Paris 2017: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux, Hauts-de-Seine (92) #1: J.-H. Rosny aîné

J.-H. Rosny aîné was the pseudonym of Joseph Henri Honoré Boex (1856–1940), a French author of Belgian origin who is considered one of the founding figures of modern science fiction. Born in Brussels, Rosny spent most of his years in France. Rosny was an influence on Arthur Conan Doyle, the plot of his Force mystérieuse (1913) being adopted by Doyle for his The Poisoned Belt. Les Navigateurs de l'infini (1925) is generally considered as Rosny's best work, and his use of the word 'astronautique' is a first. However, I suspect that, in spite of a prize existing in his name, Rosny will be most remembered for his disagreements with Lucien Descaves, particularly for the, er, scandalous winning of the Goncourt in 1932 by Guy Mazeline's Les Loups, rather than Céline's Voyage au bout de la nuit, which received the 'compensatory' Renaudot.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #12: François-Charles Barlet

'ALBERT FAUCHEUX
DIT F.-CH. BARLET
1838 – 1921'

François-Charles Barlet was an occulist and had similar interests to those of Papus and Max Théon. He was one of the first members of the French Theosophical Society, although he left them and joined the Groupe indépendant des études ésotériques (GIDEE). His publications include Essai sur l'évolution des idées (1891), Principe de sociologie synthétique (1894), L'évolution de la sociologie (1894), L'instruction intégrale (1895), Synthèse de l'esthétique : la peinture (1895), and L'art de demain : la peinture autrefois et aujourd'hui (1897).

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #11: Semyon Yushkevich

'SEMEON
JONCHKEVITCH

NÉ LE 6
DÉCEMBRE
1869

MORT
LE 12
FÉVRIER
1927'

I've not been able to discover much about this Russian playwright and novelist, quite probably because his first name is also transcribed Simeon, Simon, Semyon, etc, and his surname Youchkievitch, Jushkevich, and so on. However there's an English Wikipedia page on him (but not a French one as far as I can see and my Russian's non-existent) which has a few paragraphs. He was a member of the Sreda literary group in Moscow and 'was a representative of the Jewish-Russian school of literature'. I also learn that he wrote a play called 'King' (1906) and a novel called 'Leon Drei'. (I use the inverted commas rather than the conventional italics because I doubt that these works have ever been translated into English, although in Russian his oeuvre apparently stretches to a fifteen-volume collection.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #10: Brigitte Gros

'BRIGITTE GROS

NÉE SERVAN-SCHREIBER LE 12 JUIN 1925

SÉNATEUR MAIRE DE MEULAN

1965 – 1985

DÉCÉDÉE LE 11 MARS 1985'

Brigitte Gros was a politician and a writer, the daughter of the writer Émile Servan-Schreiber and the sister of the journalist, essayist and politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber. Earlier in her writing career she wrote novels such as Véronique dans l'appareil (1960) and Quatre heures de transport par jour (1970), which was adapted into a 1973 film called Elle court, elle court la banlieue. Later she wrote non-fiction books on urban living such as Les Paradisiennes : La Vie des femmes dans la cité (1973) and Une Maison pour chaque Français (1977).

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #9: Pierre Morhange

'PIERRE MORHANGE

POÈTE

1901 – 1972'

Pierre was a poet born into a Jewish family and was a teacher of Philosophy. He founded the review Philosophies with Henri Lefebvre in 1932 and supported the Communist Party and the surrealist movement. He wrote translations into French from English and Russian, and for at least one publication used the synonym John Brown.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #8: Jehan-Rictus

'Voui, dormir... n'pus jamais rouvrir
Mes falots sanglants su'la Vie,
Et dès lorss ne pus rien savoir
Des espoirs ou des désespoirs,

Qu'ça soye ou ben l'matin,
Qu'y fass'e moins noir dans mon destin,
Dormir longtemps... dormir... dormir !

JEHAN-RICTUS
1867 – 1933

LES SOLILOQUES DU PAUVRE
LE COEUR POPULAIRE'

One of the most interesting graves in Bagneux is that of the poet Jehan-Rictus. Rictus was born Gabriel Randon de Saint-Amand, and his poetry is his transcription of the Parisian working-class dialect of the day. The verses above are from his Déception ('Disapointment'), and the two books mentioned contain his major works: they deal with the plight of the homeless (Les Soliloques du pauvre), and workers, prostitutes, beaten children, burglars, etc (Le Cœur populaire).

