• Writer and Critic Pierre Jean Jouve, 1887

Charles Pierre Jean Jouve had "many lives". Before 1914, he was one of the writers of unanimity, the movement created by Jules Romains, and an active member of the pacifist movement led by Romain Rolland during World War I.

From 1921, a deep rupture occured with his second wife, the psychoanalyst Blanche Reverchon, a translator of Sigmund Freud (1923) and friend of Jacques Lacan. This made him one of the first writers to confront psychoanalysis and to show the importance of the unconscious in artistic creation - and that in the mid 1920s Included his poetry collections: Les Noces (1925 - 1931), Sweat Blood (1933 - 1935), heavenly Material (1937), and his novels: The Desert World (1927), Hecate (1928), Vagadu (1931), Scene capital (1935), and the most famous Paulina 1880, published in 1925 (adapted to film in 1972 by Jean - Louis Bertucelli).

In 1938 and during his exile in Switzerland, he was an important player in the intellectual resistance against the Nazis, with its apocalyptic poems Glory and The Virgin of Paris.

Jouve was the traveling companion of many artists, writers (Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Joe Bousquet, Jean Paulhan, Henry Bauchau,...), painters (André Masson, Balthus, Joseph Sima,...), philosophers (Jean Wahl, Jacques Lacan,...) and musicians (Michel Fano, ...): he also wrote extensively on art and music.

This writer, often perceived as an aloof outsider, refusing "movement" categorization, has touched many writers and artists, some of which may be regarded as his disciples, such as poets Pierre Emmanuel, Salah Stétié or Yves Bonnefoy.

Pierre Jean Jouve distanced himself from all his work published before 1925, when he started his "Vita Nuova". His work after that date included the poems Mysterious Wedding and the romance Paulina 1880 (Prix Goncourt). In his "undated Journal" in 1954 he revealed a careful selected outline of his life. This is also what has been done in reference books, often written by friends of the poet, as René Micha or Robert Kopp. However, the biography of Daniel Leuwers and the notes and comments of Jean Starobinski for his edition of Work, revealed unknown parts of his life and the importance of his first work in its formation and evolution. The recent biography of Béatrice Bonhomme has shed new light on the "crisis" Jouve went through between 1921 and 1927. This crisis profoundly affected his life and his writing. Pierre Jean Jouve broke with his father, then with his son from his first wife, Andrée, a militant feminist and pacifist, from friends Romain Rolland, Georges Duhamel, Charles Vildrac, Frans Masereel, who at the time of this rupture created the journal Europe (1923), with his artist friends (even Joseph Sima 1954) and with his publishers, Paulhan Jean and Gaston Gallimard (1945). And therefore with his first work. One can also consider the reissue of his novels and poems, with few changes, but many cuts that Jouve did from 1959 to 1968, as a new page in his life and his work.

Pierre Jean Jouve had "many lives." Jouve could be considered one of the writers of unanimity, the movement created by Jules Romains, or the Abbaye de Créteil (Abbey Group). Or as an active member of the pacifist group led by Romain Rolland during World War I. With his second wife, the psychoanalyst Blanche Reverchon, translator of Freud (1923) and friend of Jacques Lacan, he was one of the first writers to confront psychoanalysis and to show the importance of the unconscious in artistic creation, and that from the mid 1920s, with its poems Marriage (1925 - 1931), the Sweat Blood (1933 - 1935) and heavenly Material (1937), or novels, Hecate (1928), Vagadu (1931) and capital Scene (1935). He also showed the enrichment that the reading of the great mystics, Teresa of Avila, Catherine of Siena, John of the Cross, Francis of Assisi, can bring to poetry. In these mystical poets he associated closely with precursors Hölderlin, Nerval, Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé.

It was also in 1938 and during his exile in Switzerland, that he bacemw an important player in the intellectual resistance against Nazism, with its apocalyptic poems of Glory and The Virgin of Paris .Among his essays on art and music was the important wartime Don Juan de Mozart (1942, with the help of musician Fernand Drogoul) and then the experimental Wozzeck of Alban Berg (written with composer Michel Fano, 1953). After the war, his art met those of Saint - John Perse and Victor Segalen, and he emigrated to the serenity of his "inner China".

Jouve was also the companion of artists, writers, philosophers. Artists: the Cubist painter Albert Gleizes (who illustrated Artificial), the Belgian expressionist writer Frans Masereel, with whom he wrote ​​many books before 1925, the great surrealist artist André Masson (who illustrated the 1 ^st edition of Blood Sweat, 1933), the Czech painter Joseph Sima who had with him some of the most important illustrated books before the war (Beau Regard, 1927 and 2 ^e edition of Paradise Lost, 1938), the editor typographer Guy Lévis Mano ("GLM ") who made ​​some of his finest books, and finally the great painter Balthus, whom he had known as a teenager and for whom he wrote important texts. He was accompanied in collaborations, connections and translations, with writer friends like Pierre Klossowski (translation of Hölderlin, 1930), Romain Rolland, Stefan Zweig, Albert Béguin, Jean Paulhan, Joe Bousquet, Groethuysen Bernard, Gabriel Bounoure, Jean Wahl (who introduced him to Kierkegaard), Eugenio Montale and Giuseppe Ungaretti (whom he translated), Catherine Pozzi. One may consider as his disciples Pierre Emmanuel (which honored him in Who is this man, 1947), Yves Bonnefoy, Salah Stétié, Henry Bauchau, Jules Roy, David Gascoyne, Fernand Ouellette, Heather Dohollau, Gérard Engelbach.

Pierre Jean Jouve placed women in powerful roles among heroines of love in literature: Paulina, Ballerina of World desert, Catherine Spit (the heroine of Hecate and Vagadu), and particularly Lisba and Helen (The Meeting at the crossroads, Scene capital, heavenly material), and finally Yanick, the chaste prostitute (Diadem, The Mirror).