Paul-Pierre Roux, called Saint-Pol-Roux (15 January 1861, quartier de Saint-Henry,

Marseille Marseille (; ; see #Name, below) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Bouches-du-Rhône and of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region. Situated in the ...

– 18 October 1940, Brest), was a French Symbolist

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator (thought, thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral t ...

Life

Marseille

Saint-Pol-Roux was born to a middle-class family in Marseille, where his father was an industrialist. He studied in a lycée in

Lyon Lyon (Franco-Provençal: ''Liyon'') is a city in France. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Rhône and Saône, to the northwest of the French Alps, southeast of Paris, north of Marseille, southwest of Geneva, Switzerland, north ...

, and left it as Bachelor of Arts in 1880. He then wrote some plays under his own name.

Years in Paris

He left the south of France to install himself in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. He particularly frequented the

salon Salon may refer to: Common meanings * Beauty salon A beauty salon or beauty parlor is an establishment that provides Cosmetics, cosmetic treatments for people. Other variations of this type of business include hair salons, spas, day spas, ...

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French Symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools o ...

, for whom Saint-Pol-Roux had the greatest admiration. He won a certain notoriety, trying out several pseudonyms before finally becoming "Saint-Pol-Roux le magnifique". One of his plays, ''La Dame à la faulx'', was put on by

Sarah Bernhardt Sarah Bernhardt (; born Henriette-Rosine Bernard; 22 October 1844 – 26 March 1923) was a French stage actress who starred in some of the most popular French plays of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including by Alexandre Dumas fils, ...

, and was interviewed by Jules Huret as a member of the Symbolist movement. He perhaps participated in the

Rosicrucian Rosicrucianism () is a spirituality, spiritual and cultural movement that arose in early modern Europe in the early 17th century after the publication of several texts announcing to the world a new Western esotericism, esoteric order. Rosicruc ...

aesthetic of Péladan. Nevertheless, he wrote nothing on the movement or on its founder although Saint-Pol-Roux seems to have been interested in this audacious literary experiment.

Voluntary exile

Saint-Pol-Roux leaves Paris in 1898, having come to hate it for his being ostracized, and for the mediocrity of the literary criticism circles, ignoring it with as much pride as he himself had been ignored. On a

clairvoyant Clairvoyance (; ) is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to ...

's advice, and also to escape his creditors, he left for the Ardennes. There he settled with his wife in Roscanvel, in

Finistère Finistère (, ; ) is a Departments of France, department of France in the extreme west of Brittany. Its prefecture is Quimper and its largest city is Brest, France, Brest. In 2019, it had a population of 915,090.Camaret and made

Brittany Brittany ( ) is a peninsula, historical country and cultural area in the north-west of modern France, covering the western part of what was known as Armorica in Roman Gaul. It became an Kingdom of Brittany, independent kingdom and then a Duch ...

the center for his work. Living off the revenue he earned from his libretto for the opera ''Louise'', he bought a house overlooking the ocean, above the Pen Had beach, on the road to pointe de Pen Hir. He transformed it into a manor in the

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

style. He named it the ”Manoir de Coecilian”, after his son's name, or sometimes ”Manoir des Boultous”. He wrote "Facing the sea, man is closer to God" ("Face à la mer, l'homme est plus près de Dieu"). He welcomed several artists and writers at the manor, notably Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who looked up to him as an ancestor, and even Jean Moulin, then ”sous-préfet de Châteaulin”, who visited in 1930. Saint-Pol-Roux was a member of the académie Mallarmé from 1937 to 1940.

Death

The Crozon peninsula was occupied by German troops in the

Battle of France The Battle of France (; 10 May – 25 June 1940), also known as the Western Campaign (), the French Campaign (, ) and the Fall of France, during the Second World War was the Nazi Germany, German invasion of the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembour ...

. A drunken German soldier invaded the manor during the night of 22 to 23 June 1940. He killed the family's faithful governess Rose with several gun shots and wounded Saint-Pol-Roux's daughter Divine with a bullet. It is often said that the soldier also raped Divine, something she later refuted. Saint-Pol-Roux was wounded, but managed to survive the tragedy, as the German soldier fled, frightened by the house dog. The case greatly embarrassed the German military authorities. German military authorities arrested the culprit already on 23 June 1940. He was tried by the German court martial in Brest, sentenced to death and executed. Divine was taken to a hospital in Brest, where she was treated until 15 April 1941. Saint-Pol-Roux was deeply affected by the death of Rose, the injuries of his daughter and the blows he had received. While commuting between the hospital in Brest and Camaret he learned that the mansion had been visited again. The mansion was looted on 3 October 1940. The various rooms of the manor, in particular its bedroom and its study, were in great disorder. Manuscripts of several works on which that Saint-Pol-Roux had been working for several years had been torn or burned. When he saw the disaster, he understood that it would be impossible for him to reconstruct his work and felt an immense despair. Saint-Pol-Roux suffered an uremic crisis and was transported to the hospital in Brest on 13 October 1940. He died on 18 October 1940.

