Biobibilography by Jacqueline Gojard, translated by Beth S. Gersh- Nešić
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1881-1896 Childhood. André Salmon was born in Paris on October 4, 1881 in the XI arrondissement, the fourth child of the sculptor-aquatint engraver Émile-Frédéric Salmon and Sophie-Julie Cattiaux, daughter of a founding member of the Radical-Socialist Party.
My little fatherland is on the Boulevard Voltaire
The parish of Saint Ambroise
Former communards, who had been exiled for a while in London and then returned to Paris, his parents raised their children in accordance with their patriotic, secular and republican spirit. With the constraints that moving several times imposed, they neglected giving a formal education to their son, who did not follow a secondary curriculum, but [instead] received private lessons from the Parnassian poet Gaston de Raisme, who was close to François Coppée. Later, [Salmon] spoke with bitterness about his solitary life as a late child in a household that was a victim of severe financial difficulties.
My childhood was sweet and I detested my childhood.
1897-1902 Sojourn in Saint-Petersberg. First with his parents and then alone, he was employed as an assistant in the chancellory of the French consulate. He learned Russian and discovered Corbière, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, and Maeterlinck in a bookstore. He frequented the nightclubs on the islands, the embassy balls, houses of prostitutions, anarchist circles where one conspired against the tsar in the name of Bakunin or Max Stirner. This exile of five years in a great cosmopolitan city formed his sensibility: nostalgia tempered by humor, a taste for exoticism and the marvelous, and compassion for all people separated from their family roots.
1902 The return to France for military service at Saint-Mihiel, then in Rouen. Because of his somewhat weak physical condition, Salmon was dismissed after a few months.
1903-1907 Literary debuts. One night in April, in a Latin Quarter cellar bar that was patronized by the [literary] review La Plume, Salmon met Guillaume Apollinaire, a young poet who was unknown at the time, and a few more older members who were already celebrated: Alfred Jarry, Paul Fort, Mécislas Golberg (a Jewish Polish anarchist, who would become his mentor). A group of friends formed, which included the painter and engraver Edmond-Marie Poullain, the Catalan sculptor Manuel Ugué (called Manolo), and the three young poets Salmon, Apollinaire, and Nicolas Deniker (who would soon found the review called Le Festin d’Esope [Aesop’s Feast] with Jean Mollet (also called “le baron”). Le Festin’s headquarters was at 244 rue Saint Jacques, none other than the small room that Salmon rented [in the V arrondissement]. In the evening, the group could be found at the Closerie des Lilas where a cosmopolitan garden surrounded the two masters: Paul Fort and Jean Moréas. One night, at the beginning of January 1905, Manolo took Salmon to Picasso’s home in Montmartre. Picasso showed Salmon his recent canvases. Immediately taken with the work, Salmon remained so all his life. The next day, the painter introduced Salmon to Max Jacob, Picasso’s friend since 1901. From then on, the door of Picasso's rue Ravignan studio bore an inscription, written in blue chalk in Picasso’s hand: “le rendez-vous des poètes.” Salmon lived by his wits: composing couplets for L’Assiette au Beurre, writing cheap novels and collaborating with Mac Orlan (whom he met at the Lapin Agile) on popular songs. He wrote little theatre pieces with Apollinaire with the unrealistic hope of creating a big hit. In April, he assisted Paul Fort in his founding of Vers et Prose and moved to the rue Boissonade, into the offices of the review, which published his first collection of poetry, Poèmes, which received favorable notice. The poems, written in parody, were an homage and farewell to the masters of Symbolism. They were pompous allegories denouncing the mortifying power of this idealist aesthetic:
Dying of hunger watching the snow fall.
Salmon’s Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau [The Manuscript Found in a Hat] first appeared as a poetic recital in La Revue immoraliste. Salmon expressed his admiration for Picasso’s genius for the first time in La Revue littéraire de Paris et de Champagne. As a poet, storyteller, and art critic, Salmon seemed to have found his literary direction by 1905. He was seen with Apollinaire on Rachilde’s Tuesdays in the offices of Mercure de France, the most influential review among poets in those days. Was it the desire to distance himself or chronic lack of money? Without breaking with Paul Fort, Salmon left his job as secretary to Vers et Prose and moved to 3 rue Soufflot, in front of the Panthéon. It was there that he learned how to smoke opium in the company of René Dalize, a retired sailor and friend of Apollinaire’s, who became his friend too. Then, in November 1906, Salmon accepted a position as stage-manager for the tours of Baret, an itinerant theatre celebrated in all the major cities of France and neighboring countries. For a poet who would be on the move all his life, it was a great opportunity to travel at no cost.
1907-1908 Montmartre. To live closer to Picasso, Salmon rented a two room flat at 36 rue Saint-Vincent, at the corner of the cemetery, not far from the Lapin Agile, where he formed solid bonds of friendship with [two] Montmartre denizens who became famous: Francis Carco and Roland Dorgelès. In the editions of Vers and Prose, where his second collection of poems, Les Féeries [Fairies], appeared, he light-heartedly affirm the right of the poet to mix the real and the imaginary. The pitiable heroes of daily life, pimps and prostitutes, shared this literary landscape with exotic types, clowns, horseback riders, gypsies, African kings, or characters that stepped right out of the works by François Villon, Goethe or Dostoievsky. At the Bateau-Lavoir, where he eventually moved into a vacant studio, Salmon followed, day after day, the metamorphosis of a large painting that he would baptize Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. A banquet was organized in honor of the Douanier Henri Rousseau and they meditated on the lessons learned from African and Oceanic statuettes. After many short-lived relationships, Salmon fell in love with Jeanne Blazy-Escarpette, a beautiful native Parisian. Concerned about settling down, he began working for L’Intransigeant and Le Soleil [The Sun], thus beginning a long career with the Parisian press.
1909-1914 The end of Bohemian life. After becoming a journalist, Salmon married Jeanne on the July 13, 1909 in the Saint-Merry church. In the glow of Chinese lanterns festooned for the national celebration [of the French Revolution], they took leave of the past.
And my delicate youth/Suddenly rose up, a swan with a crimson neck
Like a beautiful aristocrat/Holding her head in her hands.
