Paul Léautaud
Paul Léautaud was a French writer born on January 18, 1872, in Paris, amidst the vibrant theater world. The illegitimate son of an actress and a prompter, he faced abandonment by his mother early on, which profoundly influenced his emotional development. Raised by his father and a former prostitute, Léautaud had limited formal education, leaving school after primary level to support his family. He began his literary career as a secretary at the Mercure de France in 1908, where his talent was soon recognized.
Léautaud's writing journey began with poetry in 1893, but he gained prominence through autobiographical essays, culminating in his acclaimed work "Le Petit Ami" (1903), which explored his complex relationship with his mother. This was followed by other autobiographical pieces, forming a trilogy that garnered critical attention. Over nearly four decades, he contributed essays and reviews to the Mercure, often under a pseudonym. His lifelong diary, kept since 1898, reflected on personal and cultural observations and was published posthumously in a comprehensive edition. Léautaud passed away on February 22, 1956, leaving behind a legacy that examined the self with unflinching honesty.
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Subject Terms
Paul Léautaud
Writer
- Born: January 18, 1872
- Birthplace: Paris, France
- Died: February 22, 1956
- Place of death: South of Paris, France
Biography
Appropriate for a man whose own life would be the subject of his most ambitious writing endeavor, Paul Léautaud’s birth was decidedly out of the norm. Born amid the carnival atmosphere of Paris theater world on January 18, 1872, he was the bastard son of an aspiring actress and a lowly prompter for the Comédie Française. Abandoned by his mother soon after his birth (a trauma that would impact his emotional development), the boy was raised by his father with the help of a former prostitute. Schooled only to the primary level, Léautaud began working at fifteen to help with family expenses. After an assortment of positions (among them a law clerk), Léautaud secured steady employment as a secretary at the publishing house of Mercure de France beginning 1908, where the staff quickly recognized a talented and promising writer.
A voracious reader with a fondness for contemporary theater, Léautaud began writing poetry as early as 1893 (lyric poetry, most often about his romantic affairs), but did not find an audience until he began experimenting with brief autobiographical essays in the Mercure journal. That success led ultimately to an autobiographical work, Le Petit Ami (1903), which recounted the complex relationship with his mother, whom he had met off and on while growing up and toward whom he had developed a sexual attraction. The work is difficult to categorize: An unstructured narrative, it is more fragments of recollections, frank and candid, juxtaposed with interpretative ruminations on the implications of the events. The unconventional book, nevertheless, found a wide market and critical success (it was shortlisted for the first ever Prix Goncourt). Léautaud followed the work with two other volumes of similarly conceived autobiographical constructs: In Memoriam (about his recently deceased father) and Amours (about his often tempestuous affairs), the trilogy ultimately translated and published as The Child of the Montmarte.
For close to forty years, Léautaud continued to write essays and often vitriolic reviews for the Mercure, at times under the pen name Maurice Boissard. Beginning in 1898, however, Léautaud kept a diary, a collage that reflected not only on the events of his life but as well observations on contemporary culture, gossipy pieces about Paris celebrities, and introspective discourses on troubling philosophical questions, most often on mortality. Léautaud kept the journal for more than fifty years. It was published beginning in 1954 in a nineteen-volume edition titled Journal littérature, appended with two additional volumes, Journal particulier, which recounted his numerous affairs. Enjoying a brief celebrity during the early 1950’s as a curmudgeony radio commentator, Léautaud died in his suburban home south of Paris on February 22, 1956. Audaciously and without apology, Léautaud accepted authenticity and ego as the compelling directives of the contemporary writer and subjected his self, troubled and emotionally scarred, to literally volumes of analysis and explication, leaving behind a monument not so much to ego as to the imperative to understand the self without sentimentality.