Loys Masson (1915 - 1969) is a poet and novelist Mauritian.

Biography

Loys Masson is born the December 31st 1915 with Rose Hill in Mauritius where his/her father, of British nationality, is acknowledged. It is in 1933 champion of boxing and the same year put at the door of the Royal College off Mauritius of Curepipe to have struck a professor following a conflict. Weighing of cane with sugar, bank clerk, he discovers English poetry then French poetry, begins itself with écrrire, receives in 1934 a price of poetry and publishes in 1937 a first collection.

Friends having opened a subscription to offer its voyage in France to him, Loys Masson arrives at Marseilles on August 29th, 1939. Wishing to engage, the English and the French refusing to him, it joined the Foreign legion, is affected with the camp of Sathonay, close to Lyon, but is reformed in March 1940. Of return to Paris, it takes refuge during the exodus with Tours where it meets Paula Slaweska, corresponding of one of his sisters, to whom it becomes engaged in July. Because of its British nationality, it is in the illegality and enters clandestinity as of the armistice, crossing the line of demarcation and doing with foot lot of mileage between Loches and Clermont-Ferrand, continuing on Vichy and Lyon where it helps Emmanuel Mounier in the drafting of the review " Spirit ".

In 1941 Emmanuel Mounier makes it invite to a meeting of writers and musicians with Lourmarin, where it meets Lanza del Vasto, Max-pol. Fouchet, Pierre Emmanuel, Georges-Emmanuel Clancier, Claude Roy. It returns visit to Pierre Seghers, which already published its poems, and becomes sub-editor of his review “Poetry 41” with Villeneuve-the-Avignon. Tracked by the Nazis, to escape the arrest it takes refuge in May 1943, until the Release, with his wife, in an abandoned castle close to Thilouze in Touraine which it evokes in its novel the Ditch . It then achieves several missions for the National front of release and receives the visit of François Lachenal, founder of the editions of the Three Hills. Active element of the “Resistance of the poets”, its poems, quickly prohibited by the censure of the mode of Vichy, circulate since 1941, published in " Esprit" (194O), by Seghers (1942), in the revue" Messages " of Jean Lescure (in 1942 then in “French Field” in 1943), in “the Honor of the poets” (under the pseudonym of Paul Is worth) prepared by Eluard and published clandestinely by the Editions of Midnight (1944). It adheres in 1942 to the Communist party, not considering this engagement incompatible with its Christian faith. Under the pseudonym of Paul Wattelet Aragon in 1943 an article publishes on its poems in " Confluences".

Loys Masson in 1945 is appointed general secretary of the National committee of Writers (CNE). It accompanies then, in the services of information, the army of De Lattre de Tassigny until Rastatt and Baden-Baden. Returned in Paris, it is in 1945 general secretary then in 1946 editor association of the French Lettres. Opposed to Aragon and the hegemony of the Communist party on the newspaper, it is isolated in 1948, gives up any journalistic activity, turns to the novel and the theater but continues for it to give to the radio, then on television, of the literary and dramatic emissions. Its " novels marins" regularly evoke the South Seas, the Indian Ocean for the Tortoises (1956), Mauritius for the Notary of the Blacks (1961), the Meeting for the Weddings of vanilla (1962), the Pacific Ocean for the Lagoon of the mercy (1965) and the black Angels of the Throne (1967).

Prize winner in 1962 of the foundation Del Duca for the whole of his work, Loys Masson dies in Paris the October 24th 1969.

Random links:

James Fergusson | Tank of Bouzey | Rozalla | Merošina | Rio Macaco (Santa Catarina)