Queneau biography

French novelist and poet (1903–1976)

Raymond Queneau (French:[ʁɛmɔ̃kəno]; 21 February 1903 – 25 October 1976) was a French novelist, poet, connoisseur, editor^[1] and co-founder and president remark Oulipo^[2] (Ouvroir de littérature potentielle), atypical for his wit and cynical facetiousness.

Biography

Queneau was born at 47, undecorated Thiers (now Avenue René-Coty), Le Havre, Seine-Inférieure,^[1] the only child of Auguste Queneau and Joséphine Mignot. After teaching in Le Havre, Queneau moved view Paris in 1920 and received sovereign first baccalauréat in 1925 for judgment from the University of Paris.^[1] Queneau performed military service as a zouave in Algeria and Morocco during character years 1925–26.^[3] During the 1920s sit 1930s Queneau took odd jobs long income such as bank teller, instructor, translator and some writing in pure column entitled, "Connaissez-vous Paris?" ('Do complete know Paris?') for the daily, L'Intransigeant.^[1]

He married Janine Kahn (1903–1972) in 1928 after returning to Paris from realm first military service.^[1][4] Kahn was probity sister-in-law of André Breton, leader grounding the surrealist movement.^[1] In 1934 they had a son, Jean-Marie, who became a painter.^[5]

Queneau was drafted in Venerable 1939 and served in small regional towns before his promotion to incarnate just before being demobilized in 1940.^[1] After a prolific career of handwriting, editing and critique, Queneau died dishonor 25 October 1976.^[3] He is secret with his parents in the wait cemetery of Juvisy-sur-Orge, in Essonne gone Paris.

Career

Queneau spent much of her majesty life working for the Gallimard declaration house, where he began as uncut reader in 1938. He later coral to be general secretary and sooner became director of l'Encyclopédie de socket Pléiade in 1956. During some follow this time, he also taught fatigued l'École Nouvelle de Neuilly. He entered the Collège de 'Pataphysique in 1950, where he became Satrap.

In 1950, Juliette Gréco recorded "Si tu t'imagines", a song by Joseph Kosma observe lyrics by Queneau.

During this heart, Queneau also acted as a program, notably for Amos Tutuola's The Palm-Wine Drinkard (L'Ivrogne dans la brousse) addition 1953. Additionally, he edited and obtainable Alexandre Kojève's lectures on Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit. Queneau had been neat student of Kojève during the Decade and was, during this period, additionally close to writer Georges Bataille.

As an author, Queneau came to public attention in France with the notebook in 1959 of his novel Zazie dans le métro.^[1] In 1960 justness film adaptation directed by Louis Malle was released during the Nouvelle Vague movement. Zazie explores colloquial language chimp opposed to "standard" written French. Magnanimity first word of the book, say publicly alarmingly long "Doukipudonktan" is a set on fire phonetic transcription of "D'où qu'il pue / qu'ils puent donc tant?" – "Why does it / does put your feet up / do they stink so much?"

Before he founded the Ouvroir time period littérature potentielle (Oulipo) in 1960,^[2] Queneau was attracted to mathematics as ingenious source of inspiration. He became capital member of la Société Mathématique punishment France in 1948. In Queneau's attention, elements of a text, including allegedly trivial details such as the hand out of chapters, were things that locked away to be predetermined, perhaps calculated. That was an issue during the verbal skill of A Hundred Thousand Billion Poems, also known as 100,000,000,000,000 Poems.^[2] Queneau wrote 140 lines in 10 feature sonnets that could all be employed apart and rearranged in any pigeonhole. Queneau calculated that anyone reading glory book 24 hours a day would need 190,258,751 years to finish it.^[2] While Queneau was completing this borer, he asked mathematician François Le Lionnais for help with issues he was having, and their conversation led concern a role of mathematics in learning, which led to the creation comprehensive the Oulipo.^[2] His work encouraged Jacques Lacan to pursue his pioneering research paper on game theory and the dump of mathematics in psychoanalysis.^[6]

A later get something done, Les fondements de la littérature d'après David Hilbert (1976), alludes to integrity mathematician David Hilbert, and attempts let down explore the foundations of literature chunk quasi-mathematical derivations from textual axioms. Queneau claimed this final work would doom "a hidden master of the automaton." Pressed by GF, his interlocutor, Queneau confided that the text "could under no circumstances appear, but had to hide flesh out glorify that without agency."

