Eugène Dabit
Eugène Dabit was a French writer born in 1898 in Paris, where he spent his early years in a residence hotel managed by his parents, catering to lower-class workers. This environment exposed him to the struggles of the working class, shaping his literary voice. Dabit's formal education ended early when he joined the French army at seventeen, returning to his working-class neighborhood after World War I. He married painter Béatrice Kappla, who recognized his literary potential and introduced him to notable literary figures such as Roger Martin du Gard and André Gide, who encouraged him to pursue writing. Dabit's most significant work, "Hôtel du Nord," published in 1929, draws from his childhood experiences and depicts the lives of marginalized French laborers through an informal narrative style. His exploration of political themes aligned with his involvement in the French Communist Party, and he also published poetry reflecting on the traumas of war. Dabit's life was cut short in 1936 during a trip to the Soviet Union, where he died from natural causes. His contributions to literature continued to resonate posthumously with the publication of his diary and writings on Spanish artists.
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Subject Terms
Eugène Dabit
Writer
- Born: 1898
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: August 21, 1936
- Place of death: Sebastopol, U.S.S.R. (now in Ukraine)
Biography
Eugène Dabit was born in 1898 in Paris, where his parents managed a residence hotel for lower-class workers. During his formative years, Dabit grew up in the hotel and spoke daily with the various borders who were down on their luck and blamed society for their misfortune. Dabit’s formal education ended in 1916, when he joined the French army at the age of seventeen. After the armistice on November 11, 1918, he returned to the same working-class neighborhood in Paris where he spent most of his life.
In 1923, he met the painter Béatrice Kappla, whom he later married. She helped him to recognize his artistic and literary talent and introduced him to two future Nobel Prize laureates in literature, Roger Martin du Gard and André Gide, who persuaded him that he should be a writer. Dabit was actively involved in the French Communist Party and believed he could use literature to express his political opinions.
In 1929, his masterpiece, Hôtel du Nord, was published. In this novel, heavily based on his own childhood experiences, he expressed in an informal style conversations and actions that seemed to realistically represent the feelings and despair of French laborers living on the margins of society. In 1938, the French director Marcel Carné adapted the novel into a successful film with the same title. Gide and Martin du Gard encouraged Dabit to continue writing in a popular style that, in their opinion, conveyed to readers how French workers actually spoke.
In 1930, Dabit published a collection of poems entitled Petit-Louis which contained his reflections on the horrors of trench warfare in World War I. Dabit then began writing for French Communist newspapers and magazines. His wife also encouraged him to do research on Spanish artists. With his friend and fellow Communist sympathizer Gide, Dabit traveled to the Soviet Union in 1936. During this trip, he died from natural causes in Sebastopol, which was then part of the Soviet Union and is now in Ukraine. His diary and his book on Spanish painters were both published posthumously.