Maurice Blanchard

Maurice Blanchard (Montdidier, April 14th 1890 - Montdidier, March 19th 1960) Aeronautical engineer and French poet related to the Surrealism.

Its life

1890 is born on April 14th, with Montdidier in the Sum (France). Single child, after the departure of his father as of his birth it will live his childhood with his mother. From this period, he will say to remember any mark of tenderness. He will keep of it a deep wound which will mark it all its life. At the elementary school, it is an excellent pupil. Because of an existence close to misery, his/her mother, against the opinion of her teacher, engages it at twelve years like apprentice metal worker. From sixteen to eighteen years, he works in Paris in what he will call “the industrial bagne”.

A thought of Nietzsche will give a direction to its life: “It is only if the knowledge is not an occupation, but the revelation to be it with the will first to know, that it is worth the sorrow to have courage”. In 1907, it flees this life “of slave” while leaving to foot for Toulon in order to engage for five years in the navy. This voyage is a rupture with all that its childhood represents. During the period of its engagement, of 1907 with 1917, it only thinks of informing, of giving free course to its devouring curiosity, with its thirst to learn. “From nineteen to twenty-two years, crisis indescribable, bulimia of all knowledge, digested stones, caught up with the file of the educated boys. In the double funds, in the light of the quinquets”.

It will take share with the war of 1914-1918 as a pilot of the Dunkirk flotilla of which it will be one of the rare survivors. Thanks to a baited self-educated work, it reaches mathematics and the physics of very high level. It is caught passion for philosophy (reading of the old and modern philosophers), of the crowned texts of the religions. For that, he learns the old languages, Greek and Latin. He also learns the English for reading Shakespeare (of which he will translate several sonnets) and the Italian for reading Dante. Before the end of its engagement, in 1917, it is received first at the School of the mechanical engineers of the Navy. It also gains an invitation to tender launched by the allied forces for the construction of a seaplane of open sea. It designs seaplane GL-300 for the manufacturer George Levy.

In 1919, after its demobilization, it is engaged as engineer aeronaut in a subsidiary company of the manufacturer Farman. It Marie with Isabelle Rappaz. They will have two wire: Maurice, born in 1920, and Jean, born in 1921.

He will exert his trade of engineer until in 1955 in various aeronautical building firms. From 1922 to 1930 he works with Louis Blériot.

During the war, it belongs to the resistance network Brutus. For this network, it is on mission of 1942 with 1944 as a chief of calculations in the Parisian offices of the German firm Junkers (period during which it will write his newspaper). October 10th 1945 it for this reason accepted the Military Cross.

It takes its retirement of engineer in 1955 and dies on March 19th 1960, of return to Montdidier.

The poet

In 1927, the reading of a page of Eluard to the front of the bookstore Jose Corti reveals surrealist poetry to him. For him, all will change starting from this discovery: “From thirty-seven years, writing of the poems to cure. Saved. Instinct of the wild beasts, choosing the grass which it is necessary. With published seven years later. Touched by the great release of surrealism. All is allowed. All the seeds have their chance, and a day the seed of the tree singer will germinate. All is possible, condition of progress. Died in the State. ”. (Postface of the split Lawns of Aphrodite).
He is recognized like a par by Paul Éluard, Joe Bousquet, Rene Char which will dedicate a poem of the collection to him “Mill First”: “observers and the dreamers”, and who will be a friend proche.
During the war, it will take part in the majority of the publications of “the Hand with feather” which continue under the occupation the adventure of Surrealism. This “the Hand with feather”, it is No5el Arnaud, Jean-François Chabrun and a score of others with them of which eights will die under the balls or in the camps nazis.
Poetry for Maurice Blanchard is vital. It enables him to survive. To survive the open wounds of childhood remained its life lasting: “It was an abandoned child on a faggot of spines. It was a teenager without hope and light. It was a mole in an underground kingdom and the ground was to him a refuge against the lowness of the sky”, “the hostile world of my childhood became my usual food… ”. A writing of revolt: “Of hard, of very quiet years made mature the poisons of my brain. ”, “to insult the powerful ones, it built a silence black and frosting which opened the doors of the hell to him… ”, “Food, it is the war with the trolls under the vault of the heart and of the brain”, “the birth, it is the guillotine…”. Blanchard, it is a sensitivity to sharp which bites to be defended: “I so much liked the future, I suffered so much… ”, “revenge out of blade on saber”. It is a freedom intractable, haughty, which fights, which never folds: “That a hostile capacity rises, was this with the extreme edge of my field, I sink to embank it before it finished yawning. Does the fear freeze you? The fear sets me ablaze. My escarboucles ignites with the oxygen of the fight; at the time when I will strike, with the supreme pleasure of hatred, they will spit their red incense. And you will need your hands of slaves to trail pity with full barrowfuls! ”. It is a search without end: “The poet is nothing, it is what he seeks which is all. ”. It is the life even: “For him, poetry and the life are closely tied, thus any flashback is impossible; … ”
It will be published, little read little. But its readers will be the poets. His/her friend Rene Char will say of him in a letter to Marcel Béalu: “Blanchard the swift one, the discrete one, the knotty one, the bluish one, tearing it Blanchard… ”. No5el Arnaud wrote in the “Future of Surrealism” in 1945: “Today, the sun rose over the day of Maurice Blanchard. Today still, you could have met purest of the poets of this time. It is at this time what the hour which comes is per hour that it is…. ”.

Works

1929 - the Lilies which rotted, on account of author under the pseudonym of Erskine Ghost.
1934 - Malebolge, editions Rene Debresse.
1935 - Solidity of the flesh, editions Rene Debresse.
1936 - Sartrouville, editions Rene Debresse.
1937 - mysterious Barricades, editions GLM.
1937 - Dangers of the road, editions GLM.
1939 - It is the festival and you do not know anything of it, editions GLM.
1943 - lawns of Aphrodite, the Hand with Feather.
1947 - the height of the walls, editions GLM.
1947 - William Shakespeare: twelve sonnets, translated from the English and presented by Maurice Blanchard, GLM
1949 - the Man and his mirrors, editions of Cormier, Brussels.
1951 - Le Monde which surrounds us, editions the Share of Sand, Cairo.
1955 - Bread and the Light, editions GLM.
posthumous editions

1977 - 1982 - Republication of complete works to the editions Plasma.
1988 - Publication of Maurice Blanchard in the collection “Poets of today” by Pierre Peuchmaurd, Seghers editions.
1994 - the Mysterious Barricades, prefaces of Jean-Hugues Malineau, Poésie/Gallimard.
1994 - To dance on the cord, newspaper 1942-1946, collection Vague Ether, editions Patrice Thierry.
2003 - the university Picardy Jules Vernes of Amiens organizes an exposure and publishes a catalog of new documents under the direction of Vincent Guillier
2006 - the Heights of the walls, editions of the Dilettante, follow-up of some news, prefaces and notes by Vincent Guillier.

External Liene

cultural Resources of Picardy (on the traces of Maurice Blanchard)

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