXth century: " Gravitations ".
* 1927: He becomes the close friend of Jean Paulhan and subjects from now on all its texts to him.
* 1931: He writes its first important collection of news: " L'enfant de la haute mer ". At that time, it is devoted to many literary activities and acquires the recognition of criticism, including in Uruguay. Its first important play, " La belle au bois ", is also written at that time. In addition, he will not cease altering its texts, giving place to multiple republications, and the fact of often passing from a literary kind to another.
* 1938: It binds with René Étiemble.

Years of exile

* 1939: With the declaration of war start difficult years: the international tension, financial difficulties and troubles of health (pulmonary and cardiac problems) lead Jules Supervielle to be exiled for seven years in Uruguay. He is named "Officier de la Legion d'honneur".
* 1940: The Supervielle bank goes bankrupt; the poet is ruined. But its literary activity is still very intense and its plays will be assembled thereafter by large directors, of which Louis Jouvet. In addition he keep on devoting himself to translation (Guillen, Lorca, Shakespeare…) and will receive several literary prices throughout these years of maturity.
* 1944: He makes a series of conferences at the University of Montevideo on contemporary French poetry.

the dedication

* 1946: Supervielle returns to France, having been named cultural correspondent to the legation of Uruguay in Paris. He publishes his first mythological tales under the title " Orphée ".
* 1947: Supervielle's " Shéhérazade " is one of the three plays directed by Jean Vilar at the first festival d'Avignon.
* 1951: He publishes an autobiographical account entitled " Boire à la source ", like some precious pages on its conception of poetry: while thinking of a poetic art, following its poetic collection " Naissances ". At that time, he suffers of arrhythmia and the after-effects of its lung disease.
* 1959: He publishes its last poetic collection, " Le Corps Tragique ".
* 1960: Supervielle is elected "Prince des poètes" by its peers. On May 17, he dies in his Parisian apartment; he is buried in Oloron-Sainte-Marie. In October, the NRF publishes a special number which pays homage to him.
*From 1966 to 1987: publication at the editions Gallimard (collection “Poésie”) of its principal poetic collections.
* 1976: Pilar dies; she is buried at the side of her husband.
* 1990: The city of Oloron-Sainte-Marie creates the Jules-Supervielle prize; among the prize winners, one finds the names of major contemporary poets: Alain Bosquet, Eugene Guillevic, Henri Thomas, Jean Grosjean and Lionel Ray.
* 1996: Publication of complete poetic works of Jules Supervielle in the Bibliothèque de La Pléiade, by the Gallimard editions.

Main works

to see [http://supervielle.univers.free.fr/supervielle/oeuvres_principales.htm All his work]

tudies about his work

* Claude Roy, " Supervielle ", Paris, Poésies P., NRF, 1970
* Sabine Dewulf, " Jules Supervielle ou la connaissance poétique - Sous le soleil d’oubli", coll. Critiques Littéraires, in two volumes, Paris, éd. L’Harmattan, 2001

External links

* [http://supervielle.blogspot.com Jules Supervielle and poetry]
* [http://www.ac-bordeaux.fr/Etablissement/Supervielle/pages/hjules.htm Jules Supervielle]
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