Apollinaire, the groom’s best man, recited in the guise of a toast the “Poem Read at André Salmon’s Wedding” wherein he sees all of Paris decked out in honor of his friend. The young couple moved to rue Rousselet in the VII arrondissement. The third lyric collection of Salmon’s poems, Le Calumet [Peace Pipe], 1910, mixes several aesthetics: the poet-smoker practiced modern writing of simultaneity within a form that appeared to be completely classic. Since 1908 while with L’Intransigeant, he had become known as an ardent defender of the new painting. He gave his L’Intransigeant job to Apollinaire and started “Le Courrier des ateliers” with Paris-Journalin 1910, signing himself “La Palette.” [This art column] became a pendant to Alain-Fournier’s literary column “Courrier des Lettres.” Salmon moved into 3 rue Joseph Bara and 6 rue Joseph Bara. The feverish atmosphere of La Closerie de Lilas emigrated toward the cosmopolitan cafés in Montparnasse: Le Dôme and La Rotonde. On the first of June in 1911, his theatrical revue of literary life, Garçon! . . . . de quoi écrire!, [Waiter! . . . What should I write!]—completely written in couplets--opened at the Salle Malakoff to rave reviews from “tout Paris.” In his Nouvelles de la République des Letters, he attacked the Unanimisme of Jules Romains and the Futurism of Marinetti. Bonds were forged with the young artists Möise Kisling and Jules Pascin, who were unfailing [close] friends. Kisling’s studio at 3 rue Joseph Bara took over from the Bateau-Lavoir [as a meeting place]: Modigliani, Cendrars, Cocteau, Max Jacob . . . would be seen there. In 1912, two major works appeared: Tendres Canailles [Little Rascals] and La Jeune Peinture française [New French Art] . The former made Salmon known as a storyteller. The latter launched a series of books of art criticism. Centered around the chapter entitled “An Anecdotal History of Cubism,” which presented Picasso as the hero of the new art, he took stock of recently produced art, starting with the Fauves.
1914-1918 The War. While living through the last moments of the Belle Epoque [reviewing art] for Gil Blas, Salmon learned in August of the general mobilization against Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany. As a voluntary recruit, he trained at the fort in Vincennes before joining a battalion of infantry soldiers sent to the front at Artois and then Argonne. He experienced the exhausting night watches on the battlements, frozen feet in the mud of the trenches, the patrols when one crawled wearing a backpack through the cadavers from the day before and under the crossfire of the two opposing sides—then the ambulance, the precarious care in a military hospital, the infirmary for wounded soldiers, and finally a few days convalescence in Nice. Upon his return to Paris, Salmon wore many hats for Jacques Dhur’s newspaper L’Éveil [The Awakening]. He published Le Chass’Bi(chasseur biffin, infantryman in slang) and the Histoires de Bôches[Stories about the Germans--using the pejorative slang term], very much in keeping with the taste of the times. In July 1916, he organized an exhibition, le Salon d’Antin, at the couturier Paul Poiret’s showroom. It was then that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon was exhibited in public for the first time [and received its name from Salmon]. Salmon participated in the soirées on the rue Huygens where avant-garde painters and poets socialized with each other. The long awaited news of the armistice arrived on November 11, 1918, saddened by the death of Guillaume Apollinaire, who succumbed to the Spanish Influenza on November 9. Monstres choisis [Chosen Monsters], a collection of Salmon’s old short stories, came out in July 1918, through La Nouvelle Revue Française. Sold out by August, the book was subsequently reprinted. Salmon also began his association with the publisher Gallimard, as he had been on excellent terms with the writer-editor Jean Paulhan since 1907.
1919-1921 The Golden Age of Nominalism. Postponed for a while because of the war, the works Salmon completed in 1914 were published one after another [beginning in 1919]: Moeurs de la famille Poivre[The Pepper Family’s Habits], a collection of short stories; La Jeune Sculpture française, the pendant to La Jeune Peinture française; and Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau, an ensemble of humorous texts that demonstrate different literary forms that come from different periods in Salmon’s career. It was accompanied by Picasso’s drawings. The aesthetic of simultaneity (which would later be called “Literary Cubism”) governs the ensemble. In January 1919, exhilarated by the revolutionary winds coming from Russia, Salmon completed an epic poem Prikaz (“decree” in Russian). It is a unique poem in sixteen juxtaposed fragments. Each envisions the revolution from a specific point of view and without narrative continuity nor the reappearance of characters, which makes this work by Salmon very different from Twelve by Alexandre Blok which has sometimes been compared to it. Salmon was not certain of better future, but he celebrated the lyric illusion of a whole nation drunk on liberty.
One day men will have lived according to their hearts.
This sentence, which the author of L’Espoir (Hope)will return to several times in his way, would earn the sympathy of the young people who hardly concerned themselves with adhering to André Breton’s authority: André Malraux, Pascal Pia, and Florent Fels. In the postface to Prikaz, Salmon rejects the discourse of values and defines his “nominalism” as “the acceptance of a fact on a marvelous plane.” This aesthetic clarifies the many affirmations in La Jeune Peinture française and La Jeune Sculpture française: that the work is unique and that schools are only labels for public use. Doesn’t medieval nominalism affirm that man is an abstraction, who only exists as an individual in his singularity? His creative fever continued into the next two years. Salmon published a new volume of art criticism, L’Art vivant; two major novels La Négresse du Sacré Coeur [The Negress of Sacré-Coeur] and the L’Entrepreneur d’ illuminations; three collection of poems in his new style: Le Livre et La Bouteille [The Book and the Bottle], L’Âge de l’Humanité and Peindre [To Paint]. From then on, the battles among the avant-garde belonged to the past. Supported by the poets’ criticism, the young artists triumphed over the academic and had to guard against becoming cliché. Up with Picasso, down with Cubism and all the other isms! La Négresse du Sacré-Coeur, a roman à clés in which the characters were Picasso, Max Jacob, Mac Orlan and Salmon himself, evokes with nostalgia “the Montmartre of our twenties.” Montparnasse was in mourning: Modigliani died in the Hôpital de la Charité and his companion Jeanne did not survive him. Nothing would be the same after that.
Leaving for war in the heart of summer
Victor toward the end of fall
Staggering from having fallen under tons
And tons
Of explosives under the old universe patiently sabotaged.
You are going to be forty,
You have been in the war
You are no longer the man you were
And you will never be the man that your father was at your age then.
