LITERATURE – The poet and novelist Bernard Noël, author of an abundant work on art and politics, has died at the age of 90, his publisher, POL, announced on Tuesday April 13.
“The POL editions are very sad to announce the death of Bernard Noël at the age of 90,” the publishing house, which he joined in 1988, said on Twitter. “Writer and committed poet, novelist, historian , reporter, polemicist, sociologist, art critic, publisher, he has published twenty-five books with POL editions ”, she recalled.
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The POL editions are very sad to announce the death of Bernard Noël at the age of 90. Writer and committed poet, novelist, historian, reporter, polemicist, sociologist, art critic, publisher, he has published twenty-five books with POL editions pic.twitter.com/aCrkhQ1iQ9
– POL editions (@POLeditions) April 13, 2021
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Born in 1930 in Sainte-Geneviève-sur-Argence, in Aveyron, raised by his grandparents, he embarked on journalism studies in Paris, which led him to his true vocation, literature.
Censorship and police violence
After poems with low circulation, he became famous thanks to the scandal of an erotic novel of 1969 which earned him prosecutions for insulting good morals, “Le Château de Cène”. He explained that he freed himself with this book, under the pseudonym of Urbain d’Orlhac, from the trauma of his generation, the Algerian war.
Sentenced at first instance in 1973, he will benefit from an amnesty after the arrival at the presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.
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We learn of the disappearance of Bernard Noël, one of the greatest French poets of our time.
For him, writing was an adventure of all the dangers where identity dissolves, where mind and body become one, leaving only fleeting traces at best. pic.twitter.com/IrXzJwfBxN– La Cause Litteraire (@LaCauselit) April 13, 2021
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The denunciation of censorship, oppression and violence, as well as the love of painting, are then part of the constants of his work. In 1988 for example, his first play, “La Reconstitution”, evoked a police blunder, when a CRS had shot dead a young man in Paris in 1986.
The Académie française dedicated all of its poetic work in 2016 with its Grand Prix for poetry.
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