Raoul Ponchon (born 30 December 1848 in La Roche-sur-Yon, France, died 3 December 1937 in Paris, France) was a French poet. A friend of Arthur Rimbaud, he was one of only "seven known recipients" of the first edition of A Season in Hell.
He was a contributor to the satirical weekly Le Courrier français.
André Rivoire (5 May 1872 – 19 August 1930) was a French poet and playwright whose work was defined by the delicate precision of his observation.
Henri Meschonnic (18 September 1932, in Paris – 8 April 2009, in Villejuif) was a French poet, linguist, essayist and translator. He is remembered today as both a theoretician of language and as a translator of the Old Testament. The 710-page Critique du rythme, probably remains his most famous theoretical work. As a translator of the Old Testament he published many volumes, including Les cinq rouleaux in 1970 (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther); Jona et le signifiant errant in 1998 (Jonah); Gloires in 2000 (Psalms); Au commencement in 2002 (Genesis); Les Noms in 2003 (Exodus); Et il a appelé in 2005 (Leviticus); and Dans le désert in 2008 (Numbers).
Jean-Pierre Duprey (1 January 1930, in Rouen – 2 October 1959, in Paris) was a French poet and sculptor, one of the modern examples of a poète maudit (accursed poet).
Duprey said "I, I shouldn't have got stuck in this galaxy!" André Breton, fascinated by the darkness and imagery in Duprey's poetry, invited the author to Paris in 1948. Duprey's books are not a celebration of death, neither do they find comfort in thinking about it. All questions asked in the poems of his last book The End and the Means (1970) are left unanswered, but their author found a way somewhere "beyond" (Jouffroy, 1970, quoted in ).
He had a sense for scandals, too. One day he went to the grave of the Unknown Soldier by the Arc de Triomphe and urinated on the eternal flame for which he was arrested and beaten in the jail; later also taken to a mental hospital. Between 1951 and 1958 he did not write and concentrated on working on sculptures. He wrote his final book in 1959 and upon completion, he asked his wife to send the manuscript to Breton. When she returned from the post office, she found him dead; he had hanged himself in his studio.
Three days before his death, he said calmly to a friend: "I am allergic to this planet".
Jacques Séraphin Marie Audiberti (March 25, 1899 – July 10, 1965) was a French playwright, poet and novelist and exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd.
Audiberti was born in Antibes, France, the son of Louis Audiberti, a master mason, and his wife, Victorine. He began his writing career as a journalist, moving to Paris in 1925 to write for Le Journal and Le Petit Parisien. Later, he wrote more than 20 plays on the theme of conflicting good and evil.He married Élisabeth-Cécile-Amélie Savane in 1926. They had two daughters, Jacqueline (born 1926) and Marie-Louise (born 1928). He died in Paris in 1965, aged 66, and is interred in the Cimetière de Pantin, Pantin, Ile-de-France Region, France
Joseph d'Arbaud (4 October 1874 – 2 March 1950) was a French poet and writer from Provence. He was a leading figure in the Provençal Revival, a literary movement of the nineteenth century.
Jacques Rigaut (French pronunciation: [ʁiɡo]; 30 December 1898 – 9 November 1929) was a French surrealist poet. Born in Paris, he was part of the Dadaist movement. His works frequently talked about suicide and he came to regard its successful completion as his occupation. In 1929 at the age of 30, as he had announced, Rigaut shot himself, using a ruler to be sure the bullet would pass through his heart.He is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre.
Rigaut's works include:
Agence Générale du Suicide
Et puis merde!
Papiers Posthumes
Lord PatchogueHis suicide inspired the book Will O' the Wisp by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle. The movie The Fire Within from Louis Malle is based on this book. The movie Oslo, August 31st directed by Joachim Trier, released in 2011, is also largely based on Will O' the Wisp although the narrative takes place in contemporary Norway. The Granada-based Spanish indie pop band Lori Meyers has a song entitled "La Vida de Jacques Rigaut" (The Life of Jacques Rigaut) with its lyrics relating with his life.
Jehan Rictus (21 September 1867 – 6 November 1933) was a French poet. He was born Gabriel Randon in Boulogne-sur-Mer. In the 1900s, he legally changed his name to his mother's name Randon de Saint-Amand.
After an unhappy childhood and poor beginnings in the life, Gabriel Randon took the pseudonym of Jehan Rictus. He found success in 1895 with poems that he interpreted in Parisian cabarets. These poems that Rictus interpreted, called Soliloques du Pauvre (Soliloquies of the Poor), were published in 1897. A few other volumes of verse followed, with Le Coeur populaire being published in 1914. At the time of World War I, he stopped publishing. He also forsook his anarchism for nationalist opinions. He is also the author of an autobiographical novel, Fil de fer, and of a vast diary. The first five booklets were published in 2005.
Henri Chantavoine (6 August 1850 – 25 August 1918) was a French writer and Professor of Rhetoric.
Chantavoine was born in Montpellier and educated at the École Normale Supérieure. After teaching in the provinces he moved, in 1876, to the Lycée Charlemagne in Paris, and subsequently became Professor of Rhetoric at the Lycée Henri IV and maître de conférences at the École Normale at Sèvres. He was associated with the Nouvelle Revue from its foundation in 1879, and he joined the Journal des débats in 1884. His poems include Poèmes sincères (1877), Satires contemporaines (1881), Ad memoriam (1884), and Au fil des jours (1889).
Charles Anthoine Gonnet (November 3, 1897 – September 26, 1985) was a French poet. He was born in Laon. In 1924 he won a bronze medal in the art competitions of the Olympic Games for his "Vers le Dieu d'Olympie" ("Face to Face with Olympia's God").