Papadiamantopoulos, Johannes 1856–1910

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Papadiamantopoulos, Johannes 1856–1910

(Jean Moréas, Yannis Papadiamantopoulos)

PERSONAL: Given name also spelled Iohannes or Yiannis; born April 15, 1856, in Athens, Greece; immigrated to France, c. 1879; naturalized French citizen, 1909; died of hemiplegia, March 31, 1910, in Saint-Mandé, France. Education: Studied law in Bonn and Heidelberg, Germany.

CAREER: Poet and author. Cofounder, Symboliste (literary magazine), 1886.

AWARDS, HONORS: Named officer, French Legion of Honor, c. 1909.

WRITINGS:

Trygones kai echidnai (poetry; title means "Doves and Vipers"), [Greece], 1878.

Les syrtes (poetry), [France], 1884, revised edition published as Les syrtes (1883–1884), L. Vanier (Paris, France), 1892.

Les cantilènes: funèrailles, interlude, assonances, cantilènes, le pur concept, histoires merveillueuses (poetry), L. Vanier (Paris, France), 1886.

(With Paul Adam) Le thé chez Miranda (title means "Tea at Miranda's Home"), Tresse et Stock (Paris, France), 1886.

(With Paul Adam) Les demoiselles Goubert: moeurs de Paris, Tresse et Stock (Paris, France), 1886.

Le pèlerin passioné (poetry), L. Vanier (Paris, France), 1891, revised edition published as Le pélerin passioné: édition refondue compreant plusieurs poèmes nouveaux, 1893.

Autant en emporte le vent (1886–1887), L. Vanier (Paris, France), 1893.

Ériphyle: poème suivi de quatre sylves, Bibliotèque artistique et littéraire (Paris, France), 1894.

Poésies, 1886–1896: le pèlerin passionné. Énone au clair visage et Sylves. Eriphyle et Sylves nouvelles (omnibus), Bibliotèque artistique et littéraire (Paris, France), 1898, published as Poèmes et sylves, 1886–1896. Le pèlerin passioné. Énone au clair visage. Eriphyle, Sylves (omnibus), Société du Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1907.

(Translator) L'histoire de Jean de Paris, roi de France, Bibliotèque artistique et littéraire (Paris, France), 1899.

Le voyage de Grèce, Editions de la Plume (Paris, France), 1902.

Feuillets, Editions de la Plume (Paris, France), 1902.

Iphigénie: tragedie en cinq actes (five-act play), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1904.

Contes de la vielle France (short stories; title means "Tales of Old France"), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1904.

Les stances: Les six livres complet (poetry; title means "The Stances: The Complete Six Books"; also see below), Editions de la Plume (Paris, France), 1905, twenty-fifth edition, Société du Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1929.

Paysages et sentiments, E. Sansot (Paris, France), 1906.

Premières poésies, 1883–1886 (poetry); title means "First Poems"), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1907.

Esquisses et souvenirs (poetry), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1908.

Variations sur la vie et les livres (title means "Variations on Life and Books"), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1910.

Sur Lamartine, [Paris, France], 1910.

Le septème livre des stances (poetry; title means "The Seventh Book of Stances"), F. Bernouard (Paris, France), 1920.

Trois nouveaux contes de la vielle France (short stories; title means "Three New Tales of Old France"), Émile-Paul (Paris, France), 1921.

Le VIIIe livre des "Stances" (poetry; title means "The Eighth Book of 'Stances'"), Éditions de la Douce France (Paris, France), 1922.

Oeuvres de Jean Moréas (collected poetry), two volumes, Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1923–1926.

Trois contes d'amour (short stories; title means "Three Tales of Love"), H. Jonquieres (Paris, France), 1924.

Oeuvres en prose: morceaux choisis (title means "Works in Prose: Choice Morsels"), Librairie Valois (Paris, France), 1927.

Cent soixante-treize lettres de Jean Moréas à Raymond de la Tailhède et à divers correspondants (correspondence), Lettres Modernes (Paris, France), 1968.

Also author, as Johannes Papadiamantopoulos, of Tourterelles et viperes, 1872. Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Figaro littéraire. English translations of Moréas's poems have been published in anthologies, including Contemporary French Poetry, The Poets of Modern France, and French Symbolist Poetry.

SIDELIGHTS: Poet Johannes Papadiamantopoulos, best known by his adoptive name Jean Moréas, was a founder of the French symbolist movement but later abandoned this school in order to pursue more classical forms of poetry. The son of the attorney general of the Greek supreme court of appeals, his family had a noble lineage, which afforded him a quality education. He was put into the care of a French governess, who instilled in the young boy a love for French literature. By the time he was ten, Papadiamantopoulos had resolved to become a French poet, but his father had other plans. Sent to law school in Germany, Papadiamantopoulos was supposed to become an attorney like his father, but by this time he was already writing poems in French. Although his first verse collection, Trygones kai echidnai, was mostly in Greek (though it did contain four poems in French), the rest of his works would be in French. Leaving law school behind, he adopted the name of Moréas, traveled Europe for a time, and soon settled in Paris, where he became a frequenter of the city's cafés.