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #7: Barbara

'MONIQUE SERF

DITE BARBARA

1930 – 1997'

The family plot of Barbara, one of France's greatest singer-songwriters. She was born Monique Serf, the surname of her father, and in the early days of her career she sang as Barbara Brodi, Brodsky being her mother's maiden name. In 1998, the year following her death, her unfinished memoirs were published as Il était un piano noir… (lit. 'It Was a Black Piano...'). In them, for the first time, she publically revealed her father's incestuous abuse of her at a very early age. Barbara's most famous song was 'Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?' (incidentally covered several years ago by Martha Wainwright), and this clip of her singing it gives a very good idea of the emotion she put into a song: Dis, quand reviendras-tu ?.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #6: Rachilde and Alfred Valette

'MME ALFRED VALETTE

"RACHILDE"

1860 – 1955'

The grave of Rachilde (née Marguerite Eymery) and her husband Alfred Valette, although time seems to have eroded Valette's name in his own right. Rachilde was brought up as a boy, she was an excellent horse rider and could use a pistol and a sword as an expert. By the age of eighteen she arrived in Paris with the intention of living by her pen. Her most famous book was Monsieur Vénus (1884), the French version of which can be read here. It brought her fame, and scandalised many.

As I said in the previous post, Valette founded Mercure de France.  Rachilde published an enormous number of books, whereas Valette (apart from Mercure) published just two novels.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #5: Francis Carco

'FRANCIS

CARCO

DE L'ACADÉMIE

GONCOURT

1886 – 1958'

Francis Carco was born in Nouméa, New Caledonia, which he is quoted as calling the '[French] prison capital' by André Negis in his biography Mon ami Carco (1953; repr. 1986). Negis's first chapter is called 'Le Goût du Malheur' (lit. 'The Taste of Misfortune') after Carco's novel Vérotchka l'Étrangère ou le Goût du malheur (1923). Carco spent the first five years of his life in New Caledonia, and was considerably marked by it, by his father speaking of the treatment of the prisoners at the family dinner table, by a man being beheaded for killing his prison warden, by regularly seeing convicts in chains.

In his early twenties he frequented the 'Lapin Agile' in Montmartre with such regulars as Pierre Mac Orlan, Maurice Garçon et Roland Dorgelès. His first novel, Jésus-la-caille – which involves a homosexual pimp – was first published in Mercure de France thanks to the novelist Rachilde, who was co-director of the magazine and the wife of Alfred Valette, its founder: they are also buried in the Cimetière parisien de Bagneux (see my next post).

Famously, Carco had a brief relationship with Katherine Mansfield in an 'escape' from her husband John Middleton Murry in 1915, and the character Duquette in her short story 'Je ne parle pas français is modelled on Carco.

Carco wrote a number of novels, and Le Roman de François Villon (1926), a fictionalised biography.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #4: Bernard Frank

This is by no means an easy grave to find, particularly as it doesn't appear to have a single legible word on it.  And there are others which are almost identical, but this is the genuine item.

When Bernard Frank (1929–2006) was twenty he met Sartre and contributed occasionally to Sartre's Les Temps modernes; Frank also included Sartre as a character in his novel Les Rats (1953). Writing in an article in L'Observateur, it was Frank who coined the term 'hussards' to describe the right-wing group of writers in which Roger Nimier, Jacques Laurent and Antoine Blondin are generally included – an expression which is of course still used for them. One of his most noted novels is Un siècle débordé (1970), which won the prix des Deux Magots the following year.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #3: Jean Paulhan

'JEAN PAULHAN 1884–1968'

In photographs the Paulhan family tomb looks deceptively tall, whereas in reality it stands at little more than waist height to the average adult. Also buried here is Jean's philosopher father Frédéric Paulhan (1856–1931). I wrote a few paragraphs about Jean Paulhan here.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #2: Alfred Jarry

The unnamed grave of Alfred Jarry (1873–1907) is fittingly bizarre. Jarry had a huge influence on a large number of people and literary or artistic movements, such as those involved in the Theatre of the Absurd, surrealism, dada, and Oulipo (particularly with his 'Pataphysics). In short, he was far before his time, and as such he had the power to shock, as in his very strange and most famous work – the play Ubu Roi (1896) – in which the first word is the euphemistic 'Merdre' (for 'Merde'), which is so conveniently translatable into English as 'Shirt' (for 'Shit'). Jarry is also well known for his bicycle, his revolver, drinking absinthe to excess, and for his last wish on his deathbed at the age of thirty-four: a toothpick.

Paris 2015: Cimetière parisien de Bagneux #1: Armando Chirveches

The grave of Armando Chirveches is written in Spanish:

'AQUI REPOSAN LOS RESTOS
DEL
ESCRITOR Y DIPLOMATICO BOLIVIANO
ARMANDO CHIRVECHES PERES
MUERTO EN PARIS
EN OCTUBRE EN 1926'

Armando Chirveches (1881–1926) was born in La Paz, Bolivia and although he wrote modernist poetry initially he is better known as a novelist. He was influenced by Spanish writers such as Armando Palacio Valdés and Vicente Blasco Ibáñez and also by the French naturalists. His three most noted novels are La candidatura de Rojas (1908), Casa solariega (1916) and La Virgen del Lago (1920). He spent many years in Paris.