Salmon worked for L’Europe nouvelle [The New Europe]and La Paix Sociale [The Social Peace], leftist newspapers. On April 1913, he participated in the enormous march in favor of Jaurès, the pacifist who was assassinated on the eve of the general mobilization for World War I. The Age of Humanity was for this poet being in his forties and also living in the era of the newspaper L’Humanité founded by Jaurès; it was also Zero Hour for our space—at risk of disappearing. Peindre celebrates the artist’s gesture since the caves, with no concern for chronology and medals. Art, reincarnated with each audience, is susceptible to infinite extensions despite numerous provisional or definitive setbacks.
Art is a stone that bursts forth one day
In a block of fire
Which never falls, is never fixed, cold; it radiates,
If you belief you seize it with the compass of your eyes.
Then your eyes will be the stone
Cold until other eyes
Take it in order to extend it further into the infinity of its course.
How many geniuses were snuffed out in the theatre La Grande Ourse [Big Bear]!
Pessimistic regarding history and more so regarding politics, Salmon believed in the reckless promises sustained by young artists.
O world enlarged by our drunken sages
O fatherlands drawn from nothing
O rue des Abbess
O rue Ravignan.*
[*two streets in Montmartre.]
In February 1920, Salmon became part of the Action team that formed around Florent Fels, and in March he presented the first Dada soirée in Paris to a public flabbergasted by Tristan Tzara’s provocations. He gave a poem to Littérature, André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon’s new revue. Called by Colette to the newspaper Le Matin, Salmon took charge of the judiciary chronicles and attended the Landru trials with Colette.
1922-1930 The Headiness of the Roaring Twenties. Without participating in the fashionable social life that stimulated Jean Cocteau at the restaurant Le Boeuf sur le Toit [Ox on the Roof], Salmon was no less taken with the whirlwind of scattered activities in Paris. Of course, his daily encounters in the cafés, at the painters’ studios or in the galleries gave him sustenance for his book, Propos d’atelier [Studio Talk], but it took a lot of time. Was he a victim of his own notoriety? He was asked to write prefaces to exhibitions, monographs for the art pubiishers Les Quatre chemins, Les Chroniques du jour or Crès (Utrillo, Modigliani, Kisling, Henri Rousseau, Friesz, Chagall, Derain . . .). One could no longer count the number of newspapers, magazines, etc., that he contributed to. Close to the foreign artists who poured into Montparnasse, he played the role of counselor of arts and letters, obtaining permits of extended residence, studios, or the extension of a scholarship. And he found a first job for the penniless young poets Benjamin Péret or Rayond Radiguet. His portraits by Picasso, Modigliani, Marie Laurencin, and Léopold Survage served as frontispiece for his books. Derain embellished with his woodcuts the reprint of Calumet. The Negress of Sacré-Coeur competed for the Goncourt Prize. Florent Fels and Georges Gabory wrote prefaces for the reprint of Prikaz and Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau, this time with the publisher Stock in the first paperback collection. His old collections were taken over by Gallimard, published in the collective editions Créances [Debts] and Carreaux [Squares]. Everything was going very well, except that he no longer had time to write. Called to all the regions in France to cover court trials, Salmon never ceased to fasten and unfasten his valise. His friend René Saunier convinced Salmon to take a chance with him in the theatre. The public applauded Natchalo (scenes from the Russian Revolution), Deux hommes et une femme [Two Men and a Woman], and Sang d’Espagne [Blood of Spain] until Salmon discovered that it all took more time than journalism. Two little novels without great literary pretension were published by Albin Michel in 1920: Bob et Bobette en ménage [Bob and Bobette’s Married Life] and C’est un belle fille [It’s a Beautiful Girl], having already asked the question through fiction: how far can ambitious people go without losing their souls? Was it intentional ambition or self-destruction? From this period of great confusion emerged some works written more for himself or for his friends than for the public’s approval: Archives du club des Onze [Archives from the Club of Eleven], an eccentric story dedicated to Max Jacob with a portrait of the author by Derain; Un orgie à Saint-Petersbourg [An Orgy in Saint-Petersburg], a short autobiographical novel, Venus in Libra, a collection embellished with Pascin engravings, and little volumes like Tout l’or du monde [All the Gold of the World], books that appeared in rare editions and not through Gallimard. The revue Sagesse [Wisdom] organized a banquet in honor of Salmon the same night that Pascin took his life. A new circle of friends formed which included the poet Jean Follain, the painter Alfred Gaspart, and the sculpture Volti.
1930-1936. Dangers Increase. Beginning in 1930, new difficulties appeared both in private and public life. Caught up in his professional activities. Salmon always smoked opium in moderation. It was not the same for Jeanne, who was much more dependent. In 1933, Salmon fulfilled an old dream by moving to the Ile Saint-Louis, [into an apartment at] 13 Quai d’Anjou. A few months later it became necessary to move out: Jeanne was attracted too much to the waters of the Seine. Salmon rented a first floor apartment at 73 Notre-Dame-des Champs in Montparnasse from then on. This would be his last Parisian address. Money entered one pocket and left from the other. The poet returned to producing intentionally income-generating works (Voyage au pays des voyantes [A Trip in the Land of Clairvoyants] in 1931). In February 1936, he gave a week recital of poetry at the Noctambules, alternating during this week-long event with Francis Carco and Max Jacob. The international situation continued to grow heavy [with problems]: economic crises, mounting fascism and increased anti-semitism. Salmon was accused of supporting “les métèques” [the pejorative slang for immigrants] and “the Jewish conspiracy.” The riots on February 6, 1934 demonstrated to him the weakness of the republican establishment that had been compromised by a series of scandals and the general Parisian populace allying itself with groups supporting the extreme right. His collection of poems, Saint André, published by Gallimard in 1936, expressed his sense of disorientation. He saw on the one hand disastrous ideologies and on the other hand a personal politics incapable of defending the values of democracy which he remained attached to in principle, in spite of everything.
Faithful to what I honor
Monsigneur
While being your obedient rebel.
He really had no more faith in anything but poetry:
To everything in a universe free of horrible ties
The word opens the door.
The center of literary life moved from Montparnasse to Saint-Germain-des Près. Salmon presided over the jury for the Cazes Prize given out for the first time in 1935 to Roger Vitrac at the brasserie Lipp.
