Rene-Guy Cadou

Rene Guy Cadou is a Poète French, born the February 15th 1920 with Holy-Queen-of-Brittany in Loire-Atlantique and deceased the March 20th 1951 with Louisfert also in Loire-Atlantique.

Born in the middle of the marsh from Large Brière it is laic wire of Instituteur S and saw a happy childhood. It grows in an environment of courtyards of schools, re-entries of the classes, beauty of the autumns, scenes of hunting and country life which will become later a major source of its poetic inspiration: “My father liked himself it in hunting gear, had We tender appointments there…” Then will come to the Adolescence, the departure with Nantes for the Lycée, the death of his Anna mother, who will plunge the teenager in a major melancholy. The Nostalgia of Holy Queen and this land, vegetable and happy childhood will haunt its lyric Poésie later.

In 1936, Cadou makes the meeting of Michel Manoll, which introduces it into the poetic mediums and makes known to him in particular max Jacob and Pierre Reverdy. The first publication will hardly delay: Stretcher-bearers of the Paddle , in 1937, and they will be from now on years of burning poetry, where the intoxication of creation will come to encounter new tests: the death of the father, the war, the rout. Mobilized in June 40, Cadou fails in the retirement, with Navarrenx then with Oloron-Holy-Marie where, patient, it is hospitalized. Reformed the October 23rd, it regains the Nantes area where the chance of its nominations as a temporary teacher the conduit with the four corners of the department (Bourgneuf in particular in 1941 where a bust of him will be set up,…). The poetry of the first collections is undoubtedly dominated by the influence of Pierre Reverdy. The experiment of the war will direct it towards an expression much more poignant and personal vis-a-vis the horror: “Full Chest” will mark this rupture with the more abstract tone and reverdien of the first collections.

The October 22nd 1941 three covered trucks roll towards the Sand pit of Châteaubriant, transporting the 27 hostages who will be shot a few moments later: the Cadou teacher then joined in the bicycle the school of the village where he teaches and crosses the way of the hostages. The poems of “Full Chest” will be anchored on this terrible episode of cruelty Nazi, to assert in this so personal tone of the Poésie of Cadou, the Liberté, the Amour, the Fraternité of the men…

It is with the Rochefort-on-Loire, in the back shop of the Pharmacie of Jean Bouhier, that will find a group of young poets, in rupture with the literary conformism of the Régime of Vichy, and who will assert the right to sing the love of the life. One will count there Rene Guy Cadou, Jean Rousselot, Jean Bouhier, Luc Bérimont which will make later as writer and literary journalist, to so much make known the poets and the poetic song with text, Marcel Béalu, Michel Manoll… Rochefort, a literary school? Cadou was accustomed to answering “just a playground”.

The June 17th 1943, it meets an young girl with native Nantes of Bernerie, Helene Laurent, itself poet whom it was to marry in 1946 and whom it celebrated in " Helene or the reign végétal". Appointed titular teacher with Louisfert in October 1945, Cadou settles and carries out there with people of the village, the simple life of the schoolmaster in shoes and pélerine; and it is the string of the buddies, " Friends top bord" who, the finished class come to greet the poet. It is after the class that the teacher-poet poses the gray blouse and goes up in the room of day before: Cadou knows that time is counted to him, it is in this small room, which advances the such prow of a ship on “the great rush of the grounds” that he will write in five years a lyric work of first importance.

But soon the Maladie will make its inescapable work: surgical operations in January and May 1950 followed by one period of remission which will last only the time of a summer. A few days after having signed the Wordly goods , Rene Guy Cadou dies in the night of the March 20th 1951, surrounded by Helene and Jean Rousselot which had come to see it by chance. He says to those which he likes: " The time which is given to me, that love the prolonge."