Louis Aragon Louis Aragon (; 3 October 1897 – 24 December 1982) was a French poet who was one of the leading voices of the Surrealism, surrealist movement in France. He co-founded with André Breton and Philippe Soupault the surrealist review ''Littératur ...

published an article on the "assassination" of Saint-Pol-Roux, as he called it. The article was called "Saint-Pol Roux, ou L'Espoir" and published in the journal ''Poésie'' a month after the death of Saint-Pol-Roux. It was the first article published by Aragon after the fall of France, and was censored by the Vichy authorities.An English translation by Helen Burlin appears in ''Aragon: Poet of the French Resistance'', editors Hannah Josephson and Malcolm Cowley, Duell, Sloane and Pearce, 1945 The manor was occupied by the German military during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, used by the Marine Flak Abteilung 804 as a command center. The unit was dedicated to coastal anti-aircraft defense and the German army eventually installed two French Lahitolle 95 mm cannons at the gates of the manor. The manor was bombed several times by Allied airforces and eventually burned down on 11 October 1944, only seven days before the liberation of Camaret.

A forgotten poet

On the Liberation, Divine tried in vain to ensure that her father's work was not forgotten. It is in large part due to the salvage work, editing and publication of editions of his work by René Rougerie during those years, which she called "purgatory", that his poems, essays and plays that had escaped Nazi barbarism were edited and re-edited anew. A considerable number of unedited manuscripts (''Le Trésor de l'Homme'', ''La Répoétique'') survived the pillaging. Saint-Pol-Roux is the archetypal "forgotten poet". It was under this title that he was a dedicatee of

André Breton André Robert Breton (; ; 19 February 1896 – 28 September 1966) was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first ''Surrealist Manifesto'' (''Manifeste du surréalisme'') ...

's ''Clair de Terre'' (also dedicated to "ceux qui comme lui s'offrent le magnifique plaisir de se faire oublier (sic)", or "those who like him offered themselves the great pleasure of making themselves forgotten"), and Vercors's '' Le Silence de la mer'' (calling him "le poète assassiné", or "the assassinated poet").

Corpus

Saint-Pol-Roux attempted to create a total work of art. This dream of Symbolist literature consisted of creating a perfect work responding to all the senses. Saint-Pol-Roux himself was therefore very interested in plays and operas during his Parisian years. At the end of his life, he marvelled at the artistic possibilities offered by the cinema. Saint-Pol-Roux equally created the notion of "idéoréalisme". He desired an artistic fusion between the real world and the world of ideas in a

Neoplatonic Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common id ...

perspective. He imagined a

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe, the cosmos. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', with the meaning of "a speaking of the wo ...

in which ''Beauty'' - lost in the real world - has to be revealed by the poet.

Works

;Under the name Paul Roux * ''Maman!'', Ollendorff, 1883 * ''Garçon d'honneur'', Ollendorff, 1883 * ''Le Poète'', Ghio, 1883 * ''Un drôle de mort'', Ghio, 1884 * ''Rêve de duchesse'', Ghio, 1884 * ''La Ferme'', Ghio, 1886 ;Under the name Saint-Pol-Roux * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol 1., Mercure de France, 1893 * ''L'Épilogue des saisons humaines'', Mercure de France 1893 * ''La Dame à la faux'', Mercure de France, 1899 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. I : ''La Rose et les épines du chemin'', Mercure de France, 1901 * ''Anciennetés'', Mercure de France, 1903 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. II : ''De la colombe au corbeau par le paon'', Mercure de France, 1904 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. III : ''Les Féeries intérieures'', Mercure de France, 1907 * ''Les Fééries intérieures'', 1907 * ''La Mort du Berger'', Broulet, Brest, 1938, 69 p. * ''La Supplique du Christ'', 1939. ;Posthumously published * ''Bretagne est Univers'', Broulet, Brest, 1941 * ''Florilège Saint-Pol-Roux'', L'Amitié par le Livre, 1943 * ''Anciennetés'', Seuil, 1946 * ''L'Ancienne à la coiffe innombrable'', Éd. du Fleuve, Nantes, 1946 * ''Août'', Broder, 1958 * ''Saint-Pol-Roux "Les plus belles pages"'', Mercure de France, 1966 * ''Le Trésor de l'homme'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1970 * ''La Répoétique'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1971 * ''Cinéma vivant'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1972 * ''Vitesse'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1973 * ''Les Traditions de l'avenir'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1974 * Saint-Pol-Roux / Victor Segalen, ''Correspondance'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1975 * ''La Transfiguration de la guerre'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1976 * ''Genèses'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1976 * ''La Randonnée'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1977 * ''De l'art magnifique'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1978 * ''La Dame à la faulx'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1979 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. I : ''La Rose et les épines du chemin'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1980 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. II : ''De la colombe au corbeau par le paon'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1980 * ''Les Reposoirs de la procession'', vol. III : ''Les Féeries intérieures'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1981 * ''Le Tragique dans l'homme'', vol. I : ''Les Personnages de l'individu, Les Saisons humaines, Tristan la Vie'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1983 * ''Le Tragique dans l'homme'', vol. II : ''Monodrames, L'Âme noire du prieur blanc, Fumier'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1984 * ''Tablettes. 1885-1895'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1986 * ''Idéoréalités. 1895-1914'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1987 * ''Glorifications. 1914-1930'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1992 * ''Vendanges'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 1993 * ''La Besace du solitaire'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 2000 * ''Les Ombres tutélaires'', Rougerie, Mortemart, 2005

Bibliography

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References

External links

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Blog dedicated to Saint-Pol-Roux
{{DEFAULTSORT:Roux, Saint-Pol 1861 births 1940 deaths Writers from Marseille 19th-century French poets Symbolist artists French male poets 20th-century French poets