Colette Peignot (October 8, 1903 – November 7, 1938) was a French writer and poet. She is most known by the pseudonym ''Laure'', but also wrote under the name ''Claude Araxe''.

Profile

Peignot was profoundly affected during her childhood by the deaths of her father and three uncles during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, by her failing health (tuberculosis nearly killed her at age 13), and by sexual abuse from a priest. Her writings are full of fury, improprieties, and suffering. Highly implicated in the early communist movement, she used her life as a tool of emancipation. Her affairs with prominent intellectuals such as Jean Bernier, Eduard Trautner,

Boris Pilnyak Boris Andreyevich Pilnyak (''né'' Vogau russian: Бори́с Андре́евич Пильня́к; – April 21, 1938) was a Russian and Soviet writer who was executed by the Soviet Union on false claims of plotting to kill Joseph Stalin and ...

Boris Souvarine Boris Souvarine (1 November 1895 – 1 November 1984), also known as Varine, was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist and journalist. A founding member of the French Communist Party, Souvarine is noted for being the only non-Russian com ...

George Bataille Georges Albert Maurice Victor Bataille (; ; 10 September 1897 – 9 July 1962) was a French philosopher and intellectual working in philosophy, literature, sociology, anthropology, and history of art. His writing, which included essays, novels, a ...

, were for her as important as affective encounters, than as weapons against her condition of woman, ''bourgeoise'', ill and colonialist. She spent all the money she inherited from her father in supporting political journals and reviews such as ''Critique sociale''. At the end of her life, she was considered to be a muse for the French avant-garde of literature and politics and was at the center of Bataille's secret society

Acéphale ''Acéphale'' is the name of a public review created by Georges Bataille (which numbered five issues, from 1936 to 1939) and a secret society formed by Bataille and others who had sworn to keep silent. Its name is derived from the Greek ἀκέ� ...

. She died at age 35 in Bataille's house.

Legacy

Peignot's works were published posthumously by Bataille and Peignot's close friend

Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with ...

, against the will of her brother, Charles Peignot. They were therefore published under the name "Laure". Her nephew, the poet Jérôme Peignot (who thought of Colette as a “diagonal mother”), republished the manuscripts in 1971 and 1977, despite the same family's opposition.

Works

* '' Laure: the Collected Writings'' translated by Jeanine Herman ( City Lights, 1995)

External links

"Laure: The 'True Whore' as Muse", by Jason DeBoer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Peignot, Colette 1903 births 1938 deaths Analysands of Adrien Borel 20th-century French novelists French women novelists 20th-century French women writers