Louis Chaigne

Louis Joseph Félix Chaigne (8 December 1899  – 6 June 1973) was a French writer.

Biography

He was born in Talmont-Saint-Hilaire, a commune in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire. It was in 1927 that Louis Chaigne published the first of a long list of works (72 titles): Figures, composed in Talmont since 1922.

In 1929, he left Gaëtan Bernoville's magazine Les lettres for the publishing house Gigord, in order to take care of works for the general public. Later he became literary director, a position he would hold until 1949. On November 25 of the same year, his first child is born: Louis-Marie. In 1931, Louis Chaigne moved to Paris to No. 27, Assas street. On July 25, a second son, Pierre, was born.

1930 will mark the beginning of the work of the literary critic with the progressive constitution of a considerable documentation on the writers and their works. In 1932, La Couronne d'Arianne, a collection of poems, was published by Lanore as well as a first essay: Le Chemin de Paul Claudel; he became a contributor to the journal Les Études and published the first volume of Vies et œuvres d'écrivains (Lives and Works of Writers) by Bossuet press. Studies on Paul Valéry, Paul Claudel, André Gide, Marcel Proust, André Maurois and François Mauriac soon followed. He also met Charles Du Bos and Gabriel Marcel, with whom he maintained a close friendship. In 1933, his book La Vendée was published.

The summer of 1934 was an important moment in his life. During this short period, he traveled through a part of Europe: Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia and Hungary; where he meets again friends he had made a few years earlier when he arrived in Paris. It is also the year of the publication of some of his poems with a group of friends gathered around Paul Flamand. Rondes will be the first book published by the newly founded Editions du Seuil.

In 1936, his close friend Jean Yole was elected senator. They saw each other almost daily in Paris. He met Juliette Adam, a centenarian who was one of the founders of the Third Republic. She had met Victor Hugo, George Sand, Georges Clemenceau and Léon Gambetta. He moved to a new apartment on Garancière street, in Paris and met Louis Mazetier and his wife. He witnessed his sudden conversion. The following year, he began a collaboration with the Alsatia publishing house.

In 1939, during the war and the occupation, he met Jean de Lattre. During this period, he traveled from one end of France to the other. He joined his family in Aveyron, then he went with them to the Vendée, stayed in Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée (Eure), and again in the Vendée at Aizenay. He then lived in Paris until the Liberation. In 1941, his daughter Anne-Marie was born.

After the war, he became an active journalist both in the press and as a magazine creator. The first issue of J'ai lu appeared in 1946. This period is also the beginning in 1947 of an ongoing friendship with the novelist from Auvergne Henri Pourrat.

In 1949, Louis Chaigne asserted himself more and more in the life of the Parisian intelligentsia. He invited General and Madame de Lattre to a dinner at the Veillée Vendéenne; he launched the Salon littéraire Lutetia (among the participants were Pierre de Boisdeffre, Pierre Boutang, Jacques Madaule, Gabriel Marcel, Henri Queffelec and Gino Severini). A medal was awarded to him for 20 years devoted to the French book, in 1950.

Marshal de Lattre died in 1952. Chaigne attended the national funeral at Notre-Dame and at the Invalides at the invitation of the widow. On this occasion, he published a book on the great soldier, collecting numerous testimonies, including those of Generals Weygand and Dromard.

His membership in the Tout-Paris was confirmed and he was invited by his friend Edmée de La Rochefoucauld to her salons, places of exceptional meetings and exchanges. She decorated Louis Chaigne with the Legion of Honor in 1953.

In the following years, he lost two of his closest friends: the writer Paul Claudel in 1955 and Jean Yole in 1956. That same year, 1956, he contributed to the revival of the Revue du Bas-Poitou, of which he became the director.

Finally, the national literary consecration came in 1958 with the prize of the Friends of Letters. In 1960, the appointment of Louis Chaigne by André Malraux, Minister of State for Culture, to the rank of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, and finally in 1961, the Grand Prix de Prose of the Académie Française.

He began to travel again. In Switzerland in 1961, in Italy (Assisi and Rome) in 1962. He was in the Vatican during the last moments of John XXIII. He wrote his biographical portrait, then a life of Pius XII. He also met Paul VI in 1965. The same year he was made an officer of the Order of Merit.

His activity slowed down somewhat without ceasing, in the last years of his life. With his friend, Jean Guitton, he took the direction of the magazine Ecclesia at Fayard.

In 1968, he published Le Rouergue, a work published for the pleasure of his wife Marie Pages, a native of that province. In 1969, he published a last commitment in the movement Horizon d'Ouest in favor of regionalization and the cultural and economic development of the western regions.

His friends in the French Academy suggested that he apply for membership, but he did not do so because of his declining health. He made a last trip to Rome in 1970. That same year he published Itinéraires d'une espérance, a collection of memories. He was promoted in the same year to officer of the Legion of Honor. On this occasion, a group of friends offered him a portrait by the Catalan artist Joan Soler-Puig.

Louis Chaigne died three years later, on Friday, July 6, 1973, at 8:00 p.m. in his home in Venansault, Vendée.

Works

Criticism

• Vies et œuvres d'écrivains (4 volumes; 1953-57)
• Bernanos (1954)
• Vie de Paul Claudel (1961; awarded the Grand Prix de la prose)
• Pascal (1962)
• Les lettres contemporaines, (volume X of the Histoire de la littérature française, by J.Calvet; 1964)
• Reconnaissance à la lumière (1965)
• Confidences au bord des sources (1967)
• Itinéraires d'une Espérance (1970)

Regionalism

• La Vendée (1934)
• La Vendée Maritime (illustrated by P.A. Bouroux)
• L'âme romane du Bas-Poitou (1963; illustrated by M. Besnard-Giraudias)
• La Vendée Confidentielle (1965; illustrated by Aymar de Lézardière)
• Le Rouergue (1969)

Biographies

• Maurice Baring (1936)
• Histoire de Marie (1947)
• Sainte Thérèse de Lisieux (1953)
• Monseigneur Gabriel Martin (1961)
• Saint André-Hubert Fournet ou La fierté de la Croix (1962)
• Jean de Lattre, maréchal de France (1963)
• Portrait de Jean XXIII (1963)
• Vie de Pie XII (1966)

Poetry

• La Couronne d'Ariane (1931)
• Instants d'éternité (1962)

Works in English translation

• Paul Claudel: The Man and the Mystic (1961)
• Saint Vincent de Paul (1962)

External links

• Works by Louis Chaigne at Gallica
• Works by Louis Chaigne at Hathi Trust