Thoroughly enjoying the culture of France, Moréas read his poems at local cafés, discussed literary theory with fellow intellectuals and poets such as Paul Verlaine and Laurent Tailhède, and read the works of the Middle Ages and Renaissance at the national library. Moréas, as it happened, arrived in France while the country was still feeling the aftershocks of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, in which France lost the regions of Alsace and Lorraine to Germany. The political upheaval had an effect on the arts, causing painters and writers to reject traditional schools of thought. With regard to poetry, there was a reaction against the rigid forms practiced by the Parnassians. Younger poets began writing instead in free verse. Moréas became central to this movement, which was first called dec-adism (also called decadentism) but which evolved into symbolism. "The period was idealist in its general temper but anarchist in the detail of its aspirations and its attempt to realize the formulae it proposed," explained John Davis Butler in his book Jean Moréas: A Critique of His Poetry and Philosophy.

Moréas's early verse collection Les syrtes "was considered [symbolism's] classic representation," according to Butler. A collection of reveries, laments, love poems, and remembrances, the book was nevertheless regarded by the poet to be an immature work. Still, Butler commented that it "contains many pieces that are not only readable but thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding." Already regarded as the leader of the Symbolist movement in France, Moréas was invited by the editors of the magazine Figaro littéraire to provide a definitive statement of purpose for Symbolism. The result was the article "Manifeste du symbolisme," which was published in 1886. Many scholars also credit the poet with changing the name from decadentism to symbolism, as Moréas felt the former was too derogatory a name.

Les syrtes was soon followed by Les cantilènes: funèrailles, interlude, assonances, cantilènes, le pur concept, histoires merveillueuses. Though many, according to Butler, now consider this collection inferior to Les syrtes, the critic commented that "Moréas skillfully recaptures a sense of spontaneity and the folk-feeling in some of the adaptations from the Middle Ages, and some of the Cantilènes are delightful."

When the poetry collection Le pèlerin passioné was published in 1891, it prompted Moréas's contemporaries to once again acknowledge him as the leader of the symbolist poets; a banquet was even held in his honor. By the time this work's second edition came out in 1893, however, Moréas was already abandoning symbolism for a new literary movement that would be called the école Romane (the Roman school). Butler noted that there were already hints of the poet's defection from symbolism in Le pèlerin passioné, which he felt "in one sense [was] a reaction against Symbolism" in its return in some ways to more classical concerns.

Although Moréas was passionate about his adoptive country, he was also beginning to return to his Greek roots, and searching for a way of fusing the two countries' literary heritages. As Butler stated, the poet's intention was "to create a poetry in French that above all, respects and manifests its racial-national qualities and its Greco-Latin traditions." But, explained Butler, "This shift in content … is not as consciously conceived or as much emphasized as it is Moréas' concern with language, the prime matter of poetry. Moréas is plainly abashed and dismayed at the negative influence upon the French language of foreign literatures and their trends toward excessive mystery, willful obscurity, and vagueness of expression. Now Symbolism, successor to Decadentism, was the chief and most recent offender in this verbal license that many considered so deleterious to the language. The more Moréas became oriented toward the classicism of the literary heritage of his native land, the more it became necessary for him to repudiate the abuses of the movement."

With the École Romane, Moréas, and other poets who followed his example, such as Raymond de la Tailhède and Ernest Raynaud, began to return to more classical forms, respecting rhyme schemes and rhythms in their verses once again. This is plainly seen in his next major collection, which is considered by many critics to be his eight-volume masterpiece, Les stances: Les six livres complet. Butler reported that, at the time the first six volumes were published in 1905, the collection was praised by Moréas's contemporaries. Reviews at the time contained "a plethora of unstinted, frequently almost reverent and ecstatic praise of Moréas and his Stances." Multiple themes are found in Les stances, observed Butler, demonstrating a "manifestation of the poet's ennui, metaphysical in quality, the aspect of drama and tragedy inherent in the work and in the life it reveals, the classical humanism and the philosophy of the poet shown through the poems, the workings of nature in the poetry and its poetic process in general." Although the critic duly noted that the thematic concerns of Les stances do not explore new territory, they demonstrate a marvelous "purity of expression."

Les stances represents the final significant step in the poet's evolution, a process Butler found to be "as beautiful as some of Moréas' poetic creations." Butler elaborated that the poet's literary works illustrate his constant search to improve his writing and attain an ideal: "It is interesting to confirm that in his evolution, Moréas did not stop with any one stage in which he found success. We have seen that he published successfully in several veins, his works being hailed as types, of the style of the Decadents, the Symbolists, and of the Roman group. Moréas did not settle in any one of these possible havens of achievement because he sensed in each, that he had not gained what he was seeking. He was seeking relentlessly, as if driven by a Socratic daemon, the form of art that best complemented his temperament. His linguistic search for a purity and perfection of form was interestingly enough paralleled by a quest for purity and perfection of morality and philosophy, a spiritual order in his own life. He found, fairly late in life, the artistic and moral-philosophical representation he sought."