Pierre Loüys: Cimetière du Montparnasse #9

'PIERRE LOÜYS
1870 – 1925'

As I mentioned in my Jardin des Poètes post below, Loüys was one the lovers of Marie, the husband of Henri de Régnier and the younger daughter of José Maria de Heredia. Loüys later married Heredia's elder daughter, Louise. In 1891 he founded the literary journal La Conque, which published works by well-known Parnassian and symbolist poets.

Most famously, Loüys published Les Chansons de Bilitis (1894), supposedly his translation of erotic lesbian prose poems (actually subtitled a 'Roman lyrique') by a contemporary of Sappho, but Bilitis didn't exist, and Loüys had written the poems himself. The book was a very good hoax though: Loüys had used his considerable knowledge of Greek texts to write the work, as well as incorporating several pages of falsified bibliographical notes.

My first – and very long – post on the Cimetière du Montparnasse:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Montparnasse Cemetery / Cimetière du Montparnasse