1936-1949 The poet in the fray. Salmon began writing judiciary chronicles for Le Petit Parisien in 1928. From 1932 to 1934, he covered the Tour de France. The director of the newspaper, Élie-Joseph Bois, sent two reporters to the front during the war in Spain: Andrée Viollis to the Republican side; Salmon to the Francist side. In favor of Léon Blum’s political neutrality, Salmon was opposed to the civil war. Everything that he saw—the bombardments, the summary executions, and the desecration of graves—horrified him. In Salamanca on August 14, Salmon interviewed the great anti-establishment writer Miguel de Unamuno, who allied himself belatedly with the Fascists. (Unamuno committed suicide a few days later.) That provoked a general outcry on the Left. When Franco triumphed, Salmon called for the immediate amnesty for all the Republicans. His articles were condemned. Upon his return to Paris, he explained himself to Picasso who understood without approval. After the Anschluss in June 1938, Salmon launched a chronicle entitled “Austrian Martyrs” in Le Petit Parisien in which he denounced the “methodical system of the elimination of the Jews.” In January 1940, he was sent to Beirut to report on the war. In Lebanon and in Syria, he discovered biblical landscapes, vestiges of the antique, and he let himself take in the incomparable charm of the desert. Sick at heart, he learned of the defeat of his country and he listened to Marshall Pétain’s speech in which he offered himself to France. Cut off from all manner of communication and no longer receiving compensation from his newspaper, Salmon left for Marseille in October, passing through Vichy in order to procure entry into the Occupied Zone. He finally reunited with Jeanne, from whom he had heard nothing for several months. Abandoning everything, Jeanne had joined the exodus with baggage from Le Petit Parisien and returned to Paris, surviving in a lamentable condition. Their bank account was empty. Not hesitating, Salmon went straight to Le Petit Parisien [for employment]. He did not find his friend Élie-Joseph Bois there (Bois exiled himself in London), but instead a new team predisposed to use Salmon’s signature to enhance their interests. The difficulties that he encountered after that would surpass anything he could have imagined. The extreme Right, which had not pardoned him for supporting “degenerate” art and did not forget his articles in 1938, denounced him as a Jew. He had to undergo searches in his home and interrogations by the police. At the newspaper, after he wrote an article on the French Voluntary Legion against the Bolshevics (an article considered too insignificant to censure and had to be rewritten by someone else in a less nuanced manner), Salmon was only trusted with rumors of little importance. He lived like a recluse at home with the shutters closed. He wrote verse (Odeur de poèsie, 1944) and began to write his memoirs. In the winter, the apartment was freezing and Jeanne nearly died from pneumonia. Was Salmon a double agent, as some have affirmed? All that one can say is that his position with the press gave him a free hand: he submitted “on the quiet” articles by an old friend “Arnyvelde” (an anagram for André Lévy), broke into Kisling’s studio in his absence (Kisling had fled to New York) to hide the canvases at risk of being confiscated by the current tenant, and he provided an alibi for a member of the Resistance who planted bombs and had been arrested by the Gestapo. When it turned out that Max Jacob was no longer safe at Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, Salmon proposed hiding Max Jacob at his apartment on the rue Notre-Dame-des Champs. Max refused. In the train that took him to Drancy, Max scribbled a call for help. Jean Cocteau and Sasha Guitry received that very distress signal, and with Salmon tried to have Max released. When the order to release him arrived, it was too late. Max died from pulmonary congestion on March 5, 1944. After the Liberation, Salmon became suspect, predictably, because of his contributions to a newspaper that could publish in the occupied zone. He was condemned with the minimal penalty enforced for ambiguous cases: five years of national indignation during which time he was forbidden to sign his name to anything. He survived by writing under pseudonyms and through the help of his most faithful friends: Edmond-Marie Poullain, who was himself a great resistant; Pierre Mac Orlan, whose political position (anti-communist and anti-fascist ) was very close to his own; and Léon-Paul Fargue, who was partially paralyzed and employed Salmon as a ghost-writer. On January 1, 1949, Jeanne died in Saint-Joseph Hospital.
1949-1969 A new life. At the brasserie Lipp, Henri Philippon introduced Léo to Salmon. She was Roger Vitrac’s ex-companion. Very elegant (she had been a model at Paul Poiret’s) and full of spirit, she gave him a new lease on life. He married her on October 29, 1953 in the administrative offices for the VI arrondissement. He had reconciled with Picasso on November 18, 1951 at the premier of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage in Germaine Montero's box. Picasso embraced Salmon and their relationship was mended. In 1959, a large banquet at La Coupole celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Prikaz. In November 1961, Salmon left Paris forever to move to Sanary, where he had built in 1937 a small house, La Hune, in order to live close to Kisling, whose villa La Baie stood on a neighboring piece of land. His terrace became the meeting place of friends. The painter Édouard Pignon’s wife, Hélène Parmelin, a close friend of Picasso’s, organized the meetings between the two artists, who were close to eighty years old. In 1963, Salmon was elected to the municipal council of Sanary as a Leftist candidate. In 1964, he received the Grand Prix for poetry from the French Academy and Jean Paulhan paid homage to Salmon under the cupola in a wonderful toast. Liberated from the servitude of journalism, he wrote poems for pleasure. In 1952, Les Étoiles dans l’encrier [The Stars in the Inkwell], came out through Gallimard and in 1957, Vocalises[Singing Lessons], was published by Pierre Seghers. Salmon also devoted himself to his writing his memoirs, publishing after L’Air de la Butte, Montparnasse and Rive Gauche,three volumes of his memoirs Souvenirs sans fin. His grand-nephew Jean-Jacques Pauvert published Le Terreur noire [The Black Terror], a history of the anarchist movement, in 1959 and Le Monocle à deux coups [The Monocle with Two Shots], the last fantasy novel, in 1968. The tremendously successful, La Vie passionnée de Modigliani, translated into numerous languages, provided Salmon with a comfortable steady income. In 1967, Salmon became a commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters. After twenty years of happiness with Léo, Salmon died of colon cancer on March 12, 1969 with his wife by his side in his home in Provence. He left the unpublished diary of his trip to the New East, Les Échelles du Levant [The Ladders of the Levant]; a fourth volume of Souvenirs sans fins, which covered his childhood, and a third collection of poems, Charbons, which would have made a suite with Créances and Carreaux.
