Siddhesh Joshi (Editor)

Colette Peignot

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Occupation
  
poet, writer

Name
  
Colette Peignot


Role
  
Author

Colette Peignot L39HORIZON OVIPARE Laure Colette Peignot

Born
  
8 October 1903
Meudon

Died
  
November 7, 1938, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

Parents
  
Georges Peignot, Suzanne Peignot

Grandparents
  
Charles Armant Chardon

Alkistis Dimech: Sabbatic Dance. ARAX: The Passion of Colette Peignot


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

Contents

Colette Peignot Colette Peignot dite Laure 19031938 Nuit blanche

She was profoundly affected during her childhood by the deaths of her father and three uncles during World War I, 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.

Colette Peignot dgrassetscomauthors1368685684p57090960jpg

Highly implicated in the early communist movement, she used her life as a tool of emancipation: her affairs with prominent intellectuals (Jean Bernier, Eduard Trautner, Boris Pilnyak, Boris Souvarine, George Bataille) were for her as important as affective encounters, than as weapons against her condition of woman, bourgeoise, ill, colonialist. She spent all the money she inherited from her father in supporting political journals and reviews (Critique sociale, for example).

Colette Peignot Laurequot Colette Peignot Laute Schreie auf Papierfetzen

At the end of her life, she was considered to be a muse for the French avant-garde of literature and politics. She was at the center of Georges Bataille's secret society Acéphale. She died at age 35 in Bataille's house.

Her works were published posthumously by Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, close friend of her, against the will of her brother, Charles Peignot. Because of that, they published with a surname and chose "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.

Tombe de Colette Peignot au cimetière de Fourqueux


Works

  • Laure: the Collected Writings translated by Jeanine Herman (City Lights, 1995) ISBN 978-0-87286-293-7
  • References

    Colette Peignot Wikipedia