Séverin Faust (December 29, 1872,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

– April 23, 1945), better known by his pseudonym Camille Mauclair, was a French poet, novelist, biographer, travel writer, and art critic.

Background

Mauclair was a great admirer of Stéphane Mallarmé, to whom he dedicated several works, and of

Maurice Maeterlinck Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck (29 August 1862 – 6 May 1949), also known as Count (or Comte) Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who was Flemish but wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in ...

. He was initially a

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

and

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others asp ...

. His poetry attracted some attention and was set to music by Ernest Bloch, Gustave Charpentier, and

Ernest Chausson Amédée-Ernest Chausson (; 20 January 1855 – 10 June 1899) was a French Romantic composer who died just as his career was beginning to flourish. Life Born in Paris into an affluent bourgeois family, Chausson was the sole surviving child of ...

and

Nadia Boulanger Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher and conductor. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organist. From a ...

. His best-known novel is '' Le Soleil des morts'' (1898), a ''

roman à clef ''Roman à clef'' (, anglicised as ), French for ''novel with a key'', is a novel about real-life events that is overlaid with a façade of fiction. The fictitious names in the novel represent real people, and the "key" is the relationship be ...

'' containing fictionalized portraits of leading avant-garde writers, artists, and musicians of the 1890s, which has been recognized as an important historical document of the ''

fin de siècle () is a French term meaning "end of century,” a phrase which typically encompasses both the meaning of the similar English idiom "turn of the century" and also makes reference to the closing of one era and onset of another. Without context, ...

''. He also wrote several non-fiction books about music including ''Schumann'' (1906), ''The Religion of Music'' (1909), ''The History of European Music from 1850-1914'' (1914) and ''The Heroes of the Orchestra'' (1921) which contributed greatly to French awareness of musical trends in turn-of-the-century Paris. As art critic at the ''

Mercure de France The was originally a French gazette and literary magazine first published in the 17th century, but after several incarnations has evolved as a publisher, and is now part of the Éditions Gallimard publishing group. The gazette was published ...

'', he attacked artists such as

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

and

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in th ...

, though he expressed his admiration when their work became accepted. Later in life he wrote mainly nonfiction, including travel writing such as ''Normandy'' (1939), biographies of writers, artists, and musicians, and art criticism. In his art criticism, he supported

impressionism Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

and

symbolism Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: Arts * Symbolism (arts), a 19th-century movement rejecting Realism ** Symbolist movement in Romania, symbolist literature and visual arts in Romania during the late 19th and early 20th centuries ** Russian sym ...

, but disdained Fauvism, writing of the style that "a pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public". He also provided the libretto for Antoine Mariotte's 3-act 'conte lyrique' ''Nele Dooryn'', premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1940. At the end of his life, he collaborated with the

Vichy France Vichy France (french: Régime de Vichy; 10 July 1940 – 9 August 1944), officially the French State ('), was the fascist French state headed by Marshal Philippe Pétain during World War II. Officially independent, but with half of its te ...

-regime, and worked for the ''Grand Magazine illustré de la Race : Revivre''. He was also a cofounder of the

Théâtre de l'Œuvre The Théâtre de l'Œuvre is a Paris theatre on the Right Bank, located at 3, Cité Monthiers, entrance 55, rue de Clichy, in the 9° arrondissement. It is commonly conflated and confused with the late-nineteenth-century theater company named Th� ...

with

Lugné-Poe Aurélien-Marie Lugné (27 December 1869 19 June 1940), known by his stage and pen name Lugné-Poe, was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer. He founded the landmark Paris theatre company, the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, which produce ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mauclair, Camille 1872 births 1945 deaths Writers from Paris French poets 19th-century French novelists 20th-century French novelists French travel writers French art critics French male poets French male novelists 19th-century French male writers 20th-century French male writers French male non-fiction writers French collaborators with Nazi Germany