Maurice Rollinat was a French poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

.

Early works

His father represented Indre

Indre

Indre is a department in the center of France named after the river Indre. The inhabitants of the department are called Indriens.-History:Indre is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...

 in the National Assembly of 1848, and was a friend of George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

, whose influence is very marked in young Rollinat's first volume, Dans les brandes (1877), and to whom it was dedicated.

Brief fame

After its publication, he abandoned realism

Literary realism

Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...

 and worked in a very different manner. He joined a literary circle that called themselves Les Hydropathes, founded by Émile Goudeau, an anti-clerical

Anti-clericalism

Anti-clericalism is a historical movement that opposes religious institutional power and influence, real or alleged, in all aspects of public and political life, and the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen...

 group with ties to the decadent literary movement. Under their influence wrote the poems that made his reputation. In Les Névroses, with the sub-title Les Âmes, Les Luxures, Les Refuges, Les Spectres, Les Ténèbres, he showed himself as a disciple of Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

. He constantly returns in these poems to the physical horrors of death, and is obsessed by unpleasant images. Less outre in sentiment are L'Abîme (1886), La Nature, and a book of children's verse, Le Livre de la Nature (1893).

He was musician as well as poet, and set many of his songs to music. Several evenings a week, Rollinat would appear at the cabaret

Cabaret

Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...

 Le Chat Noir

Le Chat Noir

Le Chat Noir was a 19th-century cabaret, meaning entertainment house, in the bohemian Montmartre district of Paris...

, and there he would perform his poems with piano accompaniment. His gaunt and pale appearance made his portrait a favourite subject for a number of painters, and the startling subjects of his verses brought him short lived fame; at the height of his popularity he drew a number of celebrities to the cabaret to see him perform; among them were Leconte de Lisle and Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

. Rollinat's friend Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote that "Rollinat might be Baudelaire's superior in the sincerity and depth of his diabolism".

Rollinat married the actress Cécile Pouettre. He lost his reason in consequence of his wife's death from rabies

Rabies

Rabies is a viral disease that causes acute encephalitis in warm-blooded animals. It is zoonotic , most commonly by a bite from an infected animal. For a human, rabies is almost invariably fatal if post-exposure prophylaxis is not administered prior to the onset of severe symptoms...

; after several suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

 attempts, he died in an asylum at Ivry-sur-Seine. He is buried in the Saint-Denis cemetery in Châteauroux.

Publications

• 1877 : Dans les brandes
• 1883 : Les Névroses
• 1886 : L'Abîme
• 1887 : Dix mélodies nouvelles
• 1892 : La Nature
• 1893 : Le Livre de la nature (anthology)
• 1896 : Les Apparitions
• 1898 : Ce que dit la Vie et ce que dit la Mort
• 1899 : Paysages et paysans
• 1903 : En errant, proses d'un solitaire

Contemporary editions

• Œuvres (éditées par R. Miannay - 1977) - Lettres Modernes Minard :
  • I. Dans les brandes (1877)
  • II. Les Névrôses (1883)

External links

• Biography and several poems (French)
• A selection of his verse (French)