author
Emile Blémont
1839–1927
A lively figure in late 19th-century French literary life, he moved easily between poetry, drama, and journalism. He is especially remembered for helping champion new writing and for his links to writers such as Victor Hugo, Arthur Rimbaud, and Walt Whitman.
1 Audiobook
A quoi tient l'amour? Contes de France et d'Amérique
by Emile Blémont
About the author
Born in Paris in 1839 as Léon-Émile Petitdidier, he wrote under the name Émile Blémont and built a long career as a French poet and occasional playwright. He was part of the literary world around the Parnassians and Symbolists, and his work appeared across many books, poems, and stage pieces over the course of his life.
Blémont is often noted not just for what he wrote, but for the company he kept and the writers he supported. He was a friend of Victor Hugo, and in 1872 he founded La Renaissance littéraire et artistique, a review remembered for publishing Rimbaud's sonnet Voyelles and an early French translation of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.
He died in Paris in 1927, leaving behind the picture of a writer deeply woven into the literary culture of his time. For listeners today, he offers a window into a rich and connected moment in French poetry, where established voices and daring new ones met on the same page.