Raymond Radiguet

Raymond Radiguet (June 18th 1903 with Saint-Maur - December 12th 1923 with Paris) is a French writer.

Elder of seven children, he is the son of the draftsman Maurice Radiguet. After the elementary school, it passes the examination of the purses and enters to the Lycée Charlemagne to Paris. Regarded as a poor pupil, he devotes himself entirely to the reading: writers of, in particular the Princess of Clèves of M {{me}} of Lafayette, then Stendhal, Proust, and finally poets: Verlaine, Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Lautréamont.

At the 15 years age, it gives up its studies definitively and launches out in journalism. It binds with André Salmon, max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, François Bernouard (the future editor, in 1920, of its poems, Cheeks on fire ); it becomes acquainted also with the painters Juan Gris, Picasso, Modigliani, Jean Hugo; finally he attends the young type-setters - Milhaud (with which he will create the mime later celebrates the Ox on the roof ), Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc, Arthur Honegger and finds in their works the same desire of originality as in the painters and the writers. At the beginning of the Duck connected, it signs some tales under the pseudonym of Rajky .

In 1918, it makes a meeting which will exert on its future career a dominating influence: one presents it to Jean Cocteau which at once guesses - “what has? I wonder it”, will write it later in the Difficulty in being - a hidden talent. Filled with enthusiasm by the poems that Radiguet reads to him, Cocteau advises it, encourages it and the fact of working; it then helps it to publish its worms in the reviews of avant-garde, in particular in Sic and Littérature . They become inseparable and found in May 1920 a small review: the Cock , of whimsical pace and character primarily avant-gardist in which collaborate, inter alia, Georges Auric, the painter Roger of Fresnaye, Paul Morand and Tristan Tzara. Radiguet makes appear in the first number one article which begin with these words in large capitals: “SINCE 1789 ONE FORCES ME TO THINK. I IN AI a Headache. ” Jean Cocteau publishes there worms and this criticism of criticism: “Criticism always compares. The incomparable one escapes to him. ”

Towards 1921, Radiguet gives up the put out of order life which it has carried out for a few years and a strong interior discipline is essential. “Nothing less ordered than its external life, will write later Joseph Kessel which was also his/her friend, but nothing more harmonious, moreover balanced, of built and of protected better better that its interior life. It can trail bar in bar, not to sleep of the whole nights, to wander of room in hotel room, its spirit worked with a constant clearness, marvellous and sure logic. ”

In September 1921, in Piquey, far from Paris, where Jean Cocteau it involved finished the Devil with the body . The following year, in Lavandou this time, always with Cocteau and its friends, he writes his second and last Romance the Ball of the Count d' Orgel .

In 1923, Bernard Grasset lance Devil with the spectacular body of way - on the topic: “the first book of a 17 year old novelist”. In front of such a publicity, which she judges of bad taste, criticism is surprised, even mocker and hostile. But, after the publication, Radiguet receives cordial congratulations of writers such as max Jacob, Rene Benjamin, Henri Massis and Paul Valéry.

Raymond Radiguet dies carried by the typhoid fever the December 12th 1923. It had the presentiment of its premature end when he wrote in the last pages of the Diable to the body : “A disordered man and who will die and does not suspect it often puts order around him. Its life changes. It classifies its papers. It rises early, it lie down early. It gives up its defects. Thus its brutal death seems it all the more unjust. It was going to live happy. ”?

the Ball of the Count d' Orgel was published in 1924 by Bernard Grasset. In its moving foreword, Jean Cocteau evokes the death of his/her young friend:

“Here its last words:

“Listen, says me it on December 9th, listen to a terrible thing. In three days I will be shot by the soldiers of God”. As I choked tears, that I invented contradictory information: “Your information, continued it, are less good than mine. The order is given. I heard the order. ”

Later, it still says: “There is a color which walks and of the people hidden in this color. ”

I asked to him whether they had to be driven out. He answered: “You cannot drive out them, since you do not see the color. ”

Then, it sank.

It stirred up the mouth, it named us, it posed its glances with surprised on his/her mother, her father, his hands.

Raymond Radiguet starts. ”

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