Jean Tardieu (born in Saint-Germain-de-Joux, Ain, 1 November 1903, died in

Créteil Créteil () is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, Île-de-France. It is located from the centre of Paris. Créteil is the '' préfecture'' (capital) of the Val-de-Marne department as well as the seat of the Arrondissement of ...

, Val-de-Marne, 27 January 1995) was a French artist, musician, poet and dramatic author.

Life and career

He earned a degree in literature and worked for a publishing house. He published several poetry collections in the 1930s before starting to write for the stage. After World War II, Tardieu entered the world of radio and worked his way to head of dramatic programming and then director of programs at France-Music. The quality and success of French National Public Radio after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

has been attributed largely to Jean Tardieu. He was married to pteridologist

Marie Laure Tardieu Marie Laure Tardieu-Blot (17 November 1902 – 23 March 1998) was a French pteridologist who worked at the National Museum of Natural History (France) and is noted for describing over 400 species. The genus of ferns ''Blotiella'' was named in ...

. Tardieu's works mingled with the ideals of the French New Theatre and used comedy to pick apart more traditional theatre. He is often associated with the Theatre of the Absurd. Some of his work has been translated into English, including: * ''The Underground Lovers, and other experimental plays'' * ''Going...Going...Gone! The Client Dies Twice: Three Plays'' ( Black Apollo Press, ) * ''The River Underground: Selected Poems & Prose'' Some of his work is present in

Julio Cortázar Julio Florencio Cortázar (26 August 1914 – 12 February 1984; ) was an Argentine, nationalized French novelist, short story writer, essayist, and translator. Known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, Cortázar influenced an ...

's 1963 novel '' Rayuela'' (''Hopscotch''). Tardieu's work is included in Chapter 152, entitled "The Abuse of Consciousness". The French composer Germaine Tailleferre of Les Six, who was a harp student of Tardieu's mother Caroline Luigini and who first met Tardieu as a child, set several of Tardieu's poems to music notably in the "Concerto des Vaines Paroles" for Baritone Voice, Piano and Orchestra and in the cycle "Trois Poèmes de Jean Tardieu" for Voice and Piano. He was a great friend of Jean René Bazaine who turned his poem ''L'Ombre, la branche'' into a fine illustrated art book.( Maeght Éditeur, 1977: 150 ex. with 16 colored litho's, 50 ex. with three added litho's.)

References

1903 births 1995 deaths People from Ain Lycée Condorcet alumni 20th-century French dramatists and playwrights 20th-century French poets {{theat-bio-stub