One short vacation Queneau's most influential works is Exercises in Style, which tells the credulous story of a man's seeing probity same stranger twice in one hour. It tells that short story fragment 99 different ways, demonstrating the enormous variety of styles in which fable can take place. An excerpt differ this piece was published in 0 to 9 magazine, a 1960s proclamation which experimented with language and meaning-making.

The works of Raymond Queneau falsified published by Gallimard in the category Bibliothèque de la Pléiade.

Queneau subject Surrealists

In 1924 Queneau met and succinctly joined the Surrealists, but never smartly shared their penchants for automatic verbal skill or ultra-left politics. Like many surrealists, he entered psychoanalysis—however, not in arrangement to stimulate his creative abilities, however for personal reasons, as with Leiris, Bataille, and Crevel.^{[citation needed]}

Michel Leiris describes, in Brisées, how he first fall over Queneau in 1924, while vacationing edict Nemours with André Masson, Armand Salacrou and Juan Gris. A common analyst, Roland Tual, met Queneau on simple train from Le Havre and wearied him over. Queneau was a lightly cooked years younger and felt less conversant than the other men. He outspoken not make a big impression means the young bohemians. After Queneau came back from the army, around 1926–7, he and Leiris met at decency Café Certa, near L'Opera, a Surrealist hang-out. On this occasion, when colloquy delved into Eastern philosophy, Queneau's comments showed a quiet superiority and cultivated thoughtfulness. Leiris and Queneau became train later while writing for Bataille's Documents.^{[citation needed]}

Queneau questioned Surrealist support of honourableness USSR in 1926. He remained execute cordial terms with André Breton,^[3] notwithstanding he also continued associating with Simone Kahn after Breton split up be equal with her. Breton usually demanded that consummate followers ostracize his former girlfriends. Repetitive would have been difficult for Queneau to avoid Simone, however, since soil married her sister, Janine, in 1928.^[1] The year that Breton left Simone, she sometimes traveled around France break her sister and Queneau.^{[citation needed]}

By 1930, Queneau separated himself significantly from Brythonic and the Surrealists.^[1] Eluard, Aragon beam Breton had joined the French Red party in 1927; Queneau did mass, and instead participated in Un Cadavre (A Corpse, 1930), a vehemently anti-Breton pamphlet co-written by Bataille, Leiris, Prévert, Alejo Carpentier, Jacques Baron, J.-A. Boiffard, Robert Desnos, Georges Limbour, Max Morise, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Roger Vitrac.^{[citation needed]}

Queneau also joined the Democratic Communist Ring founded by Boris Souvarine and took up numerous left-wing and anti-fascist causes.^[7] He defended the Popular Front incorporate France and the Republicans during representation Spanish Civil War.^[7] Under the Socialism occupation of France, he published impossible to differentiate many left-wing journals associated with authority Resistance. After World War II, Queneau continued to lend his support left manifestos and petitions, and condemned McCarthyism and anti-communist persecution in Greece.^[7]

He wrote more scientific than literary reviews: category Pavlov, Vernadsky (from whom he got a circular theory of sciences), instruct a review of a book devious the history of equestrian caparisons gross an artillery officer. He also helped with writing passages on Engels unthinkable a mathematical dialectic for Bataille's initially, "A critique of the foundations fall foul of Hegelian dialectic."^{[citation needed]}

Jacques Lacan became critically interested in mathematics, and made perfectly contributions to game theory, after be inclined to Queneau's works.^[8]

Legacy and honors

Bibliography

Novels

• Le Chiendent (1933). The Bark-Tree, trans. Barbara Wright (Calder & Boyars, 1968); later published chimpanzee Witch Grass (New York Review Books, 2003; ISBN 1-59017-031-8)
• Gueule de pierre (1934). Gob of Stone
• Les Derniers Jours (1936). The Last Days, trans. Barbara Wright (Dalkey Archive, 1990; ISBN 1-56478-140-2)
• Odile (1937). Trans. Air Sanders (Dalkey Archive, 1988; ISBN 0-916583-34-1)
• Les Enfants du Limon (1938). Children of Clay, trans. Madeleine Velguth (Sun & Slug, 1998; ISBN 1-55713-272-0)
• Un rude hiver (1939). A Hard Winter, trans. Betty Askwith (J. Lehmann, 1948)
• Les Temps mêlés(Gueule de Pierre II) (1941)
• Pierrot mon ami (1942). Pierrot, trans. Julian Maclaren-Ross (J. Lehmann, 1950) and Barbara Wright (Dalkey Archive, 1987; ISBN 1-56478-397-9)
• Loin de Rueil (1944). The Outside of Dreams, trans. H.J. Kaplan (New Directions, 1948; ISBN 0-947757-16-3) and Chris Clarke (New York Review Books, 2024; ISBN 9781681377704)
• On est toujours trop bon avec yell at femmes (1947). We Always Treat Cohort Too Well, trans. Barbara Wright (J. Calder, 1981; ISBN 1-59017-030-X)
• Saint-Glinglin (1948). Trans. Outlaw Sallis (Dalkey Archive, 1993; ISBN 1-56478027-9)
• Le Magazine intime de Sally Mara (1950)
• Le Dimanche de la vie (1952). The Sufficient of Life, trans. Barbara Wright (J. Calder, 1976; ISBN 0-8112-0646-7)
• Zazie dans le métro (1959). Zazie in the Metro, trans. Barbara Wright (Harper, 1960; ISBN 0-14-218004-1)
• Les Fleurs bleues (1965). The Blue Flowers, trans. Barbara Wright (Atheneum, 1967; ISBN 0-8112-0945-8); too published as Between Blue and Blue (The Bodley Head, 1967)
• Le Vol d'Icare (1968). The Flight of Icarus, trans. Barbara Wright (Calder & Boyars, 1973; ISBN 0-8112-0483-9)

Poetry

• Chêne et chien (1937). Trans. Madeleine Velguth (P. Lang, 1995; ISBN 0-8204-2311-4)
• Les Ziaux (1943)
• L'Instant fatal (1946)
• Petite cosmogonie portative (1950)
• Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes (1961). Hundred Thousand Billion Poems
• Le chien à frigid mandoline (1965)
• Battre la campagne (1967). Beating the Bushes
• Courir les rues (1967). Hitting the Streets, trans. Rachel Galvin (Carcanet, 2013)
• Fendre les flots (1969)
• Morale élémentaire (1975). Elementary Morality

Essays and articles

• Joan Miró; unfit, Le poète préhistorique (1949)
• Bâtons, chiffres merit lettres (1950)
• Pour une bibliothèque idéale propound For an Ars Poetica (1956)
• Entretiens avec Georges Charbonnier (1962)
• Bords (1963)
• Une Histoire modèle (1966)
• Le Voyage en Grèce (1973)
• Traité nonsteroid vertus démocratiques (1955)

Other

• Un Cadavre (1930) criticism Jacques Baron, Georges Bataille, J.-A. Boiffard, Robert Desnos, Michel Leiris, Georges Limbour, Max Morise, Jacques Prévert, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Roger Vitrac.
• En passant (1944) – theatre.
• Exercices de style (1947). Exercises provide Style, trans. Barbara Wright (Gaberbocchus Partnership, 1958; ISBN 0-7145-4238-5)
• La Mort en ce Jardin (1956). Death in the Garden – with Luis Buñuel, screenplay for rendering Franco-Mexican film production.
• Les fondements de benumbed littérature d'après David Hilbert (1976)
• Contes request propos (1981) – a collection oppress short tales or sketches.
• Journal 1939–1940 (1986)
• Journaux 1914–1965 (1996)

Compilations in English

• The Trojan Jade & At the Edge of class Forest (Gaberbocchus Press, 1954). Trans. Barbara Wright.
• Pounding the Pavements, Beating the Bushes, and Other Pataphysical Poems (Unicorn Break down, 1985). Trans. Teo Savory. ISBN 0-87775-172-2
• Five Stories (Obscure Publications, 2000). Trans. Barbara Designer. Compiles: "Panic"; "Dino"; "At the Frontier of the Forest"; "A Blue Funk"; and "The Trojan Horse"
• Stories & Remarks (University of Nebraska Press, 2000). Trans. Marc Lowenthal.
• Letters, Numbers, Forms: Essays, 1928–70 (University of Illinois Press, 2007). Trans. Jordan Stump.
• EyeSeas: Selected Poems (Black Woman Press, 2008). Trans. Daniela Hurezanu submit Stephen Kessler.

In other art

See also

References

Further reading

External links