1881-1896 Childhood. André Salmon was born in Paris on October 4, 1881 in the XI arrondissement, the fourth child of the sculptor-aquatint engraver Émile-Frédéric Salmon and Sophie-Julie Cattiaux, daughter of a founding member of the Radical-Socialist Party.
My little fatherland is on the Boulevard Voltaire
The parish of Saint Ambroise
Former communards, who had been exiled for a while in London and then returned to Paris, his parents raised their children in accordance with their patriotic, secular and republican spirit. With the constraints that moving several times imposed, they neglected giving a formal education to their son, who did not follow a secondary curriculum, but [instead] received private lessons from the Parnassian poet Gaston de Raisme, who was close to François Coppée. Later, [Salmon] spoke with bitterness about his solitary life as a late child in a household that was a victim of severe financial difficulties.
My childhood was sweet and I detested my childhood.
1897-1902 Sojourn in Saint-Petersberg. First with his parents and then alone, he was employed as an assistant in the chancellory of the French consulate. He learned Russian and discovered Corbière, Rimbaud, Lautréamont, and Maeterlinck in a bookstore. He frequented the nightclubs on the islands, the embassy balls, houses of prostitutions, anarchist circles where one conspired against the tsar in the name of Bakunin or Max Stirner. This exile of five years in a great cosmopolitan city formed his sensibility: nostalgia tempered by humor, a taste for exoticism and the marvelous, and compassion for all people separated from their family roots.
1902 The return to France for military service at Saint-Mihiel, then in Rouen. Because of his somewhat weak physical condition, Salmon was dismissed after a few months.
1903-1907 Literary debuts. One night in April, in a Latin Quarter cellar bar that was patronized by the [literary] review La Plume, Salmon met Guillaume Apollinaire, a young poet who was unknown at the time, and a few more older members who were already celebrated: Alfred Jarry, Paul Fort, Mécislas Golberg (a Jewish Polish anarchist, who would become his mentor). A group of friends formed, which included the painter and engraver Edmond-Marie Poullain, the Catalan sculptor Manuel Ugué (called Manolo), and the three young poets Salmon, Apollinaire, and Nicolas Deniker (who would soon found the review called Le Festin d’Esope [Aesop’s Feast] with Jean Mollet (also called “le baron”). Le Festin’s headquarters was at 244 rue Saint Jacques, none other than the small room that Salmon rented [in the V arrondissement]. In the evening, the group could be found at the Closerie des Lilas where a cosmopolitan garden surrounded the two masters: Paul Fort and Jean Moréas. One night, at the beginning of January 1905, Manolo took Salmon to Picasso’s home in Montmartre. Picasso showed Salmon his recent canvases. Immediately taken with the work, Salmon remained so all his life. The next day, the painter introduced Salmon to Max Jacob, Picasso’s friend since 1901. From then on, the door of Picasso's rue Ravignan studio bore an inscription, written in blue chalk in Picasso’s hand: “le rendez-vous des poètes.” Salmon lived by his wits: composing couplets for L’Assiette au Beurre, writing cheap novels and collaborating with Mac Orlan (whom he met at the Lapin Agile) on popular songs. He wrote little theatre pieces with Apollinaire with the unrealistic hope of creating a big hit. In April, he assisted Paul Fort in his founding of Vers et Prose and moved to the rue Boissonade, into the offices of the review, which published his first collection of poetry, Poèmes, which received favorable notice. The poems, written in parody, were an homage and farewell to the masters of Symbolism. They were pompous allegories denouncing the mortifying power of this idealist aesthetic:
Dying of hunger watching the snow fall.
Salmon’s Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau [The Manuscript Found in a Hat] first appeared as a poetic recital in La Revue immoraliste. Salmon expressed his admiration for Picasso’s genius for the first time in La Revue littéraire de Paris et de Champagne. As a poet, storyteller, and art critic, Salmon seemed to have found his literary direction by 1905. He was seen with Apollinaire on Rachilde’s Tuesdays in the offices of Mercure de France, the most influential review among poets in those days. Was it the desire to distance himself or chronic lack of money? Without breaking with Paul Fort, Salmon left his job as secretary to Vers et Prose and moved to 3 rue Soufflot, in front of the Panthéon. It was there that he learned how to smoke opium in the company of René Dalize, a retired sailor and friend of Apollinaire’s, who became his friend too. Then, in November 1906, Salmon accepted a position as stage-manager for the tours of Baret, an itinerant theatre celebrated in all the major cities of France and neighboring countries. For a poet who would be on the move all his life, it was a great opportunity to travel at no cost.
1907-1908 Montmartre. To live closer to Picasso, Salmon rented a two room flat at 36 rue Saint-Vincent, at the corner of the cemetery, not far from the Lapin Agile, where he formed solid bonds of friendship with [two] Montmartre denizens who became famous: Francis Carco and Roland Dorgelès. In the editions of Vers and Prose, where his second collection of poems, Les Féeries [Fairies], appeared, he light-heartedly affirm the right of the poet to mix the real and the imaginary. The pitiable heroes of daily life, pimps and prostitutes, shared this literary landscape with exotic types, clowns, horseback riders, gypsies, African kings, or characters that stepped right out of the works by François Villon, Goethe or Dostoievsky. At the Bateau-Lavoir, where he eventually moved into a vacant studio, Salmon followed, day after day, the metamorphosis of a large painting that he would baptize Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. A banquet was organized in honor of the Douanier Henri Rousseau and they meditated on the lessons learned from African and Oceanic statuettes. After many short-lived relationships, Salmon fell in love with Jeanne Blazy-Escarpette, a beautiful native Parisian. Concerned about settling down, he began working for L’Intransigeant and Le Soleil [The Sun], thus beginning a long career with the Parisian press.
1909-1914 The end of Bohemian life. After becoming a journalist, Salmon married Jeanne on the July 13, 1909 in the Saint-Merry church. In the glow of Chinese lanterns festooned for the national celebration [of the French Revolution], they took leave of the past.
And my delicate youth/Suddenly rose up, a swan with a crimson neck
Like a beautiful aristocrat/Holding her head in her hands.
