Valery Larbaud (Vichy, August 29th 1881 - Vichy, February 2nd 1957) is a writer French.

Biography

Single child of pharmacist Nicolas Larbaud (59 years with the birth of his/her son) and of Isabelle Office of Etivaux (38 years), it is only 8 years old when his/her father dies in 1889, and it was raised by his mother and her aunt. It obtains its license be-letters in 1908. In December 1908, for the price Goncourt, Octave Mirbeau vote for Poèmes by a rich person amateur , that Larbaud published without making known its true identity.

Family fortune (his/her father was owner of the source Vichy Saint-Yorre) ensures an easy life to him which enables him to traverse Europe with high expenses. Steamers of luxury, East-Express train, Valery Larbaud carries out the life of a dandy and goes in the multiple thermal spas to look after a fragile health.

Its novel Fermina Mark , devoted to the loves of adolescence and often compared with the Grand Meaulnes of Alain-Baker, some voices in Goncourt in 1911 obtains.

He speaks English, German, Italian and Spanish. He makes known the foreign philosopher's stones: Samuel Butler of which he was the translator as James Joyce of which he was corrector-supervisor for the translation of Ulysses , which, realized mainly by Auguste Morel starting from 1924, continues until in 1929.

When it returns to Vichy, it receives his friends, Charles-Louis Philippe, André Gide, Leon-Paul Fargue and Jean Aubry which was its biographer. Reached Hémiplégie and of Aphasia in November 1935, it spends the twenty-two last years of its life nailed in an armchair. It during these years will be looked after with devotion by the professor Theophilus Alajouanine, specialist in the aphasias, who will become his friend and will write his biography. Having spent all its fortune, it must resell its properties and its library of fifteen thousand volumes in 1948, in life annuity, at the town of Vichy. He dies in Vichy in 1957, without descent.

The international association of the Friends of Valery Larbaud decrees each year a literary prize allotted to the author of the book “that Larbaud would have liked to read”. The Arts center of Vichy, in 1985 and the new Vocational school of Cusset, in 1999, bear its name. The media library of the city preserves its furniture and its rich person library (marked bindings " VL") and organizes visits of the most cultural interest.

Large reader, large translator it had surrounded himself by books which it had made connect according to their languages: English novels in blue, Spanish in red, etc.
Its room of pain was an arc in sky.

Bibliography (partial)

• Poems by a rich person amateur (1908).
• Fermina Mark (1911)
• A.O. Barnabooth (1913)
• Childish (1918)
• Lovers, happy lovers (1923)

The principal texts of Valery Larbaud were gathered in the collection the Pleiad, at Gallimard (1 volume, 1957 then 1984).

External bonds

• 1 {{er}} March 1910 /Début of the publication of '' Fermina Márquez ''

• February 2nd, 1957 /Mort of Valery Larbaud

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