19 November 2011

Cimetière ancien de Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine (92), France: Literary Île-de-France #31

Josef Hoëné-Wronski (1776—1853) was born Josef Hoëné in Poland, but after adopting French nationality and settling in Paris, he changed his name to Wronski. He was a philosopher and mathematician whose ideas were seen as useless and utopian, although more recent research has suggested that he in fact had great mathematical perception and even some genius.


Raymonde Machard (1889—1971) was a novelist who created Le journal de la femme.

André Maurois (1885—1967) was born Emile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog, the son of émigrés from the Franco­—Prussian War. His first success as a writer was with the partly autobiographical Le Silence de Colonel Bramble, and he wrote a number of biographies of both French and English authors, such as Sand, Balzac, Hugo, Proust, Disraeli, Shelley, and Byron.

His second wife was Simone de Caillevet, who was the granddaughter of Léontine Arman de Caillavet, the mistress of Anatole France. And Anatole France is buried here, although I couldn't find him. At the cemetery reception his location was found (with some difficulty), and the clerk mentioned that he had seen his grave, although the details I was given didn't seem to meet with anything that even vaguely resembled the reality. I gave up — it had already been a long day.

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