Clovis Hugues was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 poet, journalist, dramatist, novelist, and socialist

Socialism

Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...

 activist. He wrote some of his works in Provençal

Provençal language

Provençal is a dialect of Occitan spoken by a minority of people in southern France, mostly in Provence. In the English-speaking world, "Provençal" is often used to refer to all dialects of Occitan, but it actually refers specifically to the dialect spoken in Provence."Provençal" is also the...

 and was the majoral of Félibrige

Félibrige

The Félibrige is a literary and cultural association founded by Frédéric Mistral and other Provençal writers to defend and promote Occitan language and literature...

.

Life

Born in Ménerbes

Ménerbes

Ménerbes is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France, a walled village on a hilltop in the Luberon mountains, footbills of the French Alps....

 (Vaucluse

Vaucluse

The Vaucluse is a department in the southeast of France, named after the famous spring, the Fontaine-de-Vaucluse.- History :Vaucluse was created on 12 August 1793 out of parts of the departments of Bouches-du-Rhône, Drôme, and Basses-Alpes...

) to the family of a miller, he studied for the priesthood in Carpentras

Carpentras

Carpentras is a commune in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in southeastern France.It stands on the banks of the Auzon...

, but did not take orders. For some articles favorable to the Paris Commune

Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was a government that briefly ruled Paris from March 18 to May 28, 1871. It existed before the split between anarchists and Marxists had taken place, and it is hailed by both groups as the first assumption of power by the working class during the Industrial Revolution...

, published in the local papers of Marseille

Marseille

Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...

, he was condemned in 1871 to three years' imprisonment and a fine of 6,000 francs

French franc

The franc was a currency of France. Along with the Spanish peseta, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra . Between 1360 and 1641, it was the name of coins worth 1 livre tournois and it remained in common parlance as a term for this amount of money...

. In 1877 he fought a duel

Duel

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...

 in which he killed his adversary, a rival journalist.

Elected deputy by Marseille in the general elections of 1881, he was at that time the sole representative of the French Workers' Party

French Workers' Party

The Parti Ouvrier Français was the first Marxist party in France, created in 1880 by Jules Guesde and Paul Lafargue, Marx's son-in-law...

 in the chambers. He was re-elected in 1885, and in 1893 became one of the deputies for Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, retaining his seat until 1906.

His poems, novels and comedies are full of wit and exuberant vitality.

Poetry

• Poèmes de prison (1875), written during his detention
• Soirs de bataille (1883)
• Jours de combat (1883)
• Le Travail (1889)

External links

• Full bibliography
• Ilustrated biography (in Provençal).
• Ode au vagin - a 1901 erotic poem by Clovis Hughes
• Clovis Hugues, an 1884 poem by Théodore de Banville
  Théodore de Banville
  Théodore Faullain de Banville was a French poet and writer.-Biography:Banville was born in Moulins in Allier, Auvergne, the son of a captain in the French navy. His boyhood, by his own account, was cheerlessly passed at a lycée in Paris; he was not harshly treated, but took no part in the...