Francis Vielé-Griffin (pseudonym of Egbert Ludovicus Viélé, 26 May 1864 – 12 November 1937), was a French symbolist poet. He was born at Norfolk, Virginia, USA, the son of General Egbert Ludovicus Viele, and moved to France with his mother (the former Teresa Griffin) in 1872.[1]
Quick Facts Born, Died ...
Francis Vielé-Griffin |
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Born | (1864-05-26)26 May 1864 Norfolk, Virginia, US |
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Died | 12 November 1937(1937-11-12) (aged 73) Bergerac |
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Occupation | Poet |
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Genre | Symbolist |
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Vielé-Griffin was educated in France and divided his time between Paris and Touraine. He was a writer of vers libre and founded the highly influential journal Entretiens politiques et littéraires (1890–92).
He wrote symbolist and vers-libre poetry. His first collection, Cueille d'avril, appeared in 1885. He practiced a relaxed prosody, which did not take into account the obligatory alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, the prohibition to rhyme a plural with a singular, replaces the rhyme with an assonance, if not neglected here and there the rhyme or assonancer:
- Ne croyez pas
- Pour ce qu'avril rit rose
- Dans les vergers
- Ou palit de l'exces voluptueux des fleurs
- Que toutes choses
- Sont selon nos gais coeurs
- Et qu'il n'est plus une soif a etancher.
His work includes:
- Cueille d'avril (1885) (Cull of April, in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing: ISBN 978-1-95539-218-1, 2021)
- Les Cygnes (1887; new series, 1892) (Swans, in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing: ISBN 978-1-95539-230-3, 2022)
- Ancaeus (1885–87), a dramatic poem
- Joies (1889) (Joys, in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing: ISBN 978-1-95539-221-1, 2022)
- Fleurs du Chemin et Chansons de la Route (1893) ("Flowers of the Path" and "Songs of the Journey" included in The Ride of Yeldis & Other Poems, in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing: ISBN 978-1-95539-239-6, 2023)
- La Chevauchée d'Yeldis (1893) (The Ride of Yeldis & Other Poems, in English translation by Sunny Lou Publishing: ISBN 978-1-95539-239-6, 2023)
- Swanhilde, a dramatic poem (1894)
- Laus Veneris (1895), a volume of translations from Swinburne
- Poèmes et Poésies (1895), a collection containing much of his earlier work
- Phocas le jardinier (1898)
- La Légende ailee de Wieland le Forgeron (1899), a dramatic poem.
- L'Amour sacré (1903), poems
- Plus loin (1906)
- Voix d'Ionie (1914)
- La Rose au flat (1922)
- Le Livre des reines (1929)
From “Euphonies” in Cull of April:[3]
- I ramble on return from vain lassitudes,
- Have we not dreamt of other beatitudes?
From "Dea" in Cull of April:[3]
- The rhythm of her voice is my only metric,
- And her alternating pace my nuanced rhyme,
- My idea is what I read in her thoughts,
- Of course, and Iʼve never dreamt of other America
- Than to kiss the fiery gold of her lowered head.
World Authors 1900–1950, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrew C. Kimmens, volume 4 (of 4), H. W. Wilson Company, 1996, p. 2755
Vielé-Griffin, Francis (2021). Cull of April. Translated by Richard Robinson. Sunny Lou Publishing.
- Attribution