Apollinaire, the groom’s best man, recited in the guise of a toast the “Poem Read at André Salmon’s Wedding” wherein he sees all of Paris decked out in honor of his friend. The young couple moved to rue Rousselet in the VII arrondissement. The third lyric collection of Salmon’s poems, Le Calumet [Peace Pipe], 1910, mixes several aesthetics: the poet-smoker practiced modern writing of simultaneity within a form that appeared to be completely classic. Since 1908 while with L’Intransigeant, he had become known as an ardent defender of the new painting. He gave his L’Intransigeant job to Apollinaire and started “Le Courrier des ateliers” with Paris-Journalin 1910, signing himself “La Palette.” [This art column] became a pendant to Alain-Fournier’s literary column “Courrier des Lettres.” Salmon moved into 3 rue Joseph Bara and 6 rue Joseph Bara. The feverish atmosphere of La Closerie de Lilas emigrated toward the cosmopolitan cafés in Montparnasse: Le Dôme and La Rotonde. On the first of June in 1911, his theatrical revue of literary life, Garçon! . . . . de quoi écrire!, [Waiter! . . . What should I write!]—completely written in couplets--opened at the Salle Malakoff to rave reviews from “tout Paris.” In his Nouvelles de la République des Letters, he attacked the Unanimisme of Jules Romains and the Futurism of Marinetti. Bonds were forged with the young artists Möise Kisling and Jules Pascin, who were unfailing [close] friends. Kisling’s studio at 3 rue Joseph Bara took over from the Bateau-Lavoir [as a meeting place]: Modigliani, Cendrars, Cocteau, Max Jacob . . . would be seen there. In 1912, two major works appeared: Tendres Canailles [Little Rascals] and La Jeune Peinture française [New French Art] . The former made Salmon known as a storyteller. The latter launched a series of books of art criticism. Centered around the chapter entitled “An Anecdotal History of Cubism,” which presented Picasso as the hero of the new art, he took stock of recently produced art, starting with the Fauves.
1914-1918 The War. While living through the last moments of the Belle Epoque [reviewing art] for Gil Blas, Salmon learned in August of the general mobilization against Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Germany. As a voluntary recruit, he trained at the fort in Vincennes before joining a battalion of infantry soldiers sent to the front at Artois and then Argonne. He experienced the exhausting night watches on the battlements, frozen feet in the mud of the trenches, the patrols when one crawled wearing a backpack through the cadavers from the day before and under the crossfire of the two opposing sides—then the ambulance, the precarious care in a military hospital, the infirmary for wounded soldiers, and finally a few days convalescence in Nice. Upon his return to Paris, Salmon wore many hats for Jacques Dhur’s newspaper L’Éveil [The Awakening]. He published Le Chass’Bi(chasseur biffin, infantryman in slang) and the Histoires de Bôches[Stories about the Germans--using the pejorative slang term], very much in keeping with the taste of the times. In July 1916, he organized an exhibition, le Salon d’Antin, at the couturier Paul Poiret’s showroom. It was then that Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon was exhibited in public for the first time [and received its name from Salmon]. Salmon participated in the soirées on the rue Huygens where avant-garde painters and poets socialized with each other. The long awaited news of the armistice arrived on November 11, 1918, saddened by the death of Guillaume Apollinaire, who succumbed to the Spanish Influenza on November 9. Monstres choisis [Chosen Monsters], a collection of Salmon’s old short stories, came out in July 1918, through La Nouvelle Revue Française. Sold out by August, the book was subsequently reprinted. Salmon also began his association with the publisher Gallimard, as he had been on excellent terms with the writer-editor Jean Paulhan since 1907.
1919-1921 The Golden Age of Nominalism. Postponed for a while because of the war, the works Salmon completed in 1914 were published one after another [beginning in 1919]: Moeurs de la famille Poivre[The Pepper Family’s Habits], a collection of short stories; La Jeune Sculpture française, the pendant to La Jeune Peinture française; and Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau, an ensemble of humorous texts that demonstrate different literary forms that come from different periods in Salmon’s career. It was accompanied by Picasso’s drawings. The aesthetic of simultaneity (which would later be called “Literary Cubism”) governs the ensemble. In January 1919, exhilarated by the revolutionary winds coming from Russia, Salmon completed an epic poem Prikaz (“decree” in Russian). It is a unique poem in sixteen juxtaposed fragments. Each envisions the revolution from a specific point of view and without narrative continuity nor the reappearance of characters, which makes this work by Salmon very different from Twelve by Alexandre Blok which has sometimes been compared to it. Salmon was not certain of better future, but he celebrated the lyric illusion of a whole nation drunk on liberty.
One day men will have lived according to their hearts.
This sentence, which the author of L’Espoir (Hope)will return to several times in his way, would earn the sympathy of the young people who hardly concerned themselves with adhering to André Breton’s authority: André Malraux, Pascal Pia, and Florent Fels. In the postface to Prikaz, Salmon rejects the discourse of values and defines his “nominalism” as “the acceptance of a fact on a marvelous plane.” This aesthetic clarifies the many affirmations in La Jeune Peinture française and La Jeune Sculpture française: that the work is unique and that schools are only labels for public use. Doesn’t medieval nominalism affirm that man is an abstraction, who only exists as an individual in his singularity? His creative fever continued into the next two years. Salmon published a new volume of art criticism, L’Art vivant; two major novels La Négresse du Sacré Coeur [The Negress of Sacré-Coeur] and the L’Entrepreneur d’ illuminations; three collection of poems in his new style: Le Livre et La Bouteille [The Book and the Bottle], L’Âge de l’Humanité and Peindre [To Paint]. From then on, the battles among the avant-garde belonged to the past. Supported by the poets’ criticism, the young artists triumphed over the academic and had to guard against becoming cliché. Up with Picasso, down with Cubism and all the other isms! La Négresse du Sacré-Coeur, a roman à clés in which the characters were Picasso, Max Jacob, Mac Orlan and Salmon himself, evokes with nostalgia “the Montmartre of our twenties.” Montparnasse was in mourning: Modigliani died in the Hôpital de la Charité and his companion Jeanne did not survive him. Nothing would be the same after that.
Leaving for war in the heart of summer
Victor toward the end of fall
Staggering from having fallen under tons
And tons
Of explosives under the old universe patiently sabotaged.
You are going to be forty,
You have been in the war
You are no longer the man you were
And you will never be the man that your father was at your age then.
