Valery Larbaud 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...

 writer

Writer

A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....

.

Life

He was born in Vichy

Vichy

Vichy is a commune in the department of Allier in Auvergne in central France. It belongs to the historic province of Bourbonnais.It is known as a spa and resort town and was the de facto capital of Vichy France during the World War II Nazi German occupation from 1940 to 1944.The town's inhabitants...

, Allier

Allier

Allier is a department in central France named after the river Allier.- History :Allier is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790. It was created from parts of the former provinces of Auvergne and Bourbonnais.In 1940, the government of Marshal...

, the only child of a pharmacist

Pharmacist

Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...

. His father died when he was 8, and he was brought up by his mother and aunt. His father had been owner of the Vichy Saint-Yorre mineral water springs, and the family fortune assured him an easy life. He travelled Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 in style. On luxury liners and the Orient Express

Orient Express

The Orient Express is the name of a long-distance passenger train service originally operated by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits. It ran from 1883 to 2009 and is not to be confused with the Venice-Simplon Orient Express train service, which continues to run.The route and rolling stock...

 he carried off the dandy

Dandy

A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance in a cult of Self...

 role, with spa visits to nurse fragile health.

Poèmes par un riche amateur, published in 1908, received Octave Mirbeau

Octave Mirbeau

Octave Mirbeau was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde...

's vote for Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

. Three years later, his novel Fermina Márquez

Fermina Márquez

Fermina Márquez is a short novel in twenty chapters written by French writer Valery Larbaud. It was considered for the Prix Goncourt in 1911 but did not win. Nonetheless, it is still considered to be a minor classic of French Literature and one of Larbaud's best known works along with his Diary of...

, inspired by his days as a boarder at Sainte-Barbe-des-Champs at Fontenay-aux-Roses

Fontenay-aux-Roses

Fontenay-aux-Roses is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.École Normale Supérieure was a girls school located in the area....

, had some Prix Goncourt

Prix Goncourt

The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...

 votes in 1911.

He spoke six languages including English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

. In France he helped translate and popularise Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, Romantic, literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He is probably best known for his poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla...

, Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman

Walter "Walt" Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. A humanist, he was a part of the transition between transcendentalism and realism, incorporating both views in his works. Whitman is among the most influential poets in the American canon, often called the father of free verse...

, Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (novelist)

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh...

, and James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, whose Ulysses

Ulysses (novel)

Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...

was translated by Auguste Morel (1924-1929) under Larbaud's supervision.

At home in Vichy, he saw as friends Charles-Louis Philippe

Charles-Louis Philippe

Charles-Louis Philippe, French novelist, was born in Cérilly, Allier, Auvergne, on 4 August 1874, and died in Paris on 21 December 1909.- Life :...

, André Gide

André Gide

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the symbolist movement, to the advent of anticolonialism between the two World Wars.Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide...

, Léon-Paul Fargue

Léon-Paul Fargue

Léon-Paul Fargue was a French poet and essayist.He was born in Paris, France on rue Coquilliére. As a poet he was noted for his poetry of atmosphere and detail. His work spanned numerous literary movements...

 and Jean Aubry, his future biographer. An attack of hemiplegia

Hemiplegia

Hemiplegia /he.mə.pliː.dʒiə/ is total paralysis of the arm, leg, and trunk on the same side of the body. Hemiplegia is more severe than hemiparesis, wherein one half of the body has less marked weakness....

 and aphasia

Aphasia

Aphasia is an impairment of language ability. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write....

 in 1935 left him paralysed. Having spent his fortune, he had to sell his property and 15,000 book library. Despite his illness, he continued to receive many honorary titles, and in 1952 he was awarded the Prix National des Lettres.

The Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud

Prix Littéraire Valery Larbaud

The Prix littéraire Valery Larbaud is a French literary prize created in 1967, ten years after writer Valery Larbaud's death, by L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud, an organization dedicated to the promotion of his works. The prize is awarded to writers of books the jurists...

 was created in 1957 by L'Association Internationale des Amis de Valery Larbaud, a group created to promote the author's work. Past winners of this yearly award include J.M.G. Le Clézio

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio

Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio , usually identified as J. M. G. Le Clézio, is a French author and professor. The author of over forty works, he was awarded the 1963 Prix Renaudot for his novel Le Procès-Verbal....

, Jacques Réda

Jacques Réda

Jacques Réda is a French poet, jazz critic, and flâneur. He was chief editor of the Nouvelle Revue Française from 1987 to 1996.-Works:*Amen *Récitatif *Les Ruines de Paris...

, Emmanuel Carrère

Emmanuel Carrère

Emmanuel Carrère is a French author, screenwriter and director. He is the son of Louis Édouard Carrère, often known as Louis Carrère d'Encausse after his wife's pen name, and French historian Hélène Carrère d'Encausse....

, and Jean Rolin

Jean Rolin

Jean Philippe Rolin is a French writer and journalist. He received the Albert Londres Prize for journalism in 1988, and his novel L'organisation received the Medicis award in 1996....

.

Georges Perec

Georges Perec

Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...

's character Bartlebooth is a cross between Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

's Bartleby and Larbaud's Barnabooth.

Quotes

• "Lend me your vast noise, your vast gentle speed, your nightly slipping through a lighted Europe, O luxury train! And the agonizing music that sounds the length of your gilt corridors, while behind the japanned doors with heavy copper latches sleep the millionaires . . ."

Works

• Poèmes par un riche amateur (1908) as A.O. Barnabooth.
• Fermina Márquez
  Fermina Márquez
  Fermina Márquez is a short novel in twenty chapters written by French writer Valery Larbaud. It was considered for the Prix Goncourt in 1911 but did not win. Nonetheless, it is still considered to be a minor classic of French Literature and one of Larbaud's best known works along with his Diary of...
  
  (1911)
• A.O. Barnabooth (1913)
• Enfantines (1918)
• Beauté, mon beau souci (1920)
• Amants, heureux amants (1923)
• Ce Vice impuni la lecture (1925)
• Jaune bleu blanc (1927)
• Aux couleurs de Rome (1938)
• Sous l'invocation de Saint Jerome (1946)
• Pléiade edition (1957)

External links

• Works by Valery Larbaud (public domain in Canada)
• Inventory and analysis of Valery Larbaud's non-novelistic writingsUniversité McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French)