Background

Francis Jammes was born on December 2, 1868, in Tournay, France. He was the son of Louis Victor Jammes. When Jammes was seven, his father moved to Sauveterre-de-Guyenne to work as a tax collector. Jammes, his mother, and his older sister moved to Pau, where they stayed with Jammes’ maternal grandparents.

Education

Jammes attended Primary school until 1879. He also attended the lycée in Bordeaux from 1880 to 1888.

Career

Because Jammes’ father died just after he finished school, he had to support himself and his mother, and he worked as a lawyer’s clerk. Eventually, he turned to writing. Though Jammes had written poetry for most of his young life, he described the decision to become a writer as almost epiphanic.

Jammes’ early work, published in Six Sonnets, Vers, and Un Jour, details the humble beauties of nature and country life. In Un Jour, for example, Jammes describes a day in the life of a poet: in the first scene, the poet describes his morning of shooting and enjoying a simple breakfast with his father. In the second scene, the poet speaks with his fiancée in the garden, and in the third scene, he enjoys a pipe after dinner in the kitchen. In the final scene, the poet looks out into the night before kneeling to say his prayers.

Jammes, after these collections, received encouragement from other poets, particularly André Gide and Stéphane Mallarmé. Jammes and Gide became friends, though their relationship always wavered on the edge of a literary and philosophic battle. In Les géorgiques chrétiennes, Jammes turns his attention to the spiritual life of a country family. The work also reveals Jammes becoming as absorbed in his family life as in his Catholicism. The period following his immersion in family life and Catholic vision is often described as his least impressive poetic period. Still, Jammes's reputation has remained intact.

Achievements

• French writer Francis Jammes is best known for his poetry of the natural world, in which he praised the simplicity of country life. Jammes's poetry counters French literary tradition, so often associated with highly rarefied, intellectual poetics.

Works

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  • Un jour 1895
  • La Naissance du Poète 1897
  • Quatorze prières 1898
  • De l'angelus de l'aube à l'angelus du soir, 1888-1897 1898
  • Le Deuil Des Primevères, 1898-1900 1901
  • Le Triomphe de la Vie 1902
  • Clairières Dans Le Ciel, 1902-1906 1902
  • Rayons de Miel: Églogues 1908
  • Les Géorgiques chrétiennes 1911
  • Feuilles dans le vent 1913
  • Cinq Prieres Pour Le Temps De La Guerre 1916
  • La Vierge Et Les Sonnets 1919
  • Epitaphes 1921
  • Le Tombeau de Jean de la Fontaine 1921
  • Brindilles pour rallumer la foi 1925
  • Ma France Poetique 1926
  • De tout temps a jamais 1935
  • Elegies poesies diverses vignettes de grau sala 1943
  • El luto de las prímulas 2010

Religion

Jammes was christened a Catholic, but that was about all: that, and a sort of sympathy for the fine literary themes afforded by the Church. He was a Pagan. Flowers, forests, women - he was in love with all that Lived. Jammes converted to Catholicism in 1905, thus shifting his praise of nature to the praise of God in nature.

Views

Jammes, who has been referred to as a symbolist, neo-symbolist, or naturiste, never belonged to any systematic school of poetry. He always was only himself, in the process creating Jammisme, which embraces but one guiding principle, ‘the truth that is the praise of God.’ It is innocence, simplicity, and humility; it extols the beauty of the native soil and the virtues of family life; it is adoration of God and love of all He created.

Quotations: "It was in the heart of April 1895, that I was invaded - I can find no other word to express my meaning. A simultaneous outburst of all my lyrical powers took place in me. I do not know why I did not die from the breath, as it were, of a violent wing which seemed to strike me, and of which my poem ‘Un Jour’ was born."

"There were trials before the Grace of God touched me; and there was Claudel, too. ... I shall never forget our first interview. He was already a great writer in the eyes of a little clan. I still see the small room into which we were shown, my friend and I."

"It was a sort of bare cell: three things attracted my attention, a rosary, an old woman’s prayer book, and Barres’s Appel au Soldat. And then Claudel came in. It was as if a Roman bust were to move its lips and speak. He disliked the person who accompanied me, and I remember the harsh cut-and-dry tone of his short answers. But the next day I lunched with him and Schwob; and the icy marble softened into flesh and blood. I was lost in wonder, a sort of happy astonishment. Catholicism had entered into my life."

Personality

With a naivete that at times appears somewhat studied, Jammes writes about the various aspects of rustic life. He is a keen observer of nature who expresses, with disarming simplicity and sincerity, a love of fields and flowers, of mountains and rivers, a childlike affection for all animals, and great compassion for the poor and suffering. His very romantic sensibility is conveyed through somewhat strikingly sensuous images.

Critics have often wondered how such a simple writer became a major French literary force. In many ways, Jammes’ simplicity appears to be his biggest contribution. Like Charles Péguy, he assaulted the highly wrought literary and philosophic world with his insistence on innocence.

Connections

On October 8, 1907, Jammes married Ginette Goedorp. They had seven children.

Father:

Louis Victor Jammes

Wife:

Ginette Goedorp Jammes

Friend:

André Gide

22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951

André Paul Guillaume Gide was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947).

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series: A Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Current Writers in Fiction, General Non-Fiction, Poetry, Journalism, Drama, Motion Pictures, Television, and Other Fields In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series brings researchers the most recent data on the worlds most-popular authors.
  2010
• Encyclopedia of World Literature in the 20th Century
  1999
• Guide to French Literature
  1992