Salmon worked for L’Europe nouvelle [The New Europe]and La Paix Sociale [The Social Peace], leftist newspapers. On April 1913, he participated in the enormous march in favor of Jaurès, the pacifist who was assassinated on the eve of the general mobilization for World War I. The Age of Humanity was for this poet being in his forties and also living in the era of the newspaper L’Humanité founded by Jaurès; it was also Zero Hour for our space—at risk of disappearing. Peindre celebrates the artist’s gesture since the caves, with no concern for chronology and medals. Art, reincarnated with each audience, is susceptible to infinite extensions despite numerous provisional or definitive setbacks.
Art is a stone that bursts forth one day
In a block of fire
Which never falls, is never fixed, cold; it radiates,
If you belief you seize it with the compass of your eyes.
Then your eyes will be the stone
Cold until other eyes
Take it in order to extend it further into the infinity of its course.
How many geniuses were snuffed out in the theatre La Grande Ourse [Big Bear]!
Pessimistic regarding history and more so regarding politics, Salmon believed in the reckless promises sustained by young artists.
O world enlarged by our drunken sages
O fatherlands drawn from nothing
O rue des Abbess
O rue Ravignan.*
[*two streets in Montmartre.]
In February 1920, Salmon became part of the Action team that formed around Florent Fels, and in March he presented the first Dada soirée in Paris to a public flabbergasted by Tristan Tzara’s provocations. He gave a poem to Littérature, André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon’s new revue. Called by Colette to the newspaper Le Matin, Salmon took charge of the judiciary chronicles and attended the Landru trials with Colette.
1922-1930 The Headiness of the Roaring Twenties. Without participating in the fashionable social life that stimulated Jean Cocteau at the restaurant Le Boeuf sur le Toit [Ox on the Roof], Salmon was no less taken with the whirlwind of scattered activities in Paris. Of course, his daily encounters in the cafés, at the painters’ studios or in the galleries gave him sustenance for his book, Propos d’atelier [Studio Talk], but it took a lot of time. Was he a victim of his own notoriety? He was asked to write prefaces to exhibitions, monographs for the art pubiishers Les Quatre chemins, Les Chroniques du jour or Crès (Utrillo, Modigliani, Kisling, Henri Rousseau, Friesz, Chagall, Derain . . .). One could no longer count the number of newspapers, magazines, etc., that he contributed to. Close to the foreign artists who poured into Montparnasse, he played the role of counselor of arts and letters, obtaining permits of extended residence, studios, or the extension of a scholarship. And he found a first job for the penniless young poets Benjamin Péret or Rayond Radiguet. His portraits by Picasso, Modigliani, Marie Laurencin, and Léopold Survage served as frontispiece for his books. Derain embellished with his woodcuts the reprint of Calumet. The Negress of Sacré-Coeur competed for the Goncourt Prize. Florent Fels and Georges Gabory wrote prefaces for the reprint of Prikaz and Le Manuscrit trouvé dans un chapeau, this time with the publisher Stock in the first paperback collection. His old collections were taken over by Gallimard, published in the collective editions Créances [Debts] and Carreaux [Squares]. Everything was going very well, except that he no longer had time to write. Called to all the regions in France to cover court trials, Salmon never ceased to fasten and unfasten his valise. His friend René Saunier convinced Salmon to take a chance with him in the theatre. The public applauded Natchalo (scenes from the Russian Revolution), Deux hommes et une femme [Two Men and a Woman], and Sang d’Espagne [Blood of Spain] until Salmon discovered that it all took more time than journalism. Two little novels without great literary pretension were published by Albin Michel in 1920: Bob et Bobette en ménage [Bob and Bobette’s Married Life] and C’est un belle fille [It’s a Beautiful Girl], having already asked the question through fiction: how far can ambitious people go without losing their souls? Was it intentional ambition or self-destruction? From this period of great confusion emerged some works written more for himself or for his friends than for the public’s approval: Archives du club des Onze [Archives from the Club of Eleven], an eccentric story dedicated to Max Jacob with a portrait of the author by Derain; Un orgie à Saint-Petersbourg [An Orgy in Saint-Petersburg], a short autobiographical novel, Venus in Libra, a collection embellished with Pascin engravings, and little volumes like Tout l’or du monde [All the Gold of the World], books that appeared in rare editions and not through Gallimard. The revue Sagesse [Wisdom] organized a banquet in honor of Salmon the same night that Pascin took his life. A new circle of friends formed which included the poet Jean Follain, the painter Alfred Gaspart, and the sculpture Volti.
1930-1936. Dangers Increase. Beginning in 1930, new difficulties appeared both in private and public life. Caught up in his professional activities. Salmon always smoked opium in moderation. It was not the same for Jeanne, who was much more dependent. In 1933, Salmon fulfilled an old dream by moving to the Ile Saint-Louis, [into an apartment at] 13 Quai d’Anjou. A few months later it became necessary to move out: Jeanne was attracted too much to the waters of the Seine. Salmon rented a first floor apartment at 73 Notre-Dame-des Champs in Montparnasse from then on. This would be his last Parisian address. Money entered one pocket and left from the other. The poet returned to producing intentionally income-generating works (Voyage au pays des voyantes [A Trip in the Land of Clairvoyants] in 1931). In February 1936, he gave a week recital of poetry at the Noctambules, alternating during this week-long event with Francis Carco and Max Jacob. The international situation continued to grow heavy [with problems]: economic crises, mounting fascism and increased anti-semitism. Salmon was accused of supporting “les métèques” [the pejorative slang for immigrants] and “the Jewish conspiracy.” The riots on February 6, 1934 demonstrated to him the weakness of the republican establishment that had been compromised by a series of scandals and the general Parisian populace allying itself with groups supporting the extreme right. His collection of poems, Saint André, published by Gallimard in 1936, expressed his sense of disorientation. He saw on the one hand disastrous ideologies and on the other hand a personal politics incapable of defending the values of democracy which he remained attached to in principle, in spite of everything.
Faithful to what I honor
Monsigneur
While being your obedient rebel.
He really had no more faith in anything but poetry:
To everything in a universe free of horrible ties
The word opens the door.
The center of literary life moved from Montparnasse to Saint-Germain-des Près. Salmon presided over the jury for the Cazes Prize given out for the first time in 1935 to Roger Vitrac at the brasserie Lipp.
