René Taupin (; 1905 – 13 February 1981) was a French translator, critic, and academic who lived most of his life in the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

and is best known for heading the Romance Languages department at

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

Life

Taupin moved to the United States in the 1920s. Taupin taught at

Haverford College Haverford College ( ) is a private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Fr ...

and

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

. In the 1930s, he began teaching at Hunter College. In 1954, Taupin was appointed chairman of the Department of Romance Languages at

. He remained at Hunter until 1968, when he retired. After his retirement, he returned to Paris, where he spent the last 13 years of his life. He died age 76 and was survived by his wife, Sidonia.

Career

He wrote his major work in 1929, in which he compared the effects of

Symbolist Symbolism or symbolist may refer to: *Symbol, any object or sign that represents an idea Arts *Artistic symbol, an element of a literary, visual, or other work of art that represents an idea ** Color symbolism, the use of colors within various c ...

poems with those of

Imagist Imagism was a movement in early-20th-century poetry that favored precision of imagery and clear, sharp language. It is considered to be the first organized literary modernism, modernist literary movement in the English language. Imagism has bee ...

poems and the different uses of imagery, noting of the Imagists 'the pleasure of their poetry is not the satisfaction of discovering little by little, but of seizing at a single blow, in the fullest vitality, the image, a fusion of reality in words' and concluding 'between the image of the Imagist and the 'symbol' of the Symbolists there is a difference only of precision' Taupin corresponded with

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

and was an associate of

Louis Zukofsky Louis Zukofsky (January 23, 1904 – May 12, 1978) was an American poet. He was the primary instigator and theorist of the so-called "Objectivist" poets, a short lived collective of poets who after several decades of obscurity would reemerge a ...

(who also corresponded with Pound). Zukofsky and Taupin planned to publish a periodical ''La France en liberté,'' but their plans did not come to fruition.

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a state university system, system of Public university, public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. The system has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration o ...

's Lilly Library Manuscript Collections has correspondence of Taupin's that includes letters from Zukofsky.

Paul Mariani Paul Mariani (born 1940 in New York City) is an American poet and is University Professor Emeritus at Boston College, specializing in Modern American and British Poetry, religion and literature, and creative writing (memoir, biography, and poetry) ...

said about Taupin that he was "a bitter pill for us to swallow sometimes" because he made Americans "look a rather negative lot".

Works

Books

* ''The Influence of French Symbolism on Modern American Poetry'' (1986), Ams Studies in Modern Literature, * ''The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire/Le Style Apollinaire: Le Style Apollinaire'' (1934), with

, Sasha Watson, Jean Daive, and Serge Gavronsky, Univ Press of New England, ; (Hardcover )

Essays

* ''Essais Indifferents Pour Une Esthetique'', with by Bettina L. Knapp, and Hannah K. Charney, Peter Lang Pub Inc,

Notes

External links

New York Times obituary

at the University Archives at

Kansas State University Kansas State University (KSU, Kansas State, or K-State) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university with its main campus in Manhattan, Kansas, United States. It was opened as the state's land-grant coll ...

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"ZAP! (Zukofsky, Apollinaire, and the X Men)" - discusses Taupin-Zukofsky relationship {{DEFAULTSORT:Taupin, Rene 1905 births 1981 deaths French academics Hunter College faculty French emigrants to the United States