Centenary Corbiere

Poems and Prose

Corbiere Tristan

Tristan Corbiere (1845-1875) evoked the peasants and sailors of his native Brittany, the bohemians and prostitutes of Paris, in a vivid, fast-paced language that gave a new voice to French poetry and made him a pivotal figure in the development of Modernism, Symbolism and Surrealism.

Ezra Pound called him "the greatest poet of the period" and T. S. Eliot wrote that "Rimbaud, Corbiere and Laforgue were for us the masters". They admired his directness, colloquialism and allusiveness, the combination of empathy with savage irony. Through his influence on Pound and Eliot, Corbiere made a lasting impact on the poetry of both England and America.

This parallel text edition enables the reader to experience Corbiere's dazzling, innovative technique and wordplay at first hand. Val Warner provides an essential introduction to the work of this key poet.

About the Author

Tristan Corbiere was born in 1845 in Finistere, the son of a writer of sea stories. Named Edouard after his father, he later gave himself the name Tristan, in a conscious reference to the names mythic associations. Although his early childhood was happy, he was lonely at school and suffered ill-health from his teens. He left school at sixteen and for the rest of his life was supported by subsidies from his father. His only book, "Les Amours jaunes", was published in 1873 in an edition of fewer than 500 copies, financed by his father. Ignored at the time, it was publicized by Verlaine in Les Poetes maudits (1884). It subsequently became a key work in modern French poetry and, through its influence on Pound and Eliot, in English and American modernism. Corbiere died in 1875 at the age of twenty-nine.

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