1936-1949 The poet in the fray. Salmon began writing judiciary chronicles for Le Petit Parisien in 1928. From 1932 to 1934, he covered the Tour de France. The director of the newspaper, Élie-Joseph Bois, sent two reporters to the front during the war in Spain: Andrée Viollis to the Republican side; Salmon to the Francist side. In favor of Léon Blum’s political neutrality, Salmon was opposed to the civil war. Everything that he saw—the bombardments, the summary executions, and the desecration of graves—horrified him. In Salamanca on August 14, Salmon interviewed the great anti-establishment writer Miguel de Unamuno, who allied himself belatedly with the Fascists. (Unamuno committed suicide a few days later.) That provoked a general outcry on the Left. When Franco triumphed, Salmon called for the immediate amnesty for all the Republicans. His articles were condemned. Upon his return to Paris, he explained himself to Picasso who understood without approval. After the Anschluss in June 1938, Salmon launched a chronicle entitled “Austrian Martyrs” in Le Petit Parisien in which he denounced the “methodical system of the elimination of the Jews.” In January 1940, he was sent to Beirut to report on the war. In Lebanon and in Syria, he discovered biblical landscapes, vestiges of the antique, and he let himself take in the incomparable charm of the desert. Sick at heart, he learned of the defeat of his country and he listened to Marshall Pétain’s speech in which he offered himself to France. Cut off from all manner of communication and no longer receiving compensation from his newspaper, Salmon left for Marseille in October, passing through Vichy in order to procure entry into the Occupied Zone. He finally reunited with Jeanne, from whom he had heard nothing for several months. Abandoning everything, Jeanne had joined the exodus with baggage from Le Petit Parisien and returned to Paris, surviving in a lamentable condition. Their bank account was empty. Not hesitating, Salmon went straight to Le Petit Parisien [for employment]. He did not find his friend Élie-Joseph Bois there (Bois exiled himself in London), but instead a new team predisposed to use Salmon’s signature to enhance their interests. The difficulties that he encountered after that would surpass anything he could have imagined. The extreme Right, which had not pardoned him for supporting “degenerate” art and did not forget his articles in 1938, denounced him as a Jew. He had to undergo searches in his home and interrogations by the police. At the newspaper, after he wrote an article on the French Voluntary Legion against the Bolshevics (an article considered too insignificant to censure and had to be rewritten by someone else in a less nuanced manner), Salmon was only trusted with rumors of little importance. He lived like a recluse at home with the shutters closed. He wrote verse (Odeur de poèsie, 1944) and began to write his memoirs. In the winter, the apartment was freezing and Jeanne nearly died from pneumonia. Was Salmon a double agent, as some have affirmed? All that one can say is that his position with the press gave him a free hand: he submitted “on the quiet” articles by an old friend “Arnyvelde” (an anagram for André Lévy), broke into Kisling’s studio in his absence (Kisling had fled to New York) to hide the canvases at risk of being confiscated by the current tenant, and he provided an alibi for a member of the Resistance who planted bombs and had been arrested by the Gestapo. When it turned out that Max Jacob was no longer safe at Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, Salmon proposed hiding Max Jacob at his apartment on the rue Notre-Dame-des Champs. Max refused. In the train that took him to Drancy, Max scribbled a call for help. Jean Cocteau and Sasha Guitry received that very distress signal, and with Salmon tried to have Max released. When the order to release him arrived, it was too late. Max died from pulmonary congestion on March 5, 1944. After the Liberation, Salmon became suspect, predictably, because of his contributions to a newspaper that could publish in the occupied zone. He was condemned with the minimal penalty enforced for ambiguous cases: five years of national indignation during which time he was forbidden to sign his name to anything. He survived by writing under pseudonyms and through the help of his most faithful friends: Edmond-Marie Poullain, who was himself a great resistant; Pierre Mac Orlan, whose political position (anti-communist and anti-fascist ) was very close to his own; and Léon-Paul Fargue, who was partially paralyzed and employed Salmon as a ghost-writer. On January 1, 1949, Jeanne died in Saint-Joseph Hospital.
1949-1969 A new life. At the brasserie Lipp, Henri Philippon introduced Léo to Salmon. She was Roger Vitrac’s ex-companion. Very elegant (she had been a model at Paul Poiret’s) and full of spirit, she gave him a new lease on life. He married her on October 29, 1953 in the administrative offices for the VI arrondissement. He had reconciled with Picasso on November 18, 1951 at the premier of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage in Germaine Montero's box. Picasso embraced Salmon and their relationship was mended. In 1959, a large banquet at La Coupole celebrated the fortieth anniversary of Prikaz. In November 1961, Salmon left Paris forever to move to Sanary, where he had built in 1937 a small house, La Hune, in order to live close to Kisling, whose villa La Baie stood on a neighboring piece of land. His terrace became the meeting place of friends. The painter Édouard Pignon’s wife, Hélène Parmelin, a close friend of Picasso’s, organized the meetings between the two artists, who were close to eighty years old. In 1963, Salmon was elected to the municipal council of Sanary as a Leftist candidate. In 1964, he received the Grand Prix for poetry from the French Academy and Jean Paulhan paid homage to Salmon under the cupola in a wonderful toast. Liberated from the servitude of journalism, he wrote poems for pleasure. In 1952, Les Étoiles dans l’encrier [The Stars in the Inkwell], came out through Gallimard and in 1957, Vocalises[Singing Lessons], was published by Pierre Seghers. Salmon also devoted himself to his writing his memoirs, publishing after L’Air de la Butte, Montparnasse and Rive Gauche,three volumes of his memoirs Souvenirs sans fin. His grand-nephew Jean-Jacques Pauvert published Le Terreur noire [The Black Terror], a history of the anarchist movement, in 1959 and Le Monocle à deux coups [The Monocle with Two Shots], the last fantasy novel, in 1968. The tremendously successful, La Vie passionnée de Modigliani, translated into numerous languages, provided Salmon with a comfortable steady income. In 1967, Salmon became a commandeur of the Order of Arts and Letters. After twenty years of happiness with Léo, Salmon died of colon cancer on March 12, 1969 with his wife by his side in his home in Provence. He left the unpublished diary of his trip to the New East, Les Échelles du Levant [The Ladders of the Levant]; a fourth volume of Souvenirs sans fins, which covered his childhood, and a third collection of poems, Charbons, which would have made a suite with Créances and Carreaux.