Works of Rene Guy Cadou

  • Stretcher-bearers of the paddle (layers of the Small island - 1937)

  • Forging mills of the wind (Wisdom - 1938)
  • Light-back (Books of the meerschaum Pipe - 1940)
  • Light-years (Books of Rochefort - 1941)
  • Dead season (Robert Debresse - 1941)
  • Door of scum (Proses - Books of Rochefort - 1941)
  • Noises of the heart (Friends of Rochefort - 1942)
  • Lilacs of the evening (Friends of Rochefort - 1942)
  • Friendly Angels (Books of Rochefort - 1943)
  • Great dash (Friends of Rochefort - 1943)
  • life dreamed (Robert Laffont 1944)
  • Will of Apollinaire (Robert Debresse - 1945)
  • Full chest (P. Fanlac - 1946)
  • faces of loneliness (Friends of Rochefort - 1947)
  • Letter with Jules Supervielle (Sylvain Chiffoleau - Nantes 1947)
  • Four poems of love in Helene (the Bibliophiles alésiens - 1948)
  • Guillaume Apollinaire or the artillerist of Metz (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1948)
  • Saint-Anthony and Co (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1948)
  • the Mirror of Orphée (Gallimard - 1948)
  • seven deadly sins (1949)
  • Roger Toulouse (P.A.B Ales - 1949)
  • Guy Religious bigot (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1949)
  • poetic Art (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1949)
  • Devil and its train (In the author - 1949)
  • Horn of good-bye (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1949)
  • selected Poems 1949-1950 (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1950)
  • Sparrows of the year 1920 (Sylvain Chiffoleau - 1950)
  • Before-spring (P.A.B. Ales - January 1951)
  • the wordly goods (Pierre Seghers - February 1951)
  • Usage interns (Friends of Rochefort - 1951)
  • Helene or the Vegetable kingdom (Pierre Seghers - February 1951)
Its only novel
  • the House of summer - February 1955)

The poems of Rene Guy Cadou have, after his death, is the subject of many reprintings in various editors, in particular with the Seghers editions which took again its complete poetic work under the title " Poetry, the life entière" (1976).

Its single novel " The house of été" was published for the first time in 1955 by the New Debresse editions, republished thereafter with the Astral Beaver. During his short career, Rene Guy Cadou will have also collaborated in many reviews, anthologies, radio broadcasts…

Works on Rene Guy Cadou

Books of Helene Cadou on Rene

The wife of Rene Guy Cadou published two books on Rene Guy Cadou: a biographical, at the same time intimate and modest evocation, very moving, and a more literary study and set of themes:

  • Helene Cadou, It was yesterday and it is Demain , Préface of Philippe Delerm, Éditions of the Rock, 2000
  • Helene Cadou, a whole Life - Rene Guy Cadou, death, poetry , Éditions of the Rock, 2003

Put in music of the texts of Cadou:

The poetry of Cadou has rhythmic, a music of the words, a recall of rhymes or assonances which naturally allows a work of setting in music. In poetry contemporary one can to say that it there has one author, whose word spontaneously sings, which pushed authors type-setters famous interpreters to write music on its worms, it is Louis Aragon. Cadou caused an identical passion on behalf of singers poets, the ones known like Gilles Servat or Douai, others which did not make or could not make song a trade and which is less or at all known. Among all the interpreters of Rene Guy Cadou, we listed: Gilles Servat, Julos Beaucarne, Môrice Benign, Martine Caplanne, Marc Caster hammer, Jacques Douai, Eric Holland, Robert Duguet, Michele Bernard, Manu Lann Huel… Undoubtedly of other voices did not reach us. We have just found on the Web a musical project for 2007 of Paul Dirmeikis. A disc of poêmes Rene Guy Cadou said by Alain Moreau is appeared in 1981, with the will to respect what the poet " said; the poêmes should never be known as but by their authors or other poets, a little like a liturgy. The actors are the wrong of too déclamer. Their effects of voice, aim more at bringing success to them that to serve glory or the memory of the poet. Daniel Gélin had also said some poêmes of Cadou (Adès disc)

The work of setting in music of the texts of Cadou requires a great requirement. We are of agreement with Paul Dirmeikis when he writes on his site of presentation of his musical project: “the task is difficult: to put in music the poetry of someone else request to be in symbiosis with the author, requires humility, as well as a certain will to give up its clean " tics" , its own style in order to as well as possible serve the text, its metric, its colors, its dashes. ” Some sites on the setting in music of Cadou:

http://pdirmeikis.free.fr/Pages/entreparentheses.htm

http://perso.orange.fr/rduguet/index.htm

Poems of Rene Guy Cadou

Louisfert

Barefeet in the blue countryside, as a good father

Who holds his mule by the neck and who says prayers

I go I do not know anything of my life I

At the end of all without me will trouble about time but it makes

people of today are like orchises

Drôle of head and the two hands padlocked

I walk in the thick day of before midday

Pauvre son of bitchy girl who did not finish
of it

to carry out its horses on the road without shade

Which has grand' haste and thirst and does not greet anybody

Because I like this immured village of forests

And his very old people like stoneware pots

Which tightens their ear with the crossroads of the roads

With movements which make believe that they doubt

I chose my country with miles of the

city For his nests under the roof and his volubilis

I go far in the sky and in the mists of time

I walk the barefeet like a small child

Fall

Odor of the rains of my childhood

Last suns of the season!
is seven years old as it made good,
After tedious holidays,
to find itself in its house!

the old class of my father,

Full with crushed wasps,
Felt ink, wood, the chalk
And this marvellous dust
Amassées by a whole summer.

O time charming of the soft fogs,

game, long flights of birds,
the wind blows under the courtyard,
But I hold between palm and inch
a red apple with knife.

Pourquoi don't you go to Paris?

- Why don't you go to Paris?

- But odor of the lilies! But odor of the lilies!

- the banks of the Seine have also their florists

- But not sad enough oh! not sad enough!

I am sick green of the sheets and horses

Of the maidservants hustled in the handing-over of the castle

- But the streets of Paris have also their maidservants

- How the devil tries! how the devil tries!

But me only in the great wet night

odor of the lilies and the countryside knelt

This bitter rise of the ground which

despair and happiness not to like nobody surrounds me

- You Will perish of lapse of memory and devoured pride

- Yes but odor of the lilies the freedom of the sheets!

I awaited you…

I awaited you thus that one awaits the ships

In the years of dryness when the corn
does not go up higher than an ear in the grass
Which listens to frightened the great voice of time

I waited you and all the quays all the roads

resounded of the extreme step which from went away
Towards you until I related already to my shoulders
Like a soft rain which never dries

You did not stir up yet that by some eyelids

Some legs of birds in the cold panes
I saw in you only this loneliness
Which posed its two hands of sheet on my neck

And yet it was you in the light of my life

This great din morning which woke up me
All my birds all my vessels all my countries
These stars this million stars which rose

Ah which you spoke well when all the windows

Pétillaient in the evening as well as a new wine
When the doors opened on light cities
Where we went both intertwined by the streets

You came from so far behind your face

Which I did not know any more with each beat
If my heart would last until the time of yourself
Where you would be in me stronger than my blood.

In Helene or the vegetable kingdom (Seghers 1952)

Of eggs in the hedge

Of eggs in the hedge

Flowers the hawthorn
Voici the return
Of the stallholders

And that a merry sun

Pailleté of fine gold
Wakes up wood
Of the adjoining country

is this the spring

Which seeks its nest
On the high branch
Where niche the magpie?

It is my heart marked

By old rains
And this slow procession
Of paddles which follows it

In Helene or the vegetable kingdom (Seghers 1952)

shot Chateaubriant

They are supported against the sky

They are thirty supported against the sky
With all the life behind them
They are full with astonishment for their shoulder
Which is a monument of love

They do not have recommendations to be made

Because they will never be left again
One of them thinks of a small village
Where it went to school
Another sat with its table
And his/her friends hold its hands

They are not already any more of the country of which they dream

They are well beyond these men
Who look at them dying
It y' has between them the difference of martyrdom
Because the wind passed where they sing
And their only regret is that those
Which will kill them
the enormous noise of the words
They do not hear are exact with go
They are even advances some on the others
Pourtant they say that they are not any more of the apostles
And that all
is simple And that death especially is a simple thing
Since any freedom is survived

In Full Chest , 1946

Places bearing its name

  • the college Rene Guy Cadou, in Ancenis (Loire-Atlantique)
  • the school Rene Guy Cadou, in Chateaubriant (Loire-Atlantique)
  • the elementary school Rene-Guy Cadou, with Olonne-on-sea (the Vendée)

External bonds

  • Site of the Academy of Rennes - Letter of Brittany Rene Guy Cadou
  • Bretagne.com Site - Biography of Rene Guy Cadou
  • Site wandering spirits - Poem of Cadou
  • Guy CADOU-a-Louisfert-en.html Site grounds of writers - Cadou with Louisfert-in-Poetry
  • Homage of Gilles Servat

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