Paul Morand  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

"There are three characters I felt in the big period who were writers. Morand, Ramuz, Barbusse were writers. They had the feel. They were made for it. But the others aren't made for it. For God's sake, they're impostors, they're bands of impostors, and the impostors are the masters." --Celine


"Au style-nouille en architecture et en littérature correspond la morale-nouille."--Paul Morand, 1900 (Paris, 1931), p. 205, adding “Au style-nouille en architecture et en littérature correspond la morale-nouille”; Micale, “France,” p. 101.

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Paul Morand (March 13, 1888 – July 24, 1976) was a French author whose short stories and novellas were lauded for their style, wit and descriptive power. His most productive literary period was the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s. He was much admired by the upper echelons of society and the artistic avant-garde who made him a cult favorite. He has been categorized as an early Modernist and Imagist.

Morand contributed a text to the sixty-two photographs in Paris de Nuit (1933) by Brassaï.

Biography

He was a member of the Académie française (his candidature was initially rejected by de Gaulle, the only instance of a President ever exercising his right to vet electees to the academy. Morand was finally elected ten years later, though he still had to forgo the official investiture).

He was a graduate of the Paris Institute of Political Studies (better known as Sciences Po). During the pre-war period, he wrote many short books which are noted for their elegance of style, erudition, narrative concision, and for the author's observation of the countries he visited combined with his middle-class views.

Morand's reputation has been marred by his stance during the Second World War, when he collaborated with the Vichy regime and was a vocal antisemite. When the Second World War ended, Morand served as an ambassador in Bern, but his position was revoked and he lived in exile in Switzerland.

Post-war, he was a patron of the Hussards literary movement, which opposed Existentialism.

Paul Morand was a close friend of Marcel Proust and has left valuable observations about him.

Books

  • Fouquet ou Le Soleil offusqué, éditions Gallimard, Paris, 1961.
  • Ouvert la nuit (1922)
  • Fermé la nuit (1923)
  • L'Europe galante
  • Bucarest(1935)
  • L'Homme pressé (1940)
  • Venises (1970)
  • Journal inutile (mémoires, en 2 volumes, 2002)
    • Rien que la terre,
    • Magie noire (1927),
    • Paris-Tombouctou,
    • New York (1929),
    • Champions du monde (1930),
    • Papiers d'identité (1930),
    • Air indien,
    • Londres,
    • Rococo,
    • La Route des Indes,
    • L'heure qu'il est, chroniques de cet infatigable voyageur.
  • Le Dernier Jour de l'Inquisition,
  • Le Flagellant de Séville,
  • Le Coucou et le Roitelet,
  • L'Eau sous les ponts,
  • Hécate et ses chiens,
  • La Folle amoureuse,
  • Fin de siècle,(1957)
  • Nouvelles d'une vie,
  • Les Écarts amoureux




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Paul Morand" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools