“The genius of an author is born of his misfortunes. “ This surprising belief implies that, in our contemporary imagination, the great writer would be the one who lives under the weight of a curse.
Linked to Verlaine who propelled the myth by setting himself up as a perfect cursed (“Now those who were born under the sign SATURN”), the question of the curse is firmly anchored today in literature and in mass culture. Strategy of struggle and positioning for the author, the concept of curse has contributed to the creation of a sacred perception of literature.
He dies young, the one whom the gods love
Since the 18th century, suffering has been linked to literary talent, a dualism of Christian origin which has led to believe that disease belongs to genius. This is what Michel Houellebecq points out about the suffering in Stay alive : “This resentment is necessary for any true artistic creation. “
During the 20th century, the curse was first recovered for political reasons – Céline and Brasillach, judged for their anti-Semitic and pro-German positions (which resulted in Brasillach being shot) and for that labeled “cursed” – , then, more recently, by writers like Houellebecq, Guibert and Nabe through their media provocations, or by Michon and Goffette who fictionalized the lives of certain accursed authors.
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Charles Baudelaire, the most famous of the accursed poets. © ROGER-VIOLLET
But when and how did this idea of a curse begin to emerge in literary history? As the critic Jean-Luc Steinmetz asserts, this is the example of “Three singular and exceptional destinies” namely those of Malfilâtre (gifted and indigent poet who died at 34), Nicolas Gilbert (died at 30 after having written a Hymn to Life) and Chénier (guillotined at 31 and recognized after his death) who imposes on the romantic generation as models to emulate. The 19th century saw a proliferation of publications on authors who had tragically disappeared and whose lives were marked by misfortune.
Create yourself through suicide
Thereby The Great Unhappy Poets, an anthology in which the author Bins de Saint-Victor sets out to demonstrate how “Almost all the poets have been unhappy”. However, following an unexpected dramatic event, this phenomenon underwent a shift: in February 1832, Auguste Le Bras and Victor Escousse, respectively aged barely 19 and 21, committed suicide together. These two young authors saw this as the only way to build a career and see their names on the pages of newspapers.
Their disappearance was therefore the first death of authors to be really publicized: newspapers, debates and finally songs, including Béranger, made these young people the first of a new generation. The press, rightly, wondered if “The feeling which armed Escousse and Le Bras was not the secret desire to be created by suicide”. Élisa Mercœur, Jean-Georges Farcy, Charles Dovalle, Alphonse Rabbe subsequently extended the list of the unfortunate, seeing them too, in death, a possible recognition.
At that time, there is a belief that all these young people “Will be saved from oblivion by their colleagues, by the judgment of posterity”. This valuing of suffering, or even failure, is found in several texts by Alfred de Vigny. In 1835, he staged the play Chatterton in Paris, heroizing the fate of the poet of the same name, who died at the age of 18 following a suicide. The day after his performance, the press accuses him of having too idealized the figure of the English poet … The young authors, for their part, seeing in Vigny a fervent defender of their cause, flood him with letters announcing their suicide if their works are not played.
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Engraving depicting the English poet Thomas Chatterton lying on his deathbed after his suicide, at the age of 18. © MARY EVANS / BRIDGEMAN IMAGES
Then, over the years, we witness the aesthetic reworking of this myth. Marcel Arland, in a famous article published in the NRF, relates the condition of literature and a new disease of the century, “Quite simply a moral crisis and psychological and social imbalance”.
How can we forget the disappearances of Jacques Vaché (1895-1919), René Crevel (1900-1935) and Jean-Pierre Duprey (1930-1959), situating themselves by production, posture and provocation in the lineage of the accursed poets?
A myth spread by anthologies
At the start of the 20th century, publishing was very interested in the lives of authors of the past. The genre of biographies or fictionalized lives reactivates a Christian imagination: evil, decay, suffering, damnation, conversion …
Literary anthologies also play an important role in spreading this myth. We note Les “Poètes-misère” by Alphonse Séché (1908), Evil Destinies by Léon Bocquet (1923) then The Cursed Poets of Today. 1946-1970 by Pierre Seghers (1972), Anthologie des poètes maudits. Poetry I and The New Cursed Poets by Alain Breton (1981).
These anthologies have the merit of presenting us authors who died too soon, whose few published books hardly ever attracted the attention of the critics. These writers and poets, whose literary value proves difficult to assess after reading a single book or a few extracts in magazines, sometimes show a dazzling and singular writing.
Sophie Podolski and André Brun surprise by the violence of their writing and by a tragic humor. At the young Belgian poet, in The country where everything is allowed, obsessions and invectives spare no one: “We must first know how to write the word ETERNITY. ” “I will go much further to be loved so much – I will go much further one day I will stop the treatment – I will stop writing – and I will really go for it – whore or not – friend or whore – dead alive without any reminder – I’ll start with a suicide. “ André Brun, for his part, throws himself at the age of 25 from the eleventh floor of his building; he had written : “If you want to die on your feet, take a chair, we’ll discuss it.” “
Whether through their works, their lives, the context in which they lived, the eras, the literary curse attached to certain authors has never ceased to arouse passions and nourish our imagination of literature. And will certainly continue to generate debate.
This article was originally published in March 2021 in Lire Literary Magazine.
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