Background
Jean Follain was born in the small town of Canisy (province of la Manche), south of Saint-Lô, where he spent his childhood.
( Throughout WWII, French poet Jean Follain wrote poems t...)
Throughout WWII, French poet Jean Follain wrote poems that revisit the provinces of personal and cultural history. His quietly phrased, brief devotions are -described as "miniatures," yet are monumental, capturing the pressure of history upon daily moments. By reducing the world to its small objects, every detail, every image becomes imbued with meaning. This bilingual volume, celebrating the centennial of Jean Follain’s birth, is translated by W.S. Merwin, who writes in his introduction: "Follain’s concern is finally with the mystery of the present—the mystery which gives the recalled concrete details their form, at once luminous and removed, when they are seen at last in their places, as they seem to be in the best of his poems."
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Jean Follain was born in the small town of Canisy (province of la Manche), south of Saint-Lô, where he spent his childhood.
He studied law in Paris and became a judge. He attended a college where his father was professor of the Natural Sciences.
He was a contributor to many journals, such as Louisiana Nouvelle Revue française, Commerce, Europe, Le Journal des Poètes and Les Cahiers des Saisons. In 1970, he was awarded the Grand Prize of Poetry from L"Académie française for his life"s work. A small part of his archives is conserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Saint-Lô in France.
Prix littéraire Jean Follain de la Ville de Saint Lô is a literary award honouring his name and contributions to French literature.
He died in 1971 in a car accident. In 1919 he went to Leeds in a vain attempt to improve his English, and in 1921 he began studying law at Faculte de Caen.
Foreign health reasons he was exempted from military service. In 1933 he published his first collection with Eugène Guillevic and Pierre Albert-Birot.
Jean Follain received the Prix Blumenthal in 1941, awarded to poets who refused to collaborate with the Vichy Government.
In 1951 he gave up his career as a business lawyer and was appointed to the post of judge (magistrate) of the High Court in Charleville. In 1960 he travelled to Brazil, Peru and Bolivia and in 1966 to the United States. He also visited Côte d"Ivoire and Senegal in 1967.
He resigned from the bench in 1961, attending to the cultural decade of Cerisy-la-Salle near Canisy.
He died in Paris on 10 March 1971 when, returning from a banquet given by the Boat Touring Club, he was run over by a car shortly after midnight at the outlet of the tunnel of the Quai des Tuileries. He was buried on 16 March in Canisy.
The "Reading Association at Saint-Lô" and the city of Saint-Lô with the assistance of the Regional Direction of Cultural Affairs of the Lower Normandy Regional Centre of Letters and the Council General of France organise a biannual literary prize in his name: Jean Follain Prize in the city of Saint-Lô.
( Throughout WWII, French poet Jean Follain wrote poems t...)
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In the early days of his career he was a member of the "Sagesse" group. In 1949 he became a member of the Board of the "Pen Club".